/2X/ - (XX)

Shit it has a typo but anyways. Now i'm reading "What Lacan Said About Women" by Colette Soler. Is werid, because in part is just a restructuring of lacanian writings but also isn't. I think Lacan is just an excuse to talk about what she thoughts. Doesn't shy away from calling out the male bias in psychoanalysis and how even if it could work it was made from again, a male bias. I don't find it very fullyling at the moment, (like is nothing that i didn't thought already) but is a nice reading.

Can't contribute because I know nothing about philosophy and psychology but I'm reading that trustyourperceptions blog mentioned in the MTF thread and I wanted to ask you all if you truly believe males can be socialized into anything of worth? Reading about how they function and how women function is leaving me all blackpilled. As if any theorizing about men is just pointless because what they ultimately evolved to be is a broken pile of flesh obsessed with reproducing itself.

I truly believe that most people misunderstand Judith Butler and that nobody is actually listening to her.
>First of all the intended audience of her books are other pretentious philosophers who are far removed from reality and like to do constant thought experiments,
>second of all I think the key to reading her books is getting really high,
>thirdly you have to understand that she never meant to be the paragon of trannies but of intersex people.
Her theory of performativity is not much different from that of radfems. Her work explicitly states that gender identity is bullshit, but that identity is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results. She never agreed with the TRA practice of "I identify as" or "my pronouns are xyz", she instead says that identity is assigned by others based on how you are viewed. Even when she says "sex isn't real" or some shit like that, you actually have to read the entire chapter and then you get that she's doing some thought experiment high af. Her idea is that there could be a parallel universe or planet where hypothetically people weren't mainly categorized between males and females, but between talls and shorts and that there's a talliarchy and that hypothetically in that universe patriarchy wouldn't exist. She doesn't mean that it's not a thing in our world. She considers sex to be part of gender, because the moment you sex someone, the male or female socialization starts even when parents try to do gender neutral parenting (this can be corroborated by Cordelia Fine's book Delusions of Gender). For intersex people this can also mean that doctors will perform medically unnecessary surgeries on babies, to have them fit in with their gender (like literally shortening clitorises, which is basically condoned fgm in the western world). That's why she considers sexing a baby or assigning gender to be violent, because most of her activism has been for intersex people and in their case it can be literally violent. TRA's "read" her books which were never meant for them at all and then ran with it, misconstrued it, misrepresented it. Which has caused people who never even read any of her shit to automatically hate her, due to how TRA's misrepresent it. She does interviews still nowadays where she says she thinks the pronoun stuff is bullshit and she doesn't understand why people make such a big fuss about it. She also explicitly states in these interviews that TRA's have been misinterpreting her for 3 decades now, yet everyone just focuses on the part where she says she's concerned about tradwife gc'ers and actual nazi's coopting the gender critical struggle. The only reason she even comments on that is because she keeps being asked about it.

