My Little Spat with Caitlin Johnstone on "Rape Culture"

Yes, in fact Caitlin Johnstone is a leftist journalist I admire greatly. Her well-documented and witheringly logical reporting on the Dem/MSM Russiagate scam has been spot on, as is a lot of her writing on US foreign policy. Johnstone is a leftist who does not jump on just any left bandwagon to trash the Trump Administration, and because of this she's hated and mistrusted by much of the left. She's even been called "alt-right", which is pretty hilarious given that she's a socialist, but par for the course in this climate.

But recently, and just now with the Kavanaugh Confirmation Clown Show going on, she put up a piece that referenced "rape culture"--the sophomoric and easily debunked feminist concept that claims women in America and other developed Western countries are living in cultures that tolerate rape.

Given that there are and have been actual rape cultures in history, that rape is a serious crime, and that, further, there are many men now in American jails who are there because of bogus stories concocted by ethically challenged women--given all this, and the unprecedented Kavanaugh circus, I called her out. Below is her original post graphic and parts of the ensuing spat. I don't disagree with some of the points made in Johnstone's's original post, but do very strongly disagree with her irresponsible use of "rape culture".

On this topic, it is Michelle Malkin who talks sense, not Caitlin Johnstone.

E.M.























Oh, and by the way, GOP--CONFIRM BRETT KAVANAUGH THIS WEEK, YOU WIMPS.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

There's No Going Back from this #MeToo Clown Show

Diane Feinstein, who knows how to hold onto a letter.
So surprise. With Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation falling apart, another liberal woman has stepped forward to accuse Brett Kavanaugh of misdeeds in the distant past. Her name is Deborah Ramirez. Unfortunately, even the ultra-liberal New Yorker, has to recognize her new #MeToo story isn’t very compelling. Which didn’t stop them from printing of course. Read:

She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.

Hey, me too, with legal standards like this, I’ve got things from my past, times I’ve been groped and abused and stolen from, that the FBI should investigate. I should call The New Yorker. Or my local Democratic member of Congress. Oh, wait. I’m white. And male.

Rod Dreher sums it up at his blog:

So the FBI is supposed to investigate whether or not a drunk college boy pulled down his pants at a drunken college party and exposed himself to a college girl who was so drunk that she can’t clearly remember the event, and had to take six days to think about whether or not it actually happened? It was so devastatingly traumatic to her that she had to ponder for a week about whether or not it happened, and whether or not it was Brett Kavanaugh?

This is what they’re throwing at Brett Kavanaugh now?

Let's be very clear. Both Ford and this new "accuser", as well as Diane Feinstein and her unhinged party, are doing irreparable harm to all the women who are actual victims of sexual assault. That's the real harm now sinking its claws into America's psyche. And given how this has all played out, there's likely no going back. Thanks to our identity politics left, the bar for accusation has gotten so insanely low that literally millions of Americans are being pushed, whether they like it or not, toward an attitude of deep skepticism regarding claims of sexual abuse.

For myself even, who tries hard to keep my judgment from being clouded by political considerations, I have to admit that going forward part of me, hearing an accusation made against a man, will pose the question, "Is this woman of the left-liberal persuasion?" and if the answer is Yes, I will be dismissive of the accusation unless she has very concrete evidence. It's wrong finally, that it's come to this, but this team has brought it upon themselves. Too many of them, even the most prominent, are on the verge of explicitly acknowledging that if an accusation serves their political goals it must be treated as true. All sense of due legal process is lost.

Consider this tweet last year from a female columnist at a national woman’s magazine.

Say what? But it's clear what "slips" like this reveal. Namely, this attitude is already deeply entrenched in many American women's thinking. And in the verbal repertoire of many beta men who are in it for the hugs it gets them. If this attitude weren't so entrenched, after all, the absurdly belated and memory-impaired Ford accusation against Judge Kavanaugh wouldn't have been given the attention it has.

How can there be justice in a society that allows a clown show like this to put on the garb of justice? There cannot. Shame on these women. The people they're harming most are women who have really been victimized.

All I can say is: VOTE IN THE COMING NOVEMBER MIDTERMS! Get your friends to vote. This unprincipled left needs to be kept as far away from the reins of government as possible.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Cathy Newman vs. Jordan Peterson: A Study in SJW Demagoguery

Newman's interview got within a millimeter of outright self-satire
I’m surprised the Atlantic actually ran this piece on Cathy Newman’s pathetic attempt to libsplain Jordan Peterson to himself. Perhaps the magazine's editors, after all the guffaws produced by their piece last year explaining how “the solar eclipse is racist”, have had second thoughts about the SJW bandwagon and decided they didn’t want the Atlantic to be known as the go-to magazine for high-brow infants.

In any case, the Peterson/Newman interview is already a broadcasting classic. Seriously. If you haven't watched it, you've missed one of the best verbal sparring matches ever aired on television. Click here and sit back for some serious entertainment.

I agree with the Atlantic writer that one can find Newman's style of verbal demagoguery on both left and right. But who are we kidding? The "left" now never leaves this mode. Compare Newman here with the typical Tucker Carlson interview. Carlson doesn't put words in his guests' mouths: he draws them out with questions, often simple Yes/No questions, until they reveal the ugly implications of their positions. Very different from Newman and Co.

And of course Peterson is not really a figure of the right, and certainly not of the Alt-Right to which his enemies desperately try to link him. You can only place Peterson on the right if your idea of the left is Maoism. Which, in terms of cultural issues, is exactly where our left "liberals" now sit. They are identity-politics-Maoists-cum-pro-corporate globalists. Our 21st-century left manages to combine the worst of both worlds. And to hell with them. Peterson, a strong antidote to their nonsense, is a true liberal in the best 20th c. mode. We're lucky to have him.

#SmashThisFakeLeft #JordanPeterson #antiSJW #ConorFriedersdorf

Have some deadpan with your coffee. Check out Idiocy, Ltd. Dryest humor in the west.

Feminists Publicly Abort Jesus in Bloody Performance Art

A few days back I posted on Facebook about the recent obscene provocation to come from our demented feminist avant garde. My post garnered a few comments from friends sympathetic to my disgust, but also resistance from a British atheist friend which allowed me to explain some of my thinking on the key role the Christian tradition plays in our culture. I reproduce the comment thread here, having changed the names of the participants.

Go to this LifeSiteNews piece for an an account of what went down.



My caption on the Facebook post: “Horrendous, but not surprising. These people don't know the divide they're creating.”

Comment thread:

JOHN GREIST: This is just sick.

PAUL WILKS: If ever a group of assholes deserved a smiting . . .

GRACE LEE: Stupidity redefined.

KAREN DORN: This is appalling. I cannot fathom why so many women are choosing to speak out in such offensive, sacrilegious ways. This seems similar to the type of "speech" that is burning the American flag; there is something inherently violent about it. This will backfire. I am deeply offended and saddened that these demonstrations will only erode the diminishing options women will have, especially women of lesser means and resources.

