The View Through Oneway Glass

Some Quick Comments On Radical Feminism

Mon, 13 May 2013 02:07:00 -0400

”life” in this “society” being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of “society” being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.

—Valerie Solanas

What could possibly be the value of reading the work of Valerie Solanas seriously? I don’t believe any #RadFem ers have a rational answer, but of course, anyone who would/could read the SCUM manifesto seriously would not be doing so for reasons that are rationally grounded. If we read Solanas’s work as a sarcastic and scathing satire, it is indeed an amazing text; it exposes much of the brutal savagery that underlies “civil society” and lends credence to one of the only sensible positions to take with regard to human social and cultural evolution, that is, the *anti-civilization* position. I am indeed an anti-civ proponent, and I support the satirical reading of the SCUM manifesto. As a satire, the work poses one of the most central questions of existential feminism: is it possible for women to have authentic relationships of any kind with men under kyriarchy/patriarchy? This question has no straightforward answer and even at the highest heights of my own personal humanistic optimism I find it hard to answer yes. Indeed women are in some level of constant danger in “civilization” at any given point in time and so, the palpable vitriol that pervades Solanas’s treatise is largely justified, especially when viewed in its historical context — where even the leading edge of revolutionary thought and practice at the time was throughly chauvinistic.

When considered patiently, there is little in the SCUM manifesto to reject, the automation of society and with it, the elimination of work, and the nihilation of all social (economic and political) hierarchies are indeed the most worthy of all goals. The main problem with Solanas’s work (as a feminist tract) is the misidentification of the source of patriarchy and by extension, kyriarchy. This is only in actuality a problem at all when one stops reading the SCUM manifesto as a satire and begins reading it as a serious, prescriptive work. Once read seriously, it becomes nothing more than a juvenile exercise in negative reciprocity, a childish dalliance into the ethics of revenge that is ultimately self-nullifying in the terrible irony of its reproduction of patriarchy — and oh yes it does reproduce patriarchy when read/taken seriously.

By dogmatically asserting a realist gender essentialism, #radscum has forfeited its fight against “the male sex” who, *still hold all the power, guard all the doors and hold all the keys,* who still have the power to disproportionately shape the context of identity appropriation, meaning little girls will always be made to be prey and little boys will always be made to be predators (control of the future), “the male sex” still has control over the means and modes of production, the means and modes of communication (education, mass media) and the state apparatus (social regimentation, public infrastructure, police and military) — (control of the present). If its true that gender is an innate quality of the human being, and that it is this quality that determines how men behave, then women have nothing to look forward to whatsoever, except possibly a token seat at the tables of world power as a reward for full assimilation into the kyriarchal establishment, which is still not real power since gender is innate, and thus men will always find someway to humiliate women even as they sit at the tables of world power.

The vast majority of women (including the elite #radscum) will continue to be what Solanas called “daddies girls” of one kind or another until this “civilization” collapses — which is inevitable given the interlocking ecological crises the species is facing — and begins anew, freshly reimplementing the patriarchal/kyriarchal paradigm and spelling the certain immiseration of the masses of women. This, of course does not have to be the case, but the only way to prevent it (since the “option” of eliminating the male sex is farcical as women do not now and will much more than likely not ever have the ability to do so) is to accept that gender *is not innate*. When this fact is conceded, new possibilities arise, now alliances can be built with men who are also radically anti-kyriarchal and both sexes can work together to build safe, intentional spaces of social transformation. Without these new possibilities, there is no way to prevent the cultural reproduction of patriarchy/kyriarchy.

When we look at the whole predicament humanistically, what we see is that women who take the #radscum project seriously quite obviously need to be in safe spaces removed from men, these spaces appear to be the only places where any kind of authentic healing can occur that would allow for even a remote chance of closing the psychological gap created by whatever traumas these women have experienced that precipitated this extremely hostile posture toward “the male sex” (note that the hostility is toward the male sex as a biological dimorphism of human anatomy and not patriarchy which is a culturally contingent form of social organization). I wholeheartedly support this kind of *willful segregation in the interests of healing* for reasons that should be clear, and hope that the women who seek this arrangement find solace and kinship within it. In the mean time, I’m going to return to the major work of establishing functional-alternative, prefigurative, intentional community spaces with anti-kyriarchal radicals. If #radscum has any function besides creating a controversy-rife spectacle, its proponents might spend less energy insighting useless discord, and more energy on bringing some workable version of their vision into being.