>>5300
The second verboten author I want to highlight is Jack/Judith Halberstam. She's often listed under queer theory or philosophy, which causes her to be immediately dismissed by everyone gender critical, even though she's more lesbian and butch friendly than any polilez author. Two of her books and why they matter
>Female masculinity, Through detailed textual readings as well as empirical research, Halberstam uncovers a hidden history of female masculinities while arguing for a more nuanced understanding of gender categories that would incorporate rather than pathologize them. She rereads Anne Lister’s diaries and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness as foundational assertions of female masculine identity. She considers the enigma of the stone butch and the politics surrounding butch/femme roles within lesbian communities. She also explores issues of transsexuality among “transgender dykes”—lesbians who pass as men—and female-to-male transsexuals who may find the label of “lesbian” a temporary refuge. Halberstam also tackles such topics as women and boxing, butches in Hollywood and independent cinema, and the phenomenon of male impersonators.
This book from the 90's was meant as a way to vindicate female masculinity and allow people to see it as something beautiful, not an insult. Also as a way to build bridges between butches and TiF's, she predicted what is happening now already back then. She actually took the time to fairly represent the radfem viewpoint too, but you wouldn't know that if you immediately canned her based on how she's categorized. She tries to get butches and TiFs to see that we don't have to be in competition, there's enough female masculinity to go around and we don't have to fight. TiFs don't have to be on the side of AGPs and butches don't have to align with polilez, we can form our own female masculinity coalition. Her relative silence on TiMs is deafening and do you really think TRA's will like a book which has the word "female" in it and is exclusive of TiMs?
>In a Queer Time and Place, examines the significance of the transgender body in a provocative collection of essays on queer time and space. She presents a series of case studies focused on the meanings of masculinity in its dominant and alternative forms’ especially female and trans-masculinities as they exist within subcultures, and are appropriated within mainstream culture.
The concept of "Queer time" just means that a lot of gay people are on a different timeline from straight people. If you get kicked out by your homophobic parents at 15, your life is going to look different. You might come out later and then you're still a virgin and never had a girlfriend before and you have all these firsts in your adulthood, which others might've had earlier. Other times you might feel immature, because you're not getting married and having kids at the same time as your straight peers. In the worst case scenario, you get murdered like Brandon Teena/Teena Brandon for daring to exist as a masculine female, cutting your life short. The rest of the book requires you to basically get high and just follow along. She then exposes the influence of lesbian drag king cultures upon hetero-male comic films, such as Austin Powers and The Full Monty, and, finally, points to dyke subcultures as basically "the blueprint" as some would understand it. Personally I love that shit, because I do love reclaiming masculinity. Men don't own masculinity and it's been theorized that James Dean based his performances on butch women he knew. So men who imitate James Dean are actually imitating butch women and it aren't butch women imitating men. You might hate that she's being inclusive of TiF's, but I love it, because we're not all that different and we're both female masculine people. I also like the mix of high theory, low theory, high culture and low culture. It's exactly how my brain works too.

>>5301
Third author is more unknown but should be more controversial than the other two, Paul Beatriz Preciado. I was recommended this author by a TiF on Lex and while I was skeptical at first, I was pleasantly surprised. The reading of the book Testo Junkie is like an experience which I can only compare to taking shrooms and watching some surrealist films. It starts with some gross degenerate shit, which acts as a way to scare off those who aren't supposed to read further. I enjoy her theory of the pharamcopornographic regime, how gender nowadays relies on pharmaceutical technology and how nobody is natural anymore and how everything is being used to control us. She also compares and theorizes about whether you could get addicted to HRT as if it were hard drugs (her conclusion is no, but that it's nearly a religious practice). At the same time she examines how birth control pills are a societally accepted form of HRT and how they have been used to control women, how experiments were done on marginalized colonial communities and how women have been conditioned into taking a pill every day at the exact same time. How it has turned women's brains further into a prison, a panopticon and oddly enough the first bc pill containers were shaped like a panopticon (like how Atwood says you are your own voyeur). So it's not that just the school is a prison, the workplace is a prison, but even at home you're not safe. How the stopweek was invented, because the idea of a woman not having a period was seen as not feminine. Or how testosterone supplementation for post-menopausal women has been restricted, because of the attitude that it's a male hormone, even though women need it too for energy and sexual arousal. That researchers don't even consider it an option because some women in studies had a slight androgenized effect, that a single body hair here and there popped up at such a low dosage, even though it helped with depression, energy and libido. Meanwhile doctors don't hesitate to prescribe viagra to men and insurance companies have no problem covering it. Or how doctors constantly downplay and hide the potentially disastrous side effects of longterm bc pill use and even prescribe it to teenage girls without much thinking, for even things like acne, even though it can affect bone density.