DALE CHATWIN: Why not? Virgin birth? The concept does invite, even require, mockery. If a woman was given this blessing, then the question is why are women 2nd class citizens in most societies around the world? I am a feminist. Any woman who is not, has some pretty serious issues imo.

ERIC MADER: @Dale Chatwin: Don't be such a dull positivist vulgarian.

Two points:

1) If there exists a God anything like God as understood in Western monotheism, then the virgin birth as a literal event is of course eminently possible, as are any other miracles, including the universe suddenly folding up into nothing or being rearranged on entirely new laws. As an orthodox Christian, I view miracles in this lens.

2) There are however many Christians who do not believe in the virgin birth as a literal event, who understand it as a myth, but show respect to the story itself as an ancient part of their tradition, that Christian tradition that grounds some of the most crucial elements in their present-day culture: its legal norms, its concepts of history, its notions of justice, its critique of vulgar wealth and power.

On at least this second basis you might at least recognize that in mocking Christianity you are a little like the man high up in a tree sawing away at the branch he's sitting on.

In any case you should have enough of a sense of history to understand the following: All great civilizations have risen up on myths and died when these myths fell into disrepute. You as a person wouldn't be what you are today, and your country, England, wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for Christianity. Many of the things you take for granted--the Western concept of human rights for one--arose from and because of the Judeo-Christian inheritance.

Which is to say: Westerners who think there's any virtue in mocking their own culture's religious tradition are like spoiled teenagers who scoff at their parents, the people who fed and raised and taught them. How do such kids look to you? This is where you're putting yourself with these kinds of statements.

KAREN DORN: Yes!

DALE CHATWIN: Did you mean The Vulgate? St. Jerome? I wager he would have been a laugh. Kind of bloke you'd be itching to share a pint of Guinness with.

Are you suggesting that The Life of Brian should be banned for mocking Christianity?

The Catholic Church: "Christian tradition...its critique of vulgar wealth and power." The Catholic Church is the epitome of vulgarity and obscene shows of wealth. The Vatican Bank. A church with a bank holding a minimum $8 billion. Very Christian. Jesus (or whatever his name was) would have been proud.

ERIC MADER: @Dale Chatwin. Typically, you haven't addressed a single one of my points.

DALE CHATWIN: Oh, dear. I thought I had addressed a few.

I find it difficult to take most of human history seriously, especially religious dogmas. I prefer a pinch of salt over everything.

Doesn't everyone scoff at their parents? Of course in religion, this is often terms for ostracism. Religious indoctrination begins in the home. The clothes worn, the food eaten.

I think you put too much emphasis on how tradition, both religious and secular, has formed my own personal belief system.

Anyone could write thousands of pages on what we, as a species, have learnt from history. The opposite is equally true.

The culture of monotheisms will also, given time, fall into myth.

Which points, specifically, am I missing?

DALE CHATWIN: Why shouldn't Christianity, or any other set of unsubstantiated, unproven, fanciful beliefs, be open to mockery like anything else? Are religious types that sensitive?

Poor dears.

ERIC MADER: Well, in fact if you go back and read my comments starting "Don't be such a . . ." I can't see how you imagine you've even addressed one of my points. Read those comments again, and then realize that your answer amounts to:

1) St. Jerome was a prude and would have been a bore to drink with (or, in another possible interpretation, would have been fun to tease over beers).

2) The Vatican Bank is corrupt.

One key thing that is preventing you from even seeing my points is that you don't understand myth in anything like a more anthropological sense. Your understanding of it is the common one (I dare say the vulgar one) as in: "People once believed the seasons were a result of Hades' rape of Persephone. Now we know that's a myth." In short, in your understanding, myths are essentially things that humanity overcomes via scientific advancements. In my understanding, this is not so, myth is still with us, and always will be. An enormous range of cultural phenomena is guided by thinking that is mythical; even the social thinking of secular, educated people is largely based on mythical constructs that can't be grounded in empirical research and in fact AREN'T grounded--but still prove decisive in culture. What is key, and in my view most dangerous, is that Enlightenment notions of reality have somehow convinced our contemporaries that their secular societies' norms are NOT grounded on myth, that they're based rather on reason and research, that their societies have largely left myth behind, and that progress means leaving more of myth behind. I say No. We have not left myth behind. We have just changed the names of the agents in our myths. Our very notions of the arc of history, of justice, of the power of reason as it relates to social reality and the universe, of progress, of human rights, etc.--all these are based on myths no less flimsy than the story of Hades and Persephone. And it will ALWAYS be so. Why? Because story and the stories we tell ourselves will always guide our group behavior. It is a fact that applies to Dawkins and Sam Harris as much as the Pope. The reason the former are shallow and the latter is not is that the former don't recognize this fact. They don't see the degree to which they're raising things discovered by empirical research to the level of guiding mythical principle. What science discovers about how the universe is structured (and it has discovered a lot) can tell us virtually nothing about existential or ethical questions. Those secularists who try to make science into a cultural guide are not practicing science any more--what they're doing is called scientism. Which is why serious philosophers, and many scientists besides, think the New Atheists are a joke and, in terms of the field of discourse the New Atheists are trying to enter, are in fact way out of their league.

So, to sum up: You still believe myth is something that is to be overcome. That's very 19th century of you. I however know that myth is something humans never overcome. You believe myth is inherently, to the extent it is believed, a negative thing. I believe we can't escape myth, that it is neither negative nor positive, but simply HUMAN, and the key is recognizing which myths show the deepest grasp of the human reality.

You write: "I think you put too much emphasis on how tradition, both religious and secular, has formed my own personal belief system." Sorry, but I think this is extremely naive. All of us, even the most skeptical, have been formed by tradition in ways we can't even fathom. That is what philosophy is for: to help us glimpse our own blind spots. In your case, even the nature and structure of your skepticism, how you see your skepticism as it relates to the relative naivety of others--even this is part of a tradition that you've internalized and modified in some ways. You say that you don't take history too seriously, that you take it with a grain of salt. Sure, but that doesn't mean you have escaped your inscription in history. To begin thinking is to think in language. To enter the realm of language is to be drawn into a lexicon of inherited concepts. End of story.

As usual, I didn't intend to type so much. I'll say one more thing. Given that you're a reader of John Gray, I'm amazed you seem so obtuse on this question of myth and how it is constitutive of culture, how it is inescapable on the social level. My point: On most of these issues, at least in terms of argument re: what myth is or how individual thinking can relate to traditions, Gray would agree with me.

Cheers. Since I took time to write all this, I hope you give it some thought.

DALE CHATWIN: That's a ten-course meal to get through . . . very French. Thanks.

A propos, I do not consider myself a New Atheist. I have no desire to proselytize one way or the other. I became an atheist long before the New Atheists took to the stage . . . long before I knew the meaning of the word atheist.

