Procession, Possession and Kitten Killing Christians

So I’ve expressed the intention to write some posts on Mary Daly’s work, but have not really delivered as I’ve been busy doing other things. Thing one: falling back into my habit of being distracted by male confusion. Thing two: feeling fatalistically exhausted with the subject of feminism because patriarchy is everywhere and I was feeling to suffocated by it to have much at all to say. Well I have resolved thing one by actually losing contact with the Kitten Killer. Deleted his number, I don’t know it by heart, and un-”friend”-ed him from Facebook. And thing two I’ve solved by starting a re-reading of Gyn/Ecology. Her work is always a good reminder of why I write and what it is that I need to say. And it contextualizes all of the icky feelings I’ve been having in a way that takes their weight off of me. And since it’s helped me contextualize the situations that in my previous post on them were largely scribbly, angry blather, I will go ahead and share what I learned about what happened to me.

So with that out of the way, this post will be on Procession, which is the first of her eight deadly sins of patriarchy that I will be speaking on. According to Google, a procession is:

A number of people or vehicles moving forward in an orderly fashion, esp. as part of a ceremony or festival.
The action of moving forward in such a way: “the dignitaries walk in procession”..

One of the more interesting things that I noted (I did highlight it) but I didn’t really think or speak about is the way that militarism and Christianity are inextricably and originally linked. To contextualize where I stand on this subject, I cannot remember believing the myths of Christianity, not even as a child in Catholic school. I pretended to in order to a avoid censure, but it was never genuine. When I was dealing with escalating abuse in my household in my early teen years, I tried to believe in it in hopes that doing so would resolve the situation. It did not, and the more I learned about it in my desperate attempt to get close enough to merit assistance based on my efforts, the more reason to doubt it arrived, finally culminating in me deciding at 16 that I wanted nothing to do with it, following a cover to cover reading of the Bible. The character of the god described therein sounded nothing like a being I wished to be associated with. Selfish, narcissistic, misogynist and overflowing with whimsical cruelty, I felt no sense of love or comfort. Honestly what I felt is that what must be happening is that followers don’t actually hear what he says about himself, they just ignore the words. I couldn’t imagine any other way people would willingly bow down and lay their lives at the feet of a being that would just as soon murder their entire family, destroy their possessions and afflict them with grave illness simply because it made a bet with its supposed enemy that you wouldn’t renounce him even if he did that. If I was suffering because he was betting I would be fool enough to follow him even as he punishes my devotion senselessly, then I didn’t care if he was real, I still wished to have nothing to do with him.

In time, I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t real anyway. The main component in that is learning how to apply logic in my introductory philosophy classes at university. Once I learned for real that applying logic was something that had rules and could be done with consistently in the same way that geometric proofs had rules, I was out of the gate. I started to research the origins of the documents currently described as the bible, the myths that those myths are based on (such as the myth of Horus and a dozen other sons of god that died, conquered the underworld and rose) an even how symbols like the cross had much older origins. I learned of the many inconsistencies, only some of which I caught in my reading because it can be a tedious read. I started to get a real understanding of the effects in the real world of the misogyny of Paul and how the slave holders justified themselves with the slave-holding of the prophets and I was pissed. And I wanted to hear not another word about any of it.

By extension, I also extended my certainty of non-validity to all other belief systems. I would say currently that disproving one line of thought doesn’t mean that all other lines of thought are equally valid. I would describe by current viewpoint as being pagan. I have found a connection to the divinity of the earth and female spirit. And I can totally thank Mary Daly for that, because it’s her books that allowed me to open myself to the possibility of spirituality (which I define as recognizing your connection to the interconnected Whole that is the universe) that is not a patchwork of illogical dogma and misogynist confusion. Realizing that there is a possibility of having a truly woman-centered spirituality is what made me want to open myself to exploring the subject again, but from an entirely different perspective.

With that said, I am going to bring this back to one of my many problems with the Kitten Killer. He is a Christian. The reason that we have not had conflict about this before is that he chooses to avoid preaching, generally, and as I have little to say to him about the subject, and he has little to say about the subject, it rarely came up. What I didn’t really get until the series of incidents described in the last post is that just because he doesn’t bore me to death with talk about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t contextualize his worldview. And because it contextualizes his worldview, it would be wise for me not to forget what him viewing the world in that fashiln means for me if I elect to associate with him.

Earthly processions both generate and reflect the image of procession from and return to got the father…thus in this symbol system there is an eternal circular pattern/model for muted existence; separation from and return to the same immutable source.

