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Friday, July 21, 2017
Monday, October 31, 2016
Disabling Moral Crypsis by Collapsing Feminism's Fuzzy Borders
We say that feminism has fuzzy borders. By this we mean that it is unclear where feminism ends and the rest of the world begins. Feminism makes its presence known in a confused and varied way, and appears unbounded by consistent rules or reasonings. This makes it difficult to inscribe a boundary around either the theory of feminism, or the practice of it.
Furthermore, it can be a tough job to sort out who is feminist from who isn't. Indeed, you will get self-declared feminists who show little sign of being feminist, and self declared non-feminists who show considerable sign of being feminist. People are fuzzy-minded about all this, which naturally increases the fuzzy border effect. A generally muddled use of terminology further complicates the picture.
The influence of feminist ideology spreads like a corona, well beyond the community of certifiable feminists, and feminism itself becomes so effectively camouflaged that meaningful conversation about it becomes nearly impossible. It is small wonder that people entertain confused and varied ideas upon this topic.
For that reason, the essential difficulty takes the form of a question: What is (or isn't) "feminism"?
As suggested, not everybody agrees on the answer. Feminists do not always agree with other feminists, and non-feminists do not always agree with other non-feminists. I could add that feminists and non-feminists do not always agree, but that is to be expected.
If feminists themselves cannot agree on what feminism is, then no self-declared feminist holds any mandate to tell the rest of the world what feminism is. That is a critically important realization. Their writ does not bind us, and we've as good a license as they do to take a shot at this question. Granted that they are free to tell us what they wish us to accept, we are not bound to go along.
Many feminists will insist that all feminists do agree on the dictionary definition of feminism, which features the popular buzzword "equality". But their claim is problematic because the agreement in question is rhetorical rather than substantive. Overall feminist behavior hints powerfully at motives other than making things "equal" between the sexes, and I have even known individual feminists to snort with derision at the mention of "equality" with men.
Nor have I ever heard any feminist address the question of "equality" between the feminist sector and the non-feminist sector.
More to the point, their claim is problematic because the dictionary definition of feminism is intellectually vacuous. It requires a wealth of explanation to make it meaningful or useful, and in the course of such explanation its meaninglessness and uselessness soon become evident.
At the same time, the dictionary definition is interpreted differently by different feminists, which spawns a range of different feminisms in both theory and practice. Therefore we stand upon our statement that feminists do not always agree on what feminism is.
However, even if they did agree on what feminism is, we would still not be bound to limit our study of feminism to the pathways of feminist-guided understanding. Our prerogative as free non-feminist men and women is to study feminism by any lateral epistemology or hermeneutic of suspicion we please, and to frame our conclusions accordingly. Feminism, as we say, is an object for the world's gaze.
That is true on its own account, under the liberty of the non-feminist sector. Our path of knowledge is not the path of feminist subjectivism, for the right to reject feminism is meaningless without the right to think independently of it.
When a feminist says that feminism is XYZ, it does not necessarily follow that feminism is XYZ. We can and must assert non-feminist epistemic authority. That is, we can and must define feminism for ourselves.
Such being said, we must first examine the evidence. Since the feminists have a number of feminisms on offer, we must array these under a strong light and look for the operative property that would bind them together as a SET. This would form the nucleus for a working definition that non-feminist truth-seekers could generally roll with.
We are proposing an ideal understanding that must be established if counter-feminist efforts are to become politically efficient. That is imperative. We mustn't talk past each other when we are discussing the feminist problem. We must concur upon the answer to "what is feminism?" because we must concur upon a target of non-feminist operations. We have given the proposed understanding a special name: target consensus.
The pop phrase "no right or wrong answers" is out of place here. There is a right answer to the question "what is feminism?", and it runs as follows:
"Feminism is the project to increase the power of women with no clear endpoint uniformly stipulated."
Increasing the power of women is the operative property that binds together all feminisms as a set. Everything else is details. Our deceptively simple saying is the focal point for ALL target consensus, and the essential truth about feminism is rolled up inside of it. The range of feminist operation is accounted for, including the apparent contradiction that feminism does not empower anti-feminist women against feminism.
Any account of feminism which does not flow from this axiomatic sentence, or mesh with it, or walk in step with it, is simply wrong. The sentence should be central to your thinking. You should memorize it, and spread it through speech and writing any way you can.
Think of target consensus as a work in progress, or if you will, a convergence of understanding. In the course of building target consensus, we sweep the fuzz away. We blow the radar chaff out of the sky. We clarify how feminist mystification operates in the service of feminist power, and we transmit this politically efficient realization to more and more people. Gradually it all comes into focus. We arrive on the same page, and we understand why we have got to be on that particular page and not some other page.
Owing to the fuzzy border effect, the approach to feminism is uneven and rife with ambiguity. It is hard to pinpoint exactly where (in theory or practice) feminism begins, so it is hard to know where to begin attacking it. Attacks, when they occur, will fall wide of the mark and do limited damage. This partly explains why feminism appears to be "bulletproof".
The fuzzy border effect lends a misleading impression that feminism is incoherent, but that is the whole point of the thing: to mislead. Feminism might look incoherent on the surface, but the deeper you drill into its sequestered workings, the more coherent it finally proves to be.
In other words, once you penetrate the atmospheric shroud of cognitive fragmentation, you land on something solid. Feminism becomes intelligible, and although it is still tainted by what you might call design flaws, there is no longer any mystery about it.
All feminist operations converge toward a central purpose, and these operations are of two classes: direct operations and distraction operations.
Direct operations serve the purpose directly: by maximizing female advantage directly or by advocating such.
Distraction operations serve the purpose indirectly: by sidetracking critical attention from the questionable morality of what is being done.
Both classes of operation make it possible for the feminist project to continue in effect - hence, you would say, those operations converge.
So for example, when feminist activists implemented the Duluth model years ago, it was a direct operation. More recently, when some feminist told you that not all feminists support the Duluth model, it was a distraction operation. Yet the Duluth model as a central, salient fact, continues in effect by the convergent benefit of those operations. Furthermore, feminism's defining guilt (in this case, the creation of the Duluth Model) has been shunted out of the conversation.
Feminism's fuzzy perimeter is a system of interlaced distraction operations that keep your mind wandering from one distraction to another. As you scan for the convergent truth, these operations deflect your attention into an erratic orbital path AROUND that truth. You never get to grips with feminism's core, which goes undetected and continues in effect.
To say that all feminist operations converge toward a central purpose, is to say that they all converge toward feminism's essence.
That essence, simply put, is female supremacism and the drive to maximize female advantage. We have described feminism as the project to increase female power with no concisely understood goal, and which mindset but female supremacism would such a project ultimately comport with? Where but female supremacy could such a project ultimately terminate? These are among the stubbornly persistent questions that all feminists must ultimately answer.
Consciously or not, feminism gravitates toward female supremacy as a logical endpoint. If left to its devices, that is where feminist operation would ultimately take us, and it would do this as naturally as water running downhill.
This natural process has a simple name: moral confluence.
Moral confluence holds no greater mystery than when like-minded people act in concert - we see this every day. So while I don't doubt that various feminists do sometimes meet and conspire (especially the academic ones), let none call me a "conspiracy theorist", since I believe that moral confluence (which happens spontaneously) accounts for most of the action. Does water "conspire" to run downhill?
Until a concise political endpoint for the feminist project has been uniformly stipulated by the feminists themselves, we may assume that feminism is gravitating toward its evident logical endpoint, and that this logical endpoint is identical with a political endpoint even if the latter is left unstated. In other words, we may treat feminism and female supremacism as interchangeable terms.
Feminism's goalposts are on a rubber time horizon that stretches and stretches. No future female advancement will ever be quite good enough, for the simple reason that life for women will never be quite perfect. The feminists will always interpret said imperfection as "inequality", and make this a pretext to maximize female advantage just a little bit more.
By the way, feminism's claim to support "equality" is Orwellian manipulation of language. Call this Femspeak. It is not inherently clear what "equality" means in the first place; we know only that this is a halo word with primitive emotional appeal or, simply put, a fetish. It "sounds beautiful", and for a simpleton that is good enough. However, feminist behavior bears witness to what "equality" might look like when it finally gets instituted in feminist style.
In this, as with all things feminist, non-feminist men and women are entitled to harbor suspicions. You cannot know the core truth about feminism if you don't know the moral truth about it, and that moral truth is not pretty. It is a truth which feminism, understandably, must hide: from you, and even from itself. After all, female supremacism has ugly implications even if you dress it up as something benevolent.
So feminism needs deniability, and the fuzzy border effect generates this to perfection. The trick is contained in such expressions as "feminism is not monolithic", or "X is not really feminism", or the hardy perennial "not all feminists are like that" (abbreviated as NAFALT). All such talk partakes either of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy or the "good cop/bad cop" gambit, and we should recognize these distraction operations for what they are.
It doesn't matter if all feminists are "like that" or not. It matters only that a critical number are, that this critical number is pulling the world in a certain direction, and that the innocent "who. . me?" feminists are doing diddly to stop them.
All feminists are morally confluent with all other feminists, which effectively makes feminism a social organism. However, you are not to know this. All who oppose feminism and seek the truth about it, are to be kept wandering in a cloud of muddled distraction and false understanding.....
Different feminisms, with different rules, different principles and different points of focus, are bombarding you from all directions. It seems unclear which of them is the "real" feminism, yet the answer is simple: they are ALL the real feminism. I mean, they are all real...are they not?
More to the point, they all contribute to feminism's ultimate purpose in the way that all parts of an organism contribute to the organism's ultimate purpose.
The different feminisms sometimes contradict each other, but this paradoxically makes feminism stronger. It means that feminism as a whole can keep different rule sets in play, shifting from one to another as conditions require: when the chess game goes against you, switch to basketball or backgammon! Or simply knock the game board over.
On a scale of years, feminism as a whole can shift from one rule set to another. On a scale of minutes, a single feminist can do the same thing within a single conversation.
What's more subtle, is that there are potentially as many feminisms as there are feminists. The major schools of feminism are continually shedding a detritus of words and ideas into the cultural ideosphere. These fragments, broken loose from their origins, are available on a mix-and-match basis to anybody who happens upon them.
The fruit of such recombinant intellectual DNA will be idiosyncratic at the very least, not to say solipsistic. (Think of Tumblr feminism.) All the same, feminism propagates enormously in this way, and becomes enormously more fuzzy.
Feminism seems incoherent only if you assume that it is, at root, honorable or respectable. This assumption sets a mental filter upon your understanding, but you cannot know this until the filter gets lifted. However, once you wake up to the fact there is nothing honorable or respectable about feminism (apart from its fine-sounding rhetoric), the incoherence (the fuzzy border) vanishes and the truth emerges with stark clarity.
By the end of the day, feminism has effectively NO rules apart from the meta-rules of taking advantage and gaining the upper hand - and this smacks of nothing honorable or respectable. Feminism has many conditional rules, but these are incoherent because they are forever shifting to maximize female advantage under shifting conditions. However, the meta-rules, which govern how the shifting operates, are quite unvarying: always maximize female advantage.
To the politically naive, that might not be apparent. "Obviously", they might say, "not all feminists are like that." By way of example, they might point to certain sayers of fine-sounding things which make our eyes glaze over.
Those fine-sounding ones are the moderate feminists, the liberal feminists, the friendly feminists. They are the ones with "good intentions", but we all know which broad highway is paved with such intentions.
Such feminists are not the real movers and shapers. You could as well call them political zeros, or less politely, useful idiots. They serve two main purposes. The first: to float around in the fuzzy border zone sounding honorable and respectable, so that feminism will sound honorable and respectable. The second: to sow confusion and create distraction - hence, the more you listen to these distraction operators with an uncritical ear, the less you will understand about the true state of the feminist project, or the true state of the political game at large.
There is more in this vein. For example, we all know that feminism obtains perks and goodies for women. Well, that sounds sort of nice until you realize that such activity works effectively as a system of moral bribery - there's one point to bear in mind. Another point is that politically naive people (men and women both) will conclude from this that feminism is honorable and respectable, and "speak no evil" about it. Such people, though otherwise well-intentioned, may be described as patsies, enablers, or passive supporters.
Consider the hackneyed statement that "feminism got women the vote!" One could dispute whether "feminism" per se did this, although it is safe to say that "a certain combination of people and forces" did this.
But that is a separate discussion. Our point here is that women's enfranchisement verily boosted the feminist project by boosting female power in general, and that this has tended to extort the gratitude of women in general.
Furthermore, since people typically agree that women's suffrage was an honorable and respectable cause, and since "feminism" is typically given credit for it, anybody who challenges feminism is drawn up short here. So it is moral bribery, moral intimidation and moral camouflage all rolled into one.
To summarize: imagine that a crook or bully has allegedly performed some noble service in the past and demands gratitude forever after, come what may. Crudely but accurately, that is how feminism operates.
Once again, there is nothing honorable or respectable about feminism: at the core of the feminist project lies something which is very simply...rotten. A heart of darkness. How else can we put it? As said earlier, you cannot know the truth about feminism if you don't know the moral truth about it. And the majority of feminists are in moral confluence both to advance the feminist project and to hide the moral truth about feminism.
Moral confluence belongs to an apparatus of mystification which lets feminism operate generally undetected. This apparatus ought to have a special name so that we can reference it quickly in conversation.
