Jenifer’s Fear

Photo by Rosie Hardy

Jenifer' small body woke, feeling as if she were still in a dream.  She felt fingers move across her slit between her legs.  Her body froze in shock, in a state of shell-shock.  She feared to open her eyes, but so she did after the touch of fingers left her pink, sweet labia.  She got up off of her grandma’s sofa pull out bed, dazed and panicked.  She didn’t look back… she moved herself away from that spoiled bed in a fright.  She crept to the bathroom, only a few feet away, leaving the light off inside the bathroom in fear of him seeing her.  She vomited in the toilet, and sat on the toilet impulsively, but did not pee.  She tells herself she must be quiet now… Sit. Think. Don’t Move.  What happened? she asks herself, frightened and in complete despair.  Then, she realized for the first time that she was in a state of terror, something she’s only ever experienced while watching VHS movies while hidden in the dark with her cousins, in a fantasy.  Except this fantasy was real… Real?  Was it really real?  The phantasy mocked her for all her life thereafter.  She no longer felt safe.  And she never will again.

The pain set in like a nine-inch nail corked into her vagina.  She felt raw and slashed forever, never quite in a position to speak what happened to her as a child, never able to release her anger and hurt because she Knew it would cause more havoc to tell any of her family around her.  So she never did, and she never will.

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If we do not start talking about how our bodies have been used without our consent, without a warrant, we will never begin to reach freedom.  For our freedom depends deeply on killing the war machine like cock.  We must speak up about our experiences in order to kill that old-aged fantasy of pure romance and cock.

We Must Challenge conventional ideas about how women are perceived; point in case below:

 Women are thought to seduce men through fear; we must point out that we are not totalized by our sexuality. 

The Prostitution of Black Women Slaves

When you type the goddamn word “Slavery” in Wikipedia, I want BLACK WOMEN to be added to that so-called trifling "list".  I want BLACK WOMEN on that list to have a 15,000 paragraph entry where their experiences as BLACK WOMEN are stated and recognized.  I want it to demonstrate to us that they, the fuck-able ones, were EXPLICITLY and LITERALLY a sexual organ of their oppressors. They were their vaginas.  There is no question in our minds now that these women were OWNED, FUCKED, and LABORED. I need your consciousness to take a step further: these women were fucked like PROSTITUTES who are now in our porn or on the streets.  They were the sexual property of white men.  They were conquered.  And what do we know about wars where one peoples will fight with another?  They rape and pillage!  How is this any different from white man maiming the black woman in our American History?

If you want to hear the true Cinderella story of black women in America, here it is:

Once upon a time, Linda Brent was a slave.  She LIVED with her master, her pimp, her so-called lover.  Let’s call him (a) John.  Now, this John did not actually beat her.  He had more in store for her than simply that.  Instead, he psychologically hounded her with constant threats of violence, obscene accusations, and smears against her character.  She stated in her memoir:

“My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I BELONGED to him and swearing by heaven and earth that I would SUBMIT to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me.  If I knelt before my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me there.”

Linda spent years being tormented by “her man”. Linda was one of the “lucky” ones though.  In her mid-20s she attempted to escape, but failed.  Instead, for 7 years, she lived secretly in a hole in the ground under a shed in her grandmother’s backyard. After those 7 years of being buried alive, she escaped to the North where she became an active abolitionist.

I deplore of you to ask yourself how this is different from the daily and persistent abuse and violence against women today?  Not just now nor during “Slavery”, but throughout all of recorded history.  Not just black women, but of every color of woman on the face of this earth, especially those who are sold through sex trafficking.  What is trafficking, after all?  It is SMUGGLING.  It is distributing what should be ILLEGAL goods.  It is the “tricking or luring of people away from their homeland to work under exploitative conditions elsewhere.”  What is America then?  It is a land where millions of people were trafficked in, exploited for their labor, and looked at (in the case of the black woman) as sexual objects, seen as a sexual appendage of the male.  You see, women were once an appendage.  We were once worth more to the male.  We once, in the time of Adam, were a rib.  No longer.  Blacks have been turned into the whip, while now all us women have been turned into a vibrating Pussy Sleeve©.  Women have been reduced to a literal object, no longer a part of the man, but a commodified, dead object to be sold on the Capitalist Market.

