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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Danielle Muscato

174 replies

feminazi · 10/12/2016 20:37

So, Muscato has been all over the media the past week after having a Twitter rant at Trump. Muscato was praised for being a vocal female activist...

All MSM is reporting this story in the same way, ignoring the elephant in the room...

OP posts:
Seachangeshell · 15/01/2017 18:50

Argh

Beachcomber · 15/01/2017 18:57

Your questions are derailing the thread and in addition they are not terribly well thought out in terms of feminist analysis - which is something you appear to know a lot less about than you think. For example you quoted Dworkin earlier - do you know which of her books the quote comes from (without googling) and have you read it? Have you read any of MacKinnon' s books?

I want neither of the things in your badly formulated questions. So I don't have much interest in discussing them. I want to discuss the thread subject.

M0stlyHet · 15/01/2017 19:02

Out of interest, given that Muscato is blatantly trolling to poke fun at the trans activist cult,, why is it that so many people seem to be prepared to take Muscato at face value. Is it that they will entertain any level of cognitive dissonance rather than admit the emperor has no clothes on.

HelenDenver · 15/01/2017 19:05

Thanks for juxtaposing "muscato" and "no clothes on", Het.

Envy
todayitstarts · 15/01/2017 19:07

Querty
It might be an idea to start a thread of your own to ask the questions that you would like answered. That would be more, well, polite than derailing existing threads. And you know how us girls like the politeness, dontcha?

Xenophile · 15/01/2017 19:15

Well said Beach, so glad you're back

hazeyjane · 15/01/2017 19:18

Have read some of the tweets and am not sure why (apart from the fact they are by Muscato) they are being talked about so much?

qwerty232 · 15/01/2017 19:21

I've read 'Intercourse' several times, and repeatedly come back to extracts. I've also read Right-Wing Women. I believe the quote is from Woman Hating. I did get it from an internet source but was already very aware Dworkin challenged dichotomous concepts of male and female.

I think Dworkin is one of the most important and misunderstood thinkers of the 20th century, but her analysis was flawed.

qwerty232 · 15/01/2017 19:22

Sorry todayitstarts. I'm terrible for going off on tangents.

Beachcomber · 15/01/2017 19:23

Thanks Xenophile Smile

I haven't posted much on MN for a while partly because I've been busy but also because I did a mini flounce over an exchange of emails with MNHQ on the subject of deletions on threads discussing transgenderism.

Feels to me that MN's stance on this has shifted and I think that is great and prowomen and jolly brave.

Beachcomber · 15/01/2017 19:35

Have you read Women Hating though? It is very different from Right-Wing Women.

Dworkin is often quoted out of context and we need to bear in mind that everything she wrote was before the trans juggernaut was unleashed. Dworkin was talking about transsexuals in Women Hating not about modern day transgenderists and genderists.

todayitstarts · 15/01/2017 19:35

Beach

Please stay. Your posts are brilliant. I have learned so much from you and the other posters here on FWR. Truly, other women need your knowledge and insight.

And def good from MN - I think there has been a change. I have been here maybe a year, reading and lurking. Thanks MN

CharlieSierra · 15/01/2017 19:43

I hope there's been a change, it at least that what happened recently was a blip. Thank you Beach for engaging with HQ on that, I didn't realise. I don't post much, I'm crap at typing long posts on my iPad and by the time I've got half way through someone more erudite has always beaten me to it, but I love this board and I've learned so much. Still wish we had a hide poster button though. Grin

Beachcomber · 15/01/2017 19:51

Thank you very very much.

To be honest I got into the exchange initially with MNHQ because they had deleted me and I was annoyed with the reasons they gave when I asked for an explanation. But I do understand their position of the time - basically lots of posters had reported me as being transphobic and they felt they had to do something.

I'm glad that things have moved on and I think that is thanks to the volume and persistence of women who have posted on these issues. Total team effort, a Spartacus effort :)

qwerty232 · 15/01/2017 20:02

Beach that's a fair point. I haven't, I admit, read Woman Hating; and there Is no knowing what Dworkin would have made of the current trans debate, or whether she would have amended her theoretical premises in response to it. But Dworkin consistently argued against there being two discrete biological sexes. Indeed, that contention was a fundamental premise of her project.

She wrote:

"We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete."