Turning to the the language of zoology we find, ready-made, the word "crypsis". Crypsis means anything which an animal in the wild might do to escape observation. Feminism has a similar need to escape observation, but here it is MORAL observation that must be avoided. Such observation, after all, could lead to a disruption of the feminist project by non-feminist observers who find that project morally objectionable.
You would say that feminism needs a kind of "moral crypsis", and we shall add this expedient term to our lexicon.
Moral crypsis, simply put, is how feminism veils its true nature through a multitude of distraction operations. It is a component of moral confluence. We have already sketched the process pretty fully, but will add that distraction in its many forms weaves moral crypsis as a camouflage net. Beneath this net, feminism's core truth lies sequestered in its morally unambiguous glory. One must only pull aside the net to gain a view of this.
We all know that hating men is the main show for feminism. If the anti-male hate engine were not perpetually chugging away below the floorboards, feminism as a movement would lack the motive force to keep moving. However, man-hating must be denied and concealed for the sake of public image, and that is where moral crypsis steps in.
It is true that the most radical of feminists will openly flaunt their hatred of men, but others have got to be more circumspect. That is why they will hide their misandry even from themselves if necessary. That is why all feminists are either man-haters, or to some degree morally confluent with man-hating.
The moderate feminists are the worst because they occupy the front line of moral crypsis. They are the facade, and without their endlessly iterated mantra that "not all feminists are like that" (NAFALT!), feminism's ugly core couldn't stay under wraps for long.
So the extreme radicals are the only truthful feminists, since they are the only ones who will frankly endorse the outcome which feminism's core logic dictates. In other words, they are willing to throw off moral crypsis. They are the most respectable of feminists because they lack the vice of hypocrisy. Theirs is the virtue of moral honesty; they have the goodness to be clear, and for this we can thank them.
Moral crypsis conceals feminism's morally criminal nature. Feminist apologists (typically the academic sort) must "talk around" this criminal nature in order to rationalize feminism's existence, and they do so by concocting ever more elaborate skeins of theory - basically, as a stalling tactic to throw the anti-feminist hounds off the scent. (Some feminist, reading this right now, is already mentally composing such strategems.)
All of this belongs to the fuzzy border mechanism, but we, constraining the conversation within clearly defined parameters, make such maneuvering impossible.
Our endeavor is to COLLAPSE feminism's fuzzy borders, to constrain the indeterminacy of those borders by an act of moral observation, to flatten it into an abrupt line that will mark feminism's actual perimeter.
People must be compelled to "think through" feminism's implications in the light of target consensus. As this progresses, the fog will dissipate and feminism's true boundary will emerge. The sight of it will not be pretty, and for individual feminists this will entail an existential crisis with life-changing consequences.
We must force the question "are you feminist or non-feminist?", and make this the meta-frame of reference which sets the stage for the entire cultural discourse. The meaning of "feminist" and "non-feminist" will not be directly clear to everybody (or not at first) but the counter-feminist project is to make this clear, bit by bit, by forcing the question and building the conversation around it.
By reason of the question being forced, the politically naive fence-sitters will need to re-evaluate any position (or lack of such) which they had previously held. Having done so, they might decide that they are in the feminist camp after all, and migrate to the feminist side of the field.
That is FINE. If they cannot be staunch in their standpoint, we are happy to see them travel. For this, they have our blessing. It is imperative that we prune the tangled deadwood, and we urge such people to go, by all means, and join the feminists. Otherwise they will unhappily find themselves in the political crossfire, and we would rather see them avoid that.
In the end, the world will become politically polarized along the line of feminist v. non-feminist. This polarization will be strongly marked. The correct understanding of feminism, as target consensus, will become decisively clear and embedded in the language. There will be no more fuzzy borders. There will be no longer any question where feminism ends and the rest of the world begins.
That is what we mean by "collapsing feminism's fuzzy borders". In this manner, we disable the mechanism of moral crypsis and make it impossible for feminism to hide.
As for the feminists themselves, they have no brakes. They are ideological robots who lack the common humanity or common moral instinct to know when they'd best not push a given envelope any further. Since they haven't got brakes, they cannot stop themselves - and that is why somebody else must do the job for them.
In conclusion: the task of seeing through feminist mystification, and the task of helping others to see through it, are plagued by the identical difficulty. To see through it is a battle. To explain it to others is the same battle again, time after time.
A full account of these things could occupy an entire book, but the present article is hardly that. We aim only to lay out the critical points, and by so doing, motivate others to think further and write their own books if the spirit moves them.
Furthermore, it can be a tough job to sort out who is feminist from who isn't. Indeed, you will get self-declared feminists who show little sign of being feminist, and self declared non-feminists who show considerable sign of being feminist. People are fuzzy-minded about all this, which naturally increases the fuzzy border effect. A generally muddled use of terminology further complicates the picture.
The influence of feminist ideology spreads like a corona, well beyond the community of certifiable feminists, and feminism itself becomes so effectively camouflaged that meaningful conversation about it becomes nearly impossible. It is small wonder that people entertain confused and varied ideas upon this topic.
For that reason, the essential difficulty takes the form of a question: What is (or isn't) "feminism"?
As suggested, not everybody agrees on the answer. Feminists do not always agree with other feminists, and non-feminists do not always agree with other non-feminists. I could add that feminists and non-feminists do not always agree, but that is to be expected.
If feminists themselves cannot agree on what feminism is, then no self-declared feminist holds any mandate to tell the rest of the world what feminism is. That is a critically important realization. Their writ does not bind us, and we've as good a license as they do to take a shot at this question. Granted that they are free to tell us what they wish us to accept, we are not bound to go along.
Many feminists will insist that all feminists do agree on the dictionary definition of feminism, which features the popular buzzword "equality". But their claim is problematic because the agreement in question is rhetorical rather than substantive. Overall feminist behavior hints powerfully at motives other than making things "equal" between the sexes, and I have even known individual feminists to snort with derision at the mention of "equality" with men.
Nor have I ever heard any feminist address the question of "equality" between the feminist sector and the non-feminist sector.
More to the point, their claim is problematic because the dictionary definition of feminism is intellectually vacuous. It requires a wealth of explanation to make it meaningful or useful, and in the course of such explanation its meaninglessness and uselessness soon become evident.
At the same time, the dictionary definition is interpreted differently by different feminists, which spawns a range of different feminisms in both theory and practice. Therefore we stand upon our statement that feminists do not always agree on what feminism is.
However, even if they did agree on what feminism is, we would still not be bound to limit our study of feminism to the pathways of feminist-guided understanding. Our prerogative as free non-feminist men and women is to study feminism by any lateral epistemology or hermeneutic of suspicion we please, and to frame our conclusions accordingly. Feminism, as we say, is an object for the world's gaze.
That is true on its own account, under the liberty of the non-feminist sector. Our path of knowledge is not the path of feminist subjectivism, for the right to reject feminism is meaningless without the right to think independently of it.
When a feminist says that feminism is XYZ, it does not necessarily follow that feminism is XYZ. We can and must assert non-feminist epistemic authority. That is, we can and must define feminism for ourselves.
Such being said, we must first examine the evidence. Since the feminists have a number of feminisms on offer, we must array these under a strong light and look for the operative property that would bind them together as a SET. This would form the nucleus for a working definition that non-feminist truth-seekers could generally roll with.
We are proposing an ideal understanding that must be established if counter-feminist efforts are to become politically efficient. That is imperative. We mustn't talk past each other when we are discussing the feminist problem. We must concur upon the answer to "what is feminism?" because we must concur upon a target of non-feminist operations. We have given the proposed understanding a special name: target consensus.
The pop phrase "no right or wrong answers" is out of place here. There is a right answer to the question "what is feminism?", and it runs as follows:
"Feminism is the project to increase the power of women with no clear endpoint uniformly stipulated."
Increasing the power of women is the operative property that binds together all feminisms as a set. Everything else is details. Our deceptively simple saying is the focal point for ALL target consensus, and the essential truth about feminism is rolled up inside of it. The range of feminist operation is accounted for, including the apparent contradiction that feminism does not empower anti-feminist women against feminism.
Any account of feminism which does not flow from this axiomatic sentence, or mesh with it, or walk in step with it, is simply wrong. The sentence should be central to your thinking. You should memorize it, and spread it through speech and writing any way you can.
Think of target consensus as a work in progress, or if you will, a convergence of understanding. In the course of building target consensus, we sweep the fuzz away. We blow the radar chaff out of the sky. We clarify how feminist mystification operates in the service of feminist power, and we transmit this politically efficient realization to more and more people. Gradually it all comes into focus. We arrive on the same page, and we understand why we have got to be on that particular page and not some other page.
Owing to the fuzzy border effect, the approach to feminism is uneven and rife with ambiguity. It is hard to pinpoint exactly where (in theory or practice) feminism begins, so it is hard to know where to begin attacking it. Attacks, when they occur, will fall wide of the mark and do limited damage. This partly explains why feminism appears to be "bulletproof".
The fuzzy border effect lends a misleading impression that feminism is incoherent, but that is the whole point of the thing: to mislead. Feminism might look incoherent on the surface, but the deeper you drill into its sequestered workings, the more coherent it finally proves to be.
In other words, once you penetrate the atmospheric shroud of cognitive fragmentation, you land on something solid. Feminism becomes intelligible, and although it is still tainted by what you might call design flaws, there is no longer any mystery about it.
All feminist operations converge toward a central purpose, and these operations are of two classes: direct operations and distraction operations.
Direct operations serve the purpose directly: by maximizing female advantage directly or by advocating such.
Distraction operations serve the purpose indirectly: by sidetracking critical attention from the questionable morality of what is being done.
Both classes of operation make it possible for the feminist project to continue in effect - hence, you would say, those operations converge.
So for example, when feminist activists implemented the Duluth model years ago, it was a direct operation. More recently, when some feminist told you that not all feminists support the Duluth model, it was a distraction operation. Yet the Duluth model as a central, salient fact, continues in effect by the convergent benefit of those operations. Furthermore, feminism's defining guilt (in this case, the creation of the Duluth Model) has been shunted out of the conversation.
Feminism's fuzzy perimeter is a system of interlaced distraction operations that keep your mind wandering from one distraction to another. As you scan for the convergent truth, these operations deflect your attention into an erratic orbital path AROUND that truth. You never get to grips with feminism's core, which goes undetected and continues in effect.
To say that all feminist operations converge toward a central purpose, is to say that they all converge toward feminism's essence.
That essence, simply put, is female supremacism and the drive to maximize female advantage. We have described feminism as the project to increase female power with no concisely understood goal, and which mindset but female supremacism would such a project ultimately comport with? Where but female supremacy could such a project ultimately terminate? These are among the stubbornly persistent questions that all feminists must ultimately answer.
Consciously or not, feminism gravitates toward female supremacy as a logical endpoint. If left to its devices, that is where feminist operation would ultimately take us, and it would do this as naturally as water running downhill.
This natural process has a simple name: moral confluence.
Moral confluence holds no greater mystery than when like-minded people act in concert - we see this every day. So while I don't doubt that various feminists do sometimes meet and conspire (especially the academic ones), let none call me a "conspiracy theorist", since I believe that moral confluence (which happens spontaneously) accounts for most of the action. Does water "conspire" to run downhill?
Until a concise political endpoint for the feminist project has been uniformly stipulated by the feminists themselves, we may assume that feminism is gravitating toward its evident logical endpoint, and that this logical endpoint is identical with a political endpoint even if the latter is left unstated. In other words, we may treat feminism and female supremacism as interchangeable terms.
Feminism's goalposts are on a rubber time horizon that stretches and stretches. No future female advancement will ever be quite good enough, for the simple reason that life for women will never be quite perfect. The feminists will always interpret said imperfection as "inequality", and make this a pretext to maximize female advantage just a little bit more.
By the way, feminism's claim to support "equality" is Orwellian manipulation of language. Call this Femspeak. It is not inherently clear what "equality" means in the first place; we know only that this is a halo word with primitive emotional appeal or, simply put, a fetish. It "sounds beautiful", and for a simpleton that is good enough. However, feminist behavior bears witness to what "equality" might look like when it finally gets instituted in feminist style.
In this, as with all things feminist, non-feminist men and women are entitled to harbor suspicions. You cannot know the core truth about feminism if you don't know the moral truth about it, and that moral truth is not pretty. It is a truth which feminism, understandably, must hide: from you, and even from itself. After all, female supremacism has ugly implications even if you dress it up as something benevolent.
So feminism needs deniability, and the fuzzy border effect generates this to perfection. The trick is contained in such expressions as "feminism is not monolithic", or "X is not really feminism", or the hardy perennial "not all feminists are like that" (abbreviated as NAFALT). All such talk partakes either of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy or the "good cop/bad cop" gambit, and we should recognize these distraction operations for what they are.
It doesn't matter if all feminists are "like that" or not. It matters only that a critical number are, that this critical number is pulling the world in a certain direction, and that the innocent "who. . me?" feminists are doing diddly to stop them.
All feminists are morally confluent with all other feminists, which effectively makes feminism a social organism. However, you are not to know this. All who oppose feminism and seek the truth about it, are to be kept wandering in a cloud of muddled distraction and false understanding.....
Different feminisms, with different rules, different principles and different points of focus, are bombarding you from all directions. It seems unclear which of them is the "real" feminism, yet the answer is simple: they are ALL the real feminism. I mean, they are all real...are they not?
