Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Why? Why? Why? -Why- do I do this to myself?

I mean, it's not like there isn't -enough- stupid and hateful in the world that I need to go seeking out even -more- of it, right? There is absolutely no reason on Maud's green earth why I -need- to be reading fundamentalists of any sort, let alone a rare conglomeration of fundies of both the right-wing Christian type AND (a few of) the purportedly radical feminist type, all united and dovetailing in the hatred of teh Ultimate Ev0l, teh pr0n; and -beyond- that, there is -certainly- no reason to click on what I know will be a small tetchy clump of the Lyndon LaRouchites of the feminist-or-whatever-everyone's-calling-themselves-this-week...clump...but...um...

Listen, can someone help wean me off onto a healthier habit, like, I don't know, slamming my fingers in car doors, or huffing nail polish remover?

Meanwhile, I -am- sorry, but MISERY LOVES COMPANY, DAMMIT:

exhibit #1:

I used to think men cared about women, and they would protect us if
necc. All that went right out the window, breaking me at my very core/
soul. If a man can use any woman he can use all women. There's no good
and bad uses of women. I don't want to be used in the so called good
way - as wife and fako partner, any more than I want to be used in the
bad way of p wh. It's ALL BAD!!! Using anyone is BAD!!!! There's no
good way to use someone. Yet there men are, celebrating the abuse of
women. I used to think the USA had a strong military full of strong
manly men dedicated to protecting us from external forces...

We're left feeling sooo alone in the world when we discover those who
vowed to love and honor us, have only been using us, while they also
contribute to destroying us. There's no connection between how they
treat other women, and how their fellow men treat us. They like to see
men sexualizing their OBJECTS.

...And I don't buy the BS about women do it because they like it and
they want too. If a woman likes it and wants to then she is mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually retarded, just like I was when I was also
under the influence of these man-made lies. To me it's like taking
advantage of the handicapped in our society, in soul torturous ways,
and calling that ENTERTAINMENT for MEN. That's soo messed up, in soo
many ways, it's no wonder we can't wrap our hearts and souls around
it. It's insanity, and sane people don't do it.

[another poster]
The other night there was an episode of 'Intervention' on,which I made my h watch. It was a lady who was addicted to heroin and she prostituted to get the money.

At 1st my h was angry,"I never saw a prostitute what does this have to do with me?"
I told him that that's what these womyn in p*rn movies are,they are prostituted once in the movie,and then over and over visually for sick men.

My h admitted to me that he separated these womyn in the movies from womyn in real life,because they were "sluts and they wanted to be there" :-X (I still can't believe my h said this..How can he be this man..and the one I thought I knew?)
Maybe some do think they want to be there,but if so,it's that they have been brain washed into thinking that's all their is for them.

I have seen interviews with these womyn,I have read books..I have seen these shows/documentaries,and I even knew a lady from my childhood who out of drug addiction finally resorted to prostitution,They didn't want to be there. They had no choice,or thought they had none. They had no voice and knew that that was the one thing they could always sell.

These womyn are addicts,they would do anything for their drugs. These womyn are womyn who have been abused all their life and feel as though they have nothing else to offer but their sexuality,as they've seen it's all anyone wants from them. They continue to be abused each time they do these acts.
These womyn are real ppl,they are not some mere object to be used,abused,and then used again.

I am so angry and resentful,that I am with someone who is a secret abuser of womyn,. It doesn't matter if it was visually...
That he lied,that he had everyone fooled...I could rant on this forever.

It makes me sad,angry and sick to think this is all the progress that has been made throughout human history? They went from walking hunched over,pulling us by the hair into a cave,to walking upright..only to be hunched over the computer victimizing us again,only visually.

At 1st..I was angry at God..I thought why did God let this happen to me? I am a good person,I try to live a respectable moral life.

Then a calm came over me,and I realized it wasn't Gods doing. God gave us free will so we can make the right choices,and find our way back to him. P*rn imo is truly evil,it is truly the work of "the devil" and of mans weakness for lust.

