Subdued Twisty accepts inferior status

Many moons ago I wrote some posts criticising a very radical feminist who used the pen name Twisty. She really was out there. In one of her posts she suggested that the non-consent of women should be assumed in law, so that a woman at any time could change her mind about a sexual encounter and accuse her male partner of rape. She was forthright and uncompromising in her views.

Out of curiosity, for the first time in years, I revisited her site. I found a very subdued Twisty, uncertain and ready to admit fault. Why the change?

It seems that the sectional politics on the left is beginning to eat up white feminists. White feminists are supposed now to be focused on their own privilege as whites, rather than on their oppression as women. They are being attacked from the left as much as they are from the right. And, as much as they dislike it, that's the name of the game now. They just have to suck it up.

Here's an excerpt from one of Twisty's recent posts. It starts off crankily complaining about sectional politics on the left:

After a decade of web-based patriarchy blaming, if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this: it is pretty inadvisable to make arguments, oppressionally speaking, that do not take into account the viewpoints of every possible marginalized group, particularly those groups of which one is not personally a member and the specialized interests of which one therefore has no direct knowledge. Of.

Of course there’s no way around that, so welcome to the personal attacks, rushes to judgment, tone-policing, out-of-context misquotations, sanctimonious castigations, and full-on misconstrutions of Internet Feminism. They will give you fits.
The phenomenon to which I allude ... is attributable not to the usual anti-feminist dudebros, but to the Mean Girls of Feminism Eating Their Own

...It all starts with the hurt feelings. If you are, as I am, merely a human internet feminist, rather than an omniscient deity of infinite scope and virtue, chances are the nuances and niceties of the Wide, Wild World of Oppression occasionally escape you, and from time to time you unwittingly commit, out of either naiveté or sloppiness, a privilege-based stupidity foul. Hell, I’m probably doing it right now! As I mentioned, failure to grasp every possible sociological subtlety from the point of view of every imaginable oppressed party can — and will — result in dispiriting beatdowns. Your intent is irrelevant. Such is internet feminism culture in its current form.

And what a curious form it is. With its demands that members conform to strict regulations, subject themselves to incessant policing, and submit to discipline and humiliation, much of internet feminism culture looks a lot like — lard helpis — BDSM ...Spawned by oppression culture, “feminist infighting” is, at its best, justifiable anger run slightly amok. At its worst it’s a sadistic mob indulging in an abuse fetish, slaking the bloodlust of the hive.

Many a spinster aunt finds that this hive stuff can paralyze the lobe, ravage the viscera, or chunk’er into a feminism-funk. For example, its prevalence is why — for the sake of my own delicate stomach lining — I keep disappearing on hiatus. It’s fairly depressing when your own tribe pillories you for unintended privilege infractions, or worse, when they inform you you’re not even in the tribe. In many respects it’s even worse than the “I hope you die in a rape fire” dude-threats. There’s a sense of betrayal and violation engendered by these smackdowns, and it takes a toll. You make some dumbass privilegey gaffe and suddenly you’re Public FemEnemy No. 1; women you had hoped were united with you against patriarchal tyranny turn out to have their own problems (indeed, you are one of those problems), and are now gnawing on your rotting carcass.

If it were me, I'd scramble out of such a gruesome politics as quickly as I could. But Twisty treats the whole thing like a kind of Stalinist show trial where the done thing is to plead guilt no matter what. She goes on to describe herself as a "writer of privilege" who deserves to be picked up on her obliviousness:

... it’s in everybody’s interest to use their hurt feelings as a privilege clue and quit being part of the problem. Writers of privilege who [care] about enbiggening their worldview (those who don’t ... should not be considered feminists) have a responsibility to examine with an open mind criticism — even sarcastic criticism — dispensed by the differently-privileged. Yet even among those who assiduously self-monitor, obliviousness will occur, so a good old-fashioned privilege-check can definitely be all to the good.

The comments (273 of them last time I checked) are an anguished mixture of "the call out culture sucks" to "I must unquestioningly do everything that those claiming lived experienced of oppression say I should do" to "this is the price we must pay to build alliances". And it's the last point that is the most insightful. There are white women who think they can get stuff from white men by making an alliance with other groups hostile to white men. Those other groups know that white women need them and are willing to extract a heavy price for their support, i.e. making white women kowtow to them on the basis of their relative positions within the leftist hierarchy of oppression.

Twisty has chosen to kowtow. So much for the idea of the feisty, proud, independent feminist woman. There is no such woman, only a grasping materialist willing to prostrate herself for some of the trinkets in life.