Christians, according to to tradition, participate in the “supernatural” processions through the sacrament of baptism. That is they officially join the army of believers. Significantly, the word pagan is derived from the late Latin term paganus, meaning civilian, “because the Christians reckoned themselves soldiers of Christ.” The processions of Christians, then, are profoundly connected with military parades, mythically as well as historically…Thus the mythic procession toward god presupposes belief in possession by evil forces, release from which requires captivity by the church. Consequently the sacrament of initiation (baptism) explicitly contains a rite of exorcism, blatantly belying the fact that this is really a rite of entrance into the State of Possession.

This connection of the sins of Procession and Possession really rang a lot of bells. Primarily because I was being effected by both of them. Both his obsession with participating in the male myth of procession and his desire to possess me came crashing down at me when we hit the issue of procreation specifically. And neither of these confrontations were the least bit fun.

In the section “Flying Fetuses: Mythological\Technological Necrophilia,” Mary Daly speaks of Rovert Byrn, a man who chose to represent in court fetuses scheduled to be aborted. His attorney said that “the fetus mind well be described as an astronaut in a uterine spaceship.” She goes on to further describe the parallels, such as how although the astronaut is considered to be the captain of the ship, the truth of the matter is that the astronaut’s survival is dependent on the males outside the vessel. Without the vast network of male rocket scientists, computer programmers, architects, engineers, grant proposal writers, political lobbyists, corporate interests and politicians and so on, there would be no “captain,” and if this support were revoked even for a short amount of time after launch, he would be fucked. The idea that the astronaut is in control of the ship is desperately incomplete, yet that is the mythological image that we are given.

In the same way, the fetus is considered to be in control of the woman, and this illusion is maintained by a vast patriarchal army of doctors, fixers, priests, nigels, legislators and the like. Only by the combined power of these forces are fetuses able to control the lives of women.

Males do indeed identify with “unwanted fetal tissue,” for they sense their own condition in the role of controller, possessor, inhabitor of women. Draining female energy they feel “fetal.”

Following engaging in PIV with dear nigel, my period was late, I reasonably worried that I was pregnant. He told me that I was being unreasonable, since we used protection. NONE OF THAT SHIT IS FAIL-PROOF, READ THE PACKAGE! was my response. Pregnancy is the point of PIV, so it will never be the case that they will come up with anything entirely effective. It would defeat their purposes, since the purpose of having partially effective methods is so that they can convince prudent women who don’t wish for children not to reject them outright. But the fact that they are all fallible gives room for plausible deniability when repeatedly they are inflicted with unwanted pregnancies regardless. They shrug, say “whoopsie” and pretend that getting unlimited access to our time, energy and bodies was some sort of unfortunate accident.

I had always thought about the subject of having abortion in rather vague terms. PIV happening more than a few times a year is years back for me. My last nigel that I regularly scheduled for such an activity was in 2009. Since then it was something I simply did on occasion with the kitten killer when I was in town, as an aside. And I had never been failed by contraception, nor had strong reason to feel I had been. So I didn’t really think about having one myself, but I felt I probably would if the situation arose since I definitely don’t want children.

Well when faced with “situation arose” I knew it was in my best interest to decide how I was going to handle it, and do so before mentioning it to nigel, if I didn’t want his opinions muddying or confusing me. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a very lengthy deliberation at all. Within a day I was certain it was what I was going to do. So I went to discuss it with nigel, as I’ve heard that even if you’re sure what you want to do, it’s a formality you should engage with. Worth noting is that he and I had discussed what would happen in the event of an unwanted pregnancy. I had told him that I was going to have an abortion, full stop. I wasn’t actually that certain myself when we had that discussion, but I knew that it would be a lot easier for me in the long run to go with that as the established plan, and discuss the situation in that light than to go the other direction if I changed my mind and unexpectedly wanted to keep a child, because I’m aware that he wants children, so getting his hopes up about getting them from an accident would be an unhelpful thing to do.

So I tell him, and a few days after I tell him that I’m late, and it still hasn’t happened. We’re at a week late. So now he’s starting to believe me (since he either thought I was hallucinating/didn’t know when my own cycles would usually happen.) He is elated all “we’re gonna have such cute kids.” I am so angry at this reaction I’m almost beyond my powers of speech. What fucking part of “having an abortion” did you not hear? I am NOT having your goddamned bastards. So look somber plz. Fuck you.

