Because you don’t hear enough women say the word Vagina these days.

Republicans, Get In My Vagina! from Kate Beckinsale

Some 17th century proto woman-identification that my reading around Adrienne Rich’s Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence made me think of.

Women […] aren’t women-identified, they don’t have women-oriented spaces, and they still rely on heterosexual institutions to give them the love and fulfillment they need […] Rich conceived of a “lesbian continuum” as a “political affiliation that can re-establish those lost same-sex loyalties by uniting women - heterosexual, bisexual and lesbian - in a mutual, woman-focused vision”. She wanted to do away with “male-identification” - or the casting of allegiances with men - and patriarchy - in such a way that men become the primary signifier of meaning, value and possibility culturally, socially, intellectually and politically.

http://www.autostraddle.com/compulsory-heterosexuality-and-lesbian-existence-30-years-later-5861/

This is poetry, and it’s pre-feminist.  It’s tempting to call the first poem sex negative and to accuse the second of approaching the Courtly Love paradigm (notoriously anti-feminist in that it placed the Lady on a pedestall and thus dehumanized and isolated her).  However, in their context, they provide an amazing example of resistance to the construct of patriarchal marriage as the institution with a monopoly of giving significance or status to women.

A marry state

written one year before the poet’ s marriage at the age of 17

A married state affords but little ease:
The best of husbands are so hard to please.
This in wives’ careful faces you may spell,
Though they dissemble their misfortunes well.
A virgin state is crowned with much content,
It’s always happy as it’s innocent.
No blustering husbands to create your fears,
No pangs of childbirth to extort your tears,
No children’s cries for to offend your ears,
Few worldly crosses to distract your prayers.
Thus are you freed from all the cares that do
Attend on matrimony and a husband too.
Therefore Madam, be advised by me:
Turn, turn apostate to love’s Levity.
Suppress wild nature if she dare rebel.
There’s no such thing as leading apes in hell.

What I would call sex-under-patriarchy-realism.

To my excellent Lucasia , on our friendship.  17th July 1651

written 3 years after the poet’s marriage at the age of 17

I did not live until this time 
Crowned my felicity, 
When I could say without a crime, 
I am not thine, but thee. 

This carcase breathed and walked and slept, 
So that the world believed 
There was a soul the motions kept, 
But they were all deceived. 

For as a watch by art is wound 
To motion, such was mine; 
But never had Orinda found 
A soul till she found thine; 

Which now inspires, cures, and supplies, 
And guides my darkened breast; 
For thou art all that I can prize, 
My joy, my life, my rest. 

No bridegroom’s nor crown-conqueror’s mirth 
To mine compared can be; 
They have but pieces of this earth, 
I’ve all the world in thee. 

Then let our flames still light and shine, 
And no false fear control, 
As innocent as our design, 
Immortal as our soul.

• The Moralistic Right Wing does such a good job of vilifying themselves for us.  This from the comments under Laurie Penny’s piece on masculinity for the Independent, Saturday 21st April

  You personally claim you have a very high sex drive.

  Fine, accepting that at face value, you may be some exception to the general rule, but you are *not* the general rule.

  I have known plenty of women (and I mean *plenty*) and none of them  has ever said they have got a really high sex drive like you have.

  And statistical research confirms it.

  I’ve given one survey I found without any difficulty whatsoever, that says 63% of married women would prefer reading a book, watching a movie, or sleeping to having sex, and I’ve heard many other women claiming *they do not care if they never have sex again.*

  Another clear example, which started to wake me up to the truth, which sadly too many other men are still blind to, was the book of a female author I read back in the earls 1970s called “The Manipulated Man” by Esther Vilar.

  In this book, she, a very good looking highly educated lady, who is also a published playwright, admitted that the average woman considered having sex less exciting than buying a new pair of red leather boots.

  Amongst other admissions she made about the feminist agenda and women in general, with the result she actually got *death threats* from feminists for “spilling the beans.”

  I’m not denying your right to be a sex maniac, but just pointing out that you *do not represent the majority of women.*

  All most of them want is to be loved and have children, they are not remotely as interested in sex as you are.

  You are on a loser trying to spread this point of view, because it’s not just men who are saying this, it’s *women themselves*, but as I said, you and the other feminists are not even listening to women themselves, and I mean *the average woman*, not a feminist woman.

  If you and your kind do persuade these ordinary women to start getting more sexually adventurous, as has happened to some degree, it is only going to cause women to have more casual and irresponsible sex, more children growing up without fathers, more affairs, causing more marriage breakdowns and traumatised children in the middle of these ugly relationship splits and divorce battles.
   
  In the UK we’ve got the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe,  which apart from anything else is costing the country *countless billions*, because quite often these girls are not in any relationship with a boy or man who works, and to keep promoting sex like you are doing is only going to make matters worse in that respect.