More to the point, they all contribute to feminism's ultimate purpose in the way that all parts of an organism contribute to the organism's ultimate purpose.
The different feminisms sometimes contradict each other, but this paradoxically makes feminism stronger. It means that feminism as a whole can keep different rule sets in play, shifting from one to another as conditions require: when the chess game goes against you, switch to basketball or backgammon! Or simply knock the game board over.
On a scale of years, feminism as a whole can shift from one rule set to another. On a scale of minutes, a single feminist can do the same thing within a single conversation.
What's more subtle, is that there are potentially as many feminisms as there are feminists. The major schools of feminism are continually shedding a detritus of words and ideas into the cultural ideosphere. These fragments, broken loose from their origins, are available on a mix-and-match basis to anybody who happens upon them.
The fruit of such recombinant intellectual DNA will be idiosyncratic at the very least, not to say solipsistic. (Think of Tumblr feminism.) All the same, feminism propagates enormously in this way, and becomes enormously more fuzzy.
Feminism seems incoherent only if you assume that it is, at root, honorable or respectable. This assumption sets a mental filter upon your understanding, but you cannot know this until the filter gets lifted. However, once you wake up to the fact there is nothing honorable or respectable about feminism (apart from its fine-sounding rhetoric), the incoherence (the fuzzy border) vanishes and the truth emerges with stark clarity.
By the end of the day, feminism has effectively NO rules apart from the meta-rules of taking advantage and gaining the upper hand - and this smacks of nothing honorable or respectable. Feminism has many conditional rules, but these are incoherent because they are forever shifting to maximize female advantage under shifting conditions. However, the meta-rules, which govern how the shifting operates, are quite unvarying: always maximize female advantage.
To the politically naive, that might not be apparent. "Obviously", they might say, "not all feminists are like that." By way of example, they might point to certain sayers of fine-sounding things which make our eyes glaze over.
Those fine-sounding ones are the moderate feminists, the liberal feminists, the friendly feminists. They are the ones with "good intentions", but we all know which broad highway is paved with such intentions.
Such feminists are not the real movers and shapers. You could as well call them political zeros, or less politely, useful idiots. They serve two main purposes. The first: to float around in the fuzzy border zone sounding honorable and respectable, so that feminism will sound honorable and respectable. The second: to sow confusion and create distraction - hence, the more you listen to these distraction operators with an uncritical ear, the less you will understand about the true state of the feminist project, or the true state of the political game at large.
There is more in this vein. For example, we all know that feminism obtains perks and goodies for women. Well, that sounds sort of nice until you realize that such activity works effectively as a system of moral bribery - there's one point to bear in mind. Another point is that politically naive people (men and women both) will conclude from this that feminism is honorable and respectable, and "speak no evil" about it. Such people, though otherwise well-intentioned, may be described as patsies, enablers, or passive supporters.
Consider the hackneyed statement that "feminism got women the vote!" One could dispute whether "feminism" per se did this, although it is safe to say that "a certain combination of people and forces" did this.
But that is a separate discussion. Our point here is that women's enfranchisement verily boosted the feminist project by boosting female power in general, and that this has tended to extort the gratitude of women in general.
Furthermore, since people typically agree that women's suffrage was an honorable and respectable cause, and since "feminism" is typically given credit for it, anybody who challenges feminism is drawn up short here. So it is moral bribery, moral intimidation and moral camouflage all rolled into one.
To summarize: imagine that a crook or bully has allegedly performed some noble service in the past and demands gratitude forever after, come what may. Crudely but accurately, that is how feminism operates.
Once again, there is nothing honorable or respectable about feminism: at the core of the feminist project lies something which is very simply...rotten. A heart of darkness. How else can we put it? As said earlier, you cannot know the truth about feminism if you don't know the moral truth about it. And the majority of feminists are in moral confluence both to advance the feminist project and to hide the moral truth about feminism.
Moral confluence belongs to an apparatus of mystification which lets feminism operate generally undetected. This apparatus ought to have a special name so that we can reference it quickly in conversation.
Turning to the the language of zoology we find, ready-made, the word "crypsis". Crypsis means anything which an animal in the wild might do to escape observation. Feminism has a similar need to escape observation, but here it is MORAL observation that must be avoided. Such observation, after all, could lead to a disruption of the feminist project by non-feminist observers who find that project morally objectionable.
You would say that feminism needs a kind of "moral crypsis", and we shall add this expedient term to our lexicon.
Moral crypsis, simply put, is how feminism veils its true nature through a multitude of distraction operations. It is a component of moral confluence. We have already sketched the process pretty fully, but will add that distraction in its many forms weaves moral crypsis as a camouflage net. Beneath this net, feminism's core truth lies sequestered in its morally unambiguous glory. One must only pull aside the net to gain a view of this.
We all know that hating men is the main show for feminism. If the anti-male hate engine were not perpetually chugging away below the floorboards, feminism as a movement would lack the motive force to keep moving. However, man-hating must be denied and concealed for the sake of public image, and that is where moral crypsis steps in.
It is true that the most radical of feminists will openly flaunt their hatred of men, but others have got to be more circumspect. That is why they will hide their misandry even from themselves if necessary. That is why all feminists are either man-haters, or to some degree morally confluent with man-hating.
The moderate feminists are the worst because they occupy the front line of moral crypsis. They are the facade, and without their endlessly iterated mantra that "not all feminists are like that" (NAFALT!), feminism's ugly core couldn't stay under wraps for long.
So the extreme radicals are the only truthful feminists, since they are the only ones who will frankly endorse the outcome which feminism's core logic dictates. In other words, they are willing to throw off moral crypsis. They are the most respectable of feminists because they lack the vice of hypocrisy. Theirs is the virtue of moral honesty; they have the goodness to be clear, and for this we can thank them.
Moral crypsis conceals feminism's morally criminal nature. Feminist apologists (typically the academic sort) must "talk around" this criminal nature in order to rationalize feminism's existence, and they do so by concocting ever more elaborate skeins of theory - basically, as a stalling tactic to throw the anti-feminist hounds off the scent. (Some feminist, reading this right now, is already mentally composing such strategems.)
All of this belongs to the fuzzy border mechanism, but we, constraining the conversation within clearly defined parameters, make such maneuvering impossible.
Our endeavor is to COLLAPSE feminism's fuzzy borders, to constrain the indeterminacy of those borders by an act of moral observation, to flatten it into an abrupt line that will mark feminism's actual perimeter.
People must be compelled to "think through" feminism's implications in the light of target consensus. As this progresses, the fog will dissipate and feminism's true boundary will emerge. The sight of it will not be pretty, and for individual feminists this will entail an existential crisis with life-changing consequences.
We must force the question "are you feminist or non-feminist?", and make this the meta-frame of reference which sets the stage for the entire cultural discourse. The meaning of "feminist" and "non-feminist" will not be directly clear to everybody (or not at first) but the counter-feminist project is to make this clear, bit by bit, by forcing the question and building the conversation around it.
By reason of the question being forced, the politically naive fence-sitters will need to re-evaluate any position (or lack of such) which they had previously held. Having done so, they might decide that they are in the feminist camp after all, and migrate to the feminist side of the field.
That is FINE. If they cannot be staunch in their standpoint, we are happy to see them travel. For this, they have our blessing. It is imperative that we prune the tangled deadwood, and we urge such people to go, by all means, and join the feminists. Otherwise they will unhappily find themselves in the political crossfire, and we would rather see them avoid that.
In the end, the world will become politically polarized along the line of feminist v. non-feminist. This polarization will be strongly marked. The correct understanding of feminism, as target consensus, will become decisively clear and embedded in the language. There will be no more fuzzy borders. There will be no longer any question where feminism ends and the rest of the world begins.
That is what we mean by "collapsing feminism's fuzzy borders". In this manner, we disable the mechanism of moral crypsis and make it impossible for feminism to hide.
As for the feminists themselves, they have no brakes. They are ideological robots who lack the common humanity or common moral instinct to know when they'd best not push a given envelope any further. Since they haven't got brakes, they cannot stop themselves - and that is why somebody else must do the job for them.
In conclusion: the task of seeing through feminist mystification, and the task of helping others to see through it, are plagued by the identical difficulty. To see through it is a battle. To explain it to others is the same battle again, time after time.
A full account of these things could occupy an entire book, but the present article is hardly that. We aim only to lay out the critical points, and by so doing, motivate others to think further and write their own books if the spirit moves them.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
The Manifesto of the Pseudo-Etruscan Project
"Pseudo-Etruscan" is a non-feminist political identity which anybody is free to adopt, subject to the conditions set forth below.
An account of the name itself and what it means, would be helpful. Pseudo-Etruscan means simply "false Etruscan'. In order to understand this better, we should discuss what a true Etruscan is - or rather, was.
The Etruscans were a people of ancient Italy who occupied a territory roughly corresponding to modern-day Tuscany, north of Rome. The Etruscans conquered and ruled the Romans for a bit, but finally the Romans turned the table and conquered the Etruscans. After this, the Etruscans disappeared as a people and were lost to history.
The Pseudo-Etruscans are a people of the 21st century who occupy no particular country and have no necessary connection to the original
Etruscans. It's a fair bet that the average
Pseudo-Etruscan knows diddly-boo about those original Etruscans and couldn't hope to impersonate one credibly, hence the prefix "pseudo".
The name "Pseudo-Etruscan" sounds whimsical and quirky and it might make you laugh. You are certainly welcome to laugh, but you should understand that this is not a joke. At most it is a pseudo-joke; it is nine-tenths serious and serves a serious purpose.
The memorable oddity of the name both draws attention and repels facile interpretation. With any luck it might even activate the "third ear" which can hear the sound of one hand clapping.
Pseudo-Etruscans have some over-arching commonalities. Firstly, they are not feminist. Latterly, they are obstinately individuslist and anti-labellist. "Pseudo-Etruscan" is itself a pseudo-label, and an anti-label, in much the same spirit as " non-feminist". However, it does non-feminist one better, because Etruscans (pseudo or otherwise) have no obvious bearing upon matters at hand. The monikker is pure mental teflon, serio-playfully designed so that things won't stick to it.
Apart from the commonalities, Pseudo-Etruscan men and women don't belong to any group, club, category or collective unless they tell you so out of their own mouths. Under average conditions, no Pseudo-Etruscan is accountable for the words or deeds of any other Pseudo-Etruscan. The only way you can hope to know them, is one at a time. They do not wish to be labelled, so if you label them, the infraction is yours and they will know what to think of you.
Pseudo-Etruscans go where they please, think what they please, break bread with whom they please, and that's the long and short of it. You must not only listen to what they say, but learn precisely what THEY mean by what they say and not what YOU mean by it. You must be mindful of back-story, context, and linguistic convention, and if you misrepresent what they say, the infraction is yours and they will know what to think of you.
You must never tell Pseudo-Etruscans what they think. It is presumptuous to do this. If they feel so inclined, they will tell YOU what they think, and you will listen repeatedly until you get it right.
The Pseudo-Etruscan Project (or "PEP")
asserts the liberty of the non- feminist sector in the most radical way possible. In effect, "Pseudo-Etruscan" is a label with instructions for correct usage attached to it: "Thou shalt not label the one who bears this label."
Certain individuals, when they read this, will feel self-righteously angry and hostile towatd the concepts which are laid out here. Such people are called "bores" and "squares" and "fuddy-duddies", and they shall become the butt of jokes.
If anybody would like to design a nifty, eye-catching Pseudo-Etruscan logo, we are happy to accept submissions. Your payment will be the feeling of satisfaction that you get from the act of contributing. You may send submissions to:
vanguardreport@usa.com
An account of the name itself and what it means, would be helpful. Pseudo-Etruscan means simply "false Etruscan'. In order to understand this better, we should discuss what a true Etruscan is - or rather, was.
The Etruscans were a people of ancient Italy who occupied a territory roughly corresponding to modern-day Tuscany, north of Rome. The Etruscans conquered and ruled the Romans for a bit, but finally the Romans turned the table and conquered the Etruscans. After this, the Etruscans disappeared as a people and were lost to history.
The Pseudo-Etruscans are a people of the 21st century who occupy no particular country and have no necessary connection to the original
Etruscans. It's a fair bet that the average
Pseudo-Etruscan knows diddly-boo about those original Etruscans and couldn't hope to impersonate one credibly, hence the prefix "pseudo".
The name "Pseudo-Etruscan" sounds whimsical and quirky and it might make you laugh. You are certainly welcome to laugh, but you should understand that this is not a joke. At most it is a pseudo-joke; it is nine-tenths serious and serves a serious purpose.
The memorable oddity of the name both draws attention and repels facile interpretation. With any luck it might even activate the "third ear" which can hear the sound of one hand clapping.
Pseudo-Etruscans have some over-arching commonalities. Firstly, they are not feminist. Latterly, they are obstinately individuslist and anti-labellist. "Pseudo-Etruscan" is itself a pseudo-label, and an anti-label, in much the same spirit as " non-feminist". However, it does non-feminist one better, because Etruscans (pseudo or otherwise) have no obvious bearing upon matters at hand. The monikker is pure mental teflon, serio-playfully designed so that things won't stick to it.
Apart from the commonalities, Pseudo-Etruscan men and women don't belong to any group, club, category or collective unless they tell you so out of their own mouths. Under average conditions, no Pseudo-Etruscan is accountable for the words or deeds of any other Pseudo-Etruscan. The only way you can hope to know them, is one at a time. They do not wish to be labelled, so if you label them, the infraction is yours and they will know what to think of you.