I didn’t exactly say it in those words, but it’s true to the spirit of the conversation. And had the desired effect of being instantly sobering. Sorry astronaut, but mission control is out and your ship decided to eject you. Suck on that. And after getting pouty, he starts getting angry. Immediately I recognize the misogynist waves reverberating off of him, so really it got easier and easier to deal with once he was kind enough to clarify just how little I have to do with his little procreative fantasy.

…it is the condition of all males to be childless, and there is evidence that this condition is experienced as disturbing to those who are obsessed with reproduction of the male self…Males identify the immortal soul with biological offspring.

That is the first reason why men are so obsessed with forcing women to bear countless unwanted children; they cannot bear children themselves, and in identifying themselves with fetuses, they project their desire to propogate themselves in the propagation of fetuses. They see every last one of these fetuses as themselves, as being helpless before the fertility of women because lacking the ability to sustain lives without the assistance of women, they wither. I like that she goes a bit further than that, though. She goes on to say that womb envy is just a part of the picture, the other part of the picture is vampirism.

In order to survive, fetuses rely on the body of the mother. They are quite literally parasitic. In the same way, men are parasitic to women. They drain our time, attention, money, energy and creativity. They use that which we make for ourselves to nourish themselves. That vampirism is the big picture of why men are so attached to fetuses. Possession. They take possession of our bodies in order to turn us from independent beings into their own possessions. And these desires are intimately linked in the way that men are given access to women through forcible pregnancies. Because of fatherhood rights, in order to allow continued access of the child to the father, there is by extension continued access to the mother. All of those patriarchal religions blathering on and on about the importance of two parent homes, and demonizing mothers raising children on their own, they give themselves away if you have the right words for the feelings you get about what they’re doing. As men like Mitt Romney speak about the criminality and violence of children (cough men) raised by women, but mask it by instead calling it the importance of “family” for averting violence, as opposed to saying the importance of “unconditional access to women” as important for the aversion of reactionary violence from men, they tell the truth.

What the kitten killer wanted from me wasn’t just to carry on the procession of his soul, he wanted to stage a possession of me. when he told me not to worry because he has a job, he was very explicitly laying out his plans to trap me. Once he has laid this enormous expense on me, he’s created a situation where I must rely on him. Why? Because the Christian idealists in charge of government seek constantly to de-fund services for single parents–and by that I mean women, because the overwhelming majority of single parents are women. Why do these “family” organizations (as they consistently bill themselves) seek to make life more of a struggle for families that don’t include men? Because they seek to force women to take shelter with men. Christian mission control asserting itself in the form of someone who admitted he fantasizes about killing kittens telling me he’s fit to be a father is fascinating. Hearing him go into a rant about being still (years later) filled with rage about a former girlfriend of his having an abortion (for likely the exact same reasons I would have) was illuminating. He told me this woman had a miscarriage and that it was tragic. In fact the only tragedy is that once more his efforts to possess a woman were thwarted.

The analogy between the astronaut fetus, mission control patriarchy and the spaceship as the mother shows itself to be a false patriarchal projection when you get to the very last part: women are people and space ships are machines. Unlike that ship that the astronaut can pretend to be commanding, I am an animate object and I can force both that astronaut and mission control to admit they’re not driving SHIT.

Deadpan

Deadpan.

Lessons…learning them is tough

So I’m gong to start by saying remember the kitten-killer ex-nigel? Well I decided to apparently give myself amnesia and get involved with him. Why? Cause I got dumped by my girlfriend and I didn’t really feel like dealing with that. And he was being all nice and I thought “PIV-ing you used to be fun. I remember that. Let’s do that again, just for kicks and giggles.”

Then of course I remember both why I quit doing that and why I always turned him down when he asked for a “Relationship.” Because it’s a stupid fucking idea.

Immediately after aforementioned PIV I was consumed with paranoia that I was pregnant. Why? Probably because maybe I was, that’s what that activity is for and contraceptives are a total fucking joke. And I was out of the state that I currently live in and back in the “bible belt.” Which is “oh shit now” for: I can’t get a goddamned abortion unless I either take my ass back to where I’m from or go through some hardcore shit, like waiting periods, protestors, a definite fight about how to get that financed and who knows maybe a vaginal probe or something. And a note from the president. And a psychiatrist who says for real though I’m murdering both me and the parasite like HARD if they don’t do this. And a chest of faerie treasure. And whatever. I fucking HATE that state. And that clarified a whole lot of the why.

