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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The Violent Purging of Womanhood (Spiked Article 9/7/23)

24 replies

UtopiaPlanitia · 10/07/2023 13:25

I’ve just read this article, and I think it’s an intriguing analysis, so I thought I’d post it to FWR in case anyone else would find it interesting.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/09/the-violent-purging-of-womanhood/

The violent purging of womanhood

It is a sick society that celebrates the medieval-style erasure of Ellen Page.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/09/the-violent-purging-of-womanhood/

OP posts:
teawamutu · 10/07/2023 14:15

Ooof.

The point about male saints resisting sin from without, while women purged it from within, had never occurred to me.

LoobiJee · 10/07/2023 14:17

Thanks for sharing that.

I think the point he completely misses (understandably as he’s a man) is the impact on pubescent girls’ view of womanhood and of themselves of the sexualisation and objectification of women and women’s bodies in society, and the harassment girls are subjected to by men from puberty/ even before puberty .

He also completely ignores Page’s experience of childhood abuse as the cause of the significant mental health issues described in the quotes from the book.

LoobiJee · 10/07/2023 14:21

teawamutu · 10/07/2023 14:15

Ooof.

The point about male saints resisting sin from without, while women purged it from within, had never occurred to me.

Yes because, in the patriarchal world view of established religion, if men sin it’s because Someone Else Made Them Do It whereas women sin because women are innately sinful. The misogynists, which the Church is absolutely rife with, use the Adam and Eve story as a way of justifying their treatment of women as second class citizens.

UtopiaPlanitia · 10/07/2023 14:25

teawamutu · 10/07/2023 14:15

Ooof.

The point about male saints resisting sin from without, while women purged it from within, had never occurred to me.

That part really resonated with me too. I was raised as a Catholic, the Irish version - which is particularly woman-hating - and the concept of women being spiritually impure because of their bodies was something I grew up hearing.

For example, my Grandmother was ‘churched’ after every one of her 9 children was born because she was considered impure - sexual abstinence and virginity being equated to holiness. She was unable to enter a church until cleansed by a priest. Irish Catholicism also practiced bodily mortification for spiritual reasons - fasting, forgoing sleep, walking up mountains in bare feet etc.

So this essay has really made me consider some of these current female behaviours in a new way.

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RoyalCorgi · 10/07/2023 14:32

What an interesting piece. I'm amazed it's by Brendan O'Neill, who I mostly associate with provocative-to-the-point of trolling articles about the liberal left, Brexit, immigration etc. I think he's spot on. The whole trans craze among young women is, like anorexia, driven by a loathing of one's own female body.

anythinginapinch · 10/07/2023 14:40

Great article thanks for sharing

Toloveandtowork · 10/07/2023 14:43

Even the story of Adam and Eve is 'You made me do it'

Backstreets · 10/07/2023 14:55

RoyalCorgi · 10/07/2023 14:32

What an interesting piece. I'm amazed it's by Brendan O'Neill, who I mostly associate with provocative-to-the-point of trolling articles about the liberal left, Brexit, immigration etc. I think he's spot on. The whole trans craze among young women is, like anorexia, driven by a loathing of one's own female body.

He’s so good on this stuff, it kills me. A world where I read Brendan bloody O’Neill’s articles and throw my Stewart Lee books in the bin 😵‍💫 if you’d told me this ten years ago I would have laughed

But it’s made me realise free speech really need people like Brendan, or Megyn Kelly, or Piers Morgan, or Bill Maher. Blow-hards who refuse to “be kind” if they think they’re right about something, and on this they’re really right. Can’t bully a bully.

Boiledbeetle · 10/07/2023 14:56

LoobiJee · 10/07/2023 14:17

Thanks for sharing that.

I think the point he completely misses (understandably as he’s a man) is the impact on pubescent girls’ view of womanhood and of themselves of the sexualisation and objectification of women and women’s bodies in society, and the harassment girls are subjected to by men from puberty/ even before puberty .

He also completely ignores Page’s experience of childhood abuse as the cause of the significant mental health issues described in the quotes from the book.

He also completely ignores Page’s experience of childhood abuse as the cause of the significant mental health issues described in the quotes from the book.

I noticed that as well. I thought i had just accidentally skipped a paragraph!

I wonder if he doesn't realise what a profound affect it can have on people?