I am saying that black women during Slavery were being sold on the market like women who are prostituted by white men in America or Sweden or China or Africa. 

Prospective slave buyers (pimps) looked over black woman to be purchased.  These white slave owning men had to eye the merchandise before purchase.  Black women were taken into rooms before purchase where her vagina was inspected to guarantee she was without defect so that she could be fucked.  These women didn’t even have the so-called “honor” of being courted and contracted under marriage.

Control over her body was passed from white person to white person, along with a bill of sale.

White men in our American history had selective memories.  Those so-called men of intellect and honor, raped, maimed, and killed the women in their homes, their plantations, farms.

The Plantation is just another forgotten home, shoved under the carpet by white men who wish for it to be forgotten.  It is a clear example of the exploitation of human beings, of blacks and white women, in this country.  Now, blacks have been able to break away, theoretically, from the home of the white man.  Us white women, on the other hand, still glorify and strive to live under a roof with the white man, under contract.  Marriage, to the white man, is a binding contract of sexual assess, after all.  It is a degraded position of power, as the plantation home has demonstrated.

If this isn’t horrifying, then I don’t know what it.

The Privatization of Women

Andrea Dworkin has stated that we, in this society, DO NOT perceive a husband (the one who fucks) and a wife (the one who is fucked) as a SOCIAL unit.  It is, in fact, a private unit.  It is not a social part of life.  The relationship between a man and his wife is not interpreted as SOCIAL.  This is what church, state, and institutional laws are built around.  Men build goddamn walls around women, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, and then call it their home.  In this home, or prison, we are beaten, manipulated, raped, annihilated.  Women are most likely to be beaten, raped, and killed in their own home than anywhere else.  

On top of this, we, literally, are given a script for how to interpret that PRIVATE unit.  It’s in the media, our movies, our TV shows, our literature, our institutions.  It’s everywhere.  The romance of the woman (or, what should be more appropriately called the rape of the woman) is the script we are given.  Pornography demonstrates this clearly: women are beaten with a smile on their faces, and it is a ejaculatory event for both this man and this woman.

More than 50% of women report that they were ATTACKED in their own home, most commonly by their “intimate” partner.  The meaning of the word “intimate” is defined as “very private; closely personal”.  Women are captives with no political rights to defend off their attacker, their abuser, the man they were socially conditioned to love NO MATTER WHAT.  She is his property through and through.  She still cannot claim that she has been raped in a court of law without being laughed away.  She, throughout history through the eyes of men, has seemed to have cried wolf.  She cannot claim dignity nor respect nor any self.  According to Wikipedia, the definition of captive is “the state of being confined to a space from which it is difficult or impossible to escape”.  A place where one finds it difficult to escape?  This is the function of marriage.  It is a literal capture.  Women are unable to leave their male partners for economic reasons, for legal reasons, for every male class law and institution in place.

Women, who only got the vote 92 years ago, haven’t been able to participate in the construction of their society.  Their voices have been drowned out, ignored, silenced. 

To demonstrate to you how sub-human women are, in 1990 it was reported that there were 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States. There are 3,800 animal shelters.  How is this possible, when the evidence is so clear that women are beaten, tortured, killed on a daily basis?  This means there are 2.5 times more animal shelters than there are human shelters, which supposedly are supposed to function when someone is in a state of EMERGENCY.  Apparently, a man’s best friend is only his dog, not his wife.  A dog’s function is, after all, companionship, while the wife is still relegated to the function of producing the progeny of the male through contracted intercourse.