So I’m like crying because the crushing notion that I might be having kitten killer’s spawn is enough to reduce me to tears. For like two days. And he? Is overjoyed. Cause we’re having a BABY!!!! And hey, what am I so worried about, he’s got a job and I’m like two days late and maybe I don’t know when my period’s supposed to happen and it’s not like he’d try to ditch child support. And we can get married and be a family! I don’t know if he’s trying to make me barf and die or if he seriously things any of this ought to sound good to me, but really the nonstop crying ought to give a clue. But of course there’s always the not-unlikely possibility that it’s not a misunderstanding at all. And he understands clearly what I am feeling. And doesn’t give a SHIT because he gets what he wants out of it, which is trapping me.

Well I decided fuck that. I decided I’m going to take what cash I’ve got, greyhound back to the slightly less misogynist, but much better appointed city that I had nearly un-relocated from and get myself a fucking baby killer bumper sticker. And on the way my period started. WOO YEAH!

Oh and there are MORE WORDS about that pile of bullshit. First off, when I told him that that was what was happening and letting go of the fantasy that I would be dealing with that shit is imperative, he told me that is ex-Miss did that. And that he still hates her for it. He told me that ex-Miss had a miscarriage. Convenient timing for a rewrite. I guess that was some attempt to dissuade me. But dude fuck you, you’re gonna have to hate me because just like her, I find it imperative not to be stuck with your ass. As they say I’m not trying to buy a whole pig just to get a bit of sausage. And really that’s not that great. I think it managed to get over-valued because I hadn’t spent enough time with ladies. Because really, while a consuming diversion even that’s not all that and a bag of chips. I guess that explains why it had been nearly years before the relapse and I had spent that time not really giving a shit about its absence.

And in addition to that rather stressful guilt trip attempt, there is also an argument that we had. Well not really that as much as we both got so mad we just lapsed into silence and I booked tickets out of there on my phone and went to sleep and he played video games (because apparently I failed to notice that I was entangling myself with a literal child.) We had an argument about men’s violence. We had been talking about marriage (no I wasn’t considering it, but apparently he was trying to talk me into doing so but failing to point out any advantage it would have for me whatsoever.) He said that there’s no point in getting into one if you’re going to break it off, I said that nobody intends for it not to work, but if you’re brutally unhappy then rolling out makes more sense than dealing with endless drudgery because you promised you would. His response was that no matter how unhappy someone is, if they take the vows they should stay. And that he doesn’t believe in divorce. I was like “whut?” and said that idea implies that someone is your property, because if you didn’t feel you owned them then you wouldn’t feel entitled to try to force them to stay against their will. I followed that by saying the attitude that a woman is property is what leads to thousands of women, just in this country being killed ever year, because a woman is more likely to be killed by her Nigel upon leaving him than any other time.

He said that I “really wouldn’t like what he had to say about that” and kind of cackled. At this point I was rather fully livid, in fact I was so angry that I was speaking in measured, civil tones. When I’m seriously angry I cross the line into very quiet and serious speech. I asked him “what is it that he has to say?” Basically fucking dared him to complete that thought.

He said he doesn’t really give a shit about them. Which no shit, of course men don’t really give a shit about violence against women. If they did, then they wouldn’t perpetrate it.

I said that just because someone hurts his sorry ass fee fees and decides they’ve had enough of his bullshit doesn’t give him a right to do anything except fucking cry about it. And that it’s pathetic how boys go into little fits and rages of wounded pride and hurt feelings. That more than anything I think it’s worth laughing at anyone who failed to grow enough of a sense of adult responsibility for their actions and feelings to just get over shit when they don’t get what they want. And that any guy that attempts violence because of hurt feelings should face the death penalty because we really can’t afford to keep them in cages and feed them forever. And that any attempt to do some shit like that to me would result in a very grisly death because crimes of passion can go two ways and I’m very passionate about not being ended by some pathetic shit like that. And I laughed at him. Heartily and honestly. And left in the morning with a big grin on my face. After getting back that $20 he’s owed me forever. By the way, this nigel has never been my “boyfriend” because I think he’s mostly fucking useless, and always have. The only difference is I thought he was mostly useless but a suitable transition activity. Well so that’s over with.

I almost wish I had been pregnant so that I could have the abortion and mail him photos. With a note saying “nobody will ever ever ever have your fucking babies because you’re a useless child. You should start a scrapbook of these.”

