29 June 2005 - 1:13pm
More on conservative macho
Jesse takes on Malkin and her fear of femininity:
Your typical conservative complaint about sensitivity is that it's an inherently feminine quality, and therefore threatens to emotionally neuter men. Chicks are already sensitive and hate conflict, so it's up to enlightened conservative women to fight tooth and nail to keep their men from ever having to not think with their dick first.
Where this femiphobia comes from, I don't know. But their rhetoric is laden with it. It's like they actually bow to the bully ethos. The bigger prick a guy is, the better he is. (I use "prick" advisedly.)
Jesse pokes at the hypocrisy of Malkin and the pseudo-Christian dominionists of the right:
Rather than go on with Malkin's insipid article as is, which mainly seems to involve putting scare quotes around things and convincing you that your kid needs to get suspended for a fight or four lest they go to al-Qaeda bathhouses, let's instead deal with the idea of sensitivity as feminization.
Personally, I don't see the benefit in Malkin undercutting her own credibility as a tough-as-nails nutcase by trying to prove that even the most incidental contact with anything even remotely "feminine" is tantamount to sedition. To be completely honest, if we're a "Christian nation" and pacifism will destroy is, it's time to start filling our spiritual coffers with some angry secularism. All this stuff that Malkin finds virtually vomit-worthy? I learned it when it was called Christianity. If she's a part of the anti-Christian persecution brigade, hating the womanly/Christly arts of tolerance and patience, then I suggest she grab the nearest "Happy Holidays" paraphenelia and start burning Bibles with all due haste. She's waaaaaaaay behind.
Indeed. I keep wondering Who would Jesus bomb? and Would Jesus bless the money changers today? and Was Jesus a "girly man" for turning the other cheek?
To me, it seems like conservative femiphobia is tied closely with rage. For being in charge of the government, for example, conservative politicians sure seem to rage a lot. Perhaps these sore winners simply don't know how to lead, and can only view life as a string of outrages and oppressions. Of course they need to be macho! Because to do anything else would mean giving into despair that they don't control everything and everyone.
At least that's how it seems. More on this later.
media girl also blogs at other places.
Similar entries
store
Buy stuff here.
Comments
and sexual repression that fuels the femiphobia. These people can't admit that there's nothing more powerful than {word for cat*}. They want to hide it, denigrate it, control it with legislation and violence, establish male ownership of it, prove to the world they aren't controlled by it, make sure they don't become it, even though they're really obsessed with a return to it. It's such a pathetic pathology.
Also, keep in mind that sexual repression is necessary to whip people into a murderous, patriotic frenzy. You can't get people to torture and oppress others if they've just had an orgasm. Doesn't work if they're high or have ever tripped, either. That's why the manic obsession with drugs. Endorphins are the enemy - no pleasure, ever!
*not sure where MG stands on using the "P" word. I consider it powerful myself, but I know many don't share my sentiment.
Morgaine-ism© #8
"A Woman's Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy is Sacred and Absolute."
...on an academic blog site, and was roundly chastised for saying it. There were men who wanted to argue that, while they did not fear homosexuality, they just thought it was wrong. Why? They couldn't say. Instead they attacked me for using the word homophobia. I was accused of trying to shut down the conversation by using a loaded word.
I felt they just were mentally and emotionally unable to face their own phobias.
I think a sense of ownership has a lot to do with policies that range from chauvinistic to misogynistic. Ownership of breeding rights, mostly, but also ownership of some fantasy of purity. This is why a man can fuck 100 girls to high regard, while a woman sleeps once with a guy, or the wrong guy, and is considered a slut or worse. Reality forces most men to acknowledge that they cannot always fuck virgins, but they certainly seem to hold that in high regard.
Which then gets back to the fragile male ego, and the fear that they might not measure up to other guys.
Pathology? I'd say so, especially since I don't see it in all men, just some. But those who do suffer from this are really quite dangerous, if you ask me. How to change this? I'd say one step is to cultivate a culture where men's esteem is not measured by the woman (women?) they're fucking. But in this fetishized culture, I wonder if that's possible.
but since we have seen human cultures that didn't have patriarchal values, it is within the realm of possibility. Again, it all goes back to whether we're people or property. If women are a thing to be used, bought, sold, etc. then men can be seen as macho for raping, owning/marrying, controlling, enslaving etc. one or more of them. If women are people -- and we ARE-- then such violations or manipulations become pathetic.
The problem is deeply endemic in our culture, from the nature of sports to the fairy tales we grow up with and the movies we watch. It is possible, though.
I've had that same fight that you had on the academic blog site. It's unbelievable that well-educated and even otherwise enlightened people can be so unaware of their own hatred. I've seen it in women as well. Sex is a normal function. Homosexuality occurs in all creatures that produce sexually, so there is nothing "unnatural" about it. To feel as if there is something "wrong" about it is pathology.
From there, it goes to preference. One is either aroused by someone or something or s/he is not. The normal responses are either attraction or indifference. It is not "normal" to feel disgust about normal adult sex practices. It is not normal for women to be squeamish about female genitalia, nor is it normal for people to be disgusted by the idea of anal sex. Uninterested, yes, but not disgusted.
You are right about these people being dangerous. In one case, I was talking to a woman about bisexuality -- I prefer the term "pansexuality" -- and tried to explain to her that her attitudes had nothing to do with sexual preference because she made the statement that she could NEVER have anything to do with the lower half of a woman's body. When I said that a healthy person might not desire that, but wouldn't be disgusted by it, she was furious. She couldn't handle that fact that she was homophobic, partially because this particular woman was into slash and gay male sex.
The men you are referring to are the same way. What's particularly dangerous is the fact that these people consider themselves progressive. It's one thing to know what your biases and prejudices are and to work on losing them. To ignore their very existence means that you are making decisions about public behavior, politics, etc. from a bigoted perspective. When that happens, suddenly it's ok to tell gays to put their concerns on the back burner, or women to lighten up about Choice, until the important shit is taken care of.
The really important shit is that if one of us is not equal, none of us is equal. In a Democracy, we are only as free or as strong as the least among us.
Morgaine-ism© #8
"A Woman's Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy is Sacred and Absolute."