Takedown of an Anarcho-Misogynist
Mouth shutting is key to reactionaries.
Introduction
The next several posts will (barring sidetracking) be related to a discussion going on at the Gonzo Times. I’ve always liked the Times because they address issues that a number of other anti-authoritarian sites seem to overlook in the name of expediency. One of these issues is gender. As I documented in the previous post/podcast and as is summarized (along with subsequent developments) by Punk Johnny Cash in this recent post, a number of misogynists, some self-described, have predictably sprung up to attack those voicing questions and concerns about the treatment of women in pro-liberty circles.
Of course, there are alot of ins, alot of outs, alot of what-have-yous involved, but I tend to think that this sort of development is “a good thing.” Occasionally, it’s time to introspect and make sure one’s house is in order, both as an individual and, metaphorically, as a collective. On the rare occasions that reactionaries, especially those that are so obviously poisoning the well, pop up, it provides the rest of us a chance to state our position clearly to said reactionaries and to the rest of the world.
In this case, the world clearly needs to hear the liberty perspective spelled out. Virtually all casual observers believe that libertarianism is a post-hoc political conclusion based on anger towards and fear of government takeover by non-white and/or non-male people. This conclusion is based on the media amplification of a few conservative voices that, in fact, hold that position in ways subtle and obvious.*
What we shall look at over the next few posts is a flurry of activity on the Gonzo Times website by one of the bloggers there, Jay Batman (one of the aforementioned self-described misogynists). His case, stated most comprehensively in an initial post can be addressed in a dozen ways that have sprung into my mind. I haven’t even finished reading it. Maybe he ends the entire thing with a retraction, in which case, my bad for not finishing before responding.
In any case, these issues deserve addressing as they will doubtless arise again (and again) in the future. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep at it until each and every failing is revealed, but I will do my best.
Marriage, Monogamy, and Violence
Jay begins his post with the following premises:
. . . societal conventions that deny a man’s natural and innate inclinations to preach some false idea of domestication as the ideal are the creations of a matriarchal tyranny.
We men are not naturally inclined toward monogamy or marriage. Societies that promote such end results are clearly the product of male hatred on the part of the women who drive such values. Women have appropriated the state and religious institutions to systematically de-masculinize men and relegate us to a less virile, less potent existence.
One would think a libertarian would understand that a tyranny of any sort cannot exist without the use of force. I’m not clear on what, exactly, is preaching the idea of monogamy and marriage as ideal–I guess the Abrahamic religions (why not the Sarahtic religions?) are usually interpreted as endorsing these things–but whatever the source, it’s pretty clearly using non-violent persuasion to get the job done in the western world.
This conflation of verbal pressure with violent aggression seems to be a trend among misogynists. In another, follow-up post, Jay paints the following picture
Think of the man like the Gadsden Flag bearer, and you get the picture: he’s got it in his head that striking back is the way to go, but the female standing in front of him, though half his size, has a mouth like a Gatling Gun and can tear him to shreds with it. It’s emasculating, but it’s what women do.
This echoes a similar sentiment expressed by a commenter on a Punk Johnny Cash article.
Add to this, women who can’t keep their mouths shut, who use their words as surrogate baseball bats to bludgeon their man into submission; or women who stand in doorways to prevent the man from leaving the room/house so as to DE-escalate (caused mainly by the rise of “Feminism,” another statist invention). . . they kind of deserve what they get.
At least Jay pretends to live in a world where a verbal confrontation results in the powerful man gently weeping in response to a discussion with a woman. The second commenter seems more closely connected with reality, where 4 million women apparently can’t keep their mouths shut each year and get what, apparently, they “deserve”.
It’s important to frame a verbal confrontation in physically violent terms so that men who initiate aggression against people can be let off the hook on a pseudo-self-defense clause.
In the good old days, of course, even this nonsensical veneer of legitimacy wasn’t needed, and this brings us back to the topic of marriage.
Until the tyrannical matriarchy appeared on the scene, marriage was simply a legal claim to human property. If a woman was beaten, raped, killed, or forced into labor, the legal question was restricted to which man, typically a father or husband, owned her. If the perpetrator was the owner of the woman, the issue went no further. If, he wasn’t, restitution was owed to the owner and the attacker and often the victim were further punished by the legal authorities.
This arrangement varied slightly from place to place, but was always essentially a transaction among men:fathers and sometimes would-be husbands as part of an often much larger exchange of property.
Women, for their part, were kept by in a dependent state by the inability to own property, conduct business, travel unescorted, etc. The skill set they were consequentially raised to develop was that of a domestic servant, taking care of the children, the sick, the elderly and maintaining the household. They were raised to be obedient and submissive and were therefore amenable to religions, which praise obedience, submission and forgiveness as virtuous–more on this in a future post.