Pseudo-Etruscans go where they please, think what they please, break bread with whom they please, and that's the long and short of it. You must not only listen to what they say, but learn precisely what THEY mean by what they say and not what YOU mean by it. You must be mindful of back-story, context, and linguistic convention, and if you misrepresent what they say, the infraction is yours and they will know what to think of you.
You must never tell Pseudo-Etruscans what they think. It is presumptuous to do this. If they feel so inclined, they will tell YOU what they think, and you will listen repeatedly until you get it right.
The Pseudo-Etruscan Project (or "PEP")
asserts the liberty of the non- feminist sector in the most radical way possible. In effect, "Pseudo-Etruscan" is a label with instructions for correct usage attached to it: "Thou shalt not label the one who bears this label."
Certain individuals, when they read this, will feel self-righteously angry and hostile towatd the concepts which are laid out here. Such people are called "bores" and "squares" and "fuddy-duddies", and they shall become the butt of jokes.
If anybody would like to design a nifty, eye-catching Pseudo-Etruscan logo, we are happy to accept submissions. Your payment will be the feeling of satisfaction that you get from the act of contributing. You may send submissions to:
vanguardreport@usa.com
Monday, April 11, 2016
Never Forget: Feminism is on trial
Among other things, feminism is ideology - meaning, a body of ideas which embrace a self-conception and a self-description. But it is more than ideology because it is more than self-conception or self-description.
Feminism is situated both within its own understanding and within the understanding of the world at large. This makes feminism a subject for itself, and an object for the world, which means that two separate dimensions of understanding must be considered: the feminist-subjective and the feminist-objective.
To say that feminism is on trial means it is under the evaluative gaze of an "other", an outside intelligence which is specifically not feminist and views feminism in highly objective terms. We contend that feminism lacks complete understanding of itself, and that only non-feminist alterity can supply the needed information to remedy this lack.
We further contend that such understanding, if it should arrive, would spell the end of feminism altogether because lack of self-awareness is a critical feminist feature. Therefore, it is not in the feminist interest to gain such understanding - because this would render feminism non-viable.
To sum up, feminism is not fit to judge itself because it will always rule in its own interest - and feminism's interest is to remain viable by preserving its own myth. For that reason, feminism must receive corrective input from beyond itself - the kind of input that would problematize feminism's mythically-based self-conception and give rise to a more inclusive and holistic state of knowledge.
Again, feminism is more than ideology. Yes, ideas are a part of it, but ideas exist only in the human imagination. What concerns us is the power of ideas to shape human conduct in the objective world - the extensional reality of ideas, to give it a name. This reality has objective consequences which chain-react into further consequences, and the ensemble of it is fraught with moral ramifications. So when we speak of feminism per se, and of feminism being on trial, we speak of all that.
Feminism's consequences are integral to feminism's being. Feminism is under discussion as malfeasant, and feminist malfeasance cannot be isolated from any idealistic notion of feminism's essence. No moral quarantining of what feminism is "supposed to be", from what it actually DOES, is feasible or worth considering.
In our summation of feminist phenomenology, we take both ideas and consequences into account. At the same time, we expose every aspect of feminism to an intellectual audit, with all feminist claims or theories (from the greatest to the smallest) being open to question. That is the plan from here on out, growing and spreading with the years.
Every time a feminist speaks, it should occur to us to wonder if that person is lying, or at least self-decieved. So even if a feminist says "the sky is blue", we are entitled, on principle, to greet that claim with skepticism.
It is hard to overstate just how radical and fundamental this counter-feminist culture of critique, from all quarters, has got to be. The awareness that lying is a foundational feminist behavior has got to be an instinctive, bedrock realization for everybody. It should be second nature, instilled in our marrow and etched into our neurons. "Lie like a feminist" should become a commonplace expression, taught to children at a young age.
So in the end, feminism is under both moral scrutiny for its transgressions and intellectual scrutiny for its ideas. The trial process aims to shine a light on every possible facet of the feminist problem, and non-feminist men and women of all classes are encouraged to participate in this project.
At its fullest reach, feminism is a densely connected cultural web that includes both ideas and objective circumstances. It is an extended social organism whose character is invasive. It occupies both public and private realms, and we who don't partake of it experience this as a hostile intrusion into the fabric of our lives. We were here first, an uninvited guest barged in, and we naturally have a few things to say about that.
It is unseemly for any guest to abuse a host, but when an uninvited guest does this it adds injury to insult. Feminists, as a rule, have comported themselves in exactly such a way: they abuse us, they treat us cavalierly, they twist our words, they misrepresent us, they invent stories about us, they exploit our good nature, and on it goes.
The worst of it is that they parade themselves under a banner of moral supremacy, acting like they own the world or like they ARE the world. We have a name for such behavior: feminist triumphalism, the attitude that feminism is right because it's right because it's right, that the case is settled for all time and no further discussion should be tolerated.
Non-feminist men and women should no longer tolerate feminist triumphalism. The feminists must be put on notice and told to get off their high horse.
Feminism is not the world but only a part of it. For one thing, self-declared feminist people are a minority of the human race. For another, feminist theorizations don't stretch far enough to cover all of the world's complexities. Not only that, but these theorizations often fail consequentially - for as stated earlier, ideas have consequences. Non-feminist men and women (the rest of the world, mind you!) are forced to live with those feminist consequences, and for that reason alone they are entitled to speak their minds.
It bears repeating that ALL feminist claims and theories are open to question, starting with the most basic question of all: "What is feminism?" Any feminist definition of feminism constitutes a claim or theory open to question. Hence, from the standpoint of non-feminist alterity, we may define feminism in the light of our own observation and study.
The dictionary does not accurately reflect what many people mean by the word "feminism", so the dictionary must be revised. However, a lot of us aren't waiting for the lexicographers to get with it. Within our non-feminist speech communities, the word feminism will continue to mean what we say it means, despite what any feminist (or dictionary) might say to the contrary.
We take control of the language by an act of political will. Non-feminist reclamation of language is a revolutionary act, and feminists who don't understand this must educate themselves about the reality of the situation.
We have spoken of feminist triumphalism, but we should also mention feminist subjectivism, a mindset closely entangled with it. Feminist subjectivism (which resembles solipsism) may be summed up as the idea that no correct understanding of feminism can originate outside the realm of feminist discourse. In other words, that feminism can be nothing other than what a feminist says it is. Feminist subjectivism occurs not only when they insist upon the dictionary meaning of feminism, but when they impose feminist terms and categories upon the living reality of the non-feminist sector.
Putting it simply, the feminists theorize about the rest of the world on no authority but their own, and with sweeping generalization. Hence, in the spirit of "turnabout is fair play", we are licensed to generalize feminism and feminists as sweepingly as it was done to us. In fact, we have been using that license for some time and will continue doing so. They started this, and if they want to stop the music, the onus is on them to make the first move. The aggressor owes the world a "mea culpa".
For them, the lesson is straightforward: don't start a cultural street fight if you can't finish it. And don't complain if people who are goaded beyond endurance finally turn your own tactics against you. What did you think a street fight was, anyway? Fair?
Right now, somebody might be saying "you have called this a trial, and you have called this a street fight. Which is it?"
Very simply, it is both, because it contains aspects of both. That feminism is on trial is not strictly "fair" since the trial is convened by a process which, on its face, does not look strictly fair either. Yet ironically, that process turns out to be "fair" after all when you consider that it plays by the very same unfair terms of engagement which feminism (the predominant aggressor) established in the first place.
What goes around comes around. The aggressor feminism has redefined "fair", and we're just playing along because the conventions of fairness, or any notion of "Queensberry rules", went out the window when feminism made the opening moves. Those were unfair moves, aggressor moves - and the maxim is, that the aggressor sets the terms of engagement. It follows that the aggressor must lie in the bed which the aggressor has made. We non-feminist men and women are punching "up" while feminism is punching "down". Accordingly, we do what we must, to equalize the game.
Strictly considered, we don't need feminism whatsoever. That has been our conclusion for quite a while. If feminism went away, only two things could possibly take its place: A.) more feminism, or B.) nothing. You should bear this is mind the next time some feminist asks what you plan to "replace" feminism with. You should understand that this person is loading the talk with a feminist assumption: that feminism's departure would leave humanity, somehow, in the lurch. But to ask what would replace feminism is pointless. The answer is that the waters of life would instantly close up to fill the space, as when a rock is lifted from a pool.
Whatever is good about feminism is not original, whatever is original is not good, and if we flung away the not-good parts it would leave us nothing that wasn't ours originally. Feminism offers no special wisdom or guidance that regular people couldn't light upon by their own lights, and if every form of feminism were to vanish in a puff of smoke, the general quality of life would take no dramatic nosedive - not for women, not for men, not for anybody.
As non-feminists, we are offended that feminists would deprecate our moral competence or suggest that we are incomplete for want of feminist indoctrination. Plenty of non-feminist men and women have got the relationship thing figured out just fine, thank you very much. They know how to treat each other right, and always have. Non-feminist men and women don't want sanctimonious liars and busybodies mucking around and poisoning their world, so if the feminists won't back off politely, these people can offer some rude encouragement.
The trial of feminism will go on for many years, until feminism as a whole comes to a proper humility and a posture of atonement. The culture of critique and the intellectual audit will involve people from all walks of life exposing feminism to every imaginable deconstruction. Little by little, the upholders of feminism's worldview will find their avenues of evasion sealed off and unavailable for further use.
The world will never be converted to feminism for the same reason that reality will never be converted to unreality. The feminists must eventually face up to this, and make terms accordingly. When that day arrives it will usher in a radical transformation to their way of life. Feminism will confront the cultural limit of its expansion, and this will be an existential crisis on a par with confronting its own mortality.
If feminism wants to keep existing, it must keep up a continual development and expansion called "perpetual revolution." That is how feminism rolls. If perpetual revolution fails, feminism fails, and begins to die. That is why we can predict that feminism must die eventually, because it simply cannot expand forever. Sooner or later, the rest of the world will either actively push back or passively refuse to budge. The implications are the same in either case: feminism confronts a terminus.
The vital and significant question is, "can feminism coexist?" The answer is no, feminism cannot coexist. To "co" exist means to accomodate the existence of an Other. For feminism to coexist, it would need to dwell eternally alongside of something specifically not feminist - and the operative term is "eternally", since there would be no question of that non-feminist Other ever fading away.
This would raise existential questions that would strike at the root of feminist identity and feminist reality. It would proffer the spectacle of something self-sufficient which had no need of feminism whatsoever, and such a spectacle would knock the wind out of feminist triumphalism while putting feminist subjectivism on shaky ground.
Little wonder therefore, that implacable hatred of the non-feminist sector simmers just below the surface of all feminist manifestations. The fact that non-feminist men and women simply exist, and that they PERSIST, confronts the feminist power like a kind of kryptonite. They hate us because they fear us - because they know that they can never assimilate us.
Granted, the feminists will tolerate our existence on condition that we act like we don't exist at all, but sooner or later the plain fact that we DO exist (silently or otherwise) will need to be reckoned with. It's a reckoning that cannot be put off forever.
So let us consider that feminism has effectively become the cultural default position which can impose a iburden of proof on its challengers. It has obtained this status by presumption, imposition, and a "long march through the institutions". Oh, and a certain proclivity of the masses to bow to any fait accompli and believe any narrative that gets sufficiently signal-boosted.
The upshot of all this is that feminism, no matter what you think of it, has become The Establishment - and feminists themselves strut around with the cocky self-assurance that this is so.
However, there is a big difference between admitting that a bully has power, and believing that the bully is entitled to that power. The bully's power, you would say, is not legitimate - and so it is with our present bully, feminism. Feminism is the establishment only because it has established itself by usurpation, and its title is only as secure as it can gull people into believing. We who are not gullible are free to assess the value of feminism's title and make plans for feminism's future. That is why we say that feminism is on trial.
There is an edifice of moral and intellectual privilege now slated to collapse in a heap. This loss of feminist privilege will bear down hard upon the feminist psyche everywhere. We do believe that it will signal the end, not of feminists as individuals, but of feminism as a hegemonic cultural power.
Yet in spite of all this, we do extend an olive branch, of sorts, to the feminists. Yes, when we say that "feminism cannot coexist", we are prepared to be wrong. Naturally, the burden of proof lies with the feminists. After all, they are so keen to negate presumption of innocence in the criminal justice system that it is only fair they should now get a taste of it on their own account. Turnabout is fair play. The aggressor sets the terms of engagement. They made their bed and now they lie in it.
But we do extend that olive branch. We do proffer a benefit of the doubt, that feminism can coexist with the world despite our theory to the contrary. However, the onus is on them to show this to our satisfaction - to approach us with downcast eyes, to address us in respectful tones, and to answer, with no hint of guile or deceit, such queries as we put to them.
And further, we hope to see a moral and intellectual perestroika of the entire feminist project, actively undertaken, along lines that non-feminist men and women will suggest. Surely, if coexistence is to be realized, something of this character is warranted.
Can feminism co-exist with the rest of the world? Non-feminist men and women are waiting for an answer.
Thursday, February 4, 2016
Free because it's yours: the Liberty of the Non-feminist Sector
If you are a non-feminist man or woman, feminism has stolen plenty of
things from you. Among these are non-feminist life, non-feminist
liberty, and the non-feminist pursuit of non-feminist happiness. Why,
they will even steal your non-feminist soul if you let them get
away with it!
