The Feminist Fellatio Kerfluffle

You know why West Texas is so windy?? 'Cuz the East sucks; while the West blows." -- (From a bumper sticker seen by me on I-10 going towards El Paso around 10 years back)

Ahhhh...nothing like a thermonuclear debate to start the weekend, no??

I'm sure by now that you have heard of the Cat 3 hurricane of a debate that was formed yesterday over the not-so-warm oasis of Twisty Faster's I Blame The Patriarchy blog over her personal disgust of blowjobs, as well as her belief that any woman liking such action is inherently a slave of Teh Patriarchy and should turn in her feminist card right away. Well, by this morning, Hurricane Hummergate had exploded into a certified dangerous storm, tearing a course through the feminist blogosphere, ripping apart presumptions and assumptions of unity and peaceful harmony amongst women....and all that because Twisty just got bored and wanted to stir stuff up.

Now, not being a woman and not having experienced the joys of a blowjob (not even a bad one), I'd normally not be one to intervene and offer my sympathetic voice in this debate amongst feminists. Being a sex-pos radical who believes in women's right of free will and choice, and her unmitigated right to seek and give consensual pleasure, on the other hand, I admit to be fascinated and amused by this not-so-small rumble.

For those who care and those who missed the fireworks, here's a summary:

1) Twisty, feeling bored and her occasional need to stir the pot, posts a screed about the absolute horror of blowjobs as a tool of Teh Patriarchy; she goes on and on about why any feminist or any self-respecting woman would dare resort to such a "fucking gross", disgusting, yucky thing as to put a "funk-filled bratwurst" in her mouth. She opens her blog for those who do hummers to defend themselves.

2) Several prominent feminist women take up Twisty's challenge and defend their right to be feminists while liking bj's, saying that their personal enjoyment of such activity should not affect at all their beliefs as feminists. A few even portray their particular skills at giving head as "liberating".

3) This really pisses off Twisty, who decides in her follow up post to tear the bj supporters new ones, essentially labeling them as slaves to Teh Patriarchy who are allowing their clits to get in the way of their ultimate submission to Teh MAN. And then, as a means of backing up her crusade, she does the seemingly impossible task of trolling her own blog (using the pseudomym Poffin) to declare that since bj's are automatically degrading and obscene and the ultimate surrender to TEH MAN, any woman who should dare defend her right to give fellatio is merely a "patriarchial sexbot" who should be retrained in rightful radicalfeminist education.

4) The debate explodes from there, with Twisty getting backup from other radfem stalwarts like Ginmar, Sam (remember her from the Stan Goff blog trashing of Nina Hartley???), and "Poffin"; and other feminists recoiling in disgust to Twisty's bait-and-switch antics.

5) Meanwhile....Amanda Marcotte -- self described "porn liberal" -- decides to make an attempt to square the circle and defend Twisty's antics while sympathizing with fellatio fans in a series of posts at her Pandagon site. Don't blame her for stirring shit up, sayeth Amanda, and besides, she does have a legit point about patriarchy controlling women's decisions. After all, all choice is an illusion in a society where men oppress women. That creates another firestorm there, which consumes three threads of the same debate.

Most of the response of the pro-fellatio crowd has ranged from general missives in defense of the act to the simple retort of "Blow me, beeyatch, I am my own woman and do not need your fucking permission to choose my sexuality." On the other hand, there are the more rounded and theoretical responses (see the irrepressible Bitch Lab for a nice, long deconstruction/personal narrative). For this sexrad feminist 'Dog, however, this debate reveals far more why radicalfeminism as a ideology is so late and so far short when it comes to reducing human sexuality to the essense of male rapicity and female weakness/submission.

In Part 2 of this thread; I'll elaborate a bit more. Just watch this space....

UPDATE: Oh, this is great...Heart of Women's Space decides to get her licks in (no pun) in in support of Twisty, moaning about how outnumbered the "antis" are, and how it's really all about genuine feminists challenging male supremacy. Right....and transsexuals really are men invading women's space, ehhh???

Like I said, my rebuttal to all this is forthcoming.