A letter to the militantly apathetic

One thing that reliably irritates the fuck out of me is when lazy, complacent people that don’t really care about anything project their sorry ass attitudes and incompetence onto everyone else. Gotcha, you really think finding a new place to buy your shampoo is more important than not supporting people that give millions of dollars to make gay people second class citizens. You would rather quit your job to go birthing bastards for your asshole nigel so that you can have no financial security if he decides he’d rather PIV someone else? Do it. You think it’s more important to explode your heart eating hormone laden, overweight, pork raised on genetically modified corn than to go vegetarian and live a decade or so longer or pay an extra few dollars to eat dead pigs that got to run in a field and not spend its life living in its own shit, go right ahead. Really, if that floats your fucking boat, go right ahead and fucking do it. Do all that shit at the same time if you really want to.

But don’t talk shit to me if I decide not to do that shit. Don’t tell me I’m wasting my fucking time. Don’t tell me I’m CRAZY just because you’re too fucking complacent to take a stand. Don’t tell me my blog doesn’t matter. Don’t tell me there’s not a fucking cow that cares I’m a vegetarian. Don’t tell me that I’m just selling myself short opting out of PIV and don’t tell me I’m wasting my life just because I’m not cutting my life short to help the world overpopulate. I don’t want to hear it. Not just because it is annoying, invalidating and rude as fuck, but also because it is incorrect.

To quote Margaret Mead “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Stuff changes all the time. It changes for the better, it changes for the worse. It changes every second, minute, hour, and day. The cause of the aforementioned change is people making efforts. If the problem is corporations, then we solve that shit with money. Amoral entities whose only goals are the attainment of profit by their very definition care about whether people support them or not. So why the hell would someone say that people are wasting their time by making conscious decisions from whom they will purchase? That is a stupid thing to say that is additionally untrue. It would be nice if people would stop fucking saying that.

They say “men will never change, all they care about is getting what they want.” Well doesn’t that sentence pretty much explain itself. They care about getting what they want. So in the event they are not getting what they want, they will make efforts to change that. So why would it make no difference for women to alter the level of access to our bodies, minds, finances and destinites that men have? Why exactly would that be a silly decision to make on women’s parts? It wouldn’t. Nobody looking at the situation logically would say that it was a waste or even not the best possible action to take.
But someone who is projecting their own pathetic nature onto all of humanity probably would say that’s a waste. And who really cares what someone who has no idea how people work would wish to offer on the subject on how people work? I don’t.

In the event that you have made the choice to be apathetic on a subject, by all means, keep not giving a fuck about it. And if this subject you are making the choice to not care about is negatively effecting you, then by all means keep making the choice to be negatively effected by it and not do any of the many things within your power about it. That’s on you. But expect that if you are making an effort to stop me from doing something about it I will be immediately telling you to shut the fuck up. And without wasting any time in downplaying the ability that I have to alter the direction of my life or those around me.

Reading Gyn/ecology

I am currently reading Mary Daly’s “Gyn/ecology.” I’ll have something to say about it after I’ve finished more book. Between reading this, getting some job training to avoid being perennially financially insolvent, and making some quite permanent measures to banish the ex-nigel from the “They are not shelter dogs” post, and get him to stop calling me, facebooking me, messaging me, texting me, showing up at my house, calling my girlfriend, and otherwise irritating the everlasting fuck out of me I’ve been a bit preoccupied. At least I’ve not been preoccupied without some radfem company, if only in absentia in the form of books. I’ve blocked his text messages, blocked him on facebook, had my awesome and startlingly patient girlfriend block him on facebook and send his calls (how did this asshole get her phone number anyway?) to voicemail, had his phone calls go straight to voicemail, and if he shows up at my house again, then he may tangle with my dog until the police arrive. Because fuck him.

And people wonder why so many radical feminists are lesbians…

 

Adventures in Feminism and Finding Joy

I have been thinking and thinking and thinking about what I wanted to post on next. After a lot of thought, I decided what my world could do with was some positivity on the feminist front. Learning about the horrors of the patriarchy and cataloging the latest incarnation of the never-ending misogyny that men are up to is vital, but I think on the flip side, it’s important to try to have something to offer as an alternative to the horrors of patriarchy. Yes, it is everywhere, but the great part of radical feminism is we get to not just carve it out of ourselves, but also have the opportunity to build in ourselves and our lives something biophilic and woman-centered that feels good.

In thinking about how I’ve been feeling as I’ve been doing the hard work of getting out of my depression to get back to living my life it’s led me to feel like I want to bring some of what I’ve found that’s brought me so much happiness into my work as a feminist. Knowing that I wanted to start a series about getting outside the flushing swirl of patriarchal horrors and knowing what it is that I could say, however, are two different things, however. I’ve been stewing over exactly how I wanted to kick this off for a few weeks now, hence the long silence.

