If you deconstruct gender, you aren't a lady

I have a hard time respecting feminism. Not because its underpinnings are in any way unsound or fallacious, but because like any idea grounded in the higher realms of sociological or philosophical thought by the time it trickles down to the laiety it is nothing more than a loose conglomeration of slogans having less to do with its ideological corpus and more with the same unsavory forces which have always governed the intellectual drip-pan. In this case it has become little more than a mating evaluation with little other power.

I assume much about feminism's intent and basis, with good reason. If feminism indeed originated in the spirit of the snake-necked diva claiming her right to womynly power because her boyfriend just raised her allowance to stop her withholding sex, then the whole thing is bankrupt, and I renounce all involvement with the word and proudly instantiate myself as a born again chauvinist.

In the first place feminism as it is commonly encountered is nothing more than the last in a long line of arbitrary criteria applied by women to men in order to ascertain how pliable and inoffensive they are. Most of the criteria which are now decried as trappings of the patriarchy originated in just this way: social expectations of gender interactions which place women in a dominant or unassailable position, i.e. the right of a woman to be supported by her husband, "chivalry," the wearing of veils (are we really to believe the gender responsible for designing Bloodrayne's outfit came up with that practice all on their own? Men left to their own devices will NOT restrict their access to female sexuality). What these things have in common is that to contest them constitutes a failure on the part of any man who does so, and thus a legitimate cause to deny him sex. The only function of these institutions is to allow their male participants to demonstrate that they are docile and socially compliant.

Feminism practiced thusly permanently establishes the guilt of all (mostly heterosexual) men, living or dead, for the entirety of woe, oppression, and general disenfranchisement of women throughout all time. According to this capacity of feminism men are saddled with a permanent discursive onus. This then follows the pattern of the dominant, unassailable female against the male who is placed in a morally inferior position, and who is thus eternally "wrong."

Evidence of this abounds. Feminism is no longer an ideological technique or school of thought but an ideal to be striven towards, much as chivalry, modesty, piety, or chastity was. Women do not talk about whether or not they are feminist (rarely will any woman who does not grossly misinterpret the term declare she is "not a feminist") but about whether or not they are a "bad feminist." A woman who is perceived to grant concessions to the patriarchy is a "bad feminist." That is a woman who cooks, cleans, and does anything during sex other than close her eyes and pretend her lover is Janis Joplin. A man who expects a woman to do any of these things can forget about every obtaining a female mate, because to transgress against feminism would be as egregious as men in bygone eras expecting their veiled wives to show their hair, to not pull a woman's chair out, or to expect her to get a job, to pay her share of the bills.

The salient point of this is that feminism is something expected of all educated citizens. But because it is a social expectation, yet another criteria used for the evaluation of a mate, it lacks any power as a social idea. Most men a woman speaks to will declare themselves "feminist" or at least in sympathy with feminist ideals. At the very least they will proffer comments about how much more difficult it is to be a woman.

Let me let you ladies in on a little secret: men never speak about feminism when YOU ARE NOT AROUND. I have never spoken with another man in depth about feminist theory, not have I sincerely evaluated the position in which men and women find themselves from the perspective of gender. As feminism is practiced in the lay discourse, NO MAN is a feminist in private. Men make these pretensions for the same reason they consented to the other, now reviled practices: so you will fuck them. Those guys in "this is what a feminist looks like" shirts know what they are doing. Those shirts might as well say "I'll let you win any argument we have, now suck my cock!"

When a practice becomes an evaluative, it falls into the ideological stagnation I a few paragraphs up. When I made the caveat that I assume much about feminism's basis, I was NOT talking about the alogical guilt machine I described. I mean that I assume feminism aspires to something higher. Rather the exact opposite.

"Pop" feminism, the feminism which asserts woman as "right" and man as "wrong" throughout the entirety of social discourse, is NOT feminism. Rather it is simply a kind of intellectual chivalry. Men are supposed to defer to women: to "empower" them, to continually acknowledge their superiority of perception and judgment as a perceived "payback" for centuries of mistreatment and neglect. When a man agrees with you that Freud was a chauvinist pig, he is mentally holding the door for you.

Coming back to the title of this entry, feminism is NOT about female empowerment. Feminism is about the deconstruction of gender roles into forms which do not deny ANY person the right to whatever identity they choose, regardless of gender. The flip side of this is that if no rights are restricted, no rights are accorded. Which means the position of dominance which a woman is placed by pop feminism and similar "chivalric" practices must be relinquished in order to establish equality.

What this means in the language of the laiety is you cannot be a lady. You cannot expect men to pay for dinner, you cannot expect men to hold the door for you, and you cannot expect men to treat you with any more courtesy, dignity or respect than they would show to each other. You cannot engage in worship of your uterus as "the giver of life," you cannot gender violence (for you to hit a man is every bit as inappropriate as him hitting you: no more 'V-day.' The argument that women are physically less powerful is both fallacious in many cases, and a sexist generalization. The disparity in physical power between two individuals should be based on that power, not on their gender).

This is to say, you CAN do all these things. However when you do these things you are less than a "bad feminist," you are an active counterfeminist. A woman who expects pop-feminist-brand sympathy from men is a proud and enthusiastic subject of the patriarchy, and deserves the corollary subjugation based entirely on the fact that she encourages it vigorously.