Feminism

I found this funny because Suzanne Moore  is bemoaning how Stewart Lee is not ‘progressive’ in his views on Scottish independence.

But he might as well be describing feminism and their belief in the ‘phallic’ power of patriarchy. Suzanne Moore is the ‘nostalgic’ one. And her old school feminist version of men as walking, predatory ‘penises’ fits Simpson’s description well.

Back in 1994, in his classic book Male Impersonators, Mark Simpson wrote about how ‘right-wing’ men’s movement types denigrate gay men and feminists’ alliances as a machiavellian ‘pact’. He wrote:

‘The men’s movement also began to make the connection between homosexuality and feminism in the cultural war. Its main advocate in Britain, Neil Lyndon, in his comically mis-titled book ‘No More Sex War’, railing against the evil ‘incubus’ of feminism and the lack of ‘paternity rights’, imagined an alliance between the ‘gay movement’ (meaning gay men) and the ‘sisterhood’. [He described it as] a ‘Treaty of Brest -Litovsk’ (the first world war peace treaty between Germany and newborn Soviet Russia that allowed the Germans to devote their attention to the Western Front). ‘

Well, Simpson in 2012 is an ardent anti-feminist. He made his opposition to feminism clear here, when he described misandry as the acceptable prejudice. And here Simpson’s damning critique of feminist columnists has impacted on me so well that I have used it on a number of occasions: to criticise Suzanne Moore’s ‘columns’!

I actually agree with Neil Lyndon. I think gay men and feminists DO form a ridiculous ‘pact’ against their so-called common-oppressor, the big bad wolf of heterosexual men’s ‘patriarchy’. And Mark Simspon, by emphasising his common ground with an arch feminist Suzanne Moore, is just reinforcing that alliance.

But it is dishonest. If those two were to actually speak openly about their views, not on Scottish independence but on gender, the subject they have dedicated their respective careers to, they would be on separate ‘sides’.

I know which side I am on.

SCUM

From previous conversations with Suzanne Moore, I know she is a fan of Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, and attempted assassin of Andy Warhol. However, Ms Moore is less generous in her analysis of Roman Polanski, because the violence he has admitted to was ‘rape’.

Last night Suzanne Moore was watching the Late Review show on TV and this conversation ensued:

https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/165579280972136449

https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/165581103141363713

https://twitter.com/suzanne_moore/status/165582898341220352

Speaks for itself really doesn’t it? But I think she is just employing the acceptable prejudice that is misandry. Feminism is full of double standards!

 

Freedom Of Speech – Again!

Suzanne Moore has a column in The Guardian this week advocating for ‘freedom of speech’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/18/outrage-culture-limits-free-speech?INTCMP=SRCH

I critiqued her article at Graunwatch

In my piece I wrote:
In an early paragraph Moore writes:

‘If one’s default setting is now to be part of some anonymous but offended mob, somehow the hierarchy of outrage implodes into meaninglessness. ‘

I have had a few conversations with Suzanne, about anonymity and pseudonymity online. Basically she is against both. Or at least she is against both if they are used to criticise her and her writing. She has accused me on more than one occasion, of ‘hiding’ behind my Quiet Riot Girl moniker, and being a ‘coward’ that is afraid to face the world as my ‘real’ self. I suggested that was odd since she is friendly with people (women) such as Girl with a One Track Mind, Fleet Street Fox and Belle de Jour. All of whom have been or are using pseudonyms online. But Suzanne says they are ok because she knows their names. So anonymity is all right, so long as you disclose everything to Suzanne Moore?

Also Moore has joined with other journalists, in the call for an end to anonymous commenting ‘below the line’ at newspaper forums such as cif. I think, though she has since made statements to the contrary, that she largely agrees with this statement on the subject by Julia Hobsbawm:

http://www.iaindale.com/posts/time-to-stop-anonymous-commenting

So, when she says ‘anonymous but offended mob’  Moore is picking out a large group of people online that if she had her way, would not exist at all, let alone be having the freedom to be ‘outraged’. I see a problem there.