In the last fraction of human history, state capitalism has subsidized the movement of women into the workforce by taking over some of the traditional roles: care of children, the sick and the elderly primary among them. This isn’t, as Jay posits, a result of an emerging and powerful state-feminist alliance–such an idea is laughable when one compares the numbers of men and women among the captains of industry and social engineers that constructed the state welfare system–but as an entirely predictable corporate-state alliance that always seeks to subsidize inexpensive labor for the owners of capital.
Jay’s other point in the passage is that the women force men, through the apparatus of the state, I guess, into monogamous relationships. Again, this is absurd. Men have never been held to a standard of monogamy, certainly not in the modern west. Women on the other hand have always been held to an exacting standard with phenomenally inhumane penalties for adultery.
The fear of raising another man’s child factored into both the control of women’s freedom to move, to associate, and to own property as well as the devastating penalties exacted on women for sex outside of marriage. Men never faced anywhere near the same degree of retribution for non-monogamy.
As to what is “natural” for either sex, the point is moot and largely unknowable. In a few hundred years, when women have absolute and unchallenged control of their reproduction and face no physical threat from partners, it might be possible to determine what sexual behaviors are natural and which are a result of violent institutions. My guess is, nature being what it is, that people will tend towards a wide variety of arrangements that will overrun any modern predictions.
In any case, the current situation is rife with violence and the threat of violence as well as the historical hangovers of sexual repression and institutional dis-empowerment of women–reasoning about the future of human sexuality is like predicting the future course of technology at the point that the catholic church ceased systematic interference in the conduct of science.
Overall, the extraordinary claim that women are secretly controlling the agendas of institutions that have always been overseen and staffed by males and have always relegated women to a “less virile less potent existence” requires a tremendous amount of evidence. While Jay provides a number of anecdotal instances of women who act less than honorably toward men, by any metric and at any time and place in history, men have used their physical superiority and their political privilege to completely dominate women. This isn’t a matter of “reading the right books” as Jay complains he is always asked to do. It’s a recognition of very rudimentary and basic fact of human history.
To blame women for perpetuating the institutions that have always assisted men in maintaining dominance is the height of chutzpah. To pity men that can’t willfully beat their “mouthy women” and then wonder why females avoid one’s ideology of freedom is willful callousness. To blame women in general for the behavior of the women that one chooses to associate with the definition of bigotry.
We’ve got alot more to cover folks, so if you have any desire to direct the conversation, please drop a comment.
* An compelling discussion on how ideology is used to provide psychic cover for prior trauma can be found in Freedomain Radio’s Bomb in the Brain series.
7:31 pm
A short read, interesting take on the formation of gender roles for an increasingly specialist based society.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2100251/Jared-Diamond-The-Worst-Mistake-in-the-History-of-the-Human-Race
7:50 pm
Okay, for starters, there’s nothing in any of the posts that I authored that condones hitting women. I merely note that women can and do cut most men to shreds verbally in the context of relationships with impunity. I’ll be posting an answer to this shortly after receiving leave to do so from PunkJohnnyCash.
8:06 pm
“That’s right, I’m channeling Charlie Sheen, a man who is alleged to have choked his ex-wife and who shot Kelly Preston in the arm. Oh, the lacquered performances he’d have spared us all if only his aim wouldn’t have been off due to the drug habit!”
– Jay Batman
1:28 am
Sorry, I f’d this up. I meant it as as response to Jay’s comment below: “there’s nothing in any of the posts that I authored that condones hitting women.” To be fair, shooting and strangling isn’t hitting.
1:44 am
Exactly!
8:20 pm
I hate asking this, but we can keep all replys and rebuttals in the comment sections of related posts? All these posts on the same subject are really driving back other topics, and filling recent posts with the same topics.
8:23 pm
I think that the conversation should be limited to existing posts. You are not the only one who has expressed this. The topic seems to have blown way up at this point.
1:12 am
‘Overall, the extraordinary claim that women are secretly controlling the agendas of institutions that have always been overseen and staffed by males and have always relegated women to a “less virile less potent existence” requires a tremendous amount of evidence. While Jay provides a number of anecdotal instances of women who act less than honorably toward men, by any metric and at any time and place in history, men have used their physical superiority and their political privilege to completely dominate women. This isn’t a matter of “reading the right books” as Jay complains he is always asked to do. It’s a recognition of very rudimentary and basic fact of human history.’