An Open Letter to the Krewe of The Biting Beaver (Or: How NOT To Send The Sex Police After Bad Google Searches)

To BB, Dim, and/or Dubhe:

Iim sure that given my status as Public Enemy #1 for being an frequent critic of your basic philosophy of men being innate penis-wielding predators and women and children their eternal victims, you will probably ignore this letter (and more than likely, I won't be able to send it to your blog anyway due to your stated policy of not allowing opponents or critics of yours to enter comments)...but, since it is my blog and I really do want to elicit some kind of actual discussion across the feminist continuum, I will throw this out just for the sake of enlightenment.

You see, I'm a bit confused about a lot of things about you..but this recent notion of yours that somehow a Google search using a certain combination of words reflects not just a desire to consume child pornography (and I mean by that term explicit sexual media depicting children in obviously sexual situations), but a premonition to actually molest and abuse children..and thusly justifies reporting such interlopers to the proper authorities for prosecution.

For starters, you do understand, do you, that most Internet purveyors do not need or desire to search for the kind of material that you are so exercised about, since there is plenty of ADULT sexual material (that is, material depicting willing and able consenting ADULTS having lustful sex)...so the "sick fucks" who may be making these searches may constitute a rather small minority of Internet searches??? Oh, but I forgot...since it is your stated policy over at the Biting Beaver that the mere consumption of adult-oriented sexually explicit material and media should be prosecutable because even adult consensual porn is considered harmful due to its "degrading" and "objectifying" effects on women, and because it is a gateway to all sorts of horrible acts, up to and including sexual abuse of children....there's really no need to distinguish between adult searches and "kiddie porn", now is there??

Secondly, you are aware of the recent technological advances such as "spy bots", which are machines used by sex spammers to automatic comb through search engines and thus drive the relevant spam through unsolicited to certain customers, are you?? That would mean that many of those evil "searches" for those dirty words are in fact not done by people but by machines...and that would kinda weaken your argument a bit, now wouldn't it???

And I won't even begin to question the issue of using the power of the Federal government (one of the main tools of the PATRIARCHY, mind you) to attack people for their mere THOUGHTS, rather than their actions in actually abusing children.

But the most confusing thing about this, guys and womyns, is that you reserve yourselves the right as experts in the field, while simply dismissing genuine critics of your crusade as "pro-kiddie-porn feminists"..even going to the expense of distorting their views. Case in point: This (admittedly fervent) criticism done by my colleague K. at Bitch Lab on the nature of reporting Google searches to the authorities:

Sorry, but whatever someone may be typing in to their favorite search engine doesn’t rise to the level of investigation by some idiotic organization, asshole. Really, this kind of shit is such crypto [struck in original, replaced with] proto-fascist bullshit it makes me want to scream.

Whatever, uh, respect I may have had for this person just evaporated — not to mention she’s a fucking beanbraned tool for buying into whatever bullshit she read at some Web site. Patriarchy schmatriarchy. Fucking neo-con b.s. is what it is.

Here’s a clue [epithet struck in original] :) errrrr BeebDim, you can’t hunt down an individual on this basis, and to do so violates so many of our rights as citizens that you should be ashamed of yourself for fucking buying into it. Not to mention the number of people who can simply scam the whole system with anonymizing tools, etc.


Bitch Lab: Sick (Feb. 12, 2006 entry (excerpted)

I will just ignore the reaction and the comments that were generated there, particularly the personal attacks by your ally Ginmar, which were particularly interesting for avoiding the main issue of K's objection.

Fast forward to yesterday, when Dubhe decided to post to the BB blog an update to their crusade, refering obliquely to B|L's critique as a "feminist who is 'pro-kiddie-porn'" and adding this paragraph:

The ones involving children have all been reported to that nasty "crypto-fascist organization"* known as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Thanks,
Dubhe
*(and yes, that's a direct quote from a feminist who is also pro-kiddie-porn)

Now...if I remember B|L's original post at her blog, there was no mention of the NCMEC anywhere at all, nor did she ever refer to anyone but Dim and BB as "crypto-fascist" (indeed, she struck down the "crypto" part and changed it to "protofascist", even). Actually, the organization that BB originally wanted to turn in the miscreants in to was a site called Cybertipline, not the NCMEC.