I searched for religious meaning on and off for years, but came to the conclusion that it really is all random, essentially meaningless, and misery for most of humankind. And who directs this misery? Well, humankind of course.

I believe humanity is a plague.

ERIC MADER: Bon appétit.

* * *

UPDATE: Rod Dreher at The American Conservative, writing on the same Argentine provocation, featured some of my remarks. In the comment thread that followed, various writers argued that I was mistaken in tracing so much of the political culture of the West back to the Christian influence. The real roots of our current institutions, so the argument goes, are classical Greece and Rome. You can check the thread there, but my basic response was the following:

ERIC MADER: Some here suggest that I’m mistaken in identifying Christian tradition as a key ground of our political and legal norms. And so Forbe, above, argues that the cloth of our political culture as Westerners is woven entirely of Greek and Roman materials.

Of course I’m well aware of the classical heritage. But I would say that this pagan heritage, while decisive in providing us most of our political terminology and many of our structural norms, does not finally account for certain huge differences between us and our ancient pagan models. Especially our concept of inalienable human rights, that political doctrine that all people, regardless of class or nation, are created equal and thus embody a fundamental dignity (before the law, before the divine, etc.) that is prior to accidents of class, race or gender. It is this doctrine that allowed the Christian West finally to defeat slavery, and this that explains things like the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The classical thinkers of Greece and Rome recognized no such thing. We have it because of the Christian soil from which we’ve sprung.

The earliest statement of such a fundamental equality is found in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. And really, there’s nothing else like it in in the ancient world: “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:26-28)

Race, class and gender are to take second place to a new fundamental equality? Gee, that stuffy old Apostle was quite radical, wasn’t he? Stop the presses, Slate and Salon! Your grounding social doctrine, the very litmus test by which you judge something progressive or not, is 2,000 years old. And, sorry to inform you, it came from one of those hateful Christians.

The Enlightenment, and the American Founders in particular, merely abstracted this “one in Christ” to “one in being created by the same Creator”. And so we have our modern concept of human rights.

When Rod suggests that these Argentinian feminists are unwittingly undermining the very conceptual ground on which they stand, this is what he means. Not just the radical feminists, but the whole sick SJW crew is bent on savaging the hand that feeds them. I agree with Rod on the stupidity of it. They certainly will not like what their hardball identity politics becomes once the other side begins to practice it. Which is already happening.

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Bravo, Hanna Yusuf! The hijab and Western feminist hypocrisy

Finding Hanna Yusuf’s arguments on the hijab and Western feminism valid, I shared her video on Facebook. Some interesting debate followed, parts of it showcasing the very gestures and stresses mainstream feminists in my own country (the US) have employed to bankrupt their own movement. Oh, well.

I’ve changed the names of some of the participants to protect the innocent. Here they are:

Eric Mader (myself): left-leaning Catholic; American
Paul Wylie: Irish student
Renge Grace: American businesswoman
Christine Mahler: American businesswoman
Matthew Salmon: American liberal; counselor
Theodore Mugg: strip club DJ; New Atheist
Nancy Wellington: Professor of English
David Becker: American

The original video, from The Guardian:

My hijab has nothing to do with oppression

Why is the hijab seen as the very epitome of oppression? It has nothing to do with it. It's a feminist statement, says Hanna Yusuf.

Posted by The Guardian on Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Comments:

PAUL WYLIE: What do you think?

ERIC MADER: I have much more respect for this woman's position than for Femen or 90% of American self-professed feminists. Especially sharp, and needed, is the clear critique of how "liberatory" Western feminism just plays into the dictates of the market. I call it Sex and the City feminism, which program was little more than a marketing campaign for high-end fashion products, both Stateside and here in Asia.

PAUL WYLIE: We agree! Although I'm probably more angry about the Feminazi movement: "All men are rapists! End the patriarchy!"

ERIC MADER: We agree there too. Absolutely. Feminism has worthy roots, but has managed to grow all kinds of idiot branches. The majority of American feminists who go out of their way to remind you they are feminists manage, within a few words, to prove themselves some of the biggest hypocrites America has on offer. And that's a hard distinction to attain, what with all the competition.


THEODORE MUGG: Kinda ironic that something men compel women to wear in some societies is a feminist choice in a free society.

ERIC MADER: In some societies men compel women to wear Victoria's Secret lingerie and dance on stage in it.

RENGE GRACE: Hahahaha, good one!

THEODORE MUGG: Actually, as a former strip club DJ, this is wrong on many counts. Although more than a few dancers I knew had leech scumbag boyfriends, none of them were compelled. It is less of a cliche than you think, stripping your way through school. And no dancer would wear VS, as it’s far too poorly put together to withstand the rigors of day to day use.

ERIC MADER: I think you're undoubtedly right both on most strippers around the world and on the viability of VS on stage. But: I'm sure there are plenty of "strip/etc." clubs on various continents where the women are compelled.


DAVID BECKER: Love this: "Feminism has worthy roots, but has managed to grow all kinds of idiot branches" Frankly, one can substitute “feminism” with a whole lot of other things.

CHRISTINE MAHLER: Hair = sexuality. The women of this culture cover their hair because the men are not to be held responsible for their sexual attraction to the feminine. It is the woman's job to hide anything which could elicit the "desire" response from men outside of her family. Failure on the woman's part to conceal desirable features in public is a sin, it causes a man to want the woman sexually. The woman in the video is not emancipated, as she claims to be. She has found a clever way to point out the basest forms of Western objectivity of women, and use this as a model to veil her own kept-ness.

ERIC MADER: You put it well here, Christine, and make some good points, but in essentials I disagree. Part of it comes down to the fact that I don't accept the basic American position that we're all getting freer and better and the sky is the limit. Rather, I'd say no humans in society, men or women, can finally be "emancipated". This is true in almost every realm. We live in a web of mutual responsibility in constant tension with the individual’s desire to break free. But such breaking free is largely an illusion; it can never really be attained as a social condition.

As regards women and the current question, I'd insist that "emancipated" in the sense many American feminists now use it is a pipe dream: free to show and flaunt my sexuality--to live for this--but free to have it not noticed by those I don't want noticing it--and to live for this too. How many "feminists" out there gush with pleasure when the handsome lawyer notices their tight jeans, then, on the very same sidewalk, wince in disapproval when the working class man does so. One minute it's: "That guy is so hot. He said 'Hey' to me and turned round." Next minute it's: "Sexist pig.”

Certainly, given such a deep double standard, American women of this sort are not emancipated. Rather they're trapped in a vicious cycle of wanting every day to have their cake and eat it too--and screaming at the male half of the population when this hypocritical demand doesn't always work out.

Often what is gained in one area is lost in another. The Muslim woman in the video understands this, and this is why her choice and her position are valid. Given their refusal to recognize this whole dynamic of the lost and the gained, it's no wonder many American women have grown so bitter. I'd be bitter too if I kept trying to fit reality into an impossible template.

Personally, I'd much rather have lunch with the woman who made this video than with any half dozen of our "emancipators".

