Pretty soon we’ll be called “slutphobic”: A radfem’s thoughts on slutwalk

Trigger warning. This post discusses how much women, especially the prostituted, are hated.

Why I am not queer, or the trials of dating as a radical lesbian feminist

The men are not on our side! (no duh)

In my last post, I gave a very partial overview of my journey into lesbian-ville. Just as I never felt comfortable with men, I never felt comfortable in the boy-based GLBT movement. I would go into my local GLBTIQ shop and find a small section of lesbian fiction with an increasing amount of erotica. I attended a regular lesbian discussion group, and many women there dis-idenfied as feminists altogether. (Hey, if I’m going to be a lesbian, I can still get attention from the boyz by not being a feminist!) S/M, dildos, and porn were all the rage. I have been teased by a lesbian friend for spending so much time hanging out with het women, but honestly, the ones I hang with are not into boy-based sex. I have becoming increasingly in despair about where young lesbians are headed. Most totally erase anything to do with woman identification, by referring to themselves as “queer.” As I very much would like a girlfriend, and one I can actually talk to, not just make love with, I am having intense trouble finding a partner.

I have signed up for lesbian dating sites and begun to chat with a few of the women. When I said I was looking for an egalitarian relationship and described myself as a radical feminist, one woman said she had never heard of ever concept, but looked both  “egalitarian” and “radical feminist”  up on Wikipedia (She also said I intimidated her because I wrote in paragraphs, although her writing was not bad at all).

Radical Feminist Seminar: Sheila Jeffreys on Trans Politics

After the heaviness of Saturday’s sessions, I was rather nervous about what Sunday had in store for me. However, I arrived to the conference hall bright and early, because I knew Sheila Jeffreys was starting off the morning by expressing a view that is likely to cause one to become treated as a leper. That is Jeffreys’ was explaining a critique of the queer and transgender movements.

Jeffreys began by discussing how we have arrived at this  point where there  really is no lesbian feminist movement. Jeffreys’ hypothesizes that as lesbians become more involved with gay men, for example through taking care of them during the AIDS crises, we picked up their ways of being sexual with one another. Also, from what I know, gay men in general have always been much more likely to state that their sexual behavior was innate, despite all the historic evidence to indicate otherwise.  Anyhow, as time progressed, women too, have become more convinced that our sexuality is innate; when we “come out” as lesbians, we change our life narrative to highlight the parts we would like to display. Jeffreys’ mentioned a student of hers who completed researching showing that there really has been a change in time over how lesbians view their sexual preference: i.e. innate versus environmental.

When did this become a problem?

Radical Feminist Seminar: Professor Dines Brings It On

After Sheila Jeffreys gave her talk, Dr. Dines once again took the floor and provided us with some visual imagery of the horrors of the sex industry in slide-show format. Although everything she showed is what comes in when one does a typical google search for “p*orn,” it was all pretty heavy stuff.

Professor Gail Dines

One important point Dr. Dines made, which I have thought about some myself, is how mainstream movies provide the same message as does porn, albeit in a lighter context. The message being, of course, that women are sex objects for men’s pleasure, and thus we really don’t care what is done to us. Dines also discussed how easy it is for  porn companies to use “product placement” in PG-13 and R movies, since most of the companies that produce mainstream films are owned by–you guess it–the pornography industry. Indeed, just walk into a Blockbuster (a company that gets, or at least used to get direct profits from the porn industry, for the record) and it would be hard not to take notice of the ways in which porn is mentioned as part of the movie plot even in the few-sentence-long descriptions! It seems logical then, to think watching mainstream PG-13 and R movies also changes the way both men and women come to view the role of themselves and each other in society. Indeed, I know my thinking has changed during periods of heavy movie watching, but fortunately, after breaks, my mind has felt a lot clearer.

 

Of course, men have more lines than  “slut!,” and “cumdumpster,”directed towards   women in mainstream movie and the viewer is not expected to ejaculate to the few minutes of sex one finds in a mainstream movie. This is why these films are much softer propaganda than pornography. It is also why men do not rent a mainstream movie when they want pornography: they know what they are looking to find, and they won’t find it there.