BlackForestCake · 10/07/2023 16:08

Backstreets · 10/07/2023 14:55

He’s so good on this stuff, it kills me. A world where I read Brendan bloody O’Neill’s articles and throw my Stewart Lee books in the bin 😵‍💫 if you’d told me this ten years ago I would have laughed

But it’s made me realise free speech really need people like Brendan, or Megyn Kelly, or Piers Morgan, or Bill Maher. Blow-hards who refuse to “be kind” if they think they’re right about something, and on this they’re really right. Can’t bully a bully.

Yes, O'Neill's group has a history of being being pro-GMO and climate change denialist. Its themes have always been that technology will liberate everyone and anyone who thinks otherwise is a middle-class Luddite. By rights – i.e. to be consistent – they ought to be on the opposite side in this debate. I suppose it's positive that O'Neill has taken this position.

UtopiaPlanitia · 10/07/2023 16:21

Boiledbeetle · 10/07/2023 14:56

He also completely ignores Page’s experience of childhood abuse as the cause of the significant mental health issues described in the quotes from the book.

I noticed that as well. I thought i had just accidentally skipped a paragraph!

I wonder if he doesn't realise what a profound affect it can have on people?

I’m not sure many men really understand what a horrible thing puberty can be to some young girls growing up in a sexist society and I wish O’Neill had mentioned Page’s mental health issues, which seem to have arisen from her religious background so it would have fitted the argument he made in his article but, even though he hasn’t mentioned these issues, I still find his analysis compelling.

I also know that I’ve read numerous articles over recent years that put forward the idea that women typically turn their pain, self-loathing and anger inwards on themselves and take it out on their bodies; hence anorexia, bulimia, and cutting (and now trans). Whereas men tend to take their anger, loathing and pain out on others e.g. incels, family destruction, mass shootings.

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Fenlandia · 10/07/2023 16:23

It's a terrific article and far more compassionate in its analysis than the self-identified 'feminist' writers on the left who have cheered on Page's discovery of their 'true self' and are oblivious to the horrible backstory Page themself is telling.

Backstreets · 10/07/2023 17:10

BlackForestCake · 10/07/2023 16:08

Yes, O'Neill's group has a history of being being pro-GMO and climate change denialist. Its themes have always been that technology will liberate everyone and anyone who thinks otherwise is a middle-class Luddite. By rights – i.e. to be consistent – they ought to be on the opposite side in this debate. I suppose it's positive that O'Neill has taken this position.

Instead we have the New Atheists and I Fucking Love Science crew solemnly pledging TWAW. It's a funny old world.

Rudderneck · 10/07/2023 19:31

I think O'Neill is trying to look at the bigger cultural picture, rather than at Page's personal journey specifically. I said on the other thread - it's not like there has ever been a time when some women weren't abused sexually, so why this now?

I do think there is something to the internal female locus vs th emale external one. It reminds me a bit of the interview Jordan Peterson did with that young detransioner, whose name escapes me. He said it's well known in psychology that women in phycological pain tend to turn it inwards on their own bodies, whereas men tend to throw it outwards - so you get young women who cut or starve themselves, where as young men pain graffiti on the walls or join a gang and shoot someone.

Apparently there is no real agreement on what the reasons for this might be, but there is some thought that it has to do with girls having a different relationship to their physicality, not only from a socially constructed POV but also internally.

The theology strikes me as ultimately a little too simplistic, as sin is always, in Christianity, fundamentally an internal issue, including for men. He's right to point out that a lot of these women weren't canonized for a long time, because the medievals were actually rather suspicious of that kind of thing - it was the early modern period that was more gung-ho - and that was certainly a bad period for women overall, but also included quite a lot of faddish enthusiasm for male mortification of the flesh as well.

LoobiJee · 10/07/2023 20:00

I think O'Neill is trying to look at the bigger cultural picture, rather than at Page's personal journey specifically. I said on the other thread - it's not like there has ever been a time when some women weren't abused sexually, so why this now?

hmmm, interesting point - I would have replied: well in the 80s teen girls went down the anorexia route, and in the 90s it was cutting, and now it’s this. But I wasn’t aware before reading the article that Page had done both of those before now moving on to the current day’s manifestation of bodily self hatred and psychological distress by transitioning. Starving herself and cutting herself didn’t resolve Page’s distress so it’s unlikely that double mastectomy and testosterone will either. I really feel for Page, it’s so sad.

OnAPostItNote · 10/07/2023 21:19

Thanks for sharing this v interesting article.
I think some people, male and females, are revolted by women.