MATTHEW SALMON: Feminism has, for the most part, succeeded in its pursuit for equality in Western society. Women now outnumber men as college graduates and attendees as well as holding management positions in business and government. The only areas where women are not equally represented are in upper levels of government and STEM fields, mostly because those are fields women are generally not willing to engage in. Since these goals have been accomplished, the focus has turned to shaming men for "objectifying" women, and praising women as "liberated" while they openly ogle men. Men are "rape apologists" for not embracing all aspects of the new radical feminist movement, yet these women shut down meetings held by groups who want to focus on men's issues such as high rates of suicide and inequality in the family court system. I once considered myself a feminist, I raised money for NOW and NARAL in the 90s during my undergrad, but recently, I have seen where the movement has gone and now consider myself an egalitarian instead.

ERIC MADER: With you 100%. I also once considered myself a feminist. I agree that the legitimate goals of feminism have mostly been reached in the US and Western Europe and that the new wave of feminists is just riding the Grievance Cart for all it's worth. AND managing to censor men as often as they can.

MATTHEW SALMON: Ironically, they often portray themselves and women in general as victims of an imagined oppression, which actually, in my opinion, sets women back.

THEODORE MUGG: Hmm. “I consider myself an egalitarian.” Totally using that. A good answer to the question “Are you a feminist?" Not a dodge or a euphemism, but strikes me as a good way to communicate that you are in step with the laudable aim of making a safer, more equal society for women, but reject the demonization of men that is now such a dominant part of the movement.

ERIC MADER: I’ll be using it too. The perfect answer, forcing anyone within earshot to ask: "Hm, so feminism isn't egalitarian?"

NANCY WELLINGTON: And yet, how pleasant to imagine a world without men! In time, after the fragile Y chromosome gives out and men become extinct, so many other horrible things will also become extinct: ISIS and religious fundamentalism and oppressive religious hierarchies; fear of rape, domestic abuse and unwanted children; guns, big cars, big banks, big armies and big food; Republicans. The list goes on. It's no wonder that men feel threatened.

ERIC MADER: I hear you, Nancy! I'm personally in favor of choosing one of the continents and making it into Amazonia. All the women who want to live without men will emigrate there and build their own states. And of course we know there will be no oppression within these states and no conflict between them because women are incapable of conflict--being genetically peaceful and reasonable and nurturing. The idea of hierarchy or oppression arising within a state composed only of women is a contradiction in terms, I'd say.

At present Antarctica is available. And with the global warming caused by all the male overconsumption of resources going on (just go into any mall and you'll see it full of men buying things they don't need) Antarctica will soon be perfect for Femen habitation. It will be sweaty penguins, Amazons, and shoe stores on every block! Paradise!

NANCY WELLINGTON: Ha ha, Eric! One thing we will miss about men is their adorable and mischievous sense of humor. Suggesting that women could be placated with some uninhabitable ass-end of the planet, like the Antarctic--how cute! How historically consistent with the way male armies have moved indigenous peoples off to other ass-end spots! And the sparkling wit in suggesting that women shopping at the mall (buying stuff for their kids and for the men, who couldn’t spare the time to shop away from their main work of raping, robbing, murdering, war mongering and playing video games) are responsible for global warming--rather than, you know, the men who own the malls, who create the ad campaigns, who own the factories and the Humvees and the monster trucks and the weapons of destruction and other energy-gobbling machines. As for women’s ability to cooperate and get along, rather than rush in and blow up shit, remind me, what was the last war or invasion initiated by a woman? Women don’t want your ass-end spot, thanks all the same. We will inherit the earth, ALL of the earth, and if you’re nice, we’ll create a museum display for the Y chromosome, may it rest in peace. You have a nice day, y'hear!

ERIC MADER: Believe me, Nancy, I'm not interested in placating women by suggesting Antarctica. The idea of placating women is itself something far far away from me. So forget Antarctica. I'd willing give you gals all of North America. It'd be an interesting experiment. I'd love to watch it all unfold.

Of course there haven't been any invasions started by women in recent history, because, you know, patriarchy. Generally men have ruled and thus have ruled the armies. Things would doubtless be different if the majority of modern nations were ruled by matriarchal cultures. But I'm not at all convinced that either peace or social justice would be any closer. Are you? Are you really?

A lot of feminists over the years have told me that if women ruled the world we would have global peace right now. I can agree with this in only one sense. The Cuban Missile Crisis wouldn't have ended as it did, and at present there would be no humans on the planet, so yes, we would have global peace.

One further point: For every man out there driving a Humvee to prove his manliness I’ll bet there are three CARGO CONTAINERS of fashion items being shipped over the seas so women can sate their shopping lust and prove their chic. But it’d be an interesting study: Which gender has more negative environmental impact?

NOTE: I have equal respect for women and men in terms of intellect and judgment. I do believe there are differences between the two, making me an essentialist. I also believe, however, that these differences couldn't be adequately laid out in discourse, as it's impossible to get beyond the question of nature vs. nurture. To what degree is "men's way of thinking" hardwired, to what degree learned? We'll never know. In certain situations I suspect women would perform better and thus bring a better outcome than men; in other situations I think men would perform better. But again--who is to predict with any certainty? And in the multilayered aggregate that is a nation, in society with all its complexities, I think women in a position of rule will prove equally selfish, violent, tribal, and destructive as men, though they might express this in different ways. (For instance, the ICBMs might have a different designer each year: last year Hermes, this year Louis Vuitton, so that the military parades would also be a fashion event.)

NOTE 2: I have approaching zero respect for people who blame the world's ills on "patriarchy" and thus the male half of humanity. So, hopefully you're not actually in this camp, but only playing that you are.

Again, men are brilliant and loving and cooperative. And men are greedy and rapacious idiots. Women likewise are nurturing and brilliant. And vindictive bitches.

I'd really love to sit down and write that Madame Kennedy vs. Madame Khrushchev script.

PAUL WYLIE: No men = no bad in the world? Oh dear. The absence of men would leave a void. The void would be filled by bitchy women. The circle of life . . .

[Nancy didn’t reply to my above remarks, but two days I noticed she changed her profile photo. The new photo was a picture of herself next to her husband, college-age son and teenage daughter, all smiling. So I couldn’t hold off sending her a little barb:]

ERIC MADER: I just don't get it, Nancy. You just changed your profile photo, but as far as I can tell, there are two of those nasty Y-chromosome creatures in the photo with you. What gives? How could you let yourself in for such danger?

NANCY WELLINGTON: Ah, Eric, it's true: You just don't get it! Recently you have been opining left and right on the Woman Question. Maybe it's a seasonal thing? You know how when someone says, "I'm not racist, but . . .” and you know exactly what will follow? That is the vibe you give off whenever you begin some rant on--what’s your condescending term--femen? Women and their dress/modesty? You come across as someone filled with loathing for women, which I can only hope is not what you actually are.