The husband is the human being in this “PRIVATE” relationship.  Not the women; it’s never the woman who is human in this gender classed world.  The woman is property, an object of possession, a fetishized sexual being that elevates the man’s prosperity.  The wife is his bling, like his car which functions to get him around.  She is, literally, a PART of him, like his pinky finger or his spleen.  (Eve, after all, is of Adam’s rib)  She is not human.  She is the one who breeds, who CARES for him.  During Colonial times, men literally BOUGHT women.  They were brought to the colonies as wives.  This is ONLY 200 years ago out of our 50,000 year history as humans.  This was how America began: bringing captives, white and black, as slaves to the WHITE MAN.  Both white women and blacks were sexual slaves.  The white woman bred the new generations of white men, while blacks were bred as slaves.  Black women were also used as the sexual property of the white man.  America was literally born through the system of concubinage.

Women are literally PRIVATE PROPERTY.  LITERALLY.  To this day, this is how the laws are set up.  It is "private matters".  It is "none of your business."  Literally, it is none of society’s BUSINESS.  It is personal, not to be discussed.  Law and State interprets it this way.  The church interprets it this way.  Our learned behavior has been conditioned this way… The relationship between a man and his wife is privatized.  Women are literally owned by the men they marry.  The laws make it so. She is owned inside out.  The slit between her legs is his property.  His sexual object, his possession, his fetishized obsession.  Remember, he signed a contract saying he is the owner of her slit.  That CONTRACT states that he has sexual access to her.  He can have sexual access to her whether she likes it or not, and he will get away with it.  Like the slaves, she is the white property of his estate, his castle.  He can intimidate her, insult her, degrade her, and get away with it.  He can beat her, hurt and rape her and get away with it, and on top of that she will be the one to blame.  It is her fault; she is crazy and has “personal issues”, the script says, society says.  I am here to say that her “personal” issues ARE NOT PERSONAL.  They ARE POLITICAL.  The only thing she is trying to do is keep herself alive, trying to keep her body, mind, and soul from being violated.  And the court says, “No, you are exaggerating, lying.”  And the psychologists say, “No, you are bipolar, crazy.”  And the intellectuals say, “No, you are not worth our time nor effort.”  And her family says, “No, you are his wife. Deal with it.”  He can kill her, like chattel, and get away with murder.  And she has died a trillion times throughout history.

This is why the statement, “The Personal is Political” is so important.  I’m glad a close professor has emphasized this phrase so much to me.  Women have been privatized.  This is why the personal lives of women are so important to listen to, not to be trivialized, not to be swept under the carpet.  Yet, this is what’s going on.  Women are being ignored; to take her seriously would cause great anger, great violence, great political conflict.  The Suffragettes knew it.  In their personal conversations with each other, they strategized NOT to talk about the personal lives they inhabited with men.  These women knew it would anger men to the point of losing the vote.  They strategized not to talk about it in order to get the vote.  This must end.  Our silence must END NOW.  We are no longer living under the same state of tyranny of the 1920s… that is to say, not as much... not much, after all, has changed.  The state has reconfigured and women have done that.  Now we must act in new ways; we must have the courage to not be afraid of what men will do to us when we speak up and institute new laws.  We must end the privatization of women, the privatization of marriage, and the privatization of masculine identity.  We must end our silence on issues of “private matters”.

Feminism’s war against their oppressors has always been about ridding the masculine identity from the face of the earth.  Women have done this through changing laws, obtaining the vote, creating women shelters and rape centers, through using their words. They have done this with their mutilated bodies up for grabs, putting their lives up for the violent backlash which pounds back 10 times harder. Feminism, I will tell you, have not raised up in arms as a collective force.  They have used merely their words, marching, protesting. 

But this is a war no matter how men try to define war; it is a war which violates the bodies of women.  Men use their propaganda, pornography, which is now so proliferate that even “women’s magazines” are filled with it, showing the bodies of hot young fuckable girls with a look of sexual seduction on their faces in stiletto heels.  Women, now more than ever, have internalized this masochistic language as the pornographic imagination has extended out past farther than even anyone imagined: into the public sphere of commercials, television, the media, the internet.

