13. The misogyny of the Left

Most of us think of the Left as the feminist-friendly side of the political spectrum. However, as documented in the preceding pages of this blog, many Leftists view female biology as (literally) unspeakably gross. "Female" is thus the only [facet of human experience subject to oppression] which the Left doesn't view as definable/important without somehow "reducing" our humanity. "Female" is also the only [facet of human experience subject to oppression] which the Left feels can and should be re-defined by the fantasies of our oppressor class.

Clearly the Left is not free of misogyny.

In fact, many feminists have pointed out that men on the Left have co-opted and twisted women's liberation for their own ends. Men on the Left still define women by our bodies and what they can do for men – not by our fecundity, but by our penetrability. To them, women are not born to the potential baby-making class but to the facilitation-of-male-orgasm class. What matters is not the uterus but any body cavity on offer for recreational rather than procreational penile penetration and ejaculation. Our bodies are no longer fetal incubators belonging to individual men; instead our bodies are masturbatory aids to be used and discarded by all men. We are no longer born to whisper "you're such a good provider" and push football sized infants into the world via our vaginas, but to scream "oh my god you're so big" and be buggered to the point of anal prolapse.

• See Gail Dines' Pornland for a detailed analysis of how pornographers co-opted women's liberation.
• See also Nine Deuce on pornsick Leftist men: Bill Maher’s a liberal. That means he supports your right to suck his dick.
• See also RootVeg on "sex positive" (meaning male-orgasm-positive) feminism: Consent is Sexy and Sexy is Mandatory
• See also Glosswitch on how "sex positive" feminism does patriarchy's work.
• If you really care about this issue - about misogyny on the Left - sit yourself down and read Andrea Dworkin's Pornography: Men Possessing Women, but be warned your life will never be the same.

A look at the anti-feminist propaganda term "SWERF" will highlight this phenomenon. SWERF supposedly stands for Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Yet SWERF is routinely applied to abolitionist women who have survived prostitution, just as TERF is routinely applied to any transsexual person who questions transgender identity politics.

In reality, SWERF means anyone who thinks men do not have a human right to stick their dicks into women/girls for money. In practice, SWERF is about men's right to define "woman" as "whore" and to label anyone who objects as bigoted (toward penis).

Like all good propaganda terms, SWERF misrepresents what it purports to describe. The Nordic model explicitly supports the decriminalization of women who sell sexual access to their bodies. The only people it criminalizes are men who feel entitled to buy that access - but male entitlement to female bodies is not up for debate on the Left. So pimps trot out the women they prostitute in order to use them as human shields, and claim that one cannot protest the sex industry without harming the women that industry uses as grist. This argument is about as coherent as "anyone who protests labor abuses must hate migrant farm workers and Walmart employees," but it gets a pass because: male orgasms.

Comic from RANCOM!

The term "sex worker," coined in an effort to reduce stigma, has been warped to become part of the larger anti-feminist fantasy that "sex work is work" - like any other. Women in "sex work" have the "agency" to "choose" their degradation. This goes right along with the genderist view that women are innately feminine (submissive/dependent/masochistic). Women are not groomed from birth to self-objectify. Women's choices are not shaped and limited by a woman-hating culture. Men who use prostituted women are not taking advantage of violent systems of exploitation. Women are just born whores. Flipping burgers or getting hate-fucked by strangers: it's all the same to women.

This insistence that there's nothing unusual in "work" that involves male strangers penetrating your body and ejaculating inside of you also goes right along with the "sex positivity" popular with young Leftists. Women are likely to sustain injury (vaginal tearing) during heterosexual intercourse if we are not genuinely aroused (rather than performing for others); we are more likely to contract infections and diseases than our male partners; we are more likely to be harmed by male partners (who are usually larger and stronger than we are); and we are 100% more likely than our male partners to face unwanted pregnancy. This biological reality exists within a social reality of rape culture and the pornification of ever-younger girls, and a political reality of attacks on abortion access, the criminalization of pregnancy, and cuts to support services for mothers and women who are victims of sexual violence. But none of this is allowed to dampen our enthusiasm for serving as sperm receptacles, whether professionally or in an unpaid capacity. How convenient that men now have an excuse to deny that female reality -biological, social, and political- even exists.

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Which brings us to the subject of much Leftist pontification: the "social category" woman versus the "biological category" woman.

Historically, in feminist theory, this intellectual separation is made in order to argue that femininity (submissiveness to/dependency upon males) is not a natural outcome of femaleness, but is instead a stereotypical role forced upon female humans from birth, in order to facilitate male supremacy. The feminist separation of the biological category woman and the social category woman is done in order to show that the social category woman is bullshit.

Men on the Left, however, have taken the separation of the social category woman and the biological category woman to mean they can simply ignore the biological reality of female reproductive power/vulnerability (for it is both at the same time) and enshrine the social category woman as the natural place of femininity, rather than the site of its brutal enforcement.

And of course, men on the Left have the perfect excuse for erasing the biological category woman - this must be done, after all, in order to protect transwomen, who require entry into the category "woman" in order to protect them from male violence. I've already written about the flaming stupidity of the idea that being perceived as female will protect anyone from male violence, so let's talk about what men on the Left really get out of this.

1. Erasing the biological reality of female reproductive power/vulnerability means: Don't worry men, you were never incubated in a yucky uterus by some subhuman female, you just sprang forth like magic! Furthermore, expecting casual sex from every woman you find attractive is all about good clean manly empowered fun and could have no negative consequences for those women! Party on!

2. Enshrining the social category woman means men get to use it as a garbage chute for un-manly men. After all, many Leftists (rightly) asked why Rachel Dolezal could not be herself and do her work as a white woman, but nobody wants to ask why "Caitlyn" Jenner couldn't pose coyly on the cover of a magazine, clad in overpriced lingerie, as a man. To present oneself as an object for the pleasure of another is to be a woman. Even when we all know you are a man.

Which brings us to the real point of transgender identity politics, because the social category woman is only half the picture. By enshrining the social category woman, we also enshrine the social category man, and thus protect male privilege.


Next page: The male supremacy of the Left