ERIC MADER: You sure I'm the one who doesn't get it? Femen is not a condescending term for women, it's the name of a European-based activist group whose stance and tactics I find ridiculous. Besides, the group was referenced in the hijab video. So in using this term, I'm not criticizing women, but criticizing Femen.

I fully respect women as equal to men. But precisely because of this, just as with men, there are many many women who don't deserve to be listened to. Unfortunately, too many of these women self-identify as “feminists”, and I think it's ruining the movement. What's more, many women agree with me on this assessment.

1) Women who are obsessed with the male gaze, who think only of the sexual politics of everyday life, who think they are victims because they can't be sexy in public without getting reaction from unwanted men--these women are shallow and are ruining feminism.

One of the sillier kerfuffles of last year provoked me finally to write something on this particular raging hypocrisy:

http://claytestament.blogspot.tw/2014/11/shirtstorm-matt-taylor-feminist.html

2) Women who actually believe the world's major problems are gender-based (i.e., we are ruining the planet, we are fighting wars, because of "patriarchy"); women who actually believe that an era of peace and harmony would result if women ruled the world's polities--these women are ruining feminism. (It's this latter camp that you were channeling in your comments on the hijab video, and I supposed you were mostly being ironic. But were you? Of course in my view women ruling everything would very likely NOT make the world any more peaceful than it is now. If you think it would, then, voila, you reveal yourself as someone who thinks women innately superior to men--and so in my book you join the intellectual ranks of folks who, for example, think whites are superior to blacks.)

In conclusion, I think the best thing one could do for women and feminism is stridently ridicule "feminists" when their discourse is grounded in either hypocrisy (as in 1 above) or bigotry (as in 2).

Looking forward to any reply you might have to these comments, Nancy. If you have the time to reply. And yes, I "liked" your picture with your daughter and those two Y-chromosoids. You've very sharp-looking kids. What do they plan to do/study in the future?

NANCY WELLINGTON: Just one question: Do you get positive feedback from any woman on your posts?

ERIC MADER: Yes, I do get positive feedback from women on my posts. And sometimes women share such posts. But sorry, I don't think your question here, your reply, is very worthwhile. What would be much more interesting, don't you think, would be your saying something about the two hypocrisies I underline--hypocrisies that, in my view, have made much of mainstream "feminist" discourse entirely useless. Do you think they are indeed hypocrisies, or not?

NANCY WELLINGTON: My question actually was whether you get positive feedback from women on your anti-women posts--I saw no women responding to your hijab post at all, except me. I heard embarrassed silence, in fact. And you are not even remotely qualified to discuss "feminist hypocrisy," whatever you think you mean by that. As a self-described essentialist, surely you can see that! Move on to something you do know well, like education systems in Taiwan or elsewhere.

ERIC MADER: My "anti-women" posts? They are not anti-women, they are against a certain development in feminism. I don't think the current dominant American feminism speaks for women, and millions upon millions of women don't think it does either.

Anyone is qualified to discuss hypocrisy in a movement. I've studied feminist texts going back to grad school, and I've read the pronouncements and watched the stresses of the movement for decades. Why am I not qualified?

Essentialist. Yes, I'm an essentialist, but I don't use my essentialism on this front to claim that I (or anyone else) can exhaustively define women or men; I only believe there are differences that transcend upbringing; there are innate differences. Notice how you, on the other hand, entered this thread straight off with a tirade against men as such, linking the world's ills to men as such, the high point of which was a fantasy about the demise of men and museums in memory of how evil they were. Who is the essentialist (in the negative sense) here?

The formula isn't "Eric uses essentialist viewpoints to attack women" but rather: "Eric uses his observations of rank hypocrisy to attack (one dominant Western branch of) feminism." Surely you can see the difference.

And if I write of "feminist hypocrisy", it's not a matter of whatever I "think I mean by that". It's a matter simply of what I mean. And you still haven't addressed the two salient tendencies 1) and 2) that I underline as a problem. You have made no argument claiming they NOT in fact hypocrisy. And I don't think you will, for obvious reasons. The double standard and hypocrisy in these blighted branches of the movement are too glaringly obvious.

So: Champion women, respect women, recognize women as an equal element of humanity. At the same time, to hell with these kinds of feminists: ridicule them, ignore them, satirize them. Many communists loathed Stalinism; many Jews bitterly criticize the Israeli government; many Americans think Bush and Co. very nearly deserve jail time.


SAD CONCLUSION
I foresaw that Nancy wouldn’t try to disprove my claims as to these two types of glaring feminist hypocrisy. She didn’t. The only answer I got from her was . . . crickets.

But she did prove one thing by her series of discursive moves. She proved she is herself, unlike me, well qualified to be an American feminist.

Vis.: In what was supposed to be a discussion of the hijab and how it can be understood as representing one cultural alternative to Anglo-American feminism, Nancy never mentioned the hijab once or tried to argue that Hanna Yusuf was mistaken. Rather, her very first move was to raise American feminists’ favorite topic: the inherent evil of men. When challenged to explain whether she was just joking in all this, and how she might reckon the equality (or otherwise) of the sexes, she didn’t do so, but rather just evoked the (supposed) unity of women in support of her side: “Just tell me this, do any women respond to your posts?” and then suggested that my comments on hypocrisy indicate I loathe women (which is absurd: I can respect and loathe both sexes equally, case by case). When finally told that my criticism was not of women but rather of the dominant trends in American feminism, she adopted the classic “You’re not qualified to comment on this”--because, presumably, I’m not an American feminist woman. All the while she herself hadn’t put forth one substantive remark on any of the points at issue. And finally, when I took the trouble to directly invite her to point out where I was wrong in criticizing the hypocrisy I see, she simply declined to respond.

All this is very disappointing; I wish it hadn’t turned out so. I’d much rather have learned something about where I might be wrong. I’m always willing to learn something new. But you rarely do from this tribe. They are a solid wall of self-contradictory soundbites--and their soundbites haven’t changed since 1990.

If this is the standard of discourse, I’m very glad to admit I don’t qualify for such discussions.

Very little of the thread ended up being about Hanna Yusuf’s challenging short video. Predictably, much of the online reaction to the video in Britain is negative. Having read some of it, I think it’s clear Yusuf is getting criticized because she dares to point out the obvious. Feminism as it’s currently screamed in our capitals is deeply hypocritical and ultimately bad for women. Yusuf says clearly that the Feminist Empress wears no clothes. And Western feminists, who’ve spent decades trying to have their cake and eat it too, don’t want to hear it.

Shirtstorm: Will American Feminist Hypocrisy Never End?

I’ve now read through much of the initial feminist commentary on the zany shirt Prof. Matt Taylor wore during the live stream of the Philae landing. I now understand why these women see the shirt as a major news story, and after reading their pieces, I’m ready to offer some new figures.

American feminists deserve to be ignored about 78% of the time. The number was 70% just a decade ago, so you see the trend.