A more salient quote however is this:

"You think intercourse is a private act; it's not, it's a social act. Men are sexually predatory in life; and women are sexually manipulative. When two individuals come together and leave their gender outside the bedroom door, then they make love."

This quote contains a contradiction. She is on the one hand asserting intercourse to be a social act, governed by a false identitarian dichotomy; but she is on the other hand postulating the potential for it to be an asocial act in which gendered identities can be cast off like clothes.

Dworkin was a child of the sixties, and therefore a hopeless idealist. For all her intellect, she brought into the ideas of cranks like Reich. She thought patriarchal power and sexual repression was the root from which all other totalitarian ideologies stemmed. If only the burdensome carapace of male and female could be cast off and a genderless eroticism released, then not just patriarchy but political violence itself would end. In that she was wrong.

Beachcomber · 15/01/2017 20:13

I don't agree with what you claim about Dworkin. You talk about her the way you post here - as though you know women's own minds better than they do.

It is a tiresome attitude. I suggest you read Women Hating if you want to quote it and I find it hard to believe that anyone who has read Right-Wing Women would describe Dworkin as an idealist.

But my main point is that I see no reason to cite the Dworkin quote, you post above, on this thread. It has nothing to do with the thread subject and nothing to do with modern day transgenderism.

qwerty232 · 15/01/2017 20:22

I'm responding to what people say themselves. I don't care whether they're men or women.

Would you accuse me of thinking I could read men's minds if I advanced a critique of Marx, Freud or Nietzsche?

Sorry, we did get a bit off topic. I'll try not to diverge again.

I'm interested to know why you think Dworkin was not an idealist though?

Albadross · 15/01/2017 20:37

Just briefly going back to Atheism for a second - I think many of us feel that we do need to stand up and say 'no' to the idea that one needs religion, or at least belief in a higher power to have morals. I also would rather religion was opt in, rather than opt out.

But thank no-god for Beachcomber and I am definitely bloody Spartacus.

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 15/01/2017 20:38

This is the Feminism Chat board, on which feminists are discussing issues that affect and interest us. It is not an Information office and we are not librarians. It's not our job to inform you, qwerty.

Why on earth would you think that this was a suitable place for a man to post streams of rambling irrelevant questions? Why should women exert themselves answering them? And you seem to think that we have some obligation to centre you, to let you guide us in our feminism.

People did engage with you for quite some time but it is now blatant that you don't actually read or understand what you're being told. To have posted here as often as you have and still not know that sex is not the same as gender takes some doing.

I don't know what your problem is but you need to know that your constant derails and attention seeking are rude and, to me at least, unwelcome.

Beachcomber · 15/01/2017 20:38

Well then start a thread about Dworkin and stop derailing this one.

You are a repeat offender with the derailing, and, seemingly oblivious to the fact that you are a new male poster on a feminist discussion thread in a feminist section of a female dominated forum.

MN is open to everyone but there is a general understanding that people keep on topic and that men throwing their weight about is mal vu.

HelenDenver · 15/01/2017 20:40

"Sorry, we did get a bit off topic. I'll try not to diverge again.

I'm interested to know why you think Dworkin was not an idealist though?"

Your second statement contradicts your first.

You are obviously burning to discuss the topic of your thought experiments on a gender-free world, to the extent you want to bend every thread to them regardless of the posting that's happening before you get there.

Start your own thread about this new topic and you might get respondents not already pissed off at the multiple details.

HelenDenver · 15/01/2017 20:41

X post with beach and prawn!

Well, if a thing's worth saying, it's worth saying thrice...

qwerty232 · 15/01/2017 20:43

Ok, sorry all. :)

Beachcomber · 15/01/2017 20:46

Well exactly Prawn and Helen.

Start a thread qwerty on the idea that you obviously hold dear that is "women would do it too if reality was completely different".

I'm sure you will get your arse handed to you lots of responses and a lively discussion.

Datun · 15/01/2017 21:03

I'm going to help you out here qwerty, and hopefully you might sleep better.

Sometimes, men act like misogynistic, sexist, self entitled, arrogant, aggressive, violent bastards.

And, at a given moment in time, sometimes I don't really give a fuck WHY.

If you need to write an academic paper on the disparity between the sexes knock yourself out. FWR is a forum about women, populated by women, in support of women.

Sometimes men are just shit. And the priority isn't always to deconstruct it, analyse it and write a paper on it. (The dur! Is silent).

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