This war is no different from nations violating the human rights of other nations.  War is defined as a state of emergency, and so is the condition of women as they stand now, in 4 inch high heels.  Women are in a state of emergency, yet, when we speak up, go to the authorities, talk with our closest friends and family, we are trivialized and told we deserve it, need it.  Women need to fight back against the all holy masculine identity dependent on pillage and rape.  A precondition for joy for men is putting women in their place.  This is the function of marriage, of the dating system.  It is to put a woman in her place: as a sexual object to be bred and used for physical labor.  This must change.  Men need to find a way to break the systematic sadistic joy and literal erection they get from beating, raping, and ejaculating on women.  If they do not, we, women, will force them to; they will be forced to change, and if they do not, they will perish from this world because we will make this world into something they cannot thrive in.

I'd like to leave you with a speech given by Andrea Dworkin, who highly influenced this piece.

http://andreadworkin.com/audio/montrealdworkin.mp3

WAR ZONE

I think I'm about to lose my MIND.

This documentary, War Zone, was directed/made by a woman from Louisiana.

She bought a camera, and soon found herself in the streets with her tiny camera filming men saying highly sexist things.

 It's 33 minutes long. I'm only half done. SAVE ME!!

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=213&template=PDGCommTemplates%2FHTN%2FItem_Preview.html

Just an extra note: 90% of murderers are men.

Everyday Male Chauvinism

Everyday Male Chauvinism is a form of intimate partner violence that is not called violence.  This phenomena of power and control over women is unrecognizable, invisible, and remains unnamed.  This is the name of the game, and it is part of everyday relationships with men, especially white heterosexual men who are privileged in ways that are invisible to them as they are the standard.  This invisibility is what makes patriarchy tick; it's the gas that fuels the patriarchal car.  Take away the gas, and the car will no longer be able to run.  This is what making visible the invisible so powerful.  We must make them visible and call out the patriarchal mindset as it arises.  We must not take the path of least resistance.  We must persevere, fight for our rights as human beings in need of respect, dignity, and love.

Men must understand that women and men live in a world where the patriarchal empire Masculand exists and functions in every sphere of life imaginable. This is a global phenomenon, and it's not leaving without outright resistance.  "The recognition of everyday male chauvinism can result in changes in the lives of women who suffer from it.  Men, along with women, must recognise their own behaviour and WANT to change it, not merely think about it abstractly" as I have seen done even in radical circles.  Women WILL NOT progress without the help and support of men; this is not to say that women do not have power.  This capitalistic system will fall to its feet without women's constant unpaid labor of their minds and bodies.  Feminism has drastically changed the lives of every woman who has come into contact with it. Women's roles within society have dramatically changed over the past century due to the fight that women have fought: they have gained the right to vote, to work, to their sexuality, etc.  Of course, our work is not done.  We have far to go, and even farther than Feminism, but humanity for all.

The point is: It is not only necessary for women to fight, but men’s active work is needed.

"The manifestations of everyday male chauvinism are part of a systematic behaviour—they are not occasional and momentary manoeuvres but are tactical steps constituting a strategy. The strategic aim is again the maintenance of the power position, of male dominance, and its restoration if that power is injured. The emphasis is on maintenance and restoration and not on the creation of power because this latter has already been ensured largely by the social, structural element: patriarchal society."

"Men’s 'small' controlling, violent and dominant behaviours are forms of behaviour all within the limits of so called normality and are not particularly outstanding.  They are recognized by men as normal in their lives without even realizing their harmful behaviors.  They do insidious and continuous harm to women’s autonomy, dignity and even their psychic equilibrium. They are extremely common among so called 'nice' men whom public opinion would call neither violent nor particularly controlling  or male chauvinistic."

"These almost unrecognisable mechanisms of “soft” control (i..e. everyday male chauvinism) exercised over women have a devastating effect not only on women but in the long term also on the men who exercise them." These mechanisms of control used by men are damaging to both the man and the woman.  Men are held transfixed in terror, and must prove they can defend themselves endlessly.  They also must defend their property, i.e. women, cattle, his choice of business.  They must defend their "manhood" against other men, and mostly they perish even attempting that.