I didn’t always think of the feminist movement this way. In terms of the feminism that insists women are equally capable to men and should be equally represented in companies, government, universities, etc., I’m still totally on board. But as for the newer feminism, or this neo-feminism, that focuses on the sexual politics of everyday life, I am like many people: I see little there beyond a deep and infantile hypocrisy.

Feminists have somehow come to insist that women can be sex goddesses and revel in their sexuality--they regularly champion those who are aggressively sexy--then in the next breath scream against men who react to them as sexy. (Well, not always: If it’s an unwanted man who shows some interest, that’s called “objectification”--“He’s a pig,” etc. But if it’s a guy they judge hot, then it’s not objectification, but “flirting”.)

Such feminism is a shallow hypocrisy, and should be called out as such. Women who subscribe to it refuse to recognize that they can’t have it both ways: namely, they can’t both "celebrate" their sexuality in the public arena and then not be recognized as sexy when they'd prefer not to be. Because the public arena is just that: a public space, where people mix and intermingle in relative freedom.

For decades now, these women, in their writing and speaking and everyday behavior, have sought to impose an absurd double standard on those around them: "Notice me; worship me; don’t notice me--what are you looking at?” all at the same time. They are like a little girl at a birthday party who, when she is told she can have cake or ice cream, says she wants both, then cries and ruins the party because in fact she can’t have both.

As for Matt Taylor’s shirt, the irony is that the supposedly “objectifying” images on it are images of female sexual power that these very same feminists would celebrate--were they in a mood for celebration. But instead, since they see the shirt’s being worn by a bearded scientist, it suddenly becomes an offense more newsworthy than the scientific history Prof. Taylor just helped make.

Never mind that the shirt was designed by a woman friend of Taylor’s--such details aren’t likely to slow down these women when they're feeling righteous and have a not-so-sexy male in their sights.

In fact such feminists have very nearly succeeded in making feminism a dirty word via their endless pettiness and hypocritical posturing. The movement used to focus on substantial issues of women's equality, but somehow, beginning in the 1990s, we watched it devolve into a sort of non-stop tirade conducted by a clique of largely privileged Women's Studies grads who apparently could find nothing better to do than discover new ways men were offending them.

For years, the main conceptual tool wielded by these women has been "objectification"--which, as I've said, they now apply selectively to any kind of sexual attention that doesn't arise from their own deified personal libidos. If something turns them on, it's cool or liberating. If the same kind of thing appears, say, on the shirt of an overweight man like Matt Taylor, suddenly it's "objectifying women". Which means what exactly?

The concept of objectification is itself nearly useless. Why? Because every human in love or in normal social interaction shifts constantly between objectifying others and respecting/interacting with them as persons--indeed often with the very same person in the course of the same get-together. This comes with the fact that we are sexual beings; it is not something that will ever disappear as long as we are human.

And so: a man admires a woman’s legs from across the room, but then admires her wit and passion as they talk; then later, again, he’s looking at her legs; then they talk more, and he’s back to thinking about her character and ideas. Though in this way she has been "objectified" several times, his respect for her hasn't suffered because of it. She may in fact end up being someone he respects more than anyone else he knows. And of course women are also constantly doing the same thing: appreciating men’s physical charms without thinking any less of them; ogling men's abs and making sly comments barely out of earshot--without necessarily thinking the man is therefore just an object.

Yes, some of the sharper feminist theorists have tried to define the parameters of objectification more carefully, but even among them there are those who recognize the concept is inevitably subjective or undefinable. And that is precisely how it comes to be used by the thousands of card-carrying "feminists" who spend their time in a fury against the male gaze. They use it simply as a pseudo-theoretical slur to throw at anything that doesn't please them. This is why the whole concept of “objectification”, as a basis for criticism of the desiring gaze, should have been junked years ago. In itself the term has virtually no conceptual meaning.

I could go on, about women's representation in the media (usually their own self-representation therein) but I think these are different topics. The key words here are "narcissism" and "childishness" and “hypocrisy”. As Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote in a USA Today column, some women watching the science event unfold on their screens were apparently “overcome by the desire to feel important and powerful at others' expense”:

Thus, what should have been the greatest day in a man's life--accomplishing something never before done in the history of humanity--was instead derailed by people with their own axes to grind. As Chloe Price observed: “Imagine the . . . storm if the scientist had been a woman and everyone focused solely on her clothes and not her achievements."

The best thing intelligent women could do for the feminist movement is spend some time, as women, attacking the shrill "feminists" who regularly claim to speak for them in the press. They should attack those who made a big deal out of Matt Taylor’s shirt; those who think "objectification" is a useful concept and who use it almost to the exclusion of all other concepts; those who think using the term "patriarchy" in one's critique is sufficient as analysis; those who've managed to make feminism intellectually useless through their nonstop shrill posturing.

I wish I were part of a society where I felt I could be proud to support the self-identified feminists around me. But it looks like I’ll have to wait. As long as the movement continues to demand both cake and ice cream, it shouldn’t be surprised if people consider it childish and irrelevant.

Eric Mader

Added 11/23:

Among the many feminist pieces online responding to Taylor's shirt, Nikita Ramkissoon's piece at Thought Leader provided a casebook example of the kind of thinking "objectification" theory leads to. I recommend reading it. As the reply I tried to post there at first didn't get posted, then got cut in half, I'll offer it here--for the record as it were:

If we reduce it to its basic premises, the argument you make here, Nikita, runs as follows:

1) Men in our society “own” women, so men’s attention to women’s beauty or sexuality is always an attempt to further consolidate this ownership and is thus always a matter of objectification.

2) Women in our society don’t own men, so women’s attention to male beauty or sexuality is never objectification, but rather a kind of worship of or awe at masculine power.

Really I don’t know what is more striking about this argument: the sheer obviousness of the double-standard or the fact that many so-called feminists still think such biased claims are worthy of any respect.

First, a few simple questions: Who showed you (or your feminist sisters) what is happening in men’s heads when they look at women? Human sexuality, after all, is a complicated phenomenon, with many levels. How would you know anything about the various levels or elements that make up male sexuality? How do you presume to define my sexuality, and that of other men, so precisely? Please show me your sources, if you have any, besides other feminist writers who’ve now been repeating this same worn-out urban legend for decades.

But second, and more importantly, the only even tentative logic your argument holds is based on your first premise, which is easily disproved: namely, your claim that men in modern societies “own” women.

I’m sorry, but I personally have never met a man who owns any women. As far as I can tell, there is no one around me who knows of such an institution either. As a modern Westerner, I see all the time how women are free to walk out on these men who supposedly “own” them. It’s called breaking up. And in such cases, if the man were to try to force her to remain under his “ownership”, that would be a crime and our justice system has statutes to deal with it.