  What makes a happy, secure and peaceful world is if we can build relationships on *trust.*

  And if *either* partner, the man or the woman is a sex maniac, that is a very direct threat to the other, because the implication is that one partner will not be enough for them, and then they will be off sexually adventuring with somebody else, and then the person who is betrayed will possibly have the rest of their life destroyed, unable to ever trust a member of the opposite sex again, and as I’ve said, the children also will be the victims, traumatised by the sight of their parents tearing lumps out of one another, or never even having known their father or in some cases even mother.

  All due to the fact that too many men can’t “keep it in their pants” because they are being given too much opportunity and encouragement to do otherwise, and some women can’t keep *their pants on*, and only have sex when it is socially responsible to do so.

  Women in the UK are *not* being sexually repressed by men; they are in their millions living out their lives happily, but if they start listening to people like you, all they will do is start getting discontent, start shouting about “why am I not having multiple orgasms like Katie Shapland?”

  I’ll tell you why Katie, because they *do not care* about having multiple orgasms, even single orgasms most of the time, and that you do care so much, is a problem that *you* therefore for some “strangest array” of reason have, which *they do not.*

  We don’t need a crop of female sex addicts in the UK, any more than we needed the ugly and death dealing tobacco addiction which also got imported unwisely from America.

  What we need is to concentrate on stopping all the *male* sex addicts, not trying to make a right with two wrongs, by creating a generation of female sex addicts too.

  At the bottom of it Katie, in your case, is your overt rejection of spirituality/religion and “embracing” of atheism.

  You’ve got no idea whether there is a God or not, and have more or less rubbished the idea that my spiritual views have any validity in your replies to me below.

  It’s why you hold *those views* that in my view you need to be looking at, instead of going on a campaign as you are apparently doing to make British women into sex maniacs.

  If you won’t take it from me, so to speak, because I am a man, and you dislike men telling you you are wrong, take it from a woman.

  Read Esther Vilar’s “The Manipulated Man”, and thus start waking up to the fact that  the *average* man’s life is and has been throughout most of recorded history both repressed and painful, but now we are supposed to have a vaguely civilised society, there is no need for this abuse of men to continue, yet it does.

  We’ve got the situation that one gender - the women - must be respected in every way, are never to blame for anything, and the other gender, the men, are responsible for anything bad that happens in the world, always wrong.

  e.g. a feminist quote

  “You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs.”
  Catherine MacKinnon (Prominent legal feminist scholar; University of Michigan, & Yale.)

  It’s clear that not all feminists show the same *pro-sex* view as you do, isn’t it?

  • Like

  • 1 week ago
  • in reply to Katie Shapland
  • 4 Likes
• 
  anonanonanonanonanonanonCollapse

  Lots of women have told you they’re not interested in sex? I think we all have an idea of why that is.

End the double burden of wage labour and home-keepin on women now.

thepoliticalnotebook:

Picture of the Day: Lahore, Pakistan. May Day protesters gather in the capital of Punjab province.

Credit: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty. Via.

View more Picture of the Day posts. Submit a photo.

(Source: )

Trigger warning: serious objectification, male invasion into female personal space, patronising language, racism.

Comments in italic my own, but surely representative of Sexist Pig Simon Hattenstone’s true thoughts.

She has a body like Marilyn and a mouth like Eminem. No wonder Nicki Minaj is the hottest female rapper in the world. Normative beauty is a must for female success.

Underneath the pneumatic bosom and bottom (rumoured to be surgically enhanced, which she denies), because a woman’s body, including the most intimate parts, are legitimate objects to rumour about the gold bangles, the screaming pink and green make-up, there’s a rather delicate beauty – lovely big features in a small face it’s so great that she looks like a little girl because little girls are not intimidating to men. She refuses to talk about her body these days and looks aghast if it’s suggested anything might have been worked on because she’s a crazy ball breaker, not because your body is your own and should not be dragged into public discourse by a man trying to line his pocket out of it.

“Your teeth are beautiful,” I say.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Are they natural?”

She gives me a ferocious stare “Are your teeth natural?” she replies.

“You can tell they are,” I say. “They’re disgusting.” Just like me.

Now one of half a dozen big men sitting in the room with us stares at me. “I can see your plaque from here,” he says, in an intimidating voice.  A man’s told me to shut up now.  I might listen.