Please understand that you owe feminism no answers. That is a deep concept, probably deeper than you realize. It is your inalienable right under any condition to say "I am not a feminist", then turn around and walk away. And it is their eternal responsibility to say "okay", and leave you the hell alone to Go Your Own Way in peace. Eternally.
All right, so you are a non-feminist man or woman, and that is good. However, you are something more important than that: you are an INDIVIDUAL. Yes, a non-feminist individual, but an individual first and foremost, a unique and precious snowflake unlike any other. Yes, I said it.
My friend, if you are not a feminist, then in relation to feminism you ARE a special snowflake! They had better get that in their head. They had better get with the program and accept that reality with a good grace.
The liberty of the non-feminist sector is FREE. And why? Because it's YOURS.
One more time: the liberty of the non-feminist sector is free because it's yours. It's stolen property, and you have only to claim it. You have only to stand up and declare "I am not a feminist". Say this loudly if you wish, but if loud is not your style that's okay, say it quietly. The important thing is to say it. Just say it. Say it in a number of ways, explicitly or implicitly, as your style dictates. And don't just say it to yourself: say it so that others can hear it, or see it, or know it. If they too are not feminist, it will make them know that they are not alone.
And if they are feminist? Well all right, they too, in a different way, will know that they are not alone. They will know that WE are with them always, everywhere, and that they needn't ever languish for want of our fine company. They will know that they are surrounded - and what a comfortable, supportive feeling this will be for them. . . yes?
It will inspire them to their best behavior, will it not? As for us, it will instruct us in the wise maxim to keep our friends close and other people closer.
When they know that they are surrounded, when they know that they are not the only game in town and not the only sentient life form on the planet, it will make them think twice about pulling any funny business with you or your friends. They will slowly back off, and as they do, you and your friends will expand, and stretch, and breathe - occupying social space more freely, and more freely voicing what is in your non-feminist minds.
More and more, you will do this, and the feminist people will give you no grief for it. Not if they are wise.
The post-feminist world will be a kind of post-colonial world, once the colonizing aggressor (feminism) has been expelled. The revolution will progress by stages, as more and more people awaken to the enormity of what feminism has done, and start getting frank about it.
When you claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector (your stolen property!), you repudiate ANY form of feminist governance over your life - moral, spiritual, psychological, existential, intellectual, you name it!
By claiming your non-feminist liberty, you claim your non-feminist identity. Those claims are indistinguishable, and by those claims you make known to the world that feminism does not define you. Granted, feminists can and will attempt to define you, but unfortunately for them they lack the moral legitimacy to do this. Feminism's moral license to govern or define anything at all (let alone YOU) has been revoked - or more accurately, declared to have been invalid all along.
Feminism's purported legitimacy was never put to a plesbiscite. Feminism arrived in our world and lodged itself into place with never so much as a "by-your-leave". It was and is built upon sheer presumption. Nothing better than presumption - followed by a never-ending river of lies which (like any river) grows bigger the further downstream it travels.
The worst of all feminist presumptions, is that feminist theorization about the world trumps every other analysis. Feminist theorization - regarding patriarchy, rape culture, male privilege, male violence, gender roles and the human condition in general - has become the default paradigm for the greater cultural discourse, with institutional support and legal backing.
Feminism has usurped, by presumption, the power to morally adjudicate nearly every aspect of the the human situation. Yet never at any point did feminism and its ideologues recieve any Divine mandate for this. They simply took it. It wasn't theirs to take, but that didn't stop them. They screamed, they bullied, they slandered, they spread lies. Then they came back and did it again. They have done this for years and believe me, they will never stop. Ever. Not unless a non-feminist force intervenes to make them stop.
So, to morally adjudicate the human situation means to subject ALL moral phenomena to the critical apparatus of a particular ideology. In this case, we are talking about the critical apparatus of feminist ideology in particular.
The feminists seem to think that we non-feminist men and women are morally incompetent to adjudicate matters for ourselves, in a non-feminist way. They want to be moral dictators, in charge of everybody's rights and wrongs, and they unceasingly act like it. It's just another way to make their power hegemonic, and put themselves in control of the greater cultural discourse.
We must intervene and put a stop to that. The feminists are free to view the world through their own ideological lens - after all, it's their brain, their choice. But if they want to put the power of the state behind this and make their view the foundation of law and public policy, then we will rudely tell them where to get off. In fact we are doing that already, so let's build the momentum, okay?
Here's a final thought which I don't want to omit. Feminism, in common with the authoritarian Left, makes heavy use of collective guilt (or "guilt by association") as a moral bullying instrument. Well here's the good news: when you claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector, you liberate yourself, by implication, from guilt by association.
Any time a feminist postulates a group or category, and tries to shove you into it in order to implicate you in a pattern of collective guilt, said feminist has committed an act of FEMINIST AGGRESSION. As a non-feminist man or woman you are an individual, and can only be judged as an individual -- according to a non-feminist system of moral adjudication.
Think for a minute: "Lack of feminism" is not a group, not a movement, not an ideology. In principle, lack of feminism is nothing more than "the world minus feminism", and among other things that means the world minus all forms of feminist moral adjudication.
Again: the world minus all forms of feminist moral adjudication.
Let that sink in.
The non-feminist sector is nothing less that a cross-section of human nature. It is a full moral spectrum. A "non-feminist" can be almost any kind of person imaginable. Some non-feminists are wonderful people, other non-feminists are terrible people. What matters is that they are individuals.
Or more to the point, non-feminist individuals.
And whatever transgressions non-feminist men or women might commit, they commit them as individuals. Their crimes will be adjudicated individually, in a non-feminist way, independently of feminist moral authority, feminist oversight, or feminist theorization of any kind.
The non-feminist sector, as a cultural space, must become self-aware and must assert the power to TALK BACK to feminism on non-feminist terms. Under this system, all feminist claims and theories, starting with the definition of feminism itself, are radically open to question. ALL of them - bar none.
Non-feminist alterity and non-feminist autonomy shall become the order of the day in every domain , with feminism thrown permanently on the defensive. Non-feminist analysis shall be a guiding force, along with a non-feminist culture of critique and a non-feminist intellectual audit of every last thing pertaining to feminism, leading toward an ultimate deconstruction of the entire feminist worldview.
Friends, claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector. Do it now. Do it today. What are you waiting for?
Claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector. Take back your stolen property.
It's free. . because it's yours.
-----------
Addendum: The Counter-Feminist Cyclopedia (a compendium of liberatory vocabulary), is available here:
http://counterfem2.blogspot.com/p/the-counter-feminist-cyclopedia.html
Please understand that you owe feminism no answers. That is a deep concept, probably deeper than you realize. It is your inalienable right under any condition to say "I am not a feminist", then turn around and walk away. And it is their eternal responsibility to say "okay", and leave you the hell alone to Go Your Own Way in peace. Eternally.
All right, so you are a non-feminist man or woman, and that is good. However, you are something more important than that: you are an INDIVIDUAL. Yes, a non-feminist individual, but an individual first and foremost, a unique and precious snowflake unlike any other. Yes, I said it.
My friend, if you are not a feminist, then in relation to feminism you ARE a special snowflake! They had better get that in their head. They had better get with the program and accept that reality with a good grace.
The liberty of the non-feminist sector is FREE. And why? Because it's YOURS.
One more time: the liberty of the non-feminist sector is free because it's yours. It's stolen property, and you have only to claim it. You have only to stand up and declare "I am not a feminist". Say this loudly if you wish, but if loud is not your style that's okay, say it quietly. The important thing is to say it. Just say it. Say it in a number of ways, explicitly or implicitly, as your style dictates. And don't just say it to yourself: say it so that others can hear it, or see it, or know it. If they too are not feminist, it will make them know that they are not alone.
And if they are feminist? Well all right, they too, in a different way, will know that they are not alone. They will know that WE are with them always, everywhere, and that they needn't ever languish for want of our fine company. They will know that they are surrounded - and what a comfortable, supportive feeling this will be for them. . . yes?
It will inspire them to their best behavior, will it not? As for us, it will instruct us in the wise maxim to keep our friends close and other people closer.
When they know that they are surrounded, when they know that they are not the only game in town and not the only sentient life form on the planet, it will make them think twice about pulling any funny business with you or your friends. They will slowly back off, and as they do, you and your friends will expand, and stretch, and breathe - occupying social space more freely, and more freely voicing what is in your non-feminist minds.
More and more, you will do this, and the feminist people will give you no grief for it. Not if they are wise.
The post-feminist world will be a kind of post-colonial world, once the colonizing aggressor (feminism) has been expelled. The revolution will progress by stages, as more and more people awaken to the enormity of what feminism has done, and start getting frank about it.
When you claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector (your stolen property!), you repudiate ANY form of feminist governance over your life - moral, spiritual, psychological, existential, intellectual, you name it!
By claiming your non-feminist liberty, you claim your non-feminist identity. Those claims are indistinguishable, and by those claims you make known to the world that feminism does not define you. Granted, feminists can and will attempt to define you, but unfortunately for them they lack the moral legitimacy to do this. Feminism's moral license to govern or define anything at all (let alone YOU) has been revoked - or more accurately, declared to have been invalid all along.
Feminism's purported legitimacy was never put to a plesbiscite. Feminism arrived in our world and lodged itself into place with never so much as a "by-your-leave". It was and is built upon sheer presumption. Nothing better than presumption - followed by a never-ending river of lies which (like any river) grows bigger the further downstream it travels.
The worst of all feminist presumptions, is that feminist theorization about the world trumps every other analysis. Feminist theorization - regarding patriarchy, rape culture, male privilege, male violence, gender roles and the human condition in general - has become the default paradigm for the greater cultural discourse, with institutional support and legal backing.
Feminism has usurped, by presumption, the power to morally adjudicate nearly every aspect of the the human situation. Yet never at any point did feminism and its ideologues recieve any Divine mandate for this. They simply took it. It wasn't theirs to take, but that didn't stop them. They screamed, they bullied, they slandered, they spread lies. Then they came back and did it again. They have done this for years and believe me, they will never stop. Ever. Not unless a non-feminist force intervenes to make them stop.
So, to morally adjudicate the human situation means to subject ALL moral phenomena to the critical apparatus of a particular ideology. In this case, we are talking about the critical apparatus of feminist ideology in particular.
The feminists seem to think that we non-feminist men and women are morally incompetent to adjudicate matters for ourselves, in a non-feminist way. They want to be moral dictators, in charge of everybody's rights and wrongs, and they unceasingly act like it. It's just another way to make their power hegemonic, and put themselves in control of the greater cultural discourse.
We must intervene and put a stop to that. The feminists are free to view the world through their own ideological lens - after all, it's their brain, their choice. But if they want to put the power of the state behind this and make their view the foundation of law and public policy, then we will rudely tell them where to get off. In fact we are doing that already, so let's build the momentum, okay?
Here's a final thought which I don't want to omit. Feminism, in common with the authoritarian Left, makes heavy use of collective guilt (or "guilt by association") as a moral bullying instrument. Well here's the good news: when you claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector, you liberate yourself, by implication, from guilt by association.
Any time a feminist postulates a group or category, and tries to shove you into it in order to implicate you in a pattern of collective guilt, said feminist has committed an act of FEMINIST AGGRESSION. As a non-feminist man or woman you are an individual, and can only be judged as an individual -- according to a non-feminist system of moral adjudication.
Think for a minute: "Lack of feminism" is not a group, not a movement, not an ideology. In principle, lack of feminism is nothing more than "the world minus feminism", and among other things that means the world minus all forms of feminist moral adjudication.
Again: the world minus all forms of feminist moral adjudication.
Let that sink in.
The non-feminist sector is nothing less that a cross-section of human nature. It is a full moral spectrum. A "non-feminist" can be almost any kind of person imaginable. Some non-feminists are wonderful people, other non-feminists are terrible people. What matters is that they are individuals.
Or more to the point, non-feminist individuals.
And whatever transgressions non-feminist men or women might commit, they commit them as individuals. Their crimes will be adjudicated individually, in a non-feminist way, independently of feminist moral authority, feminist oversight, or feminist theorization of any kind.
The non-feminist sector, as a cultural space, must become self-aware and must assert the power to TALK BACK to feminism on non-feminist terms. Under this system, all feminist claims and theories, starting with the definition of feminism itself, are radically open to question. ALL of them - bar none.
Non-feminist alterity and non-feminist autonomy shall become the order of the day in every domain , with feminism thrown permanently on the defensive. Non-feminist analysis shall be a guiding force, along with a non-feminist culture of critique and a non-feminist intellectual audit of every last thing pertaining to feminism, leading toward an ultimate deconstruction of the entire feminist worldview.
Friends, claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector. Do it now. Do it today. What are you waiting for?
Claim the liberty of the non-feminist sector. Take back your stolen property.
It's free. . because it's yours.
-----------
Addendum: The Counter-Feminist Cyclopedia (a compendium of liberatory vocabulary), is available here:
http://counterfem2.blogspot.com/p/the-counter-feminist-cyclopedia.html
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Feminist Triumphalism and Feminist Subjectivism
Feminist Triumphalism and Feminist Subjectivism
---------------------
Today, let's talk about two very important things that you need to understand about feminism, if you want to take feminism down. These two things are called feminist triumphalism, and feminist subjectivism. They are closely related mental operations, and together they form a set of brackets, or bookends, which hold the entire feminist psychology together.
