Monday, May 25, 2009

Cake, or Male Infanticide?

(We're out of cake).

First of all, blame mandos for this. He's been enabling my rubbernecking habit like whoa by deposting these links in unrelated posts. Sort of like my cat would have brought me dead mice if he were any good at mousing. The cat, that is. I've no idea how good mandos is at mousing. Presumably they're more difficult targets than The Eternal Moonshine Of The Wadfem Dwama. And this first source in particular is like the dead mouse with hantavirus.

Nonetheless. I had to look. And now, apparently, before seven days go by, I have to share, or Sheila Jeffreys comes out of the television and eats my brains. Therefore:

http://aroomofourown.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/am-i-crazy/

Am I Crazy?
2009 MAY 17
by Margaret
I will rank the following three scenarios, options, if you will, in order of my preference:

Male infanticide.
Female infanticide.
Females continue living as males’ slaves.
Of course, these are not the only three options available, though they do seem to me to be the options most likely to occur with any lasting *effect* (with full recognition that numbers 2 and 3 concur).

But, yes, I believe male infanticde to be the best of those three options. That is to say, I believe male infanticide to be a *better* option than the current circumstances. That doesn’t speak to what I might feel the *best* option would be. I only mean to put into perspective my stance on male infanticide, given its invocation in the comments of another post. I think it’s better than what we’ve got.

Note that I also feel that female infanticide is a better option than being born into patriarchy as it stands, as well.

I just happen to think it’d be better if the males were the ones dying, rather than that the females be the ones dying *and* suffering.


You have to admit, at least she screwed her courage to the sticking place and -said- it. If saying shit that most people find repulsive and WTF? isn't radical, what is? Huh? As Lady Macbeth notes:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out.
Bite they little heads off,
Nibble on they little feet...


...no, wait, sorry, that's from Hamlet. Anyway, Lady M's probably not all that great a role model on account of she was created by a male author and was in it for her husband's ambition, thus a tool of the Patriarchy and not a true Revolutionary, despite her admirable fighting spirit. (The fact that she's fictional shouldn't be held against her; after all, it's not like the OP being quoted here isn't actually a cartoon).

Right, so. Meanwhile, not very far away, also brought to you courtesy of mandos, there's a new (apparently) dude on the block.

http://thelongestwar.wordpress.com/

Unlike most men, I admit I started this physical life as a female fetus, like all human fetuses do, also born of a woman like all human beings are.* Also, I’m embarrassed to be a man with all the societal privilege manhood entails. Hence, this blog. It soothes my conscience**...

... To end man’s war against womankind may take men not just doing laundry and ending non-sexual violence, but practicing celibacy as a commitment to not exploiting women. Real celibacy, not what Catholic priests pretend to do. Unless men wise up and take better action, Mother Nature might just wipe men out and leave women with procreative parthenogenesis. Life will go on, with or without men.

I’m proposing celibacy for bi and het-sex men (any men born as men interested in sexual relations with women) as the ground of being to expand male consciousness as a pathway toward real peace. Celibacy for this group of people would mean that no woman would be sexually exploited by any xy-chromosome humanoid while a lasting peace is sought through heightened awareness for all...

...(1) See and (2) Break Free. It’s a simple two-part plan to species unity. I said simple, not easy. But if the war ends in my lifetime, maybe I can start having real sex as a whole human being with another whole human being.

...I can no longer wield my spear in the longest war. Plenty of warriors remain ready. To womankind I would say: In this war, it’s the spear and not your spirit that he’s interested in. To paraphrase a recent title of a book-based movie with a sappy ending, “He’s never that into you (in other than a spear-thrusting way).”


*oh snap, Macduff so was NOT! You missed the ironic part! You should be careful with your turn of phrase, there, sport. Even if you totally don't mind losing the kingdom and the battle and the, um, spear, and all that patriarchal jazz.

**You do that with your left hand or your right?

***

But this guy's so, so, maddeningly close, and yet doesn't quite seem to get there. In the interest of protecting Womankind, he heroically falls on his own, um, spear; he denies us all his essence (although fortunately we still have his bloviations). Which probably means he's not planning to burden the Earth with his spawn, either. He even refers to himself as a former (female) fetus, heaping due guilt upon his own head at having developed the Y chrom and then gone on to take up all that privilege and oxygen...

...and yet, he doesn't quite seem to leap to the logical conclusion that Margie there probably already did, or should have.



We will refrain from mentioning l'affaire B---ng B---r here, just because I don't want to link to anyone who still has that shit cached. But, yes, truth is stranger than AbFab etc, at least in the Land Of The Online Wadfem.

In epilogue: as long as we're speculating about possible parallel worlds, I wonder how much more energy and goodwill I might have had, how many great works of art I might have created, new elements discovered, buildings leapt in a single bound, if every time I'd been tempted to rubberneck at this sort of thing, much less engage, I'd instead just hit this button.

17 comments:

Dw3t-Hthr said...

I just, y'know, have fun with your war now, kids. I'll be over here having a nice life.

Which includes, y'know, unity-ing on my own terms with males of my preference, which I'm sure chaps Mr. Longest War's essence-sacrificing arse bigtime.

Natalia said...

The drama button scared my kitties.

The two luminaries you feature here scare me.

