Feminism Means Men Are Always Wrong: @SuzannahWeiss and ‘Kafkatrapping’

Posted on | August 3, 2016 | 56 Comments

Feminist rhetoric is an endless stream of anti-male hate propaganda — accusations that men are guilty of sexism, “objectification,” etc. — and yet, when any man calls attention to the insulting nature of these attacks, his objection is cited as proof that he is a sexist. Feminists actually expect men to agree that we are so vastly inferior that we need to be constantly lectured about how incompetent, selfish and stupid we are. Feminists believe that any man who defends himself against such hateful slurs has thereby demonstrated how ignorant he is of his guilt as an oppressor.

 

Three years ago, Suzannah Weiss graduated from Brown University with a degree in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Therefore, she knows everything. The rest of humanity is expected to sit silently in reverent awe while Ms. Weiss imparts to us her insights of superior wisdom.

6 Reasons “Not All Men” Misses The Point,
Because It’s Derailing Important Conversations

This was the title of a recent column by Ms. Weiss, making the important point that anything a man says to a feminist is always wrong.

Feminism requires males to be completely silent. No feminist ever wants to hear a word any man has to say. Anything a man does say to her will be condemned and cited as evidence of his sexist ignorance.

Consider, for example, the subject of masculinity. If you are a man, you might think you would be able to speak with some authority on this subject. However, you are a man, and therefore inferior, which is why you need Suzannah Weiss to enlighten you:

Whether you like it or not, if you are a man who has grown up in the United States or really any Western culture, you have picked up some aspect of toxic masculinity. This doesn’t mean you are a rapist, but it probably means you have been taught to objectify or underestimate women at some point. Own it. . . . If you believe you are the exception and the “good guy,” you’re probably not taking a hard enough look at yourself.

All men are guilty. You objectify women. You underestimate women. Your masculinity is toxic. There are no exceptions (because “Western culture”) and you are not a “good guy.” CONFESS YOUR GUILT!

This is a classic “kafkatrapping” tactic:

One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}.” . . .
My reference, of course, is to Franz Kafka’s “The Trial”, in which the protagonist Josef K. is accused of crimes the nature of which are never actually specified, and enmeshed in a process designed to degrade, humiliate, and destroy him whether or not he has in fact committed any crime at all. The only way out of the trap is for him to acquiesce in his own destruction; indeed, forcing him to that point of acquiescence and the collapse of his will to live as a free human being seems to be the only point of the process, if it has one at all. . . .
Real crimes — actual transgressions against flesh-and-blood individuals — are generally not specified. The aim of the kafkatrap is to produce a kind of free-floating guilt in the subject, a conviction of sinfulness that can be manipulated by the operator to make the subject say and do things that are convenient to the operator’s personal, political, or religious goals. Ideally, the subject will then internalize these demands, and then become complicit in the kafkatrapping of others.

Feminism is “designed to degrade, humiliate, and destroy” males, and the so-called “feminist man” is one who, having internalized the demands of his accusers, confesses his guilt and acquiesces in his own destruction.

This is why “not all men” is unacceptable to Suzannah Weiss:

When women talk about experiencing sexism or feeling unsafe, it has become a cliché for men to respond with “not all men.” . . . When we shift the discussion from the oppression of women to the protection of men’s images, we undermine the very real problems women and men face. . . .
[T]oo often, the phrase “not all men” is used to invalidate women’s claims about gender inequality or make men feel less uncomfortable about their privilege. In that case, it’s not really serving a purpose, and it’s silencing women.

The subject of all feminist discussion is “the oppression of women.” No matter how privileged she may actually be, the feminist always believes that she is oppressed. Who is responsible for oppressing her?

“Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. . . .
“We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . . All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women.”
— Redstockings, “Manifesto,” 1969

“The class separation between men and women is a political division. . . . The role (or class) system must be destroyed. . . .
“Men . . . are the enemies and the oppressors of women. . . . Both the male role and the female role must be annihilated. . . .
“The pathology of oppression can only be fully comprehended in its primary development: the male-female division. . . . The sex roles themselves must be destroyed.”
— “The Feminists: A Political Organization to Annihilate Sex Roles,” 1969, in Radical Feminism, edited by Anne Koedt, et al. (1973)

“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

“Sexuality, then, is a form of power. Gender, as socially constructed, embodies it, not the reverse. Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.”
— Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)

From the very beginnings of the Women’s Liberation movement in the 1960s, feminists have been quite emphatic about the nature and causes of their oppression — man is the enemy, and all women are victims. This is why feminism requires male silence: The enemy can never be allowed to deny his guilt, to explain or defend himself or otherwise “shift the discussion from the oppression of women,” as Suzannah Weiss says. She attended an elite university (annual tuition $49,346) where her feminist professors taught Ms. Weiss that her victimhood is an undeniable fact, and that all males are complicit in her victimhood. She recites a litany of offenses (“12 Signs Your Date Is Sexist”) as a condemnation of any man who disagrees with her radical ideology. Men who dispute her insulting accusations about their “toxic masculinity,” etc., are accused by Ms. Weiss of “silencing women” (???) even while she dishonestly disavows the fundamental tenets of feminist theory:

When feminists talk about gender inequality, we are not blaming men.