I know step one to reducing the impact of patriarchy in a woman’s life is recognizing that it’s out there, and what did that for me was fun feminism. Step two, was realizing that it’s in my lifestyle choices too, and that is what took me over the line to radical feminism. Step three was joining a community of radical feminist women to help get the word out, and that step was creating my blog and starting to write for it.

The real doozy for me was the next step, thinking about what this meant for my life, and putting what I was learning into practice. I reconsidered my life, my relationships, what I want to do for a living and what sort of part I want patriarchal overtones to take on my life. After giving it quite a bit of thought, I came to the conclusion that what I need to do for myself is take myself off the heterosexual dating hamster wheel. Neither PIV nor dating were bringing me anything but strife, so I thought about why I was doing either of these things. The answer for me was that I wanted to be in a stable, long-term partnership with someone. When I thought about what that means with a man in a patriarchy, that led me to admit what I already sort of knew, that it was marriage, and that piece of patriarchal cattle trade was not a subject that inspired me to joy. So if I don’t want to get where this train is going, what I need to do is get off of it, so I decided that I was going to officially take relationships with men off of my list of things that I was doing (and declared that in a post, since this one thing this blog is about is sharing my journey as a feminist and that was a big part.) . This decision brought me an entirely unexpected amount of joy and clarity. So much so, in fact, that I can say with no exaggeration that my chronic depression WAS just a symptom of feeling trapped in patriarchal nonsense. Not that I really believed that I was suffering from a tragic lack of poorly regulated pharmaceuticals with abysmal success rates in my bloodstream anyway.

The next logical step for me seems like it would be to take this big bundle of contentment and spread it around, thus the decision to start talking about happiness. I like having my blog not really be about men, because I like the way that creates a space where the talk is about women. FCM’s “Trigger Warning” post about how learning about the horrors of the patriarchy is horrible that sort of asks the questions “how much of this horror do we need to know about?” got me thinking. In the comments it was said several times that there needs to be a balance. Some sort of imaginary limit on how much of this you can take in isn’t really an executable balance. That still leaves the question of how much is too much and how little can you take in before you cross the line into denial. I think a possible solution to that conundrum is to propose that what goes on the other side of the scale be joy.

There are wonderful things that feminists are making happen in the world every day both in big ways that you can hear about in papers and in little ways that you can only hear about in diaries. Communities of women are forming, women are waking up to feminist consciousness and women are pushing back. Women are loving and supporting each other and finding joy outside the false constructs of dishonest phallic lust. This world that we dream of as feminists is becoming real, and the evidence of that is apparent not just in the outside world but in the changes that take place within us, which are damn real.

I was reading through Pure Lust (which due to being busy I am about a chapter away from completing) and sure enough, Mary Daly said something that was exactly what I was looking for. The answer to the question “how do we live our lives knowing these terrible truths?” is there, in the last few chapters, where she talks about centering. The patriarchal world fragments us and rips us into distracted bits that can’t see the big picture of ourselves or of the world we live in. Now that we have the ability to see the world for what it is, there comes the task of seeing ourselves for what we are. We are not broken like the patriarchs insist on saying we are. If we were broken, damaged and fragile like they said we were, then we wouldn’t have the courage to step out into the truth as we do on a regular basis, much less the truth to put ourselves out there telling this truth. Sure the necrophiliac violence inflicted on us physically and psychologically has left some scars, but scars just mean we’ve done battle and healed enough to keep living; injuries that kill never leave scars, because if your body can’t heal it then it won’t scar, you’ll just die.

Mary Daly quotes an author who describes cancer as an illness characterized by the failure of the affected cells to communicate with other cells. This lack of communication causes them to be in disharmony, and this disharmony is why cancer cells grow incorrectly the way that they do. I think that is much like the horizontal violence that happens among women. What we are doing here as radical feminists is we are reminding women that we all share a common reality. Just like the holographic model of the universe says that one part reflects the whole, in that way our voices repeating, repeating and repeating the reality of womanhood doesn’t just change us, but it changes the women that we encounter. It changes our friends, it changes our families and changes everyone who comes to our sites and reads our words. All it takes to upset the body’s balance is a few cells that log off of the body’s rhythms to make a cancerous situation, and in the same way all it takes is a few women that log off the patriarchy’s program to shake their shit up; that goes both ways.

As long as we don’t stop reminding ourselves and each other that we are creating a way for women to live without these horrors being their daily realities, I don’t think the question of “how much can we know the horrors of patriarchy without breaking” is as dire of a question. When taken with the knowledge that the world is being turned away from a rule of degradation and destruction, the knowledge that it is still occurring has some context. There are many kinds of truth to tell, and while the truth of how we as women are being degraded, invaded and eradicated is important to tell, the truth that we have not been crushed by this and we are making strides needs to be told as well. If all we were doing is being sad together then the MRAS wouldn’t be so scared that their testerical panic landed them on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate group list as domestic terrorists.