Feminist triumphalism, and feminist subjectivism.
Feminist triumphalism is the idea that feminism is absolutely, categorically and objectively "right", beyond all further discussion, for all time. Hence feminism is triumphant, and trumps any alternative standpoint. Feminist triumphalism is the moral bedrock for all feminist thinking, because the feminists are adamant that feminism has achieved an objective moral victory absolved from all further discussion. They will suggest that if you oppose feminism in any way, you are on the wrong side of history. Feminist triumphalism is their dogma, their fixed idea, and the pivot point which their moral universe revolves around.
In their mind, you are morally bound to agree that feminism is RIGHT! It just IS. Feminism is right because it's right because its right . . and that settles it. And because feminism is right, you must support it, for if you don't, you are WRONG. You just ARE! And not just intellectually wrong, but morally and metaphysically wrong through every last fibre of your being. In other words, you are a wrong person altogether, on every imaginable level - and I don't think wrongness gets any wronger than that!
So what's the trick, anyway? How do they get to this state of mind, and more to the point, how do they stay there? Why is it virtually impossible to dislodge them from their way of thinking?
The trick is, that feminism controls the language - and this control starts by controlling the word "feminism" itself. Just the word. In other words, feminism is what they say it is because the WORD feminism means what THEY say it means, and not what YOU say it means. At least, according to them.
That brings us to our next topic: feminist subjectivism.
Feminist subjectivism is the feminist notion that non-feminist people don't know what feminism really is. Feminist subjectivism assumes that feminism has one correct universal definition, that feminists have an exclusive right to formulate that definition, and that a feminist frame of reference is assumed within any conversational setting. In the end, feminist subjectivism fails to consider that non-feminist reasons for rejecting feminism might compose some portion of the truth about feminism.
That bears repeating: feminist subjectivism fails to consider that non-feminist reasons for rejecting feminism might compose some portion of the truth about feminism.
We've all seen feminist subjectivism in action. Every time a feminist quotes the dictionary definition of feminism for your benefit. . . there it is!
Beyond that, feminist subjectivism is the default state of mind for any feminist at any time. For a feminist, all people, ideas and situations are processed and evaluated through the lens of feminist understanding - and this understanding grows from the unquestioned assumption that the word "feminism" has a meaning which only a feminist may authoritatively pronouce.
A feminist will set the value of the word "feminism" at X, with X being something irreproachable, something unimpeachable, something that will brook no moral opposition. In other words, something morally triumphant.
And that brings us back to feminist triumphalism again.
In the end, the whole charade runs like this: feminism is X, X is irreproachable, therefore feminism is irreproachable, therefore feminism is eternally right, therefore feminism is triumphant, therefore you are eternally wrong if you oppose feminism, and if you don't believe that, return to "feminism is X" and start the game over.
Feminist triumphalism and feminist subjectivism are like chicken and egg, and it is pointless to wonder which comes first.
Feminist triumphalism. . . and feminist subjectivism.
Feminist subjectivism is the mental filter through which feminist triumphalism controls the language and reconstructs reality. In the end, feminism operates as the self-appointed gatekeeper of moral truth.
However, what nearly every feminist fails to understand, is that non-feminist people view feminism in a very different light than feminist people do. Non-feminist people either do not agree that "feminism is X", or else insist on deconstructing the entire formulation as such, because they find something radically problematic about it.
There you have it. By taking control of what the word "feminism" means, we can drive a wedge between feminist triumphalism and feminist subjectivism. Hence, we can regain control of the language, ownership of our thoughts and feelings, and ultimately, mastery of our lives. We can also commence disestablishing the feminist worldview, and dismantling the entire power structure built upon that worldview. One step at a time.
Finally, we establish non-feminist as a broad political identity, through our revolutionary act of reclaiming the language. Controlling the definition of "feminism" is our necessary first move in reclaiming the language, with thousands of moves to follow. In this manner, we build non-feminist identity step by step.
Feminism IS what we say it is.
We say it, and we will make it stick. Let no feminist tell us that we "can't do that", since we have clearly done it already. Furthermore, we are curious to know how they intend to stop us.
Feminist triumphalism and feminist subjectivism. You will find these words useful, and you would do well to make them a part of your lexicon.
---------------------
Today, let's talk about two very important things that you need to understand about feminism, if you want to take feminism down. These two things are called feminist triumphalism, and feminist subjectivism. They are closely related mental operations, and together they form a set of brackets, or bookends, which hold the entire feminist psychology together.
Feminist triumphalism, and feminist subjectivism.
Feminist triumphalism is the idea that feminism is absolutely, categorically and objectively "right", beyond all further discussion, for all time. Hence feminism is triumphant, and trumps any alternative standpoint. Feminist triumphalism is the moral bedrock for all feminist thinking, because the feminists are adamant that feminism has achieved an objective moral victory absolved from all further discussion. They will suggest that if you oppose feminism in any way, you are on the wrong side of history. Feminist triumphalism is their dogma, their fixed idea, and the pivot point which their moral universe revolves around.
In their mind, you are morally bound to agree that feminism is RIGHT! It just IS. Feminism is right because it's right because its right . . and that settles it. And because feminism is right, you must support it, for if you don't, you are WRONG. You just ARE! And not just intellectually wrong, but morally and metaphysically wrong through every last fibre of your being. In other words, you are a wrong person altogether, on every imaginable level - and I don't think wrongness gets any wronger than that!
So what's the trick, anyway? How do they get to this state of mind, and more to the point, how do they stay there? Why is it virtually impossible to dislodge them from their way of thinking?
The trick is, that feminism controls the language - and this control starts by controlling the word "feminism" itself. Just the word. In other words, feminism is what they say it is because the WORD feminism means what THEY say it means, and not what YOU say it means. At least, according to them.
That brings us to our next topic: feminist subjectivism.
Feminist subjectivism is the feminist notion that non-feminist people don't know what feminism really is. Feminist subjectivism assumes that feminism has one correct universal definition, that feminists have an exclusive right to formulate that definition, and that a feminist frame of reference is assumed within any conversational setting. In the end, feminist subjectivism fails to consider that non-feminist reasons for rejecting feminism might compose some portion of the truth about feminism.
That bears repeating: feminist subjectivism fails to consider that non-feminist reasons for rejecting feminism might compose some portion of the truth about feminism.
We've all seen feminist subjectivism in action. Every time a feminist quotes the dictionary definition of feminism for your benefit. . . there it is!
Beyond that, feminist subjectivism is the default state of mind for any feminist at any time. For a feminist, all people, ideas and situations are processed and evaluated through the lens of feminist understanding - and this understanding grows from the unquestioned assumption that the word "feminism" has a meaning which only a feminist may authoritatively pronouce.
A feminist will set the value of the word "feminism" at X, with X being something irreproachable, something unimpeachable, something that will brook no moral opposition. In other words, something morally triumphant.
And that brings us back to feminist triumphalism again.
In the end, the whole charade runs like this: feminism is X, X is irreproachable, therefore feminism is irreproachable, therefore feminism is eternally right, therefore feminism is triumphant, therefore you are eternally wrong if you oppose feminism, and if you don't believe that, return to "feminism is X" and start the game over.
Feminist triumphalism and feminist subjectivism are like chicken and egg, and it is pointless to wonder which comes first.
Feminist triumphalism. . . and feminist subjectivism.
Feminist subjectivism is the mental filter through which feminist triumphalism controls the language and reconstructs reality. In the end, feminism operates as the self-appointed gatekeeper of moral truth.
However, what nearly every feminist fails to understand, is that non-feminist people view feminism in a very different light than feminist people do. Non-feminist people either do not agree that "feminism is X", or else insist on deconstructing the entire formulation as such, because they find something radically problematic about it.
There you have it. By taking control of what the word "feminism" means, we can drive a wedge between feminist triumphalism and feminist subjectivism. Hence, we can regain control of the language, ownership of our thoughts and feelings, and ultimately, mastery of our lives. We can also commence disestablishing the feminist worldview, and dismantling the entire power structure built upon that worldview. One step at a time.
Finally, we establish non-feminist as a broad political identity, through our revolutionary act of reclaiming the language. Controlling the definition of "feminism" is our necessary first move in reclaiming the language, with thousands of moves to follow. In this manner, we build non-feminist identity step by step.
Feminism IS what we say it is.
We say it, and we will make it stick. Let no feminist tell us that we "can't do that", since we have clearly done it already. Furthermore, we are curious to know how they intend to stop us.
Feminist triumphalism and feminist subjectivism. You will find these words useful, and you would do well to make them a part of your lexicon.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Can Feminists and Non-feminists co-exist?
Episode 78 of the Vanguard Report will be an episode unlike any
that we’ve had before. Today, non-feminists Fidelbogen and Kevin Wayne
will be hosting not one, but two self-declared feminists: Russian
Deadpool and Poison Ivy, of the Skeptic Feminists YouTube Channel. This
duo recently appeared on the Honey Badgers, and we are glad to have them
here as well.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/allbulletins/the-vanguard-report-episode-78-feminists-and-non-feminists-can-they-coexist/
Let’s face it, we are in a growing culture war between two sectors of humanity – the feminist sector, and the non-feminist sector. A lot depends on these two groups getting along on the same planet without stepping on each other’s toes. Today’s episode will be a kind of diplomatic meeting under the white flag of truce. It is important to understand that this is NOT an argument or debate of any kind – it is a conversation for mutual clarification, and that rule will be enforced.
We hope that you can join us for this historic occasion. Pass the word along, and we will see you on Sunday, January 4, 2016.
Cue1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ih…
Cue2: http://counterfem2.blogspot.com/p/the…
Cue3: http://counterfem2.blogspot.com/p/saf…
Cue4: https://archive.is/3ix4O
http://www.avoiceformen.com/allbulletins/the-vanguard-report-episode-78-feminists-and-non-feminists-can-they-coexist/
Let’s face it, we are in a growing culture war between two sectors of humanity – the feminist sector, and the non-feminist sector. A lot depends on these two groups getting along on the same planet without stepping on each other’s toes. Today’s episode will be a kind of diplomatic meeting under the white flag of truce. It is important to understand that this is NOT an argument or debate of any kind – it is a conversation for mutual clarification, and that rule will be enforced.
We hope that you can join us for this historic occasion. Pass the word along, and we will see you on Sunday, January 4, 2016.
Cue1: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ih…
Cue2: http://counterfem2.blogspot.com/p/the…
Cue3: http://counterfem2.blogspot.com/p/saf…
Cue4: https://archive.is/3ix4O
Thursday, December 24, 2015
The Counter-feminist Express
I have created a new blog, where I will be posting shorter material on a more frequent basis. The present blog will be a repository for longer, weightier material.
My new blog, called The Counter-feminist Express, is here:
http://cf-express.blogspot.com
My new blog, called The Counter-feminist Express, is here:
http://cf-express.blogspot.com
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Worth-based Entitlement
I find no good reason to believe that women are uniquely downtrodden, or
that their sufferings in life transcend the common lot of humanity. Moreover, I can see a strong case that men have it worse in many ways.
However, feminist theory maintains that women as a group are oppressed by men as a group, and specifically names women as a "political sex class". Feminist preaching for many years has openly incited women to view themselves in such terms. The last half-century has witnessed a mushrooming growth of women's advocacy groups, lobbying groups, government bureaux, and all manner of special services for women both public and private.
But it doesn't end with blind favoritism toward women. The state of matters takes a malignant turn when you consider that female citizens presently hold a disproportionate power to compromise the well-being of male citizens. As simply as we can put it, women have the power to lie about men with impunity, in a way that seriously harms them. And that power, being vested in laws and institutions, becomes a political power and makes women a political class.
To put this another way, it is not women, but MEN who are "oppressed". Oppression, as feminist theory informs us, is structural. It is rooted not in the power of individuals, but in the power of institutions made disproportionately available to some groups and not others. When the disfavored group feels the institutionally-based power of the favored group like a boot on its neck, only then may we correctly say that "oppression" is taking place. Men (not women) may be considered the oppressed group in today's world because the power of women to harm men is embodied in laws and institutions -- in other words, structurally. If we are to hold the feminists to the letter of their own law, we must insist that they acknowledge this.
What we have related here tilts the political board against men as a group. In light of this, we feel no hesitation in stating that men, as a group, have no political obligation to go to bat for women as a group. Under the circumstances, why should they? Rationally speaking, men would do best to look out for themselves as individuals and to form contracts of mutual assistance in order to multiply the benefit. No consideration, either moral or utilitarian, can inspire me with any sense of duty toward women as a group. This would be true even in the best of times, but is doubly true at present, when men are an oppressed class.
Therefore any individual woman I meet will get special consideration from me only as an individual, and only if she proves herself worthy. And clearly, some will prove themselves worthier than others. This way of thinking entails no "misogyny" because it entails no opinion, either good or ill, about women as a group.
Now, misogyny means disaffection toward women irrespectively. Hence, even if you were to form a bad opinion about every female person on earth, it would not entail misogyny if you had weighed each case on its merits. You would merely harbor a bad opinion about this woman, that woman, and the next woman -- but not about women.