So what society exactly do you live in? If you live a modern Western society as I do, the level of malice and possessiveness you project into the heads of men like me is simply offensive--those men you somehow imagine “own” you or are trying to own you. Or have I misunderstood your argument? Because to me it looks no more respectable as argument than it would be to claim that, say, “Black men are inherently violent” or “Jews will always try to cheat you.” Nobody who tried to foist off these kinds of unfounded racist generalizations would get a second hearing. Because such claims are not critical discourse, but merely bigotry. Yet this is just the kind of prejudiced assertion you’re promoting. This is the intellectual company you belong with. Like antisemitism or other forms of racist theory, your discourse is offensive starting from its very founding premises.

You write that: “We cannot lay back and make feminism comfortable for you. We refuse to work within your paradigm, because it’s your paradigm that is doing the oppressing.”

Okaaaay. Frankly, Nikita, I don’t care if you make it “comfortable” for me or not. I’m personally not interested in getting closer to people who themselves are comfortable living a prejudice that is nearly sociopathic in its extremity. But forget about me. Think of the women around you. The least you could do, for them, some of whom have posted comments here, is to make “feminism” a bit more respectable in terms of its intellectual rigor. Because at present your discourse is shabby, offensive, and bankrupt.

Yes, there is still serious gender inequality in many world cultures, including Western ones, so I would think that you, as a feminist, would recognize the work that needs to be done. Why not begin by throwing out this transparently two-faced discourse of “objectification” and finding a different tack? Sure, it may not be as sexy or exciting as the man-hating mythology you currently spout, but it will almost certainly bear more fruit. After all, evidence suggests that even most Western women are getting tired of the spiel you currently have on offer.

Zellweger's Disease: Shock and Queasiness are the Natural Reactions

So you've gotten some rest, you say?
All of us are possessed of physical vanity to one degree or another. We’re pleased to think we look good, and bothered if we don’t look as good as we’d like. Such vanity is part of us as social beings: it is not something we could ever eradicate.

Nonetheless vanity is a vice. Follow it where it leads you, and at some point a certain line is crossed, and your desire for beauty, or your conviction that you are beautiful, will bring about its opposite. Something deformed or monstrous will be the result.

This line that is crossed is very hard to define, to be sure. Different people sense it in different places. But wherever one places it, I think it’s clear that in America crossing this particular line has become an everyday occurrence. A vague and queasy feeling of monstrosity pervades the public space.

I don’t usually write about these kinds of things, but the recent discussion of Renee Zellweger’s “new look”, raising up hordes of people criticizing her and others defending her, has given me the perfect opportunity. Because the issue of cosmetic surgery, what used to be called plastic surgery, has bothered me for years. I wouldn’t consider it a major issue, no, but it’s a bothersome one, regularly disgusting me anew with the culture around me.

Frankly I’m flat out against cosmetic surgery. I think its prevalence is a cultural illness. And it’s getting worse. If I had the power, I would ban cosmetic surgery except in certain cases (reconstructive surgery, for instance). And I will insist on the following: The world would be a more beautiful place if cosmetic surgeons were put out of business.

Renee Zellweger
Regarding that line I mention, the one that shouldn’t be crossed, I might clarify that I personally find nothing wrong with makeup or coloring ones hair, and nothing wrong with staying firm and fit as opposed to slack and fat. Makeup is best in moderation of course, and I’d prefer if you didn’t color your hair, but if you really must, I still respect you. Obviously some people are too obsessed with maintaining their killer bodies, but again--if you must, I’ll hold myself to snide remarks or a few jabs, which will bounce right off you, fit as you are, whereas your comebacks will likely stick on me, overweight as I am.

So makeup or hair coloration or workouts are not really likely to drag one across the line, or at least not too far.

But cosmetic surgery is something else entirely. It almost always crosses the line. I admit that when I’m talking to someone whose face has obviously had procedures (and yes, it’s pretty obvious when such procedures have been done) I lose a good couple dozen points of respect for the person talking to me. Sorry, that’s just me; and sure, maybe you don’t care to talk to me anyway, but I thought you should know.

Cosmetic surgery almost never makes a person look better--it nearly always makes one look to some degree plastic or strained or, sorry to say it, somehow post-human. So as I’m talking to you across the table or watching you on the screen I can’t help repeatedly thinking: What a dope. Why did he/she do it?

These remarks go for both men and women, by the way, but the sad fact is--women are the main consumers of these deforming procedures. And more and more women, in all the world’s wealthier nations, are making themselves borderline monstrous. And spending big bucks to do so.

It really is sad.

Doubtless my deep feeling of distaste when confronted with all these new plastic faces everywhere comes from my sense of what a face is to begin with. Is my sense of the meaning of the human face maybe somehow eccentric? Judge for yourself.

The way I see it, you do not own your face as something you can change as if it were a sofa or a pair of drapes. Rather, your face is constitutive of who you are as a human being vis-a-vis others. Change your face, and you’ve inevitably undone part of your character.

What’s more, when people can see you’ve changed it, and they can, a little voice inside them will whisper: She’s turning away from her self. She’s trying to efface herself and become a different face.

And the gut feeling that accompanies these whispers? It is a queasy feeling of nature offended: a vague feeling, as I’ve said, of monstrosity.

And what is this “different face” that you suddenly show up wearing? It is no one really. It is not a face that has experienced time, that has lived through the years with loved ones and rivals and joys and pain. No, it is no one--a kind of new artifact appearing out of nowhere.

I never was one for watching American TV, but in recent years I can hardly stand it--all the plastic pseudo-faces blabbering at each other, all the people turning away from the self and toward some kind of shiny and conformist non-self.

And this is what Renee Zellweger has obviously done. She had a face with character, she acted edgy roles and gave the impression of a woman with a strong sense of self. She didn’t seem like the type to give up on her real self just because of wrinkles or a bit of sagging of the cheeks. But that’s just what she did.

If you hadn’t told me it was her, I wouldn’t recognize the woman in the recent photos as the actress whose movies I’d seen. What’s more, though the woman in the recent photos is (somewhat) beautiful, she has the strained and fake look of nearly everyone who gets such procedures. I do not at all feel like I’d be attracted to talk with this woman.

And no, I don’t think the fact of her making her career in Hollywood, or the pressures of being a major actress, should temper my criticism. If anything, her choice to deface herself is worse because as a celebrity she knows she’s a role model for millions who very likely possess even less self-confidence.

Of course some writers who consider themselves feminists have come out with daggers raised against the many others who were shocked and a bit dismayed by Zellweger’s “new look”. I’m sorry, but I don’t think there’s anything feminist in defending a woman who’s undergone such radical cosmetic surgery. If Zellweger wants to be respected as a woman who is more than her mere appearance (her appearance as a commodity, given her career) she shouldn’t have gone and tried to upgrade that appearance, to undo its slight changes over time. Further, the shock of Zellweger’s critics can be attributed, I believe, not to any tendency to commodify women, but rather to that deep sense of the meaning of face that I try to get at above. Someone who changes his/her face to that degree, whoever they are, has broken with themselves and rejected their continuity as a person in the community. And I believe most everyone, whether or not they can articulate the fact, senses this deep down. Thus the dismay at what Ms. Zellweger has done.