I think some of these men can save themselves,if they really see the problem as a whole. It's not just p*rn,it's not just mb. It's how womyn are seen and valued in their minds,how our role in society is placed. They have to place value on every womyn,no mater how "lowly" she might be...or they might not ever win this.

Two books I thought I might mention,if you're feeling mad as hell and don't mind getting madder:

'Against our will' -by Susan Brownmiller
and
'Who Cooked the Last Supper: The Women's History of the World'-by Rosalind Miles


on another thread:

I'm not coming at you with a machete nor am I trying to drive you off
the boards in any way. I am simply pointing out the error in your ways
when you encourage porn addicts to look up to someone for recovery
when that same person would tell the PA's on here they don't have a
porn addiction, and the SO's that they are insecure and porning for
men is a normal and healthy activity..

[sig quote]

..."Feminism is the radical notion that women are people"


and then, from the main pages of that same site:

Overcoming temptation is easier with an Accountability Partner.
That's why Covenant Eyes is effective. It is NOT a filter -- but it
does restore your freedom to choose.

Fully endorsed by: "Promise Keepers Men of Integrity"; Steve Hewitt,
editor and President, "Christian Computing Magazine"; by "Focus on the
Family"; and by No-porn.com.

Benefits and Features:

* Tracks every web visit and sends an e-mailed report to the
accountability partner(s) of your choice.
* Removes the secrecy of using the Internet. Reports can be sent
every seven, 14 or 28 days.

"I'm not religious, so I was pleased to find out that using this
doesn't require religion. It is just common sense."


o noez, doesn't require religion, it's only endorsed by FOCUS ON THE
FAMILY and PROMISE KEEPERS. i can totally understand why some "radical feminists" (hi, one angry girl! you've been cited in there!) would be sympatico here! I mean, they're only using software that's a-ok with frigging FOCUS ON THE FAMILY and PROMISE KEEPERS. Absolutely! Certainly much better allies than, o I don't know, female sex workers who don't happen to agree with you about whether their job is so terrible that they need to stop and repent forthwith, but DO agree with you wrt reproductive rights, gay rights, whether or not it really -is- a woman's -only- rightful place to sit at home by her husband's side and raise kids...

you stupid, stupid fucks.

and yeah, -nice- with the eye and the whole thing, not at all
Handmaid's Tale.***

Please, do tell me another one about how the ONLY reason I could -possibly- be more concerned about rabid anti-porn/kink/etc/etc/etc "feminists" than, I don't know, Playboy, or "raunch culture," or the harm my queer pro-domme friends who make indie pr0n are causing to anxious straight womyn who can't keep their husbands at home, is because I luuuuuurrrves the porn so very, very much.

NOT because o i don't know not only does it SOUND like right wing fundamentalism a lot of the time, not only is it -possible- that right-wing fundamentalists use this shit to further their own agenda (that no-porn board has literally hundreds of thousands of postings, apparently tens of thousands of regulars if you buy their "survey" numbers, or did), but in -some- cases we are in fact talking about -the very same people.- That's a lie! That never happens! And, y'all (y'all know who you are) are SO RIGHT to be so much more willing to work/engage with these people than someone like this.

I'll skip the bit with the terribly earnest young man who's convinced he must be entirely chaste because he has a homosexual orientation -and- is a Christian, but -for some reason- just can't stop looking at Those Pictures or thinking Those Thoughts, can anyone help? or indeed the guy who's convinced he's an "addict" because he still jerks off once a week, and the very helpful woman who may or may not be a "feminist," it's a bit ambiguous from her login and other posts, who suggests imagining his dead grandmother looking on every time he starts to lapse, hey, whatever works, right?

just, by way of transition to the next Place What Makes My Brain Hurt, one last, thiswas also rather choice, I thought:

Even if they are looking at straight men having sex, they are mb to
other men having sex. And whether they are consciously aware of it or
not, it's a perversion, and their subconcious is soaking it all up no
matter what they think. I often wonder if my h is gay, even when it's
not shemales, because I can't tell what he's looking at the girls or
the guys. And often the so called girls, are really men, made up to
look like women, so often times they are wanking to men while thinking
they are women, but their soul sees them as the me they are regardless
imo. It's only a small step from there to shemales imo. It really
doesn't matter what kind of p it is though, because it is all messed
up, and they get messed up no matter what kind they are using from the
tamer type to the grosser type. Using p makes them pornosexuals, and
totally ruins their natural hetrosexuality no matter what the images.