Oh, to be a blissfully ignorant kitty.

belledame222 said...

I'm still not quite clear on why, since he says he's bi, he needs to abstain from teh homosex as well? I mean, I'm sure legions of gay boys are crying into their beer as we type, but, y'know.

belledame222 said...

poor kitties.

but yeah, poor the rest of us...

belledame222 said...

there was more, p.s.

Comrade PhysioProf said...

Gadzooks! That's some seriously out-there shit.

Ceridwen said...

Ugh, like I really needed anything else to keep me up at night.

Mandos said...

Hey Dw3t-Hthr, I just noticed you're a Cherryh fan. Go you!

SnowdropExplodes said...

nitpick: It was MacDuff, not Macbeth, who was not of woman born, having been "untimely rip'd from my mother's womb" (she had died in giving birth, and so he was delivered by caesarian section - he was therefore not of woman born, but born instead of a corpse)

(it may be 15 years ago, but I studied the Scottish Play for my exams)

CrackerLilo said...

Bad mandos, bad! I think he needs to try mousing now. The drama button's so bookmarked now!

Regarding Margaret, the answer to "Am I Crazy?" is "Yes, yes, HELL YES!"

Regarding that "thelongestwar" guy's "spear" talk, I think he's just bragging. That or trying to cover for the small size and flaccidity of said "spear." In the most feminist way, of course.

At my blog, I just wrote, among other things, about a bi man who taught his little girl to love hockey and has encouraged her in playing it herself. She wants to be the first woman to win the Stanley Cup, and he sees no reason why not. He has complemented my breasts while drunk-dialing, and L'Ailee and I both know far too much about his "spear," but we'd take his company over a radfem male apologist any day of the week.

sqrrel said...

You missed the extra bit of transphobia in the second one too:

I’m proposing celibacy for bi and het-sex men (any men born as men interested in sexual relations with women) The 'men born as men' bit indicates that it's okay for trans men to be non-celibate, because, as we all know, trans men are men-lite.

ugh.

Alon Levy said...

Wow. I never thought having sex with my girlfriend was a radical act. Does that make me a firebrand?

belledame222 said...

SDE: der, woops, you're right. i go fix.

Mandos said...

The reason why I find this so fascinating is that I've noticed an acceleration in the rate at which radfems stratify themselves by the Logical Conclusions that they reach (or become willing to articulate). For example, M. S. quoth:

Enter second wave feminism and “women only space”. Ohhhh, yeah, women love it. As a quick battery-recharge tactic, to be employed at intervals, so they can go back to the male vampires for their required tours of duty. Husbands, boyfriends, sons, bosses. Usually with the conscious awareness that they don’t ever want to live in a female-only space. Or if they did so, it would be only with the assurance that their male loved ones would be “OK”.http://aroomofourown.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/politics/#comment-3934

That is to say that she is now more willing to express the idea that women are betraying the cause by having any male loved ones at all. While I have no doubt that she always thought that, it's interesting because many of the other commenters who have reached that stratum with her (Amy's Brain Today, for instance) have expressed that they have male loved ones whose well-being they still do care about. M.S. and maybe Margaret are therefore the only ones willing to walk the talk, whereas for the rest male infanticide is merely a discussion of the hypothetical.

All M.S. needs to do is to get a biotechnology degree now.

There was a thread where Polly Styrene and others were not willing to follow to this conclusion.

http://pollystyrene.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/body-positive/

Not following to the conclusion enables a strange alliance between her and Satsuma, who assuredly does not care about the love of males in her life, and it also permits a grudging acceptance of body-modification. It's not possible to follow to MS' position if you believe that males and lesbians are NOT opposed categories by definition. But if you don't admit that, then how do you retain a consistent edifice of radical/cultural feminist thought?

Note MS' bitterness (elsewhere) at Twisty and VS falling off the wagon with sexist slurs.

Dw3t-Hthr said...

(Yep, big Cherryh fan. It was an obvious riff for setting up the blog when I did.)

More on-topically:

Fancy. M.S. doesn't think I'm a woman.

Because "women-only space" I avoid like the fucking plague. "Women love it", but I sure don't....

belledame222 said...

back at Howly Blog, Margie continues to develop her thesis:


"Is there anything particularly “matriarchal” about a society without boys and men? I certainly don’t think so. On what planet is separatism about wanting to control those from whom you’re seceding?

But I suppose if there were ever an ideology doomed to mischaracterization it’s female separatism. Men and boys can mistreat women and girls in all the ways that men and boys have done so for thousands of years, yet you don’t even hear the existence of patriarchy acknowledged in everyday conversation. But the second women start talking about feminism, cries of “matriarchy” rise up from the mob...."



and it's like:

Well, in your case, no, I wouldn't call it "matriarchal" at all; rabbiting on about "infanticide" isn't very matronly, that's quite right. As you've made quite clear, you're -not- like Heart. However, I'm not sure where "matriarchal" becomes more of an "eek stay away" thing than "full-on homicidal."

"Eliminationist," I suppose Orcinus would call it.

Alon Levy said...

God, I hate that word, "Eliminationist"... in plain English, these people are thugs, or possibly terrorist sympathizers. It just sounds a lot scarier when they're right-wingers because they have more power and more guns than the average radfem blog commenter.