This is the thing that I have found hardest to understand throughout this debate; without this historical evidence how on earth can one advocate the misogynist position? As far as I can see, the historical oppression of women simply isn’t up for debate. It is happening the world over and has been for a very long time. To re-write history like this (especially whilst appealing to stereotype and offering bad anecdotal evidence) isn’t merely astoundingly stupid, it’s a page out of the very statist playbook that the poster was railing against in the first place.
1:33 am
Which was kind of the point, genius. It was a satirical inversion of feminist extremes. That’s all it ever was. Despite the fact that I explicitly stated as much, the lot of you are still going on and on and on like I actually believe this shit. Really. It’s funny, on the one hand…but it also makes me wonder if you can actually read beyond the first paragraph of anything I write.
12:56 am
“Take down of an anarcho-misogynist”…The title does everything but bring your arguments down. Just another classic example of the same feminist hyperbole spewed out which hitherto have gone unchallenged. Be strong young man and realize you’re numbers are growing like wildfire.
2:59 pm
I very much liked this post because it attempts to place the individual relationship in the context of the wider historical problem of the reduction of women to property beginning with the emergence of property itself. I agree that we know nothing of the “proper” relation between the two sexes, and cannot know what this relation is because it is a human relationship and no human beings are present in our society. This is true not only for men but also for women.
To give an example of what this implies: Marxist ideology proclaims that it is a critique of Capital, but, as a few writers have noted, this critique of Capital takes place wholly within Capital — that is, it is the criticism leveled against the capitalists by the workers. The point, however, is the role of labor — the activity — in constituting/reconstituting the relation between the two classes. The capitalist does indeed exploit the worker, but the worker’s own activity is the source of the capitalist’s power over the worker.
To give another example: Racism implies that “black” people do to themselves what “white” people do to them, namely reduce them to non-personhood owing to the color of their skin. It also implies that white people do not do to themselves what they do to black people, and that black people do not do to white people what they do to themselves. A white person is, therefore, not “white” except in the presence of a black person, but a black person is always “black” even when alone.
To really critique the relation between members of society we have to find a place to stand outside those relations — whether we are talking of class conflict, racial conflict or the ongoing conflict between men and women. This is only possible theoretically at this point.
2:17 pm
Thank you for this. I’ve just left a Libertarian board after being informed suffrage and women’s ability to have sex on their own terms are responsible for the downfall of society itself. Punctuated with rape jokes and calling women whores and inferior intellectually.
2:28 pm
Those kinds of sexism within libertarianism were a point of great conflict here lately. I personally do not condone any such things. We have tried to be vocal about our support of women’s rights here and hopefully will be able to continue on that path.
This is a subject that disturbs and upsets me.
2:41 pm
The idea that my hoohaa can bring the end of society itself amuses me. The rest of it just pisses me right the hell off.
2:28 pm
Those kinds of sexism within libertarianism were a point of great conflict here lately. I personally do not condone any such things. We have tried to be vocal about our support of women’s rights here and hopefully will be able to continue on that path.
This is a subject that disturbs and upsets me.
2:41 pm
My question here is what is feminism’s stand on marriage? At the early movements, they want to abolish marriage. But when survey indicated that more than 50% young men are delaying marriage and 22% doesn’t want to marry ever, feminists get angry and called it ‘Peter Pan’ syndrome. Yet 70% divorces are initiated by women. So women want to marry and divorce at the same time?
2:46 pm
I would strongly suggest Voltairine de Cleyre on those subjects http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/03/sex-slavery/ also “those who marry do ill” is a good one, you can google it.
5:14 pm
Which feminism brand?
here’s a little trick that might help you-
Much like not asking “what do women want” and instead asking “what does that individual woman want”
ask ” what does that individual feminist want”.
11:15 pm
Thank you. This article pretty much sums up all the reason why I gave up on (right-)libertarianism.
Jay Batman is now officially on my special loathe list.
1:33 am
Excellent!
According to Jay and some others women are the secret society that run the world. Why was I not informed that I have such prowess as a female?
2:39 am
You didn’t get your Sooper Sekrit Ebil Feminazi Decoder Ring O Doom???
I got mine last week, right after I sacrificed a fetus and kicked a puppy.
4:25 pm
A woman tried heckling Winston Churchill at some speaking event.
She said (approximately) “I’ll have you know Mr. Churchill, that in 50 years women will run the world!”
Churchill paused dramatically and then said “What, Still?!”
Better late than never, but consider yourself now informed.
6:33 pm
I was already well aware that Winston Churchill was a colossal asshole. Thank you for the additional anecdote.
1:40 am
Thank you.
I was looking for a massive FAIL of a takedown.
Damn, Batman scrambled ya’ll eggs real HARD. Who knew Libertarian men were such wussies?
Now I know
1:44 am
whooops,
guess that would Anarchists as wussies!