Sunday, February 21, 2016

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.

14 comments:

  1. Sorry, I know this isn't really related but I thought you might find this interesting (and sad), "Meet the United Church minister who came out as an atheist"

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    1. Thanks for the link. I don't really even understand her theology. She says she is an atheist in the sense of being a non-theist, but when you look at the revised prayers then the very notion of God or of the divine has been erased in favour of references to our own personal emotional states. It is, at best, an attempt to sacralise our own feelings, in reference to nothing else outside of ourselves. The divine doesn't exist as a real entity, but our feelings are sacred, seems to be the message.

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    2. I'd be more surprised if a United Church minister came out as a Christian!

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    3. "The divine doesn't exist as a real entity, but our feelings are sacred, seems to be the message."

      That pretty much sums up modern feminised Christianity.

      That's why female ministers are a very bad idea. I don't believe any of them are true Christians.

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  2. So the question then is, what can we offer these womyn as an olive branch and as a lead-in, to to bring them to this side of the precipice? We know that the left-right divide no longer cuts the cheese. We must be wise and gather those useful idiots for our own purpose. Mwahahaha.

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    1. Paul, I don't think the Twistys are ever going to come on side. But I do think there's a chance that some middle-class white women are going to see feminism as less appealing, now that it is stuck in the quagmire of a rainbow coalition where white women are treated as third class citizens.

      Honestly, though, I don't think that what you might call the "alternative right" is really ready to offer such women a different home. The alt right is still going through a process of reconfiguring attitudes toward women. It is quite rightly dropping the nineteenth century view that women are naturally virtuous creatures whose influence purifies men. But the "red pill" moment will have to progress to something more positive before the alt right becomes a beacon for disaffected women who reject the self-abasement required from the left.

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    2. "So the question then is, what can we offer these womyn as an olive branch and as a lead-in, to to bring them to this side of the precipice?"

      It does seem like this could be an opportunity to exploit divisions within what Steve Sailer calls the Coalition of the Fringes. But of all the groups that make up that coalition feminists are the craziest. There may be moderate feminists. If there are I've never encountered one.

      Even women who do not identify as feminists are hopelessly infected by the feminist craziness. You think they're sensible and rational and then suddenly the emotional rush kicks in and they're talking as much lunacy as the hardcore sisterhood.

      Exploiting the splits within the Coalition of the Fringes is a great idea but it's going to be very difficult to do.

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  3. What a revolting culture, so removed from both reason and the human heart! They would make even fanatical Bolsheviks blush. How do such people make it through their day? It's sad and sickening.

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  4. Some other things I'd love to hear your opinion on:
    You must know a thing or two about male teachers
    Manny Pacquiao
    as an aside, I remember you wanting to post more positive stories. I think Manny falls into that category.

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    1. Rob,
      I disagree about Manny Pacquiao. He is wrong to frame things in a way that denies the humanity of homosexuals. The crux of the matter lies elsewhere, in the ordering of our impulses.

      As for male teachers, I don't think the article goes far enough. At the moment, fathers are accepting an arrangement in which they go out to work and leave their children to be socialised by mostly left-wing women. These women are often highly competent in a technical sense, but the socialisation is malign.

      It should be one of the highest priorities of a society to arrange things so that boys from about Year 5 are brought up in a more elevated masculine environment. That means establishing boys only middle and senior schools, a mostly male teaching staff, with the men selected for character and intelligence, rather than self-selecting into the profession.

      This ought especially to be true of the elite schools responsible for educating the future leaders of society.

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  5. "What I did wrong was just comparing the people to animals, but you know what I am telling is the truth,"
    It appears to me that he more or less apologises for dehumanising queer people, but still refuses to back down from his opposition to the lifestyle or marriage 'debate'.
    Considering the millions he will lose and the risk of becoming an international pariah, I still think his bravery is admirable.

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    1. He was humble enough to admit fault, but still courageous in sticking to principle. That is admirable.

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  6. Now that we're well and truly into the era of Show Trials and Purges I can't help being rather pleased that the feminists are the first to be purged.

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  7. Manny Pacquiao is spatially gifted and highly intelligent, in an elemental way. He doesn't need to be an intellectual giant to make good sense. His instincts are obviously sharp.
    He was right to apologize since he couldn't full explain himself.
    He innocently contradicts himself rhetorically, while confidently making his fundamental point.
    Homosexualist claim that isolated same-sex-animal acts indicate homosexuality, even "orientation". Some actually say "gay", a civil rights advocacy! Cows in heat "bulling" each other in the field aren't engaged in lesbian sex. Animals display mindless, chemically driven instincts. What same-sexed animals are consciously seeking mutual orgasm? Sex obsessed research scientist claim they stimulate female monkeys to orgasm. The human scientists are doing it! Do male animals commit sodomy? Anal sex?
    One of my two male Dobermans briefly suggested "mounting" the other. The dominant brother snarled him to the ground, instantly. Neither of them had a clue what that was about. They didn't meet at a "gay" dog pound.
    No dog or monkey or cow has the required high-level consciousness and sexualization, or the seductive skills and socializaton of human homosexuals.
    Homosexuals seek comfort in animals "being born that way". "Gay" like "gender" is a high form of deception and tactical abstraction, expecially for themselves.
    When Manny Pacquiao said "If men mate with men and women mate with women, they are worse than animals.", he intuited that only humans have the capacity to deny and consciously defy the natural order, that only humans are capable of such high level of disorder.
    Animals exist as an element within a natural order about which they know nothing.

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