Male domestic violence and rape in our culture is turned into a fiasco of "victim blaming" where women are castigated as whores and deserving of men's violence.  So, what makes us think the more subtler forms of violence against women like verbal abuse and intimidation are ever even remarked upon in our culture in our daily lives?  Even when it's the most common, most widespread mechanism of control.  Break a woman (soldier) down, and they are yours forever.

Maybe you're thinking to yourself that women are very often violent themselves, even violent against men.  Yes, this is true.  Women can act in all sorts of ways just as men can and vice versa, but the violence women commit is against the flow of the dominant system of patriarchy.  They are working against an everyday patriarchal society where violence committed by men is dominant in their daily lives.  Women, unlike men, are quickly and swiftly shut down and dismissed as bitches, worthless whores, witches, man haters, crazy, unreasonable, illogical.  Pick your favorite.  On the other hand, when a man acts this way, in an intimidating (although, for them, reasonable) way, he is treated like next years king.

In simpler terms, intimidation on women looks bitchy, unreasonable, deserving of put-downs and hatred.  On men, it looks like terror, logical, right, and even can be sexy.

To really make this point compare these photos:

While both look harsh and terrifying, which one's anger looks and feels unjustified, unreasonable, stupid?  Which one looks and feels terrifyingly reasonable?

This woman in the photo uses intimidation and slave-owning techniques just like the man, so don't both genders use intimidation and everyday "male" chauvinism?  Women may use everyday male chauvinism as a mechanism to protect themselves, to fight off feelings of powerlessness from the unequal division of power, or to stand up against the dominant power structures set up to put women back in "their place."  Sometimes the woman, herself, usually alone, must use the dominant system of revenge: castigating him for his indifference and ruthlessness, jail him, use capital punishment.  This is not because she just loves to be sadistic like a man.  It's because it's the only way she is finally able to gain any sort of sense of safety.  If your attacker keeps attacking and threatens to kill you, rape you, or hurt you and those close to you, and if the capitalistic world institution can't help you (even further, they discredit you and castigate you), you are left to defend yourself "outside the proper lawful system".  Outside this "moral" system of lawfulness, we are left to fend for ourselves in a world where our concerns are not considered worth a even a cent! We, women, must stand together, and SHOUT, SCREAM at the top of our lungs that we are not immoral, psychotic, or vengeful.  It is the system which "drives us crazy" and "makes us psychotic and hysteric".  It is a personal feeling and experience that every woman has experienced in a wide variety of ways.  That sick Chicana woman.  That blonde whore.  That negress slut animal.

The majority of women who use violence are merely protecting themselves against the systematic violence that is committed against them on a daily basis.  Any oppressed group can use the tools of the master when the time arises in the right moment of strategic consideration, but, watch out for some serious BACKLASH and watch out FOR YOUR VERY LIFE.  For instance, a man may rape a woman or maybe he throws her around a little bit, or maybe he says something hurtful, or maybe he cheats on her.  The woman may use violence that typifies everyday male chauvinism when other mechanisms aren't available due to her systematic oppression, but the difference is she will be labeled an uncontrollable raging bitch, and therefore simply dismissed as hysteric.Women are castigated as very violent in comparison to men . It's not their "normal" roles to be violent, so any instance of violence by women is heavily sedated by the power structures in place. Neutralized I should say.  This is what we are fighting, women.  Listen up.  Men are neutralizing us before we even have the chance to stand on our two feet.  They kick us down before we even stand.

