| Angry Rant |
[27 Sep 2007|12:53am] |
At the International Feminist Summit (well technically just after the Summit) a well-respected radical lesbian feminist called me critical, judgmental and negative. While I was quite hurt by this on further reflection she is absolutely right about me. I am absolutely critical, judgmental and negative, and proudly so. I won’t deny it. More recently, I was called negative by a post-modernist who works for DIMIA (Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs), they are the department responsible for locking up hundreds of asylum seekers and most recently for the military invasion onto indigenous land in the Northern Territory. I can see how a woman who works for the government in that capacity would absolutely have grounds to call me negative.
Anyways this is the run down for women this week in Australia. (Actually that is bullshit, a quick look at the news on the net shows that it would take a much longer entry than this to cover all of the violence that has been done by men to women in this week. This entry only covers those murders, rapes and other injustices that I had heard about without searching the net.)
A man in New Zealand slaughters his wife after years of wife-battering, puts her body in the boot of his car which he leaves outside his house, flys to Australia with his daughter (she looks about three from the photos), abandons his daughter at a train station in Melbourne then flies to America. link
An 'apparently loving family man' shot his wife then shot himself in Townsville.
I blogged a while ago about how one of my sister’s friends had an eighteen month old child that started screaming for no reason. When she took him to the doctors they found that the child had been raped. Although the child was covered in sperm that was DNA matched to the mother’s then partner, the defense argued that there was reasonable doubt that he was the culprit and of course the rapist of this eighteen month old baby walked free.
Another man raped a two year old to death. link
Our wonderful prime minister wants a state funded funeral for a child molester friend of his. After public opposition he has withdrawn the offer of the state funded funeral. link
This is the world that we live in. We live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable a man to bash his wife. And if death results well… that is only really sad if she leaves young kids behind. We live in a world where men rape kids. We live in a world where men rape kids then walk free because the male judges and the male lawyers are probably rapists too and if they are female then they have been taught to think like rapists, just like the post-modernist who works for DIMIA. We live in a world that is run by rapists just like Johnny who surrounds himself with like-minded men and distances himself if they get caught. Not that getting caught means anything. A child can be covered in sperm and there is still ‘reasonable doubt’.
This is going to prove that I am negative, critical and judgmental when I say this: if you think it is ok to live in a world like this and not be critical, judgmental and negative then, quite frankly, I think you are sick. You have been poisoned by the bread and water of male supremacy, women-hatred. I am not going to sit back and let people call me negative without responding that anyone who lives in this world is fucking sick if they are not absolutely negative about the violence that is perpetuated against women and children by men day in and day out.
I really have to wonder sometimes whether words actually mean anything anymore. A woman like me, who voices her opposition to marriage, prostitution, fisting and intercourse, is branded negative by a woman who defends men’s right to purchase women for sex, and works for the government locking up people who don’t have the right coloured skin.
I really want to say a big fuck you to post-modernism. I want to know how ‘multiple subject positions’ and ‘transgressing gender’ will stop men from raping babies. I want to know how ‘gender fucking’ and ‘transgressive performativity’ will stop men from bashing and slaughtering women. I want to know how the ‘lesbian phallus’ and ‘drag’ will stop the sexualisation of women, will stop women from starving themselves, will stop girls from cutting themselves, will stop men buying women for sex, will stop men from raping us, will stop men from viewing us as sex, will stop men from viewing us as whores. I want to know how post-modernism will stop men. Right now.
I want to wake up tomorrow knowing that there are absolutely no women being bashed in any given second in the whole world. I want to wake up tomorrow knowing that every single sex-trafficked woman currently enslaved by men, to men, for men, has been released. I want to wake up knowing that every man in the world would be absolutely horrified and repulsed by the idea of doing anything to a woman that she did not wholly desire. I want to wake up knowing that no man or woman would do anything harmful (this includes fisting, BDSM, subordination, domination etc.) to any other man or woman and call it love. I want to wake up knowing that every single one of our political prisoners have been freed, the lesbian seven, Aung Sun Suu Kyi. I want to wake up in a world where men don’t kill us or each other, where women are free to define what words like love, peace and freedom actually mean because we are the ones that have the power to make them happen.
If this makes me negative then so be it. I’d rather be negative than sick enough to call fisting a legitimate act of love. I’d rather be negative than sick enough to defend men’s right to use economic means to force women into sexual slavery. I’d rather be negative.
Post-modernism is neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism is post-modernism. Neo-liberalism/post-modernism is a male conspired disease that has robbed me of so many of my sisters. I grieve for them. I yearn for them.
I still hope. I still refuse to participate in the male politics of either/or. I am not positive or negative, I am Radically Other. I will not let the politics of fear keep me from speaking my truths. Let them call me critical, judgmental, negative, intimidating. I am all of those things but one thing I will not be is silent. Being silent about men raping babies, about men bashing their wives, about men screwing with women in every way imaginable, that is truly unforgivable.
I will not accept the male-apologists. I will not accept the neo-liberal postmodernists. I will not accept silence.
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