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Bask in the Crazy: Radical Feminism
The bulk of a conservative’s time engaging liberal arguments is best spent addressing their most pointed and nuanced positions. But we should occasionally revel in liberals’ worst arguments and fringe elements. Today we smash the patriarchy in manly fashion.
There is trouble in the locker rooms of the Iowa Hawkeyes football team. You might assume this stems from their inability to win a national championship in more than half a century, but you’d be wrong. No, the trouble is the color of the visiting team’s locker room.
When opponents of the Iowa football team walk into their locker room on any given autumn Saturday, they are met with a tradition that is unique even by the somewhat off-kilter standards of college sports traditions. The locker room, the walls, the stalls, the towels, the floor, even the urinals, rather than displaying the shade of white common in most Iowa facilities, are bright pink.
It’s blatantly obvious that the pink locker room is a rather childish example of a destructive and anachronistic culture. As University of Iowa Professor Kembrew McLeod pointed out in the Des Moines Register last week, the governing philosophy behind the color arrangement is that pink is a “girl” color; forcing the über-masculine opponents of the Hawkeyes to prepare themselves in the presence of a “feminine” color will disturb the opposing players’ minds so much that they will fail to conquer the Hawkeyes.
Despite the undeniable problems posed by having a pink locker room, university officials and Iowa football fans continue to assert that the locker rooms are benign and even something to be proud of.
Wait, when did we establish this was an undeniable problem? I’ve been reading along diligently and missed the argument that fixed this as fact. I still feel supremely confident denying any problem exists here.
The culture of hyper-masculinity, embodied by the locker rooms, is exactly what leads to the rape culture — the tolerance of widespread sexual assault through victim blaming and the enforcement of patriarchal norms — which results in the egregious sexual-assault problem the campus (and campuses across the country) grapple with.
Now, it would be ridiculous to suggest that the pink locker rooms are the cause of rape culture or that painting the locker rooms black and yellow would magically fix the problem.
Oh good, I was confused by the earlier paragraph that outright stated that the pink locker rooms embody exactly what leads to the rape culture. Now that you’ve insisted that you didn’t say what you just said, I find your position much more reasonable.
I will not waste bits here arguing that there is no culture of rape in America, as far more intelligent thinkers than I have already taken feminists to task on this point. Instead I would like to explore what is required of each and every one of us if we are to ever overthrow the patriarchy.
You would think a movement as steeped in academia as radical feminism would have by now published some kind of handy bulleted list of the necessary steps to ending male oppression. Alas, the path forward is vague. But the key to understanding the patriarchy is to realize that anything that reinforces gender roles oppresses women.
Paint the visiting team’s locker room pink? You’re oppressing women.
Paint your son’s room blue? You’re oppressing women.
Buy your daughter a princess dress? You’re oppressing women.
Let your wife endure pregnancy instead of carrying the child to term yourself? You’re oppressing women.
Stand on average five and a half inches taller than women? You’re oppressing women.
Grow a beard? You’re oppressing women.
Wear anything but Star Trek style gender neutral unitards? You’re oppressing women.
Pay for her meal on the first date? You’re oppressing women.
Try that line on your next date by the way: “I’m smashing the patriarchy by not paying for your dinner.” It won’t get you lucky though, as that would oppress women.
Or my personal favorite: Invent a convenient feminine hygiene product? You’re oppressing women.
That’s right friends; the Daily Beast felt this particular form of patriarchal oppression (tampons) warranted a 1,300-word treatise. Some highlights for your consideration
A tampon would help you do all these things that you weren’t allowed to do, and no one would be the wiser. Unfortunately, that also meant that it was harder to get wise to the stigma surrounding menstruation.
“If man’s body is considered the norm or the normative body, reproductive functions are going to render women’s bodies sick, defective, abject, especially in a patriarchal cultural context,” Johnston-Robledo says. As she noted in an article earlier this year about menstrual stigma, because signs of menstruation signify contamination, the products that hide it best and are least visible—tampons rather than pads, for instance—are preferred.
“There’s the blessing and the curse that is attached to real openness about menstruation—we tell girls this is natural and normal, yet keep it secret, keep it private.”
So… what’s the end game of the anti-tampon crusade? Just keeping a lot of towels handy? Frequent floor mopping? Sadly, the article is unclear on this point. Aside from recurrent, enthusiastic discussions about menstruation, how else can we men help liberate women from the bonds of the patriarchy?
Searching the bowels of the internet for radical feminist writings is a bit like typing an unintentionally suggestive phrase into Google image search: You’ve already seen too much by the time you recognize your mistake. The consensus seems to be, act less like this guy…
…and more like this guy.