#radfem #radscum #feminism #kyriarchy

If you believe this and you are a heterosexual woman, and you...

Sat, 11 May 2013 01:21:00 -0400

If you believe this and you are a heterosexual woman, and you care at all about why this appears to be the case, then you should probably stop using *lookism* and *gender conformity* as dominant criteria for which men you choose to fuck, stop fucking and being emotionally intimate with patriarchal sociopaths and then complaining about how men are dumbasses who don’t care about you or anyone else (this is important because generally speaking its safe to assume that the people that a person is both sexually and emotionally intimate with are the ones they will have and/or raise children with) — of course this is only if you are intelligent enough to understand that the way men treat women has everything to do with *both* the micro-familial and macro-societal context they are enculturated to understand gender behavior in, if you are not smart enough to understand this, please by all means continue fucking things up for yourself and others by helping to reproduce patriarchy. If you are a lesbian feminist who gives a shit about future generations of women’s welfare, you should become allies with radicals who are interested in creating safe, intentional spaces of social transformation, where we, importantly, *stop raising little boys and girls to mindlessly reproduce patriarchy/kyriarchy*.

"Some of our ideas about who we are as a people hamper our struggles. For example, the Black..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:43:25 -0400

“Some of our ideas about who we are as a people hamper our struggles. For example, the Black community is often considered a monolithic group, but it is actually a community of communities with many different interests. I think of being Black not so much as an ethnic category but as an oppositional force or touchstone for looking at situations differently. Black culture has always been oppositional and is all about finding ways to creatively resist oppression here, in the most racist country in the world. So, when I speak of a Black anarchism, it is not so tied to the color of my skin but who I am as a person, as someone who can resist, who can see differently when I am stuck, and thus live differently.”

- ashanti alston, black anarchism (via no-vvolf)

cosmarxpolitan: Cosmarxpolitan, Issue 6 8 steps to make extra...

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:14:51 -0400

cosmarxpolitan:

Cosmarxpolitan, Issue 6

8 steps to make extra pounds (and enemies) disappear

man hell yeah…

femfreq: “The Great Debate” by The Escapist’s Cory Rydell and...

Sun, 05 May 2013 23:48:12 -0400

femfreq:

“The Great Debate” by The Escapist’s Cory Rydell and Greg Carter

Of all the criticism thrown at Anita Sarkeesian, the bitching about her decision to disable YouTube comments in the face of an an organized campaign of harassment is the most misguided. It’s a dumb position for a couple of reasons. First, it implies that anyone who makes a video is honor-bound to lend their credibility and popularity to the opposing argument, they are not. Second, it implies YouTube comments contain anything that could remotely be called criticism, they do not. “I hope you get raped,” is not criticism. “Feminazi whore,” is not criticism. “Make me a sandwich,” is not criticism, nor is it funny.

stop, you're ridiculous: mckadence: Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word...

Sun, 05 May 2013 20:31:00 -0400

stop, you're ridiculous: mckadence: Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word...:

mckadence:

Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word “essentialist” in quotes, its clear that if they think they have ground to stand on, they clearly don’t know what the word means, or how the concept applies to the real world. If you think that men oppress women because they…

Also I need to add that, I never specified who (men or women) was forcing boys and girls to conform to these roles, you ignorantly and quite mindlessly assumed things I hadn’t even addressed yet; and further you have shown by your short-attention-spanned response that you haven’t really thought deeply at all about where the origins of male oppression of women is located, the main point I made was that the source of patriarchy is *cultural* not *biological*, but that #radfem ers either don’t deal with this issue at all, gloss over it, or claim that its biological which is false, unsupported by evidence and most depressingly ironic of all *PATRIARCHAL*.

#quitsleeping #wakeup #radfem #whatyouareseeingisnotreal

stop, you're ridiculous: mckadence: Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word...