I suggest a new practice for bloggers and others who agree with me here. When an actor or singer (or even a person in one’s social circle) changes their face like Zellweger has done, why not acknowledge the new person by giving them a new name? Because in a disturbing way, as a familiar face in society, that person is starting over from scratch. So I will refer to this new woman as Renashe Zellweger. It's different enough, and broken enough, to suggest the willful mashing of one's own appearance that cosmetic surgery grants.

In these remarks I’ve left out the other valid question of the privilege, as in spare cash, of those who can afford to deface themselves in this way. But the question of the wealth necessary for such changes only further underlines the degree to which vanity, unchecked, quickly becomes tied up with vice.

I repeat: Cosmetic surgery should be banned, and if it can’t be banned, it should be taxed to the hilt--and in any case, for those who value what is real and true in this world, cosmetic surgery should be shunned. And since the question may arise: Would I include Botox, or whatever other virus they’re injecting these days, in the ban? By all means. Stiff and rubbery, botoxed faces are clearly a part of this new ambient monstrosity.

The actress Renee Zellweger has defaced herself, and that’s that. Please don’t follow her lead.

[Further reading: Of the handful of pieces I’ve read, Vis Groskop and Mary Elizabeth Williams get it right I think; Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy is just using the incident to blow her rinky-dink feminish horn.]

Eric Mader

Vaginal Knitting: Yarn and Yawn

If a man trains himself to thump out a ditty on a piano using his erect penis, we think of it as a joke, a kind of sick gag. YouTube will cut the video soon enough. But if a woman somehow manages to knit using her vagina--well, that's what we call "performance art". It is considered art in part because the reason the woman did it was, as she says, to raise awareness about a shunned and supposedly misunderstood part of female anatomy.

Uh-huh. Cue Casey Jenkins.



Now Casey Jenkins seems like an easygoing and open-minded woman. And she certainly seems earnest about her work here. But I would have to suggest, even so, that she is drowning in a narcissistic craving for attention. And she is perversely exploiting her own sex organs to get this attention.

When last month I read about the poor dope who nailed his scrotum to the pavement on Red Square I thought a new low in attention-grabbing antics had been reached. And I thought this new low might hold for awhile. At least for a year or so.

Russian artist Petr Pavlensky
But I was too hasty in my judgment. Not even a month has passed and this Australian "craftivist" Jenkins comes in and, uh, snatches the trophy away. She gets the trophy because her work, regardless of the earnestness she seems to show, cannot escape being ridiculous--reaching a new level of ridiculous in fact. It is the stuff of humor and scoffing and a vague or even strong sense of aversion. And these emotions are not, contrary to what her ideological statements suggest, because there is anything inherently scoff-worthy in a woman's vagina. No, the humor and scoffing and revulsion are not due to her vagina itself, but to the way she is exploiting it to get attention.

Some consider her work a "brave" feminist statement. Yaaaawwwwnnn. In what is it brave? Is it brave because she is openly courting ridicule by doing something so evidently ridiculous? Jenkins' performance doesn't even subvert any boundaries (unless you consider the boundary between scarf and tampon worth subverting, which I don't). Vaginal motorcycle repair, now that might provoke some thought, but vaginal knitting? C'mon. Muffs and knitting go way back. My grandma knit muffs in her day.

So you see I'm starting to take the humorous end of this yarn and run with it. Ouch. Because I think this is what Jenkins' work calls for.

I can credit Femen with bravery when they do actions in authoritarian states and risk arrest. I can certainly credit Muslim women with bravery when they stand against forces like the Taliban. But a woman in Australia publicly fetishizing her own sex organs is not bravery: it's silly narcissism grasping for the status of art. She knows she's almost certain to make a name for herself among the community of like-minded feminists and "artists". And she risks nothing but being laughed at for her trouble.

While we're on the silly antics of performance artists in rich Western countries, why not try to craft a vaginal art project of our own? I'm neither a woman nor an artist but even I have better ideas how to make political statements with vaginas than Casey Jenkins. If such a sentence as this last one offends and incites feminists to rage, all the better.

"Misogynist asshole! So you think you understands women better than women do, huh? Typical! What a fuckin' jerk!!! We need more women like Casey in the world!!!!"

Thought you'd say something like that.

But in fact I don't think I understand women or vaginas better than women do. I just think I, along with millions of other people, understand the subversive potential of art better than Casey Jenkins does. Even if this art involves employing the vagina.

You doubt it? Consider: We all know our planet is it trouble, and we all know one of the reasons is the unnecessary over-consumption that comes with capitalism. Many people try to link an ethic of environmental protection with the nurturing feminine, claiming that our destruction of the environment is mainly a result of patriarchy. I don't buy it, but no matter. For performance artists it's plausible enough. So here's my plan, my own contribution to snatch art: How about a group of women activists/artists who come forward and pledge that for the duration of a year they will buy nothing from shopping malls that they can't insert and carry out in their vaginas? Now that would constitute a subversive political statement! What's more, if enough women took up the cause, it would actually put a damper on excessive consumption. Just think--a whole year with no high-end bags being sold. Or a fall season without any chic urban trench coats going. Because who's going to be able to buy a new trench coat? If you've ever tried to stuff a whole trench coat in your vagina, you'll know what I mean. Yes, it's true those first-floor cosmetics companies wouldn't really be hurt, given the smooth little canisters they sell, but guys like Louboutin would be in deep trouble.

If my project sounds utterly ridiculous, if it sounds like a joke even as it's being formulated, there's good reason for that. It's because making art with your sex organs is a dubious strategy in any case. But putting the ludic element aside, I would still insist: my project is way more subversive and consciousness-raising than vaginal knitting. And maybe, you might be saying, I should actually start work on this project.

But look: there are two things that keep me from making a name for myself as the creator of Vaginal Shopping: 1) I have a penis and so am disqualified from even proposing the idea; 2) I have a sense of the positive aspects of the mild taboo we in the West still hold in relation to genitals, and so would consider the project degrading.

The one redeeming element I can see in Jenkins' project is that she's knitting just a single long scarf rather than a series of scarves. One long scarf can't be worn, and that's all for the better, I'd say. I shudder to think of her knitting and selling wearable scarves. And so I close with the following:

A FEW WEEKS AFTER CHRISTMAS, MELBOURNE SUBURB
"Mom, why does my scarf smell like . . . ."

"Like fish, dear?"

"Yes."

"That's because that scarf is very special. It was made by a performance artist."

"What is a performance artist?"

"A performance artist is a person who does something obscene or ridiculous to get attention, but claims they're doing it because they care about some social issue."

"Do they really care about the social issue?"

"Maybe a little, honey. But the important thing is for them to get their name to appear in the media."

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Why do I have to leave this little hair stuck in the scarf?"

"That's like a signature, honey. I paid extra for the scarf because it had that hair. Try not to lose it."

E.M