QueenHippolyta · 10/07/2023 22:26

Agreed @UtopiaPlanitia @Boiledbeetle O'Neil wrote a terrific article and I agree that men don't know the hell of turning 12-13 years old and suddenly strange men in the street are saying obscene things to you.
I hated my body for this happening until I read Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch. Then I realized it wasn't my body that was the problem; it was men!

2nd Wave Feminism was fantastic that way.
Utterly liberating and I then loved being a woman.

JanesLittleGirl · 10/07/2023 22:46

You could conduct a small experiment. You know your own experience of puberty - what was OK, what was horrible and what was embarrassing. Have a conversation with a man that you are really close to about their experience of puberty. It's chalk vs cheese.

TheBiologyStupid · 10/07/2023 23:28

LoobiJee · 10/07/2023 14:21

Yes because, in the patriarchal world view of established religion, if men sin it’s because Someone Else Made Them Do It whereas women sin because women are innately sinful. The misogynists, which the Church is absolutely rife with, use the Adam and Eve story as a way of justifying their treatment of women as second class citizens.

Well put!

Boiledbeetle · 10/07/2023 23:30

JanesLittleGirl · 10/07/2023 22:46

You could conduct a small experiment. You know your own experience of puberty - what was OK, what was horrible and what was embarrassing. Have a conversation with a man that you are really close to about their experience of puberty. It's chalk vs cheese.

It's puberty where the

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them"

Starts to come into play.

I imagine puberty is shit for both sexes but the power differential becomes abundantly clear to girls way before boys I feel purely because girls are subjected to the stares comments and advances of older boys and men way before boys the same age have got past the ugh girls are icky stage

Rudderneck · 11/07/2023 00:40

LoobiJee · 10/07/2023 20:00

I think O'Neill is trying to look at the bigger cultural picture, rather than at Page's personal journey specifically. I said on the other thread - it's not like there has ever been a time when some women weren't abused sexually, so why this now?

hmmm, interesting point - I would have replied: well in the 80s teen girls went down the anorexia route, and in the 90s it was cutting, and now it’s this. But I wasn’t aware before reading the article that Page had done both of those before now moving on to the current day’s manifestation of bodily self hatred and psychological distress by transitioning. Starving herself and cutting herself didn’t resolve Page’s distress so it’s unlikely that double mastectomy and testosterone will either. I really feel for Page, it’s so sad.

The difference though in't so much the internal, personal psychology. That seems to be a thing that manifests in all times, girls who in some way self-harm.

What's new, for now, and he's comparing to that particular historical fad, is society as a whole somehow embracing the behaviour.

UtopiaPlanitia · 11/07/2023 14:17

O’Neill has definitely noticed that society is enabling, and embracing, misogynistic behaviour. As well as girls taking on culture-bound symptoms to express their unhappiness by attacking their bodies, we have the return of witch hunts attacking outspoken women as well as demonising women who disagree with prevailing social views on womanhood.

He’s written another article decrying politicians refusing to straightforwardly condemn the encouragement of violence against women that were made at Trans Pride.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-did-trans-pride-allow-itself-to-become-a-front-for-misogyny/

How did Trans Pride allow itself to become a front for misogyny?

Sarah Jane Baker told a crowd who had gathered in Trafalgar Square for Trans Pride 2023: 'If you see a TERF punch them in the fucking face’

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-did-trans-pride-allow-itself-to-become-a-front-for-misogyny/

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UtopiaPlanitia · 11/07/2023 14:27

QueenHippolyta · 10/07/2023 22:26

Agreed @UtopiaPlanitia @Boiledbeetle O'Neil wrote a terrific article and I agree that men don't know the hell of turning 12-13 years old and suddenly strange men in the street are saying obscene things to you.
I hated my body for this happening until I read Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch. Then I realized it wasn't my body that was the problem; it was men!

2nd Wave Feminism was fantastic that way.
Utterly liberating and I then loved being a woman.

@QueenHippolyta Discovering second wave feminism saved me as well - it helped me to make sense of what I saw happening around me and it explained why my society treated me less favourably. It helped me to realise that I wasn’t wrong inherently and that I wasn’t alone in noticing that things were tough for women. It gave me a framework to explain my instinctive resistance to being denigrated because of my sex and it helped me to stay strong in the face of sexism.

I would love young women today to have a access to a version of feminism that helps them rather than hinders them.

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flyingbuttress43 · 11/07/2023 16:52

Yes. Second wave feminism was the truly progressive movement. Modern feminism, not so much. Trans ideology, pink and blue genderism - highly regressive.

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