The reason that nobody can kill radical feminism off, no matter how much they call us crazy, hazy, man-hating harpies, no matter how much they don’t print our books, no matter how much they decry our words, no matter how little recognition and respect is given to women-centered feminism, is that it just rings true to women. When given the chance to let down our defenses, put our darling nigels at a thought-bubble-sized distance and really work the logic of what radical feminism has to say about the universality of the lived experience of being a woman and what living with that in mind can do for us as women, it’s hard to dismiss it. The truth knocks on that locked up bit of knowledge in us all and we feel something. All women have this in them, and while many have their well-being too entrenched in patriarchal systems to allow themselves to examine that, not all women are unable to go there with themselves. We can’t now who can or who can’t without presenting it and letting the chips fall internally where they may. I am seeing that more and more women having those chips fall in a way that leads them here. And that makes me happy.

Heterosexual Dating and Pascal’s Wager

You know what, y’all? I have had a revelation. I don’t want to be with a man. Any more of them. It’s not some sort of “I just figured out I’m a lesbian, who knew?! All this time I’ve been living in my body and interacting with people, and wouldn’t you know I just figured out when I like someone” sort of thing, though. I mean I am attracted to men sexually, but then again, I’ve never been exclusively attracted to men anyway. I occasionally even find them tolerant company. But the truth of the matter is, it’s one of my worst nightmares being stuck with one. Because everything I know about what being stuck with a man entails is that at best it’s not that bad and at worse, well you know, he fucking ends you when you fry his eggs wrong one day.

So to clarify, still a bisexual, so seriously, do not leave comments saying how shit bisexuals are or how glad you are that I figured out I’m a lesbian on my page. I am just a bisexual lady who has decided I’d rather date women. I never quite made the logical leap to ask myself if there is any clear reason I date them when I don’t like them that much, and don’t have the misfortune of being exclusively attracted to them, or, as yet, tied to any man on a permanent basis in any way. It was when I was thinking about what a best-case scenario with one would entail that a light bulb kind of went off in my head and I was like “Chatonne, why would you want that anyway? That doesn’t sound that great, really.”

All of this thinking about how a “good” straight relationship could/would even go made me start thinking about Pascal’s wager. Admittedly, that popped into my head because the topic was stressing me out and making me think a lot about hell. This wager basically posits that you should believe in God because if believe in Him and you’re right, you go to heaven. If you believe in Him and you’re wrong, you’ll live a decent life and be a benefit to society. If you don’t believe in him and you’re right, you get nothing for it. If you don’t believe in him and you’re wrong, you will go to hell. The basic problem with this logic, is that it only works out if there are only two options for you, believing and not believing, and there are only two options for the truth of the universe, God is, or God isn’t. This is not the case, because really, there are countless religions, and many consider the truth of their worldviews to be mutually exclusive. That means for you, faith is not an on and off switch. This also discounts the different possibilities for the universe. There isn’t just God or not God, there is god, or goddess, Krishna or Odin, god and goddess, Demeter and Isis, really any combination of gods and goddesses could be or not be. This also doesn’t work out because it’s not really hell, heaven, or neither, it’s hell, heaven, Sheol, Valhalla, Tartarus, nirvana, Hades, reincarnation, vast nothingness, becoming an angel, being reborn as a star, or any number of things.

I thought about how, in a way, relationships are like that two. It’s not man or loneliness. They say that all the time, but it’s not true. There are also communities of friends, women, blissful solitude, polyfidelity, or any countless numbers of other possibilities of ways to live and be happy. That got me to thinking, okay, now that I’ve established that this bet I’ve been asked to make is not rigged nearly as effectively as they say it is, and there are more doors I can pick than the two they said, let’s think about what’s really behind that door. Now that we’ve decided that we don’t have to accept it’s just heaven where you serve or hell where you burn, let’s actually think about how I really feel about the supposed prize I am supposed to be betting and scrambling and hoping for. And I realized that even if everything goes the way I’ve been trained to hope it does, that still isn’t something I really want. I guess the best way to put it, is eternally bowing, scraping, and singing praises sounds as torturous to me as being lit constantly aflame. So why not roll the dice and see what’s behind another door?