(Then who is to blame for this “inequality”?)

In fact, many men would probably rather live in a society where gender roles did not exist.

(No such society has ever existed, nor will it ever exist in the future.)

When people say “not all men,” they’re assuming that feminism is making claims about men as a group, which it isn’t.

Yet feminists have always made “claims about men as a group” and certainly a Gender and Sexuality Studies major from Brown University like Suzannah Weiss must know this. The class “Introduction to Gender and Sexuality Studies” (GNSS 120) is a prerequisite to all other classes in this program, and an online syllabus for that class (as taught by Professor Denise Davis in spring semester 2014) indicates that Catharine MacKinnon was required reading, along with lesbian feminists Judith Butler and Gayle Rubin. The assigned reading by Rubin, her 1982 essay “Thinking Sex,” incidentally contains a defense of child pornography and pedophilia (or “cross-generational intimacy,” as Rubin calls it in a footnote) that favorably cites NAMBLA:

For over a century, no tactic for stirring up erotic hysteria has been as reliable as the appeal to protect children. The current wave of erotic terror has reached deepest into those areas bordered in some way, if only symbolically, by the sexuality of the young. . . . In February 1977, shortly before the Dade County vote, a sudden concern with “child pornography” swept the national media. . . .
The laws produced by the child porn panic are ill-conceived and misdirected. They represent far-reaching alterations in the regulation of sexual behavior and abrogate important sexual civil liberties. But hardly anyone noticed as they swept through Congress and state legislatures. With the exception of the North American Man/Boy Love Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, no one raised a peep of protest. . . .
The experiences of art photographer Jacqueline Livingston exemplify the climate created by the child porn panic. An assistant professor of photography at Cornell University, Livingston was fired in 1978 after exhibiting pictures of male nudes which included photographs of her seven-year-old son masturbating. . . .
It is easy to see someone like Livingston as a victim of the child porn wars. It is harder for most people to sympathize with actual boy-lovers. Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boy-lovers are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation.

According to Gayle Rubin, child pornography and pedophilia are not a problem; the problem is the “erotic terror” and “stigma” caused by people who do not “sympathize with actual boy-lovers” — and Rubin’s essay was required reading in an introductory course for Gender and Sexuality Studies majors at Brown University (annual tuition $49,346). Somehow, we are expected to believe, Suzannah Weiss never noticed the perverse radicalism promoted by her professors at Brown, so that she can invoke plausible deniability as to what feminist ideology actually involves. Nevertheless, she has vowed never to shave her legs again:

The problem was, shaving my legs never felt natural. . . .
I put up with the physical discomfort of shaving all the way until college because I couldn’t tolerate the potential social discomfort of having legs that stood out. But as I became more aware of the excessive standards our society imposes upon women’s appearances, I grew angry that something as benign as body hair had caused me so much concern. The ideal of smooth legs was about pleasing men . . .
I stopped shaving once and for all around my junior year of college, and surprisingly, nobody has (at least openly) objected. One boyfriend even told me he liked my natural legs because they showed I thought for myself rather than blindly following conventions. . . .
One great barometer of how much a man respects women is whether he believes they have an obligation to look aesthetically pleasing to him.

You see? Society “imposes” these “excessive standards” on women because this is “about pleasing men,” and feminists believe it is wrong for women to make any effort to “look aesthetically pleasing” to men.

Given her implacable hostility to “pleasing men,” what sort of man do you suppose would find Suzannah Weiss attractive? Or vice-versa?

