SEX TROUBLE
Essays on Radical Feminism and the
War Against Human Nature
By Robert Stacy McCain
Sex Trouble: Essays on Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature, copyright 2015 by Robert Stacy McCain
Most of these essays can be found online:
http://theothermccain.com/category/feminism/sex-trouble/
Contact the author by e-mail at:
Selections from the works of other authors quoted herein are used in accordance with Fair Use doctrine (17 U.S. Code 107) as criticism, comment, news reporting scholarship, or research.
Introduction
The Feminist Abyss
What do we mean by the word feminism? This question has become increasingly crucial to the way that we talk about men, women and sex in the 21 st century. Almost everyone claims to accept feminism if they can be permitted to define it in the most commonly accepted understanding of equality as basic fairness . Especially in terms of educational and employment opportunity, no one argues in favor of discrimination against women. Yet this widely accepted idea of feminism, as a concern for equality in the sense of fairness and opportunity, is not the goal of the feminist movement today, nor was this the goal of the movement when it began in the late 1960s. The leaders of the Womens Liberation movement were radicals many of them were avowed Marxists who advocated a social revolution to destroy the basic institutions of Western civilization, which they denounced as an oppressive system of male supremacy, often labeled patriarchy. Women are oppressed and men are their oppressors, feminists declared, calling for the destruction of this systematic oppression: Smash patriarchy!
Feminism confuses many people who do not understand that the movement has a political philosophy a theory and that this theory is fundamentally incompatible with human nature. In fact, feminists do not believe there is such a thing as human nature. Instead, they insist, all human behavior (especially including sexual behavior) is socially constructed and, because feminists believe that the society that constructs our behavior is a male-dominated system which oppresses women, everything that we accept as human nature is part of that oppressive system. A feminist blogger explained this in July 2014:
Radical Feminism is, and has always been a political movement focused on liberating girls and women, those who are born into the sex caste female, from the unnatural, yet universal roles patriarchy has assigned....
Radical Feminism fights to disassemble the subliminal sex role behavior performances that cause female subordination.... This is socialized behavior instruction. Its a teaching, a grooming from birth that is false, harmful to our freedom and must stop.
What this blogger described as the unnatural, yet universal roles patriarchy has assigned are the characteristics we call masculinity and femininity the normal traits and behaviors of men and women. Feminists consider these roles unnatural, both the cause and effect of female subordination, and their movement can therefore never be satisfied with the simple fairness that most of us think of as equality. As long as these universal roles (masculine men and feminine women) continue to define human existence, feminism has not achieved its objective.
PIV is always rape, OK? Mocking laughter greeted this declaration from an anonymous radical feminist blogger who, in December 2013, explained that heterosexual intercourse PIV being a feminist acronym for penis-in-vagina is inherently harmful a manifestation of male supremacy and the patriarchys violent oppression of women. The same blogger elsewhere declared, No woman is heterosexual, a statement that seems absurd, except to those who have studied the influential feminist scholars whose theories support such a claim. Heterosexuality, these authors argue, is never a womans own free choice, nor is female heterosexuality the result of natural instinct or biological urges. Rather, according to radical theorists whose works are commonly taught in Womens Studies courses at universities everywhere, women who are sexually attracted to men have been indoctrinated brainwashed by hetero-grooming to believe that male companionship is desirable or necessary to their happiness.
The blogger whose anti-PIV rantings inspired so much laughter (Was she dropped on her head?) was, in fact, able to cite as sources for her arguments such eminent feminist authors as Mary Daly, Dee Graham and Sheila Jeffreys. To say that these lesbian feminists are controversial, and that their radical views are not shared by the majority of American women who call themselves feminists, is by no means a refutation of their arguments. Those who would attempt to separate mainstream feminism from the more radical aspects of its ideology cannot avoid the problem that the faculty and curricula of university Womens Studies programs where feminism wields the authority of an official philosophy are disproportionately dominated by radical lesbians. This hegemonic influence is not merely manifested in the fact that outspoken lesbian activists are employed as directors and professors in Womens Studies programs everywhere, but also plainly evident in the textbooks and readings assigned in their classrooms. Even if a moderate heterosexual feminist were to become a Womens Studies professor, she would find it nearly impossible to assign a textbook that was not crammed with radical anti-male/anti-heterosexual readings from lesbian feminists like Charlotte Bunch, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Janice Raymond, Judith Butler and others.
It is this radical ideology which drives the feminist rape culture discourse that claims (contrary to evidence) women on college campuses are systematically victimized by male sexual violence. University administrations, state legislatures and even the federal government have reacted to these feminist claims, despite data which shows that incidents of rape have declined nationwide in the past two decades, and that female college students are actually less likely to be raped than women who dont attend college. When I covered a SlutWalk protest in Washington, D.C. half-naked women marching to show that the way a woman dresses doesnt mean she is asking for it I listened to their chants and realized that their message was really about silencing critics of feminism: Shut up, because rape.
Feminism is a totalitarian movement that seeks to eliminate opposition by branding critics misogynists and rape apologists. Attempts to discuss the actual prevalence of rape on college campuses are shouted down by feminist activists, and even after feminist claims are proven false (as when a Rolling Stone story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia was exposed as fraudulent), this doesnt end the militant rhetoric. Why? Because the rape culture discourse isnt about rape, its about culture . It is specifically about promoting a campus culture that is hostile to men and hostile to heterosexuality. This anti-male propaganda intended to inspire in female students an attitude of hatred and suspicion toward male students: Fear and Loathing of the Penis .
Encountering this hateful attitude in feminist blogs, I began researching these radical theories in depth. People told me I was crazy for taking these theories seriously, but then again, Ive always been crazy, and somebody has to pay attention to this stuff.
One reason feminism has gained so much influence in our culture is that few have been willing to confront this movement at its intellectual root, to examine the radical egalitarian theory behind feminist rhetoric. Studying dozens of books by feminist authors, I found many dangerous ideas and theories, some of them so crazy as to provoke laughter. This inspired McCains Law of Feminism.