I had gotten to where I was willing to kind of stake it out and try to find someone that is tolerable, or maybe find someone sweet, dumb and malleable enough that I could coax them into being tolerable. And then I took a bit more of a logical journey and was like okay, you have found a man you can get along with, where does your relationship go from there, assuming all goes well? Well I thought about how relationships with men always go, and the answer to that question is “eww gross! Why the fuck would I want to do that?!” You “win” a relationship, you get stuck with babies, endless PIV and marriage, which ties all of your legal statuses and assets to him permanently. You “lose” a relationship, and there are endless ways you can be totally fucked. You get this frustrating lose-lose situation, for example, with sex.

Sex with them always must include PIV, and you’re fucked either way you turn that. If you have good sex with them, then you have more of it and you multiply your pregnancy and std risk, that sucks. If you have bad sex with them, you get to fake lots of orgasms, deal with the intense discomfort of having someone fucking you badly, and get to a point that you dread whenever they come near you with that thing which certainly produces psychological discomfort. You also are still running the same pregnancy and STD risks you would be if you actually enjoyed it. If you have no sex with them then you shoot up your rape risk in the event they get pissed with you and decide to just entirely disregard your non-consent. You are also constantly under fire as a result of your reduced relationship security. It’s like Pascal’s wager, sort of. Lose, lose, lose!

I know exactly what is expected of me when it comes to being in a relationship with a man. Not only do I have access to mass media, I’ve also met hundreds of other people in the real world; I know what’s expected. You are expected to get in a relationship where you start out with dating. What dating is, is you go on banal amusements together. Movies, dinner, dancing, that sort of thing. If you’re doing this properly, the man will pay for aforementioned banal amusements. How you will play your part, is you will get all dolled up in your lady drag, you pretend he’s not boring you shitless, and you will let him PIV you. He pays, you look pretty and let him fuck you. If a man has been taught proper manner, he will be quite nice to you during these amusements. He will open your doors, pull out your chairs, compliment your drag, and occasionally drag his eye line up from your breasts so that he can pretend to be interested in your face. Really he should be able to manage to pretend to be interested in your face after you’ve gone and put so much bright sparkly stuff on it, from earrings to eyeshadow and lip gloss. But both of you know what’s going on, he’s performing the perfunctory acts so that he can get your panties off and you can move from phase one of dating, to phase two.

So once you’ve completed phase one, with the banal amusements, you enter phase two. Phase two is basically the transition stage. During phase two, you can occasionally relax your drag efforts, and he will accordingly relax his chivalrous politeness efforts. Basically, you’re laying the groundwork for stage three in which your obligations to the man become permanent. During this stage you meet parents, have a series of “the talks” where monogamy is established and plans for ongoing commitments are established and you start ironing out your expectations from one another. Towards the end of this stage, couples tend to start spending increasing amounts of time indoors, which is quite a contrast to the way that stage one is filled with little outings. This time spent indoors tends to lead rather predictably to a feeling you should head to stage three.

Stage three is where a woman’s obligation to serve a man becomes permanent. The events that lead to stage three can happen in several different sequences, and really it only takes one or two of these events in order to prompt a shift to stage three. To get from stage two to stage three a couple can either move in together, get engaged, or have the better half find herself pregnant. Either of these three things tend to lead to marriage, or a not-legally-recognized facsimile thereof. And what pray tell is marriage? Basically hell, if you happen to be a woman. It’s a patriarchal organization designed specifically to ensure a man a life-long servant. Aforementioned servant will basically be expected to do whatever the man requires of her, the list of duties is infamously mutable. A sample list of job titles that would cover the aforementioned duties is laundress, on-call prostitute, chef, nanny, personal assistant, maid, personal trainer, therapist, nurse, and secretary.

Honestly, that sounds like that sucks; I don’t want to do that. I would like to spend my life with someone, but I can’t imagine wishing to spend my life with someone that would expect me to do all of that for less than free, as I would still probably need to bring a second income into the home, thus creating a situation where I am paying at least half of my income to him and his upkeep for the privilege of providing his upkeep. That sucks, right? And from knowing other women, reading statistics and studies and just watching television and movies it’s clear to me that no matter how diligently I do all of this, I still can’t be expected to be rewarded for all of this with gratitude, consideration, affection (and NO, the obligatory PIV is not by any definition affection) or even emotional support and decent conversation. So you basically date in purgatory, and marry in hell. You know what, I’ve seen what that set of beliefs has to offer me, and I think I’ll take my chances with another faith. I know, I know, they say I’ll burn in hell. But really, their “heaven” sounds pretty shit anyway, right?