Shehadic Sobbings of the Waah-Waah Sisterhood

Last week saw not one but two gynocentric moral panics, with the forces of femiternalism once more waging their holy war, or shehad, against the tentacles of the todgerarchy .

First the Fräuleingruppen set their sights on that ever-(op)pres(s)ent organ of penile persecution—the “lads’ mag”:

The Lose the Lads’ Mags campaign by UK Feminista and Object is calling on high-street retailers to immediately withdraw lads’ mags and papers featuring pornographic front covers from their stores. Each one of these stores is a workplace. Displaying these publications in workplaces, and/or requiring staff to handle them in the course of their jobs, may amount to sex discrimination and sexual harassment contrary to the Equality Act 2010.

Every mainstream retailer which stocks lads’ mags is vulnerable to legal action by staff and, where those publications are visibly on display, by customers. There are, in particular, examples of staff successfully suing employers in respect of exposure to pornographic material at work. Such exposure is actionable where it violates the dignity of individual employees or customers, or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.

– ‘Lose the lads’ mags or risk legal action’, The Guardian

In other news, another cluster of shehadists turned their guns on Facebook admins for the “hate speech and violence against women” supposedly running rampant on the site. According to Rebecca Leber at Think Progress, their efforts elicited something of a surrender:

The company promises to complete a review of its community standards on hate speech, update training for the staff that review harmful content, increase accountability for the creators of the content, and establish new partnerships with women’s rights groups. Additionally, Facebook will encourage international anti-defamation groups it works with to include women’s groups in their conversations.

Some would call such she-nanigans examples of fearless feminists beating back the tyranny of traditional gender roles; examples of staring down the patriarchal panopticon that holds the hymened under its male gaze.

Some would be sorely mistaken.

As Sp!ked’s Brendan O’Neill astutely pointed out in his Huff Po article, the shehad against lads’ mags constitutes yet another attempt to belittle both male sexuality and female agency, much like the anti-Page 3 campaign that preceded it. As well as slighting those women who choose to flash for cash, this feminist fatwa (or twatwa, if you will) unwittingly insults the general female population by presuming them too “weak, meek, [and] easily offended” to withstand the sight of shared somata on supermarket shelves.

The same implicit presumption also underlies the whole Facebook fiasco, the latest in a line of gynocentric social network gripes. It all brings to mind rather Victorian notions of modesty, what with the need to shield the eyes of fair ladies lest they spill out in tears.

But then, such behaviour all too often characterises those who identify as feminist. For all their appeals to “equality”, all their denunciations of “male privilege”, they seem terribly intent on procuring many a prerogative for their desired demographic. Take the curious phenomenon I call ‘rape exceptionalism’ (which warrants a post all of its own), where the very mention of the r-word fucks many a person’s capacity for logical and consistent thought until it’s a bleeding, sobbing mess. What folks take as good sense and benevolent advice in any other context becomes “victim-blaming” and “rape apologism” when the subject of sexual assault raises its leery head. Less carnally (and more ridiculously), those who simply joke about and depict the act find themselves subject to a censure (and censorship) not doled out to those who make light and art of murder, war, suicide, et al; of course, femorrhoids being the special pleaders that they are, such outrage only arises if the “violated” possess vulvas.

With all their signalling of female fragility, these pearl-clutching, secularised church ladies also tap into the common male urge to protect, peacock, and pander for pussy; hence the presence of the privilege-checking Percivals who call themselves “male feminists”, hoping to revive the fainting fems with their smelling salts of semen.

Awww!

By drawing, often consciously courting, such attention, the wounded gazelles of feminism further affirm their unwitting (?) adherence to long-lived gender roles and stereotypes. Assigning all agency to males, and all passivity to females, they reinforce the traditionalist trope of men as sole saviours in the process of condemning them as sole subjugators. Instead of taking direct action to sever from their patriarchal persecutors, these divas-in-distress look to them to fulfil their time-honoured role as protectors, bending them to their will by way of tantrums, trickery, and, of course, tears.

In other words, they play the part of the emotional, manipulative, needy princesses so beloved of traditionalist wet dreams and misogynist hatewanks.

For a movement that claims to be for liberation and autonomy, feminism tends to play out—in the words of Girl Writes What—as “traditionalism in lipstick”. The constant, categorical appeals to womanly weakness and male mastery strike me as more offensive to females than all the played-out “kitchen” and “sandwich” jokes posted on the web. With their blessed battle cries, the shrieking shedhadists declare their worship of a goddess that fails at her stated aims.

From my vantage point, Western feminism amounts to the not-so-radical notion that women are feeble.

~MRDA~