Sun, 05 May 2013 19:36:54 -0400

stop, you're ridiculous: mckadence: Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word...:

mckadence:

Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word “essentialist” in quotes, its clear that if they think they have ground to stand on, they clearly don’t know what the word means, or how the concept applies to the real world. If you think that men oppress women because they…

Both boys *and* girls and men *and* women pressure boys *and* girls (who grow up to become men and women who are then pressured again) to act according to rigid hetero-normative gender roles, this is the truth, you don’t have to like it; it doesn’t have to be in women’s interest for them to do it, it just has to be sufficiently internalized psychologically. Its not my fault that by failing to see this, you and others who are similarly myopic work (however inadvertently) to perpetuate patriarchy, but you need to get outside of this patriarchal mind state if you give a shit about doing anything besides trying to emasculate men — and failing at that too I might add.

Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word “essentialist” in quotes, its...

Sun, 05 May 2013 13:45:50 -0400

Its funny to see #radfem ers on tumblr putting the word “essentialist” in quotes, its clear that if they think they have ground to stand on, they clearly don’t know what the word means, or how the concept applies to the real world. If you think that men oppress women because they have a dick and balls (genetic/biological determinism), and not because both boys and girls — and then again as men and women — are systematically traumatized, along a spectrum of varying intensity, and interpersonally pressured in an extremely heavy handed manner into playing out rigid hetero-normative gender roles (*social learning*) then you must be either blind or seriously psychologically unbalanced. TO THINK THIS WAY IS TO ENDORSE, PERPETUATE AND REPRODUCE A PATRIARCHAL METANARRATIVE #wakeup #radfem #thematrixhasyou

"Parents, teachers, bosses and cops… they all achieve control by mimicking the binary system of..."

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:21:00 -0500

“Parents, teachers, bosses and cops… they all achieve control by mimicking the binary system of threats (absolute law and punishment) that the state uses. Rather than an organic system of constant, decentralized give and take that rewards wider attention, the archist approach seeks to ideally shrink the subject’s attention down to a single, controllable input. This creates an artificial environment that rewards habits of rigidity and punishes persistent inquiry. And of course these habits are replicated in the communities and structures they create with their peers. Little has broken my heart more than going from teaching third graders who delightedly took to advanced algebra and calculus to jaded and broken middle schoolers whose priorities were social survival and escape from misery. Suffice to say, people would place far more value in science if they weren’t constantly beaten down for having an open mind.”

- William Gillis, “Every Scientist Should Be An Anarchist” (via freeman23)

newmanology: BLACK HISTORY MONTH MAGAZINES: THE CRISIS The...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:20:00 -0500

newmanology:

BLACK HISTORY MONTH MAGAZINES: THE CRISIS

The Crisis was founded in 1910 by W.E.B. DuBois as the magazine of the NAACP. Within nine years it reached a circulation of 100,000. It was an important venue in its early days for African American authors, including Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jessie Fauset. A complete set of issues from 1910-22 is available at The Modern Journals Project, where many of these covers came from.

illingsworth: Uchiha Itachi - Light & Darkness better...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:19:19 -0500

illingsworth:

Uchiha Itachi - Light & Darkness
better than everybody

very cute, she looks #motivated

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:18:48 -0500

very cute, she looks #motivated

Global-local Gangbanging (an excerpt)

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 14:50:00 -0400

“rivals walk in thick fogs of theyselfness, flaunting a false rebellion to impress they play selfish, but the hypest of these types in a crisis is strait helpless, another example of a form of self Identity endlessly reproduced in the wheels of the culture industry”-”Kadence vs Samiyam” Global-local Gangbanging (click text)