Minaj refers so often to her male genitalia, it’s not surprising there’s been talk about her sexuality. When asked if she thought there could be a successful gay rapper in a notoriously homophobic world, she suggested she was gay. “TMZ were just yelling stuff out to me, and they were like, ‘Do you think there’ll ever be a gay rapper?’ and I said, ‘You have one.’ It was just in fun.” So she likes boys? Silence. Girls? Silence. Both? Silence. Neither? She grins. “Yeah, none.” Oh come on! It’s totally my business what you do between the sheets and implausible that you would choose not to be a sexual object in a marketable, patriarchal way at all!  ”I don’t like any of them. Sexually or otherwise.” Minaj says exactly what she wants to: not a word more or less. There are, of course, contradictions aplenty. Her music certainly does not suggest an aversion to sex or sexuality. Nor does her appearance. After rowing publicly with fellow rapper Lil’ Kim, who claimed Minaj had borrowed heavily from her, she asked, “Why in the black community have we got to hate on each other? Gaga didn’t on Madonna… we’re helping each other.” Fine sentiments, but in the songItty Bitty Piggy, she states, “It’s like I’ve just single-handedly annihilated, you know/Every rap bitch in the building”. Hardly collegiate.  Ha!  Caught her out!  Pretending like women can be strong and stand up for each other like men and especially male rappers are so renowned for…

Is there pressure to change her image for the children? “Sometimes it feels like I have to change, but I can’t. What rapper changes themselves for children?”

“So if some business guru came up to you and said, ‘Hey, Nicki, if you lose the swear words…’”

Before the question is out she blows up. Crazy bitch.  “Why do people ask me to lose swear words? Do people ask Eminem to lose swear words? Do they ask Lil Wayne to lose swear words? I did an interview the other day and when I saw it back I’m like, why the hell did she make the interview all about some goddamned kids? It was crazy. Five-year-old children shouldn’t be the subject of a Nicki Minaj interview.”  Because Niki Minaj is a successful and talented woman in her won right?  Don’t be ridiculous, women only exist in relation to child bearing or nurturing duties!

Excuse me, I say, trying to interrupt because I have male privilege and I’m not afraid to use it, can I just ask my question: what would you say to the business guru? “Well, first I want you to answer my question, then I’ll answer yours.”  What a crazy, ball-breaking bitch, right?

I’m tempted to say that Eminem and Lil Wayne don’t have such impressionable fans, but I don’t think that’s actually true. “Because it’s a sexist world out there and we apply different values to women?” I offer That’s right, I know all about that ole male privilege.

“So make sure you put that in your article. Cos we’re getting this on tape.”

I ask if she wants to write up the interview herself  coz that male privilege thing I keep using means I’m allowed to patronise my female interviewees, see. “No, I just want you to put that in. Don’t you think it’s strange, though? I used to see Eminem in concert and people were bringing their little brother or whatever. Nobody stops them and says [she adopts a posh English accent], ‘Would you stop swearing, Eminem, for loads of money?’ I don’t get it, I don’t get it.”

“I tell my Barbs, ‘Stay in school, respect your body, don’t go giving it away, don’t depend on a man.’ I tell them that all the time.” Who’s been her role model? “My mother,” she answers instantly. And her heroes? “God. And my mother.” Does she consider herself political? “No.” Is she going to vote Republican? “Of course not!” she says outraged.

So she is political? Glad I was there to tell her what she is.  These women, they do get their pretty little heads so confused about what they are!  She cackles.

On Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, four of the songs are produced byRedOne, best known for working with Lady Gaga. The cover imageconfused me, I say. At first glance I thought it was Gaga, or at least a spoof of her.  Because a black person with a white attribute is a joke, right?  Like, she doesn’t seriously expect anyone to ever look past her race?

Minaj gives me a look that could kill at a thousand paces. “You think that looks like Gaga? Absolutely not. I have no idea what you’re talking about… Maybe little black kids shouldn’t wear blond hair?”  Well, no.  That confuses me, when people make choices about their identity presentation.  I can’t categorize, divide, and conquer then.

At which point there is much muttering about my manners from the men in the room, and I’m told there is no time for any more questions.  And because they’re men, I listen to them.

Guardian, Friday 27 April 2012

‘The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves’.

Who said that?  Marx?  He did say it, but the original quote in fact belongs to early nineteenth century French socialist feminist Flora Tristan.  It’s ok, I’d never heard of her until this week either.  Wait, no, that’s not ok.  Flora Tristan also wrote about the need for an international Worker’s Union before Marx.  She wrote about the intersectionality of class and gender struggle before Marx.  And, which is more than can be said for most utopian socialists, she went on a Tour de France in 1843, a year before her death from typhus, to galvanise the workers into organisation and action.  Workers inspired by her visit went on strike at the Toulon arsenal in 1845.  This was a woman who got things done, and written down for posterity to record, and about whom you could go your entire academic career hanging out with Marxists and Leftists and Socialists and Feminists and never hear anything about.