I guess that I should say that when another blogger named Antiprincess of the Paleofeminist blog pointed out that error, Dubhe did have the decency to print an apology and a partial "retraction" and revise that previous comment above. But even that "retraction" contained a backhanded attack on B|L that attempted to smear her almost as harshly as the original:

I also stand corrected on the point of the comments thread. Although I still wonder about what a person thinks of child porn if that person thinks reporting child porn is cryptoproto facist and the organization that would investigate it is idiotic.

(Comment in Paleofeminist thread located here)

Question for Duhle: Are you blind or what??? B|L never even mentioned child porn, just your quest to report people for their website searches. Merely going on a search using certain words is no proof whatsoever of any connection with child porn, nor should it mark the sercher as automatically a pedophile. And you haaave heard of the presumption of "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law"??? Or the idea that people should be prosecuted for their ACTIONS, not their THOUGHTS???

And you should know that while the NCMEC itself does not deal with child porn explicitly, some of their chief spokesmen have openly and enthusiastically supported efforts to censor adult-oriented sexual material and target adults who consume and posess such material as innately "exploitatve" to children. One of the NCMEC's main spokesmen, Charles Taylor, current sits atop the Justice Department's Obscenity Task Force...and he has opinly opined that even softcore depictions of simulated sex is innately prosecutable under obscenity law as "harmful to children" and leading to sexual abuse of children. So perhaps even the original remark might not be so extreme after all.

All of this is so unbecoming of you, Dubhe, since you appear to at least have some respect for opponents (unlike Dim of BB, who simply dismiss them as enablers of the evil male penis); at least you acknowledged Bitch |Lab as a feminist while you smeared her, which is more than I can say of the others.

Bottom line here, in conclusion: If you are going to attempt to ilicit a debate with others on the hot button issue of child sexual abuse, you might want to use a bit more accuracy and a tad more common sense than you have thusly portrayed....and it would be a good idea as well to think a bit before you strike down your critics. You don't have to agree with them in the end, but at least interpret them in the correct and respectful way they deserve.

Like I said, I may by blowing into the wind on this one, but never say that I didn't try.

Thanks,
Anthony

UPDATE: Here's the revised version of the above post:

*(and yes, that's a direct quote from a feminist who, while emphatically not pro-kiddie-porn, believes that reporting someone being an accessory to child rape to law enforcement is "cryptoproto facist bullshit".)

Nice "retraction" there, Dubhe...Karl Rove might have a job for you in the future.


UPDATE #2: Surprise, surprise, surprise!!!! Turns out that Dubhe is really Dim under a pseudonym. Nice going....being a shill and a sexual McCarthyite isn't enough for you?? I thought that hiding behind a pseudonym while shoveling poop at critics wasn't your style, ehhh?

($10 and a tip of the hat to antiprincess for that breakin story.)

Breaking News: Rove Beats Rap; Liberals Get Punk'd..Again

Well...so much for the liberal blogosphere's "Fitz-Mas" fantasies.

USA TODAY: Rove Won't Be Charged In CIA Case

So much as well for Jason Leopold and truthout.com's fiction of a "Sealed vs. Sealed" indictment, too....they just got punked by another classic Rove disinformation campaign.

But what did they expect...after all, Fitzgerald is still a conservative Republican, and Rove still has a great deal of power, even without his White House policy position.

My guess is that all the drama over a Rove indictment was just smoke and mirrors to solidify the case against Scooter Libby (and perhaps grease the wheels for indictments against other lower levels)...Rove (and by extension, Dick Cheney) were never really serious targets at all, contrary to rumor.

Congratulations, liberals...you just got owned. Again.

Combined with the Democrats' cave in and the death of Zarqawi, this all but cinches continued Republican control of Congress for the next two years..and perhaps beyond.

Maybe now we can discuss some REAL alternatives now??? Like, say, a REAL Left movement that speaks to REAL people???

Too much to ask, I'm afraid.