My First Love Came Out as Transgender
By Suzannah Weiss
“I don’t feel comfortable in the male gender role.”
When John* first told me this on a walk through the woods during college, I thought it described a common feeling. Didn’t we all defy gender stereotypes in some way or another?
I imagined what he might be referring to, and they were all things I adored about him. He loved animals, attentively caring for his pet guinea pig and buying lobsters just to set them free in the water. He had meaningful friendships with girls, who viewed him as a confidant. He was close with his mother.
But when he brought it up again as we sat on the bed in my dorm room, it had a more serious tone. “I really need you to know, I don’t feel like a man.” . . .
To my relief, months passed without him bringing up his gender again. Yet he grew distant, calling me less often and acting sullen without telling me why. When he showed up uninvited at my dorm one afternoon and told me we needed to talk, I had a hunch what was happening.
“Are you breaking up with me?” He let out a slow sigh. “But you love me.” He told me he didn’t anymore. We were totally different people, he said. . . .
“Since I was very young, I felt uncomfortable living as a male,” he wrote. “I would ride my bike to Walmart to buy girls’ clothing. I felt so ashamed and confused about why I did this.”
He went on to explain that he had always confided in me about everything except his gender identity because he didn’t want to impose his struggles on me. “I hope you understand that I need to transition to live a happy life, and that I do and always will love you,” he continued.

Suzannah Weiss probably thinks this is a coincidence, but it’s not. Normal men are attracted to normal women for normal reasons, but feminists are not normal women. Men who find feminists attractive . . . Well, why?

If gender “embodies” sexuality, as Catharine MacKinnon asserts, so that men and woman are “made into the sexes as we know them” according to “the social requirements of heterosexuality,” then we would expect the most masculine men to be considered most attractive by women. This in turn would make masculinity a factor highly correlated with men’s heterosexual success. As a logical consequence, such men would have no incentive to waste their time and resources pursuing women who make no effort toward “pleasing men.” The obverse correlation is that the most feminine women would be most attractive to men and, being able to choose among many would-be suitors, could require men to devote time and resources to their effort to please her. Thus, the “power” that MacKinnon attributes to sexuality works both ways, although any individual’s ability to wield this power is directly correlated to their own attractiveness which is a function of how successfully they embody “gender” according to the “social requirements of heterosexuality.”

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Although one can use MacKinnon’s analysis to understand the relationship between “gender” and sexuality, the feminist purpose of MacKinnon’s analysis is to destroy that relationship, in order to deprive men of the “power” by which women are allegedly oppressed under a system of “male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.”

Understanding what feminism is, we therefore are not surprised when women who embrace this destructive ideology report difficulties in their relationships with men. A woman who achieves happiness within the “social requirements of heterosexuality” — the feminine woman who succeeds in forming a relationship with a masculine man, and who enjoys the normal results of such success — has no more incentive to alter the system than does any man who is similarly successful and happy.

It is only the misfits and outcasts, the disgruntled, the maladjusted and the neurotic, who find in feminism’s utopian project of androgynous “equality” a vessel for their antisocial resentments. Quite predictably, the women who are most fanatical in their devotion to this warped ideology are those who are most unhappy with “gender stereotypes,” women who suffer from feelings of inadequacy (or inauthenticity) in heterosexual relationships and who actively dislike masculine men. Feminism offers women sour-grapes rationalizations for their failures, and also justifies their vindictive impulses toward males as “social justice.”

What kind of man is attracted to feminist women? Suzannah Weiss’s experience with her college boyfriend who did not “feel comfortable in the male gender role” is quite instructive in this regard. No honest man with any sense of self-respect would tolerate the kind of insulting rhetoric that feminists habitually use to describe men. Who finds hate attractive?

There are 3.5 billion women on this planet, most of whom do not consider “pleasing men” to be oppressive. Most women enjoy pleasing men, just as men enjoy pleasing women and, if our “gender roles” are at times difficult, successful performance of these roles is undeniably rewarding.

Ah, but we are forbidden to say so! No heterosexual man is allowed to speak on his own behalf, because feminists have claimed a monopoly over all discussion of “gender” and sexuality. We must be lectured by Suzannah Weiss — she whose “first love” was a boy who liked dressing up as a girl — and don’t you dare accuse her of hating men. Nor should you raise the issue of Suzannah Weiss’s mental health, her history of eating disorders, her body-image issues, or her pathological hatred of children:

Ever since I was a kid myself, I’ve held the conviction that I didn’t want kids. I found baby dolls creepy and real-life babies irritating. . . .
Children never appealed to me the way they do to many. I love animals, but human infants just seem like tiny, screaming, pooping aliens to me. I’ve also read enough parenting articles to understand the stress of child-rearing, not to mention pregnancy and childbirth — all to create a human being who may not even grow up to like you. It seems like too big a gamble.
On top of that, I wouldn’t make a good parent. . . .
I’d hope none of the men I date operate under this assumption that all women instinctually like kids. . . . I’ve realized it would be a waste of time to date someone who wants kids.

Feminism always leads to the Darwinian Dead End, and yet these failures consider themselves the only people qualified to talk about sex. Pay no attention to that old married guy with six kids . . .

 

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