More men need to LISTEN, really listen... really gravitating to the weight of what women are saying daily about their particular struggle within their very lives NOW.  Women also, especially, if we are even to get this war back on with more equal footing.  What is she going through?  What is she concerned about endlessly as if in a psychosis that can't be woken up from?  Even those men who give us the time of day to speak don't seem to realize the gravity of what we are saying.  After all, their emotional range isn't ideologically supposed to be anything more than an emotional-less stone or anger.  Alas, we are to only be seen, looked upon as their porcelain dolls for them to glorify when we go with the flow, and we will be vilified when we act against the flow of THEIR power structures.  If we "go with the flow" we are seen as innocent, pure dolls, but when we ACT against that flow, we are demonized and systematically dismissed.

We are never to be heard.  We are like children with little right to exist beyond men's needs.  Men treat us like children as they "know better".  They have an "intellectual stamina" over women due to all that inherent male superiority given to them by this patriarchal structure.  Believe me, they realize this structure exists and that it oppresses women.  They invented it afterall, this system of slavery, this slavery of the gender class woman -- can you contradict me?

This is, of course, the same old story of male logic which keeps women down and out of intellectual circles in all fields of life except love, motherhood, and wifehood.  This is of course the biggest farce.  Women very well know what's going on.  They've been learning since they were BORN that they could not be "men" as they were stuffed into a pink bonnet and severely punished for acting out against the gender class man.

Men have been indoctrinated with the idea that they are the show runners of the world.  They see themselves as the rulers, the bosses, the kings, the organizers, the politicians, and this is, indeed correct. THEY ARE.  Big whoop.  Women are the ones breaking their backs with little reward or little thanks from their bosses, their husbands, their boyfriends, and even their families.  They do the dirty work.  They clean, sweep, organize the home, print the kids homework, create the pamphlets for that organization, set the dates for that beach or business trip, shop for your groceries, and the list is almost endless.

What is all very, very critical to this is the man's (and woman's) realization of his (her) socialization, indoctrination as a kid.  As a young boy, he adapted to the terrain of traditional roles set up for him before he's even born (his father maintained the family, his mother takes care of him, and on top of that he sees how other families interact in such similar ways).  His father uses "male logic" on his mommy.  His mommy uses kisses, hugs, complements, and sex as a tool of submission when she requests anything from a man, including him.  These ideas are indoctrinated, uploaded, buried beneath the boy's very understanding of men and women.  It becomes reality.  Even if he knows about patriarchy and wishes theoretically to dispose of it because (logically) he knows this is best for Homo Sapiens survival, he still knows these patriarchal roles are functioning NOW in the world.  He knows, at anytime, he can use these mechanisms and maneuvers against women and other men which degrade both.  He knows, beneath all of that, that he has the capacity to destroy a woman's self-esteem and sleep with any woman he wishes simply through the mechanisms he's used on his mother or sister or that cousin he felt up when he was 15 and she was 5.

This is so well into his very life-being.  He doesn't realize how much of that is in him, even when he may endorse the equality of both women and men in order to dissolve the gender classes.  He exploits and abuses the fact that the woman is an “expert” at taking care of others. He know she's been conditioned to do just that, so why not let her do it as she knows best and it'll be easier anyways, right guys?  By reinforcing women's already socialised calling “to live for others”, it leads the woman into the roles that are hers “by nature”, "by roles", and now "by patriarchy". 

Do you really think men aren't thinking this?  That if they get their wives or girlfriends to do the laundry or those dishes or plan that trip, he won't have as much to think about except his long held desire to exploit her and live out his dream of become "expert" or "theoretician".  It'll be just like living with mommy.

Women are conditioned to be a mother, wife, assistant, secretary, dispatcher, psychologist, social worker, telephonist, receptionist, cleaner and cloakroom attendant all at once for one man and for those men she works for at "her" job without any help from other men or women what so ever (unless, she dare ask for it, for help... which may lead to a hit, a put down, and terror).

“Often men feel that a relationship has deteriorated when the mechanisms of male power, which are accepted as everyday communication, are no longer enough to maintain power over women.” -Why Does He Abuse? Why Can He Abuse?

***This writing was highly influenced by the paper, Everyday Male Chauvinism.  Direct quotes are taken from it and have been modified by me.  No copyright infringement intended.