Case study: Yes, they really do manage to believe this stuff

It’s amusing only because it isn’t important enough for it to be really sad. We have spoken here before in a variety of contexts about people who will go to amazing lengths in order to hold onto their special feeling of victimization all the while making arguments that contradict themselves. They do this because the longer they can be special, and the more victimized they feel then the less they have to accept any moral responsibility for their actions.

Shirking responsibility for their feelings, or failing to acknowledge them head on is critical. The feelings themselves are fairly common ones. Fear, lack of esteem, jealousy, loneliness and a inability to handle the realities of the world they exist in.  Like conspiracy theorists of any other stripe they blame these feelings on the world outside. Alien abduction, 9/11 conspiracy theories, New Word Order silliness or a vast global male conspiracy… it’s all the same.

More than just letting them deal with feelings they have no other outlet for, many activism movements provide a few other essentials…

• A ambiguously defined standard of authenticity that neatly allows the adherents to marginalizes anyone they disagree with who might happen to be in the movement
• An echo chamber of others who can support you and feed your feelings of isolation all the while providing an illusion of camaraderie
• Other eyes to ensure a constant flow of “outrages” that the would be victim themselves might miss

With all that said again, lets look at a case in specific. Transphobia which for many radical feminists is just a variation of a normal distrust, fear of and hatred for males. This is a trait they share with other groups – including the radical Christians. Amp knew this and drew a fantastic little cartoon about it.

The crowd, as they say, went wild.

Now much of the ensuing madness isn’t worth repeating here. You can find it all played out in various comment threads listed below.

• Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Cartoon An Easy Mistake To Make
• Renegade Evolution In defense of Amp
• Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Some Responses to the “Easy Mistake To Make” Cartoon
• I wake up to the smell of straw « Littoral Mermaid
• A Few Words About the Latest Round of Anti-Radical Feminist, Pro-Men’s Rights, Propaganda
• The SmackDog Chronicles » Blog Archive » OMF’nG:.Heart(less) Sweeps The Lunacy Sweepstakes:Again

There were some fine examples of paranoia and insanity to go around as well. I particularly love this gem by someone called Rain.

“But its a very popular and attractive one, Mary Daly also discusses this, men-in-drag, “˜gentle’ men, liberal men have always seduced women in large numbers, because they lie, and pretend they are on our side, they pretend they are “˜one of us’, but they are not. They lie.

As heart said, on some levels it is much easier to deal with the christian right-wing faction of patriarchy, because they at least are very honest and up-front, and all their cards on the table. The trans-activist political patriarchal faction are not honest, they lie and deceive, obfuscate and confuse, and actively seek to ultimately destroy feminism from within.” – the wisdom of the Rain

That’s right boys and girls! Hordes of patriarchy spies are lining up to get their dicks cut off for the cause all so that the oh so threatening radical feminist movement can be destroyed from within. How do we know this? From the casual chatter of the CIA agents who follow radfems around their houses. They know they are there, they can hear them talking in their fillings… but only during their period.

Of course much of this insanity is trickle down from the various patron saints of the radical feminist movement, consider Mary Daly and her fairly constant stream of ranting’s, screed and near apoplectic anxiety. It doesn’t surprise me that someone who is so seemingly incapable of handling the world around her would try and find a vast conspiracy to blame it in.

“Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent not only in religious myth, but in its offspring, phallocratic technology. The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul/spirit/life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophillic invasion/elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes.” – Mary Daly in GYN/Ecology

If you read Daly’s comments you see how much in common it has with regular paranoia. Hell, it even sounds like the old “Red Menace” and “Yellow Menace” stuff we had int he old days. Those darn men… they are trying to invade us! Why the woman right next to you on the train could be a man! Keep your thoughts pure sisters! Sheesh… it’s like a bad Invasion of the Body Snatchers sequel script.

Anyway, lets get the the crowning jewel of this sort of mental double think they have to go through.

1. On the one hand radical feminism attempts to put forward the idea that gender is an entirely social construct and that there is no inherent difference between men and women. That they do this all the while making art prints in watercolor of their vaginas isn’t going to cause them any distress. Logic is such a patriarchy thing anyway.
2. On the other hand, their hatred and fear demands that they somehow define men as inherently flawed and evil… it is critical that all men are the enemy
3. You get bonus points if you can feed yourself a load of bullshit that not only harmonizes 1 and 2 but goes on try use the logic of the victim to try and postulate that it is impossible for you to be racist, sexist or phobic.

I present to you the glory that is Heart.

“Radical feminists are no more “transphobes” than we are “manhaters.”Â  To allege that we are is to indulge in sexist, misogynist, anti-feminist propaganda.   The herstoric position of radical feminism is that those who are born male into this world enjoy male privilege, for all of the years they live as males and as men.  It is never “_phobic” for an oppressed people group “” which females certainly are to castigate its oppressors, even in harsh and mean-spirited terms, with name-calling, swearing, and hyperbole.  It might be mean-spirited, we might be generalizing, we might be stereotyping, we might “” and likely are “” angry, but we aren’t “manhaters” because we denounce what men do or because we denounce male privilege, which again, all who are born male into the world have or have had.   Male to female transsexuals/transgendered persons have enjoyed male privilege, for all of the time that they have moved and lived in the world as males or continue to.  To call them out for their sexism whenever we see it, find it, hear of it, know of it, are targeted by it,  are impacted and affected by it  is not “transphobic.”Â  It is feminism.” – a perfect picture of crazy

There you have it. Bask in the glow.

[tags]heart, insanity, radical feminism, transphobia[/tags]