The next aspect of Moore’s piece I have a problem with is her insistence that she thinks ‘self censorship’ is a bad idea. In relation to Nick Cohen’s latest book on freedom of speech she says:

‘pre-publication self-censorship “is the most suffocating form there is”. This self-censorship is all around us’

Well yes. And Suzanne Moore positively encourages self-censorship. In me! A few times now she has written to me or tweeted me or left a comment on blogs, basically telling me to stop writing articles about her work.  She has commented here at Graunwatch:

‘ I’d hate if you had to engage in any world beyond your ‘oh -so -clever I am a woman who hates feminism doesnt that make me interesting stance’ If you are a woman? I’d hate to be so essentialist? Goodbye . Dont bother to ever speak to or about me again.’

‘Don’t bother to ever speak to or about me again’ is asking me to censor myself.

Thankfully, I am a bit stronger than that. And when I received a rather nasty email last summer from Ms Moore, telling me to ‘watch my back’ I ignored it.

But it’s not just a personal issue I have here. I think the brand of feminism that Suzanne espouses actually actively encourages men to censor themselves on a daily basis. With her kind of feminism it is my way or the highway, and the discourses of ‘pornification’, of ‘rape culture’, of ‘online misogyny’ all inhibit men from speaking out. As Simpson has put it, misandry (that Suzanne Moore often employs) is the acceptable prejudice, and so challenging it is almost impossible.’

Suzanne responded in the comments in a rather nasty and personal way I think.

Also, when I went back to her article at The Guardian I noticed that some of the comments ‘below the line’ had been deleted. I commented on twitter:

https://twitter.com/#!/Notorious_QRG/status/160026692440698880

I know it is ‘cool’ to claim you are in favour of free speech. But to really actually be in favour of it takes a bit more than a couple of glib Guardian articles.

Suzanne Moore: Stupid Woman Columnist #2 Miss Whiplash

This is another section from my post at Graunwatch about Suzanne Moore and the ‘female columnists’ campaign against ‘online misogyny’. The subject is one which is not about to go away and I am emphasising how here at QRG HQ we do not automatically accept that ‘men’ ‘dominate’ ‘women’ in society’s power dynamic. I am also grateful to regular reader and commenter Stoner with a Boner for sharing my recent posts at Feminist Critics blog. I will link back to them and follow up some of those discussions soon.

Here’s Graunwatch:

http://graunwatch.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/suzanne-moore-stupid-woman-columnist/

[Mark Simpson is] not very enamoured of ‘female columnists’. In a piece defending the beauty and androgyny of Andre Pejic, Simpson criticised Amanda Platell who he termed ‘an outraged female columnist’.

In the comments under his post, Simpson emphasised the way ‘female columnists’ such as Amanda Platell like to ‘pose as a defender of [their] sex, dressed in cliches’:

‘She’s just a hack columnist. A hack female columnist (writing for the Mail’s ‘Femail’ section) who likes to pose as a defender of her sex. Dressed in cliches.’

I know Simpson was not aiming this comment at Ms Moore, but it certainly applies to her, and all the ‘female columnists’ and ‘female bloggers’ who have emphasised their ‘femaleness’ in order to present themselves as victims of nasty men online and off.

Something else that Simpson pointed out to me in a private correspondance relating to Platell and Pejic, was that these ‘female columnists’ are not ‘silenced’ or ‘outnumbered’ by men. They dominate the broadsheets column and lifestyle sections. Almost all writing on gender in major newspapers is done by women. And if you include fashion and beauty the ‘female-dominated’ nature of this arena becomes even more marked. Mr Simpson, the leading theorist of masculinity of our times, does not have a column in a national newspaper. Ms Moore, complaining of women being ‘silenced’ by powerful men, has two.

While we are on the subject of ‘domination’ it is interesting to note that Suzanne Moore evoked a familiar figure from all of our psyches in her article: the female dominatrix. She wrote:

‘Other commentators face down the abuse or step in themselves. The last few times I have done this on Twitter I have not been polite and these guys – I am presuming they were male from their names – have apologised or told me they loved me. Since I get a Christmas card every year that says “I know when you see this is from a man you will be sick” I am fairly inured to it. Suffice to say, it comes as no surprise to me that dominatrices make the money they do.’