They-self or The They (German: Das Man) One of the most interesting and important ‘concepts’ in Being and Time is that of Das Man, for which there is no exact English translation; different translations and commentators use different conventions. It is often translated as “the They” or “People” or “Anyone” but is more accurately translated as “One” (as in “‘one’ should always wear clean underwear”). Das Man derives from the impersonal singular pronoun man (‘one’, as distinct from ‘I’, or ‘you’, or ‘he’, or ‘she’, or ‘they’). Both the German man and the English ‘one’ are neutral or indeterminate in respect of gender and, even, in a sense, of number, though both words suggest an unspecified, unspecifiable, indeterminate plurality. Heidegger refers to this concept of the One in explaining inauthentic modes of existence, in which Dasein, instead of truly choosing to do something, does it only because “That is what one does” or “That is what people do”. Thus, das Man is a not a proper or measurable entity, but rather an amorphous part of social reality, that functions effectively in the manner that it does through this intangiblity. ‘Das Man’ constitutes a possibility of Dasein’s Being, and so das Man cannot be said to be any particular someone. Rather, the existence of ‘the They’ is known to us through, for example, linguistic conventions and social norms. Heidegger states that, “The “they” prescribes one’s state-of-mind, and determines what and how one ‘sees’”. To give examples: when one makes an appeal to what is commonly known, one says “one does not do such a thing”; When one sits in a car or bus or reads a newspaper, one is participating in the world of ‘the They’. This is a feature of ‘the They’ as it functions in society, an authority that has no particular source. In a non-moral sense Heidegger contrasts “the authentic self” (my owned self) with “the they self” (“my un-owned self”). A related concept to this is that of the Apophantic, assertion.

Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is...

Wed, 16 May 2012 04:01:57 -0400

Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.-“Endgame”

The Self-Attribution Fallacy

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:49:00 -0500

The Self-Attribution Fallacy:

Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality.

"Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these..."

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:37:21 -0400

“Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.”

- Derrick Jensen “Endgame” Modification of Premise Twenty

"…Some of these forms of discrimination are not well-recognized or generally acknowledged...."

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:41:21 -0400

“…Some of these forms of discrimination are not well-recognized or generally acknowledged. ‘Lookism’ for instance, is a subtle form of discrimination in which attractive people get numerous nonmerit advantages over less attractive people (e.g., more attention, more help, more recognition and credit for accomplishments, more positive evaluation of performance and the like)…”

- The Meritocracy Myth (click text)

” Be-Like-Water #swag “

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:32:26 -0400

” Be-Like-Water #swag “

” in the battle of the urban vs. the pagan in which nature...

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:17:43 -0400

” in the battle of the urban vs. the pagan in which nature is forsaken, the ground of idle human survival’s violently shaken, but (what) will it be enough for people to see, or will strippers asses and sports channels lull them to sleep (for keeps)?”-Kadence “Rhetoric 2: Divine Speech” Hideaway

Rhetoric album statement: This album reflects the development of...

Mon, 16 May 2011 12:13:00 -0400

Rhetoric album statement: This album reflects the development of a style or technique of emceeing over a six year period. The technique is meant to address the current crisis of consciousness facing my people (the sons and daughters of the African ancients) first and foremost, but *not to the exclusion of the rest of the world’s oppressed populations*. The technique is meant to accomplish this goal by combining elements of the old Negro spiritual practice of encoding plantation escape instructions into work songs and spirituals, with the new communications and performance practices of modern hip-hop at the apex of stylistic delivery and content. today’s plantations no longer exist solely as physical work camps, but also as mental prisons; a psychological detainment that quite effectively generates the false consciousness of oppressed peoples that keeps them (most frequently) in a state of docile/zombie like detachment from both the world at large and their own situation—accomplished through both the seduction of false promises of material wealth and the more general distractions and misinformation of mass media and establishment education—as well as leading them (less frequently) back onto physical work camps and/or into physical prisons through the use of socially enforced myths about the inferiority of oppressed peoples and the self-fulfilling prophecies that result from such myths. Adding to this already-grave problem of worldwide mental slavery and the unacceptable living conditions that it produces is the environmental destruction this system generates, destruction that will likely create a real scarcity of natural resources and basic necessities for the oppressed and non-oppressed alike out of the now imagined state of scarcity. These issues are the substance of the ‘crises of consciousness’ the technique is meant to address and the emphasis of its use is on the awakening of the people all over the globe. The title of the album is intended to confront the likely response of detractors, those who are hopelessly mentally detained; to them such a project is of little worth and will only appear as a tidal wave of confusing and pretentious rhetoric…