Had enough of that? Okay! Moving on. And in fact, this has gotten SO long and unwieldy that it's now TWO posts o'rantiness, continue here.

***
Sometimes the movie she showed would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties. Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks, women hanging from trees, or upside-down, naked, with their legs held apart, women being raped, beaten up, killed...

Consider the alternatives, said Aunt Lydia. You see what things used to be like? That was what they thought of women, then. Her voice trembled with indignation.

Moira said later that it wasn't real, it was done with models, but it was hard to tell.

Sometimes, though, the movie would be what Aunt Lydia called an Unwoman documentary. Imagine, said Aunt Lydia, wasting their time like that, when they should have been doing something useful. Back then, the Unwomen were always wasting time. They were encouraged to do it. The government gave them money to do that very thing. Mind you, some of their ideas were sound enough, she went on, with the smug authority of one who is in a safe position to judge. We would have to condone some of their ideas, even today. Only some, mind you, she said, coyly, raising her index finger, waggling it at us. But they were Godless, and that can make all the difference, don't you agree?


and

Lilies used to be a movie theater, before. Students went there a lot: every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds. They worse blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

...Women were not protected then.

I remember the rules, rules that were not spelled out but that every woman knew: Don't open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don't stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble...

Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, speaks to us, touches us. No one whistles.

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, you had freedom to. Now you have freedom from. Don't underrate it.


--Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

9 comments:

CrackerLilo said...

I thought I understood that book well enough before. I think I get it better now.

I don't know how to improve on a single thing you said in either of these last two posts, or what to add. I just want you to know I nodded like a bobblehead and thank you for writing them.

ArrogantWorm said...

That is one hell of a book to snag selections from, there's a lot in there to choose.

Alon Levy said...

I think everyone should read Against Our Will. I also think the good parts, which present the facts and the current state of research as of the time of the book's publication, don't really support the moonbatty theories about porn and S&M and the source of patriarchy.

Trinity said...

waitwaitwaitwait, am I reading these quotes aright? Are these people Christian radfems? "the devil" alongside protecting "womyn"? *jawdrop* Say it ain't so, Plucky, say it ain't so.

belledame222 said...

CL: thanks

AW: I know, I had a hard time narrowing it down to just those.

AL: also the bit that was probably the impetus for the whole "gender trumps race" business in the first place, i.e. Believe The Woman takes precedence over any consideration of "this might actually be a racist set-up and/or naming the wrong person under a white supremacist regime," no matter what, roughly.

trin: exactly my reaction. except i -had- seen a little of that before. just...yeah, it boggles. it does explain where a bunch of RE's trolls and/or some of the people at a particularly virulent Melissa Farley thread might be coming from, though, for example.

Alon Levy said...

Yeah, I know. But I suspect it was mostly the sentiment in the 1970s that created Brownmiller's anti-civil rights rhetoric, rather than the other way around.

Anonymous said...

You can take the church ladies out of church...

belledame222 said...

RE: i know, right? how many ways can you be a poisonous ignorant bigot all at once? it's an art, of sorts, really.

Daisy said...

Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katherine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds.

Does this person realize that Bacall met Bogart when she was only 19? Isn't that terrible oppression, a 45 year old man and a 19 year old GIRL?

Hey, I love Bacall and Bogart too, but I was regularly hammered by REAL RADICAL FEMINISTS (not these women, obviously) for saying something similarly admiring about Lauren Bacall, and I think it's funny that they're saying it now and holding her up as some feminist example...

She'd never survive long in authentic 70s politically-correct-to-a-fault radical feminism, with a sensibility LIKE THAT! :P