Here’s a popular slogan you’ll hear in those circles: ‘No feminism without socialism, no socialism without feminism’.  Here’s a disclaimer to that slogan: ‘No socialist feminism without the acknowledgement of women’s contribution to the development of Marxist theory and, equally importantly, the redress of the invisibility this female contribution has suffered, allowing Marxism to become a male dominated, and therefore often alienating, field of study and practice, which has too often held or seemed to hold, that feminism should wait for socialism, even though no advance can be made towards an international socialist state if over half the membership of that state are left behind to have their oppression generously lifted at a later date by the newly benign oppressor’.  And of course, no socialist feminism would mean ‘no socialism’.  I’ve often wondered what’s been holding us back.

Disclaimer: I study German politics; this critique is centred on Germany.

Concerns about the ‘democratic deficit’ in European politics have gone hand in hand with economic hardship and popular discontent since way back when, even in Germany.  This is hardly surprising; in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, Capitalism won, socialism demonstrably did not work, the establishment of the EU in 1993 was obviously going to be Western right down to the shiny tips of its West German shoes.  That meant capitalism: No market economy, no EU membership.  And capitalism, as an unplanned and purely profit driven economy, is by nature not answerable for itself.  It IS a democratic deficit.

Capitalism lies right at the heart of the EU.  The EU is not an ideological, cultural, emotional union.  It’s not a union based on, say, solidarity.  It’s an economic union: it used to be CALLED the European Economic Community.  And member states’ behaviour proves this; any member state is going to pursue policy in its own interest at the EU: in 1998, Germany threatened to derail Agenda 2000, the programme for the accession of ex-soviet states, unless EU funding was restructured so it would have to pay less.  This was all forgotten about by 2007 when the Berliner Erklärung proclaimed that we are united for the sake of our happiness, we put the human being at the centre of our politics, only together can we defend our democracy, freedom, peace, and welfare – ‘in Solidarity’.  But still, 2012, with Germany insisting that Brussels oversee the elected Greek government’s budget, looks a lot more like 1998.

What kind of foundation for ‘union’ is this? Not only is everyone is in it out of self interest, economic self interest at that, but those interests themselves are clearly planted in shaky ground;in 1989, the West German economic and political elites predicted a second Economic Miracle in the East, such as West Germany had enjoyed after the Second World War.  They were proved wrong.  In 1993, they insisted on market economies in all European member states, believing markets to be the only guarantee of economic prosperity.  They are being proved wrong.  Markets are no guarantee of anything; capitalism is AN UNPLANNED ECONOMY.  IT IS BY NATURE UNPREDICTABLE.  If you’re only in the club for personal gain, when the gains stop coming – and under capitalism, stop coming they will – you’re going to want out.  Or to control the club so what gains there are are all yours.

And that’s the thing: the case of East Germany’s non Economic Miracle is actually nowhere near as bad as the current Eurozone/ Mediterranean crisis.  West Germany and East Germany are one nation; they see themselves as having shared self interest, shared personal gain to make.  The EU is comprised of nation states, demarcated territories that proclaim who is us and who is other.  The Greek people are other to the German ruling class and the German ruling class can pretend they are other to the German working class too; the system says they are.  That leaves little room for, say, solidarity.

1989 was an opportunity to rethink fundamentals of, at least, the German political and economic system.  This didn’t happen; the pre-existing staples of Western European integration were adhered to more strongly than ever, as having supposedly been lent new legitimacy by the collapse of what was perceived as the only alternative to Western neoliberal bourgeois democracy and capitalism.  Clearly, then, when a capitalist crisis struck, it would strike hard.  Meanwhile, the capitalist drive for economic growth has trumped other considerations for European integration, meaning that those member states that ‘let the side down’ when it comes to growth are finding it harder to receive the support they need from their European peers.  This is obviously not a propitious foundation for true integration; apart from any resentment in current Greek-German relations, serious democratic questions are rightly being asked about a situation in which a German government can impose budgetary restrictions on an elected Greek government and in which a German government can impose austerity on the Greek people against their will. 

The increasingly economic and monetary foundations of European union lend themselves naturally to imperialism, as the largest purse, not the largest democratic mandate, holds the most power.  Concerns about a ‘democratic deficit’ run throughout the history of European integration since 1945 and have clearly not been satisfactorily addressed – this needs to happen more urgently now than ever.  That it did not happen in 1989 is perhaps unsurprising, given that the fall of the Iron Curtain was perceived as a victory for Western values which should not, therefore, be questioned.  The current economic crisis, however, is a second opportunity.  We have to seize it.

Whoever her favourite teacher/ mother/ aunt/ big sister/ other potential mentor figure is who influenced this girl, I want any daughters I have to meet them.

We have it from the inside: Terri White, ex-editor of Nuts lads’ mag tells it like it is for one paragraph.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/22/nuts-magazine-lads-mags-women