Behold your liberation, ladies. Don’t weep too hard, it reinforces gender stereotypes.
Hint: Use four or more random words (Ex. starbucksportalmonitorstormtrooper). To make it stronger, avoid using common phrases and add upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols like: ! ” ? $ % ^ &. ·QUOTE ·Reply ·Flag ·DIRECT LINK
Well done, Frank.
I’m checking with the powers that be to find out where that odd “Hint: Use four or more random words…” text is coming from.
That is a real conundrum.
Of course, the women still sleep with the guy in the first picture, not the second, no matter what they say they want.
Because they are perpetuating the patriarchy!
Eliminate the problem, keep them pregnant.
I had assumed it to be a literary critique of the post. Relieved to hear it is a bug.
Now you know:
http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-the-body/drunk-tank-pink
There is an awful lot of crazy contained in this world salad:
The key is to bask in it.
I dunno. I kind of think I need something around SPF 50 to protect my skin.
So many jokes, so many CofC violations. Senik is sitting there with his finger over the ban button just waiting for me to slip up. He’s just waiting to pull the string on this trap Frank has set.
Frank,
..hmmmm….women
Let’s see Jill Abrahmson is making $500k a year and is irritating everyone she works with plus the boss. She tried to jam another hyper radical down the throat of the paper without consultation. She gets canned and complains about the fact that her male predecessor was making $525k. They give her a commencement speech.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali fights for the rights of 1/2 billion muslim women who are tortured raped and murdered every day. She risks her own life every time she speaks. She gets dumped from a commencement speech.
Gosh, what could be wrong with modern feminism?
Regards,
Jim
I know my wife feels oppressed by society because she can’t just go to work in her pajamas. I’ve never heard that the use of feminine hygiene products was male oppression, though. Are there feminist pockets of society where women are encouraged to just “go natural”, upholstery be damned?
Nah, it’s because pajama boy wouldn’t know what to do. His mommy probably didn’t explain the facts of life to him.
There are scientific studies that show prolonged exposure to pastel colors and pink decreases aggression, the Buckeyes, are simply using sound psychology to decrease the effectiveness of their opponents. (AG Schauss – Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry, 1979) The color of the locker room has nothing to do with gender bias.
I knew you were gonna. I just knew it.
Et tu Whiskey?
You quoted Dr. Ingrid Johnstun-Robledo as saying this (which may be one of the stupidest things ever consigned to paper):
You may be interested to know that she teaches at SUNY. Guess how she describes her area of academic interest?:
When you’re a hammer, everything else is a nail, right?
Are there any woman-oppressing Ricocheti who actually believe that “man’s body is considered the norm or the normative body”? Last I checked our “normative” bodies tend to be “dead bodies” about five years (yes, five years) sooner than the body considered defective by the patriarchy.
Sigh….. It is comments like this that justify my utter contempt for feminists. Its as if they haven’t realized that they’ve won. Its a feminized culture and women are not necessarily happier in it. These ladies need to take a break from their outrage at……….. pretty much everything. Its a lot of work to be angry all of the time.
BOOYA! Nice work, Frank!
Frank, I think you’re downplaying the undeniable problems posed by a pink locker room. Have you ever tried to buy a pink urinal?
regarding the featured image: you know it’s a great photograph of feminists when someone has to point out which ones are women.
That’s a violent figure of speech, and contributes to a threatening environment in this thread. Unless you mean the claw part of the hammer, which gently embraces the nail and pulls it out so it can join the community of disused nails, as opposed to conforming to the “Strong, Silent Type” nail that society has privileged as an essential part of holding up buildings, which are another aspect of the patriarchal / capitalistic need to commodify space into isolated units that prohibit greater social cohesion. It’s no coincidence that they say buildings are “erected.”
Take that to the chair of a liberal arts dept. at your local university and you’ll probably be hired on the spot.
The hammering of a nail is a disgusting act of violating penetration, the injection of a phallic object into an unwilling participant. Thanks for the trigger words, friends.
Ricochet? More like Rapeochet.
We keep menstruation “private and secret?” Oh, give me a break. Girls talk about their periods all the time. And what about all of the tampon and pad commercials you see on TV?
There is enough actual abuse and oppression of women going on (yes, even in this country)… I wish these crazies would stop making things up and distracting from real problems.
Ignoratio elenchi thy name is womyn! How about the utter dearth of products to keep hidden the socially mistimed “stiffy”? And don’t say, in your cavalier [“sexist”, I know] unfeeling way to “wear a jock strap with a cup”. That’s effectively a codpiece, which deals with the social inappropriateness by making it normative.