Radical Feminist Seminar: Sheila Jeffrey’s Speech on Trafficking

The afternoon sessions on Saturday June 25th were extremely draining, as they focused almost exclusively on the global war men are waging on women . It’s understandable why women would rather go to a liberal feminism conference, or even a “sex-pozzie” convention, where what they hear is how wonderfulyl men treat women in the sex industry. But, we were here to hear what we already knew, many women from their own experience in the sex trade. Indeed, it was these experiences precisely that  drove them into the arms of radical feminism.

After a break for lunch Saturday, Sheila Jeffreys gave a lecture related to her book, The Industrial Vagina. I had recently read through this entire book, a book so painful to read that I had to put it down every few minutes of reading, just to remind myself that, yes, I am safe, but this is why I am a radical feminist. One point Jeffreys hammered home, is that the idea of individual agency is fundamentally a conservative idea. At what other job do we claim workers are expressing their “agency”?  It is really Milton Friedman’s politics of super, super individualism that are being put forth by “pro-sex work” lobbyists.

Because we know you like to watch…

I have attended Reel Affirmations, for a couple of years.  It has always been a big highlight of my year, because it’s so easy to make friends at the wimmin’s movies. Even if I go alone, which I have done a couple of times, I find welcoming women to sit with. And some of the movies are actually pretty decent. There was even a fictional movie about May Sarton shown, as well as a documentary about feminism.

However, the festival is not as welcoming to women as it could be. For one thing, their special passes can cost more than 1,000 dollars! Back when the LGBT bookstore was in operation, I would see gay men come in quite frequently to buy such special passes, but I never saw a single woman do so.

My real problem with the festival though is that of a few years ago, their slogan became “We know you like to watch.”

Can you please stop talking about your dick? It offends me.

 

The picture above is call Menstrual Night, and it was created by a painter named Emily Balivet. It shows womyn who are able to celebrate  being female in the light of a full moon. These womyn are gathered together in sisterhood and are clearly enjoying themselves. No one is able to hold them back from appreciating their bodies. In my opinion, this is what feminism should be. Not necessarily saying how wonderful every aspect of the menstrual cycle is, but talking with each other about it, openly and honestly.

Yet, the more I read in the queer blogosphere, the more disturbed I become. In an effort to support transwomen, trans allies have seriously encouraged womyn to say that “abortion isn’t a women’s issue.”  If you think this is a case of a fluke, well, if you’re invested in the queer community you KNOW it’s not. I remember reading the Michigan boards some time ago and there was a post about a woman who heard a gyrl who JUST GOT her period being scolded by trans activists for saying she was PROUD of that! Is it just me, or is that majorly ANTI-FEMINIST of them?! Can you imagine, celebrating menarche, being HAPPY about it, and then being scolded for it??

There are plenty of people where I go to school who consider themselves “genderqueer” or are out and out trans in one direction or the other. I sometimes read their blogs, just to keep up with what is going on in that scene. I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw womyn become so male-identified that they would say having a vulva, or having a uterus, has NOTHING to do with being a woman. 

Yet, for the vast, vast majority of women, getting their period IS a big deal. It IS something we talk about with one another on a semi-regular basis, because we can all relate to it. We talk about our breast size and the best fitting bras. Women who have PIV (penis-in-vagina) sex talk with other womyn about how to cope with the effects of that, i.e. ”I’m on the pill, but it gives me horrible cramps.” 

Is  saying we can’t talk about any of these experiences because it might HURT THE FEELINGS of another group, and a group that has had male privilage for at least some of their life, at that, FEMINIST?!?? I think not.

Many events that encourage gyrls and womyn to take pride in our bodies do activities such as breast casting and paintings with menstrual blood. But, we are supposed to think menstruation and the puberty we go through as young women have NOTHING to do with being a women, all in the name of not hurting “transwomen.”

How far do we want to take this, really? Should we make it so that anyone seen reading The Red Tent is considered anti-trans rights?

As I have made abudently clear in previous posts, I am all for “trans rights,” in the sense of basic healthcare, freedom from job discrimination, food, shelter, and a community of one’s own. But why does this have to come at the cost of WOMYN?

I don’t see “transmen” demanding men stop talking about their dicks, because it might hurt their feelings. (But hey, I’m all for getting behind a trans agenda that involves men stopping the talk TO BE HEARD BY EVERYONE of what they dick’s been up to as of late).

Womyn are just plain an easier target for a male-identified movement to go after.