I am far from having evaluated every woman on earth, and I know my life is too short to do that. So I am content to say that I harbor no opinion either good or ill about the huge majority of women, but that as I make their acquaintances I will evaluate them one at a time. Then, according to the case, I will form a social contract binding myself to specific behaviors. Upon that base alone, I will decide what, if anything, I "owe" to the individual in question. In this, I do just as I would do with any man -- I am entirely even-handed.
Yes. Characterization by merit is a first principle, and it frames my conduct toward everyone I meet. Nobody, man or woman, is "entitled" to anything save what I, by my good pleasure, bountifully proffer -- and calculation of merit weighs considerably in that dispensation. In short, I study the manifested qualities of other people in living form, and work from there.
But prudential considerations are always uppermost in my thinking, with an eye to rational self-preservation grounded in a prescience of natural consequences. My policy, then, entails a strategizing sense of the Kantian hypothetical imperative: "If you want the world to be X, you must do Y and Z." The reason is, that if you fail to do Y and Z, then by natural consequence the world will not be X.
So in the end, although my conduct is governed purely by a moral law within myself, that moral law is framed by the considerations which I have sketched above. I should add that it never hurts to get on my good side. Deal squarely and rightly with me, and I shall be the truest friend you could ask for. Otherwise, things might get sticky.
Feminism views women as an entitled class, and fails to hold them accountable as individuals. I find this both pernicious and unworkable, and for that reason (among many others) I reject feminism as a movement and as an ideology. I disavow it. I disclaim ownership in it. I repudiate the cultural narrative which it imposes and I wash my hands of any project predicated on any aspect of that narrative.
Briefly then, I am not a feminist and no power in the universe will force me to become one.
Finally, no woman I shall ever meet may exercise any claim upon me in the name of feminism, or under color of feminism in any form. She is entitled to nothing unless she proves to me that she is worth something.
Such is worth-based entitlement.
However, feminist theory maintains that women as a group are oppressed by men as a group, and specifically names women as a "political sex class". Feminist preaching for many years has openly incited women to view themselves in such terms. The last half-century has witnessed a mushrooming growth of women's advocacy groups, lobbying groups, government bureaux, and all manner of special services for women both public and private.
But it doesn't end with blind favoritism toward women. The state of matters takes a malignant turn when you consider that female citizens presently hold a disproportionate power to compromise the well-being of male citizens. As simply as we can put it, women have the power to lie about men with impunity, in a way that seriously harms them. And that power, being vested in laws and institutions, becomes a political power and makes women a political class.
To put this another way, it is not women, but MEN who are "oppressed". Oppression, as feminist theory informs us, is structural. It is rooted not in the power of individuals, but in the power of institutions made disproportionately available to some groups and not others. When the disfavored group feels the institutionally-based power of the favored group like a boot on its neck, only then may we correctly say that "oppression" is taking place. Men (not women) may be considered the oppressed group in today's world because the power of women to harm men is embodied in laws and institutions -- in other words, structurally. If we are to hold the feminists to the letter of their own law, we must insist that they acknowledge this.
What we have related here tilts the political board against men as a group. In light of this, we feel no hesitation in stating that men, as a group, have no political obligation to go to bat for women as a group. Under the circumstances, why should they? Rationally speaking, men would do best to look out for themselves as individuals and to form contracts of mutual assistance in order to multiply the benefit. No consideration, either moral or utilitarian, can inspire me with any sense of duty toward women as a group. This would be true even in the best of times, but is doubly true at present, when men are an oppressed class.
Therefore any individual woman I meet will get special consideration from me only as an individual, and only if she proves herself worthy. And clearly, some will prove themselves worthier than others. This way of thinking entails no "misogyny" because it entails no opinion, either good or ill, about women as a group.
Now, misogyny means disaffection toward women irrespectively. Hence, even if you were to form a bad opinion about every female person on earth, it would not entail misogyny if you had weighed each case on its merits. You would merely harbor a bad opinion about this woman, that woman, and the next woman -- but not about women.
I am far from having evaluated every woman on earth, and I know my life is too short to do that. So I am content to say that I harbor no opinion either good or ill about the huge majority of women, but that as I make their acquaintances I will evaluate them one at a time. Then, according to the case, I will form a social contract binding myself to specific behaviors. Upon that base alone, I will decide what, if anything, I "owe" to the individual in question. In this, I do just as I would do with any man -- I am entirely even-handed.
Yes. Characterization by merit is a first principle, and it frames my conduct toward everyone I meet. Nobody, man or woman, is "entitled" to anything save what I, by my good pleasure, bountifully proffer -- and calculation of merit weighs considerably in that dispensation. In short, I study the manifested qualities of other people in living form, and work from there.
But prudential considerations are always uppermost in my thinking, with an eye to rational self-preservation grounded in a prescience of natural consequences. My policy, then, entails a strategizing sense of the Kantian hypothetical imperative: "If you want the world to be X, you must do Y and Z." The reason is, that if you fail to do Y and Z, then by natural consequence the world will not be X.
So in the end, although my conduct is governed purely by a moral law within myself, that moral law is framed by the considerations which I have sketched above. I should add that it never hurts to get on my good side. Deal squarely and rightly with me, and I shall be the truest friend you could ask for. Otherwise, things might get sticky.
Feminism views women as an entitled class, and fails to hold them accountable as individuals. I find this both pernicious and unworkable, and for that reason (among many others) I reject feminism as a movement and as an ideology. I disavow it. I disclaim ownership in it. I repudiate the cultural narrative which it imposes and I wash my hands of any project predicated on any aspect of that narrative.
Briefly then, I am not a feminist and no power in the universe will force me to become one.
Finally, no woman I shall ever meet may exercise any claim upon me in the name of feminism, or under color of feminism in any form. She is entitled to nothing unless she proves to me that she is worth something.
Such is worth-based entitlement.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Notes: Toward An Efficient Political World-View
This article article was first published on April 12, 2008. It was been edited for clarity and style, and reissued.
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The will to oppose feminism and its damaging consequences operates, in a fragmentary way, all across the social landscape. This so-called "movement" lacks cohesion. In terms of ideology, strategy and practical organization, it looks like a disjointed rabble of separate mobs armed with torches, pitchforks,and poorly articulated anger. Briefly, a peasant rebellion.
Hence it is no movement at all, but a plurality of "motions" that amount to a sloshing chaos. That some of these angry mobs are as angry with each other as with feminism, thickens the plot.
Putting it simply, our so-called "movement" is a broad demographic uprising among a disaffected population. To call it a movement is a linguistic shorthand, and we must muddle along with this until the language grows to accommodate new thinking.
All the same, our enemies wish to proclaim this thing of ours as a movement according to their orthodox understanding. This helps them, for it simplifies matters and puts their side in a stronger attack posture. If our side looks amenable to customary formulae, they find it easier to forgo the diligence of investigation and chuck us off glibly.
This thing of ours is paradoxical because it both is and is not monolithic. True, it embraces the full moral spectrum of human nature, but that spectrum is hardly monolithic apart from being monolithically human. We are at present little more than a fermentation of disaffected feeling across a range of people. What makes this monolithic for us, is that it conjoins in a shared opposition to feminism and feminism's consequences. This opposition is sometimes articulated, other times not, but at all events it unites us – at least up to a point.
So a certain unity is already ours, because opposition to feminism combines our energy at the root of our endeavor. This does not quite make us a "movement", but it does make us a community of shared intention. That is a foundation not to be neglected, since for want of it nothing further could be built.
Such being said, our task is to see if we can build it further.
Again, the opposition to feminism embraces the full moral spectrum of human nature. Disliking feminism does not make you a good person or a bad person. It simply makes you a person who dislikes feminism – and there are reasons to dislike feminism which cannot be tarnished merely because unlikeable people happen to concur with them.
Yes, human behavior is sometimes commendable and other times otherwise. Yet the fact remains that nobody, commendable or otherwise, enjoys being trodden on — and the more so when they have committed no certifiable offense that would justify such treatment.
When a targeted population — in this case a birth group equal to half the human race — is subjected to such treatment arbitrarily, on a systemic skew, it should come as no surprise that this group will show its displeasure in many ways, and that when it does, some of the action, some of the time, will be blameworthy. Call it the law of averages.
Truly, we confront the full spectrum of human nature here: there is no doubt the world contains all manner of men, and you mustn't expect all of them to react morally when they are immorally treated —although quite a few of them might struggle heroically to do so.
So the unity of our cause lies in our shared opposition to feminism and its damaging consequences. Such is the bedrock we stand upon. That alone—no more, but certainly no less. For it comes to this, that our shared opposition draws us all into a shared perimeter of operations or, if you will, a sector. And please note that a sector is not a movement, but rather a charted space that renders movement intelligible in terms of its progressions.
Given that the prefix anti is understood to mean opposition, to say that I am "opposed to feminism" means that I am anti-feminist. However, prior to opposition (and a necessary precondition to it) is simple negation. Hence, to declare that I am non-feminist is to assert a thing of greater latitude, greater profundity and, as it may prove, greater utility.
The term non-feminist etches a line through the middle of reality, and by so doing draws into the light of discourse a region of existential space which is not feminism. This act is decisively consequential, as hope to show. It is of course a political line in the sand—that much verges on the self-evident.
Yet the thing is not merely political, but in addition metaphysical. The category of non-feminism, as we understand it and would have it understood, poses a counter-claim against feminism's usurpative self-investiture of hegemonic privilege. This counter-claim operates elegantly, by directing attention to a
quintessentially constitutive fact about feminism iself: that it both claims universality and aggressively aspires to it.
We consider feminism's claim to be grandiose, and we believe that it crosses into the territory of hubris. We consider feminism's aggressive pursuit of its claim to be pernicious.
But to say that feminism "claims universality"—what meaning has this?
It means that the partisans of feminist doctrine assert that a certain body of theory—of which they are the custodians—holds a legitimate sovereign right to subsume all of human life within the purview of its explanatory
discourse.
And to say that feminism "aggressively aspires" to universality—what meaning has this?
It means that the partisans of feminist doctrine seek by all possible contrivance of law, pedagogy and propaganda to advance feminism's claim into the realm of WORLDLY FACT—both within the fabric of cultural and institutional life, and within the private lives of as many private citizens as might be drawn into the moral gravity-well of feminist theory.
Non-feminism both bears witness to these facts about feminism, and stands as a roadblock against them. The minute you say "non-feminist", you are (so to speak) advertising a competing product and demanding a rightful share of the market for that product. Feminism, you see, not only claims a monopoly upon truth, but likewise claims a mandate to exercise unhindered political muscle on behalf of that monopoly. But the claim is spurious; the claim is a bubble. A way is needed to pop this bubble—and the simple notion of non-feminism is just the pin for the job!
When the term "non-feminism" presents itself without explanation and yet apparently demanding respect, how can a feminist argue against it? The answer is: uphill, and with difficulty.
"Non-feminist" says both a lot, and not much at all. It says a lot because it surveys a lot of territory, but it says not much because we are not told much about what that territory contains. We are told only that it does not contain feminism.
But to a feminist, such negative presentation offers a slippery wall with no grappling points— there is nothing positive to be asserted against non-feminism because the term itself asserts nothing positive in the first place. It bespeaks nothing judgmental - either good or ill—as regards feminism. It bespeaks only ALTERITY.
Non-feminism signifies nothing about itself other than to assert its otherness by its mere presence. It signifies to the feminist, "you are feminism, and I am not." That is ALL it signifies.
Yet this deceptively simple message sets a burden of proof upon the feminist, IN PERPETUITY, to establish feminism as inherently more desirable than a lack of feminism, or inherently more entitled cultural sovereignty.
Simply stated, the non-feminist sets feminism permanently on the defensive, by default, and does this masterfully, without assuming any aggressive posture.
Mere lack of feminism is not a person, not an organization, not an ideology, not a doctrine, and above all not a movement. It is simply the universe exclusive of feminism—and that is a portion of the cosmos greater than 99%. Therefore, non-feminism need not and cannot answer for itself.
How can 99% of the universe "answer for" itself? What in heaven's name could such action possibly entail? No, only persons, organizations, ideologies, doctrines and so-called political movements need to "answer for themselves", because only entities such as those are constricted enough to embody the
possibility of transgression.
Those who speak on behalf of feminism cannot hope to gain the initiative against non-feminism without FIRST making it clear why the rest of the universe ought to be filled with feminism, or interpreted by feminism, or overshadowed by feminism, or by whatever means brought under the sceptre of feminism's imperium.
Tersely stated, feminism must first explain itself. And regrettably, self-explanation constitutes a position of weakness because it differs by merely a shade from self-justification—and self-justification is a defensive posture.
Thus, to be under obligation of explaining yourself is ipso facto to be on the defensive. It is the thief who must explain himself; the magistrate need not. It is the courtier who must explain himself; the king need not.
So, if you simply declare yourself "not feminist", others have no warrant to interrogate you in quest of further particulars. Your non-participation in feminism, your non-alignment in the polarity of its discourse, your cavalier refusal to take its issues as points of decisive personal or spiritual significance,
are simply not open for discussion unless you—in your own good time and at your own sovereign pleasure—feel so disposed.
Still, you may anticipate occasional opposition to this scheme of politesse. A customary knee-jerk response by the typical feminist foot-soldier is to rattle off a list of talking-points pertaining to women's issues. In the mind of the speaker, such a list passes for a "definition" of feminism, and the speaker wishes to drive you into a corner by suggesting that your aloofness toward feminism means that you approve of glass ceilings or the like.
