Typical Antifeminist Tactics

Below are a half-dozen common antifeminist tactics routinely employed to discredit and demean feminist writers and activists:

1. Physically objectify or unduly focus on the body of the feminist:Focus on the writer-activist's appearance. This is utilized against women who are considered "attractive things" by dominant white male supremacist standards, as well as for those women who are not. This tactic exists to take the focus off the author-activist's work, especially off the intellectual prowess and power of the work, in order to misogynistically retrain the eyes back on the woman as a patriarchally scrutinized body. This may be done through scornful description, objectifying photography, or both. As a test of sexism, ask yourself if a similarly well-known man's body, relative to his intellectual-political work (ideas, activism, etc)--think Karl Marx--is similarly scrutinized. Jerry Falwell just died recently: amidst the public contempt there was no preponderance of viscious disparaging comments about his weight; yet when Andrea died, "Finally, that fat b*tch is dead" was among the most frequently uttered remarks, online and off.

2. Psychologize and isolate the feminist:
Focus on the writer-activist's emotional state, internal world, and personal history as other than socially understandable and politically useful. This is what happens to raped women in courtrooms across the U.S. This tactic is used to get us to think more about what's happening in or has happened to the author-as-individual, than to examine with the author what's happening to women as a class.

3. Further portray the feminist as "a kind of woman" seen through patriarchy's distorting lens:
Turn a complex person back into the raced or gendered female Other, whether the mean mother, masochistic whore, wounded martyr, goddess-savior, or man-hating madwoman, by those who, through their writing, infer they have the ethical or political right to assess or reinscribe any woman in these misogynistic ways. She is thus more easily dehumanized, dismissed, or deified--someone who must be permanently pedestaled, knocked or otherwise taken down, or a combination thereof.

4. Undermine the feminist's work or reputation:There are many ways to do this, and most of them employ techniques of back-handed compliments, quotations taken out of context, and subtle to blatant mischaracterizations of the work and its author.

5. Promulgate lies and distortions:Especially recycle misstatements already circulating in the public domain. The repetition of these falsehoods helps keep them alive as "truth," maintaining an inaccurate or delusional understanding of the feminist under scrutiny.

6. Politically compromise and conceptually contain the feminist:This tactic exists in many forms. Portray the feminist as ideologically rigid or physiologically frigid. Minimize or ignore real patriarchal forces. Keep the sexist spotlight on what those feminists do amongst themselves, as if not in response to living in and fighting a racist patriarchy. Employ conservative to liberal understandings of reality to text that is written from a radical point of view. Refuse to accept or comprehend the work on its own terms, instead collapsing its meaning back into a conservative to liberal worldview--which the radical feminist's text often exposes as part of the political problem.

Radical feminist writers' work is never supposed to be "met" on its own terms, by the reader; there is no imperative on privileged people to do their homework, so to speak, before approaching the radical woman's material--inside or outside the academy. However, whole college courses and books for Dummies exist to help us with the basic concepts and framework, the analysis, the terminology of the "great and influential ideas" of dead white men; I've read several of them. If I'm in the academy and I don't get it, I am advised to take the intro course again, or to please stop wasting everyone's time with my misunderstandings and inaccurate interpretations. I might be advised to speak with someone "in the know" before approaching the great white man's work again. And if I do, I will be asked to metaphorically remove my shoes before entering.

From Plato to Derrida, if you are not familiar with the framework or philosophy--and sometimes also the non-English language--the usually European man's great mind is operating out of or critiquing, the failure to comprehend the material belongs to you. With women writers, the failure to comprehend is placed back on the author. The dog-shit on the soles of anyone's shoes may be wiped on the feminist soul's work, and too often, no one will notice or care.

Source: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/levy/