Here Moore is portraying ‘abusive’ men online as really underneath, just ‘submissive’ weak men. Apart from the *misandry* towards men who like to take the ‘bottom’ position in the sexual power dynamic, she is also suggesting that they deserve and want some kind of ‘punishment’ for their ‘bad behaviour’ from a strong woman.

Again Mark Simpson has already identified the ‘dominatrix’ within contemporay feminism. In an article reviewing a book defending masochism he said:

‘Ironically, the exclusion of masochism from the male psyche has produced a public scenario of their punishment and chastisement by women which continues today. The feminist is Ms Whiplash.’

Once again, I get the impression that Suzanne Moore has not read Simpson very carefully at all. And she certainly hasn’t taken on his ideas. She is just another illustration of his insights.

I however have read his work carefully and I  have taken Simpson’s model of the feminist as ‘Miss Whiplash’ and written:

https://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/miss-whiplash-and-manboobz-the-mystery-of-the-male-feminist/

‘I am not saying feminists completely dominate men or ‘society’ in a sadistic manner. Rather that they take a punitive approach to anyone who does not go along with their dogma. If you are not a male feminist and are not masochistic in that way, you are seen as a ‘problem’ as a man, a problem that needs punishing.’

As Ms Moore’s article shows, men can’t win. If they accept their ‘punishment’ they are treated as pathetic and weak; if they don’t, they are considered to be nasty misogynists.

Suzanne Moore: Stupid Woman Columnist

Over at my Graunwatch blog I have written another response to these seemingly endless claims by feminists of endemic ‘misogyny’ online and ‘abuse’ by men of ‘female columnists and bloggers’. This has really incensed me, not least because I myself am a ‘female blogger’ and yet I am continually cast as  a ‘traitor’ to my sex, and very often called a ‘man’ (as an insult).

I am including here the section of my post about misandry and how it is denied as even existing by many feminists and their supporters:

There is another word beginning with ‘m’ forming on my lips as I type this: ‘misandry’.

But oh, if we so much as dare suggest that this line that men are nasty abusers of women constitutes ‘man -hating’ we are called … misogynists. As Dorian Lynskey tweeted to Suzanne Moore earlier today:

https://twitter.com/#!/Dorianlynskey/status/134569491156832256

Someone who Graunwatch admires enormously, and who, apparently Suzanne Moore also admires, Mark Simpson, has had a few things to say about misandry.

Simpson, in an article reviewing a book on the subject, termed misandry ‘the acceptable prejudice’ because nobody bats an eyelid when it is employed. He wrote:

‘Quiet Riot Girl has kindly brought to my attention the vogue online for dismissing anyone who suggests that men might face sexism as well as women with the retort: ‘what about the menz?’And it isn’t just feminists using this school-ground approach.

It’s a rather telling phrase because it tries to project the childishness of the people deploying it against the ones they want to shut up. Ironically, it also seems to depend on the ‘patriarchal’ notion of shaming the whining boy who doesn’t just sup it up ‘like a man’.

Never one to miss an opportunity to whine – or annoy feminists – I thought I’d post this review I did a few years back of a book which argues that abuse and libel of men as a sex is not only acceptable but de rigeur.

Men, say the authors, have become society’s official scapegoats and held responsible for all wickedness, including that done by women they have deluded or intimidated. Women are society’s official victims and held responsible for all good, including that done by men they have influenced or converted’.

Maybe Mark Simpson is just a ‘self-pitying woman-hating cock’. But I don’t think so. And I don’t think Ms Moore has read his work carefully enough, or given it the respect it deserves, because Simpson’s thesis is a direct and strong challenge to Moore’s whiny, misandrist feminism…

My piece ends with this (included here to explain the title):

I called this piece ‘Suzanne Moore: Stupid Woman Columnist’ quoting one of the ‘thousands’ of hate letters she has received over the course of her career. I of course don’t really think she is stupid. On the contrary she is very intelligent and very clever at getting people to think she is the ‘sensible’ voice of feminism. But she does not fool me. She does not ‘silence’ me either and I will continue to challenge her misandrist, victim feminism wherever I see it. I hope you do too.