The talking-point trick is simply a way for the speaker to talk past you, and duck the genuine point at issue. I don't mean the speaker consciously goes about to do this, but the net effect comes to the same thing. The speaker presents what he or she personally believes to be feminism, and uses this purely subjective understanding as a yardstick to measure the objective world—in this case, you!
Such is the character of feminist subjectivism. Feminism is an enterprise composed of many people who have only a skewed, sketchy, or compartmentalized knowledge of what they are involved in. It is also an enterprise which privileges theory over reality, and fails signally to factor the real-world result of its theories into its self-definition, preferring rather to lay blame upon the world when things go awry.
For such reasons among others, we are ill-advised to go to the feminists themselves for an account of what feminism essentially IS. The feminists will only explain what feminism is supposed to be, and even those reports will vary markedly. Hence, our quest for an objective accounting must step beyond feminist subjectivism and self-description, and take stock of feminism from the outside, as a phenomenon embedded in a web of ecological relations with things other than itself.
Feminist subjectivism presumes that feminist ideology holds the power to explain all things, and that all things must therefore yield a right-of-way to feminist ideology. The trick works because the majority of feminists are profoundly ignorant of how feminism actually operates. This ignorance is owing to incomplete information about feminism—in other words, partial knowledge.
Partial knowledge begets partiality, toward a personal version of feminism—whatever the feminist speaker believes feminism to be, or wishes it to be. But this personal version, being founded upon incomplete (partial) information about feminism, cannot gather the full scope of what feminism in total does to the non-feminist world.
All the same, this partial knowledge deems itself to possess a complete understanding. Accordingly, if the non-feminist world does not defer to such "understanding", then that very fact must (by the feminist reckoning) be due to intransigence on the part of the non-feminist world — and must therefore count as inculpatory evidence against that world.
Now consider that this mental proceeding is duplicated, with degrees of variation, in millions of feminist or feminist-influenced brains, and it becomes clear that feminist understanding is built upon a subjective platform. Signals from the non-feminist world—which speak of feminism's effects upon that world—would be critically informative in this connection. But such signals are not objectively processed.
In sum, if you wish to know what "real feminism" is, you could as well ask a non-feminist as a feminist. To ask a feminist about feminism is useful if you wish to put feminism on the defensive by forcing it to explain itself. But if you seek pragmatically useful knowledge about feminism as a phenomenon, you should commence your investigation in the border region of feminism's impact upon
the larger world, and only much later convene your court of inquiry with the individual feminist.
So once more, it is feminism's responsibility to justify itself to the non-feminist world—continually and repeatedly if need be, and even until hell freezes over! Feminism is not equivalent to a natural law (such as, for example, gravity) which operates with supra-human compulsion. One cannot "argue" with a natural law or expect a natural law to justify itself.
But as concerns feminism, the case stands rather differently. Feminism is very much a human artifice. It is contrived by humans and imposed by human methods upon other humans—who in theory might not take such imposition kindly and therefore ought first to be consulted.
In the future, we may expect to block feminist subjectivism by an arsenal of methods whose ingenuity will grow in proportion to our research and development efforts. This is to suggest where our study energy should be directed.
In the end, to position yourself as “non-feminist”, is to position yourself as one possessing a moral awareness of the harms which feminism has inflicted.
Yes. Feminism, which presumes to interpret all things, must hereinafter be made to answer searching questions about itself as requital for its presumption. That is quite proper when you consider the metaphysical nature of the case. Did feminism give birth to the rest of the universe, or did the rest of the universe give birth to feminism? If you are like me, you will see straightway that the rest of the
universe knocks feminism behind the eight-ball every time.
Simply put, the rest of the universe supplies the foundation and formative principle which permits feminism to exist in the first place—and that makes feminism itself no better than a ripple on the river.
There is an enormous world beyond feminism, a world enormously more ancient and deeply-rooted than feminism, and feminism is enormously conceited if it presumes to explain everything about that world, or presumes to make its explanations morally binding upon that world.
In the expanded view of things, feminism is precious little and non-feminism is quite a bit. So if you are not a feminist, you have ample territory in which to wander without feeling constrained or in peril of being taken for somebody you are not.
Nobody is entitled to any clarification of your standpoint beyond what the term non-feminist plainly intones. By that I mean, that if you encounter somebody who desires to "preach feminism" at you, you have only to say "I am not a feminist" and then walk away. Having no ground to guess your precise objection to feminism, or even that you have any objection at all, they may not rightfully harm you further.
Or if they assail you with the talking-point trick, stand quietly and let them say their say until their spring winds down. You may, at your discretion, ask them if they have anything to add. Then, deliver something like the following speech:
"None of your remarks have the least bearing upon my reason for objecting to feminism. Since I have not stated my reason, you have no ground on which to Furthermore, I am bound by no legal or moral principle to discharge my mind upon that point. So, I bid you a good day!"
You might go for the rest of your life and never call yourself anything but a non-feminist. This might be the only such descriptor you will ever need or care to use. I would like to impress upon you that there is no requirement to voice your opposition in terms of a political movement, platform, ideology, organization, or anything at all of a positively assertive nature. To declare yourself not feminist does no more than locate you within the universe exclusive of feminism—which is in no way a "movement", but rather a container of movement, or of predispositions to movement. Yet this brisk little maneuver is a radical decision of enormous political weight.
As earlier stated, the non-feminist part of the universe is a region of existential space. A word previously used was sector, and that is a good terminological choice because it implies cutting or partitioning—which is very much the sense of matters we would like to impart. So from henceforth we shall refer to the universe exclusive of feminism as the non-feminist sector.
The non-feminist sector contains all that is not feminism—and that is a lot. But prior to anything else, and as the name would suggest, it embodies a primordial negation of feminism. Negation is the foundation. With respect to opposition of whatever form, negation is clearly the greater holon. If you declare yourself anti-feminist you must as a prerequisite declare yourself non-feminist. But the reverse is not the case. You can be non-feminist without being anti-feminist, even as you can be non-catholic without being anti-catholic, non-jewish without being antisemitic, or all manner of similar examples.
Again, the non-feminist sector contains all that is not feminism—and that takes in a wealth of scenery. It includes the ridiculous, the sublime, the base, the exalted, the ignoble, the noble—the sum of human nature and all which it encloses or encloses it! Please etch upon your memory that the non-feminist sector is in no way a moral generalization or moral collective.
These two sectors—the feminist and the non-feminist—are merely two opposed systems of human imperfection. One must prevail and the other must sink into irrelevance, because some imperfections are more desirable than others.
Feminism, as we have explained many times, is perpetual revolution — which means that its being is identical with its being-in-motion. And feminist motion can be of only two sorts: advancing or retreating. Thus, for feminism to prosper, it must overflow continually into the world beyond its perimeter, and in the process convert more and more of the non-feminist sector to a subaltern pattern of existence.
That is how feminism aggressively aspires to universality. It doesn't just sit quietly and pronounce an abstract "right" to be the ruling paradigm. It undertakes actively to conquer, and to assert the rights of conquest.
Feminism can do none other than this, for it cannot sit still. If it were not in motion, it would literally not exist at all. Therefore, if feminism is barricaded along its line of advance, it can do one thing only—retreat, and disintegrate within its own boundaries like an empire collapsing from internal decay. Such collapse too, is after all a form of motion.
Given that feminism aggressively aspires to universality, it cannot tolerate the continued existence of the non-feminist sector in any form, whether as opposition or as negation:. Let's consider these one at a time:
Firstly, feminism cannot tolerate the non-feminist sector in the form of opposition, and whenever it non-feminist opposition, it will call this "reactionary" or "regressive" sooner than look into alternative explanatory models. Such is feminist subjectivism.
Equally, feminism cannot tolerate the non-feminist sector in the form of negation, for the quite simple reason that feminism does not wish to be negated. Any piece of the world which stubbornly persists in "going its own way" is an open affront to any system (such as feminism) which desires to "become the
world", or which claims an unassailable prerogative to do so.
Briefly then, any condition or thing which is distinctly not feminist is an irritation and a threat to feminism because it stands as a reminder that feminism is not the world. That in turn raises the politically loaded question whether anything which is not feminism should be permitted to exist at all.
The only plausibly feminist answer would be NO, but few feminists would care to tackle this head-on because honesty would be politically awkward and therefore not the best policy. Luckily for them, it is easy to sweep such conversations under the rug before they even get started.
So it comes to this, that the non-feminist sector commences with mere indifference to feminism, and rises by degrees through the many shades of active opposition, even to the point of unmitigated vitriol. And yet, to the feminist worldview there can be NO difference among those many shades, for in
the mind of a truly indoctrinated feminist it is all the same whether we merely negate feminism by living blithely as if no such thing existed, or whether we campaign actively with the fixed intention of destroying it. Either possibility pours equally consequential sand into the machinery.
In consequence, the universal and etherically all-pervading feminist undertone says: "Who is not for me is against me!"
This, I submit, is a fact of surpassing importance which ought to stand uppermost in our thoughts. You must realize that they will name you as an adversary if you merely fail to hoist their flag.
Yet it goes deeper, for you must also realize that by your mere existence — your simple presence in the world nothing more—you pose an objective threat to their existence, the very basis of their existence, their entire enterprise. Thus, whatever your posture within the non-feminist sector — be it opposition
or "merely" negation—they will rank you as an objective enemy within their ideological paradigm.
Hence: All opposition is negation, and all negation is opposition. Through the feminist eyeball, that is how the world appears. In their scheme of things, negation and opposition are the same animal, and whatever stands in the way of feminism's universal presumption – be it actively or passively—counts as opposition. It's all the same to them.
In the beginning, before feminism existed, everybody was a non-feminist, and there was only negation. Those were innocent times. Then feminism appeared, making certain claims and demands, some of which appeared reasonable. After a time, the world re-flowed somewhat in order to accomodate those claims and demands. Then feminism came back with new claims and demands, or more detailed editions of the old ones. This time, the claims and demands sounded a shade less reasonable, but still somewhat so. Again, the world re-flowed—and this time in a more detailed way, but a shade more slowly.
Over and over the cycle replayed itself — with such frequency and overlap that it more resembled an asynchronous transformational blur along many fronts. In time, the continually updated claims and demands became tedious in their proliferation of nuance, taking on a more boring and burdensome character, seeming to drain the vital blood of life from the non-feminist sector in a way that could no longer be tolerated.
In addition, the overt reasonableness of feminist claims and demands was declining steadily because the normative threshold of reasonableness itself was steadily declining—owing largely to those small initial concessions which had little-by-little debased the standards defining that threshold in the first place, thereby lowering the bar and admitting further debasement of standards, followed by still more lowering of the bar, and so on.
Such was the slow, steady encroachment of feminist politics into the non-feminist sector. And as the feminist power base grew, so likewise grew feminism's power to roll over anything in its path—culturally, socially, legally, academically, politically, propagandistically, or any other way.
However, as feminism's power multiplied, more and more of the non-feminist sector grew aware of that power, and that power's range of influence. In the course of so learning, the non-feminist sector grew ever more aware of itself as a thing not only apart from feminism, but actively opposed to it.
Feminism, as we have noted, does not distinguish negation from opposition. In the long run therefore, feminism can do none other than greet negation with the same hostility it would display toward opposition. I say in the long run, for there is plenty of non-feminist territory which feminist reconfiguration hasn't quite probed into yet—meaning that life within such territory may go on for quite some time in the naive enjoyment of its proper narrative. But eventually the feminist miasma will creep into such corners also, and when it does, predictable antagonisms will arise.
For sooner or later, the feminist question "what side are you on?" would demand imperiously to be answered. And some people, knowing a phony moral dilemma when they smell one, would flatly refuse to be lumbered with this. Above all other things—although likely in addition to such things—they
would take offense at receiving an ultimatum.
At such a critical moment, an anti-feminist is made.
Yes, when feminism aggresses against non-feminism, certain parts of the non-feminist sector will naturally rise up and take the field against feminism, and in so doing become anti-feminist—by choice, by definition and by practice.
Negation turns into opposition when feminism rudely steps on the wrong people's toes—and to its significant misfortune it does this quite a bit.
Feminism has from the very beginning waged a campaign of steady, escalating aggression against the non-feminist sector. It is only to be expected that the non-feminist sector would rise up against this. If such uprising is not yet evident in all locations clear across the board, it will become so when feminist innovation reaches such critical mass that none may any longer live in blissful ignorance of feminism's true nature.
On that day, it will be as if the feminist effort no longer had any room to exploit the unheroic, pacifistic nature of the average person. This will occur because mere shallow acquiescence in feminist ideas will no longer satisfy the feminist demand for affirmation. More precisely stated, feminist authority will no longer be humored or bought off by such acquiescence and will require some manner of decisive inner change testable for authenticity.
When matters come to such a stand, people in markedly greater numbers will put away their pacifism and wax heroic. When they are backed against that brick wall they will make their decision—be it yea or nay—and the hurly-burly will commence.
In the interim, the term 'non-feminist sector' solves the vexed problem of how to designate ourselves. We may, if we choose, call ourselves non-feminist and nothing more. Yet because the non-feminist sector is not a political movement but only a container of such movement, it can be made to contain whatever the superabundance of our creativity and the exigency of our future needs might eventually require – a rising sea floor destined to become a new Atlantis, but first showing only scattered islands which in time will grow and merge.
The non-feminist sector is everything. In the feminist order up to the present it has been nothing, but it must now assert itself and become SOMETHING.
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