Her theory is that because a large number of women women are on hormones and are pressured by the pornography industry to get plastic surgery and how men are on viagra, gender has become reliant on pharmaceutical technologies, not just for TiFs and TiMs, but for everyone. Nobody is allowed to exist in their natural state and the pharmacopornographic regime makes it increasingly difficult to do so, it causes problems in intimacy and then sells the cure. Obviously birth control pills have also liberated many women, but it's still curious how it has put reproductive responsibility solely on women's shoulders and how it has caused researchers to be lazy and not seek actual cures and causes for things like endometriosis and PCOS. Or how it has in a Brave New World way, made it our responsibility to take anti depressants and other pharmaceuticals to get through life, instead of fixing the real world material problems which make people depressed and burned out. Like how the 50's housewife was constantly on benzo's just to cope with her abusive husband and insane amount of responsibilities, instead of actually giving her the option to divorce and find happiness. There's also this whole bit about how TiFs don't need bottom surgery, because you already have your hands and it made her feel pretty weird when she got a manicure for the first time as a butch woman. The framing is that the book is an homage to a scrote who died of AIDS, but like I said at the start, it truly feels like one of those memes where a woman says some weird shit and then goes "okay the men have stopped reading by now, [insert actual message]" picrel.

You may hate her because she's on T herself, but she sees her use of T similarly to Freud's usage of cocaine or some tragic Victorian author's usage of opium, so she's aware that it's not exactly healthy. I think a lot of TRAs would hate her for that. She also kept her original name Beatriz, just added Paul. I have had some interesting discussions with the TiF who suggested the book to me and she later stopped using T. I started reading these authors after being gaslit into reading polilez philosophy, because a lot of people share memes and quotes without understanding where they come from and how anything which is labeled as "queer" is seen as verboten. Even though the writings of these butch authors are seen as verboten by TRAs (especially TiMs) too.

Kind of like how everything written Simone de Beauvoir is automatically dismissed by many rf's because she signed that one petition, even though many people who shit on her have never read any of her books. So I started with her and a couple male authors on post structuralism and postmodernism, read through history and that gave me a new perspective on the verboten "queer" butch authors. I have found that people who do postmodernism and poststructuralism the hardest, will denounce it and claim they hate it, like polilez, tankies, Putin, and fascists (Putin is a fascist too, just a very interesting case because he hired a postmodern art director as the head of propaganda while shitting on "postmodern neomarxists"). They create new narratives and rewrite history as a means to their political goals, while vehemently denying that they do so. They just say they have the absolute truth and you're just a relativist if you question anything. Postmodernism is merely a tool and isn't always evil, sometimes cool movies can come out of it which combine high and low culture, like the Romeo and Juliet movie from the 90s, or even zoomer humor is a good example of it. While at the same time it can be used to craft new narratives for a harmful ideology like palingenetic ultranationalism or Maoism (which ironically enough influenced polilez, together with Christian theology, several polilez were also theologists). It aren't just TRA's who are doing post-modernism, but they do at least admit it. They don't seem to understand the implication of that though and still act just as annoying and also still claim they know the absolute truth and if you criticize anything you're literally killing them lol. I'm just talking out of my ass two, just sharing my two cents, because maybe someone has similar brainworms and will consider what I said and my recommendations.

>>5302
The fourth author you all know and meme about, but nobody seems to read past "the male is a failed abortion" and completely ignores her call to action and other interesting points. First of all, SCUM manifesto is both satirical and serious, which makes it a masterpiece. It takes what Freud wrote and reverses the roles, but she writes much better. She also references Thomas Paine's rights of man and George Orwell. I want to highlight the parts which are often overlooked, because many women reading it want to keep the neoliberal economic system and don't understand how it's just an extension of patriarchy.
>There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most. All non-creative jobs (practically all jobs now being done) could have been automated long ago, and in a moneyless society everyone can have as much of the best of everything as she wants. But there are non-human, male reasons for wanting to maintain the money system:
>1. Pussy. Despising his highly inadequate self, overcome with intense anxiety and a deep, profound loneliness when by his empty self, desperate to attach himself to any female in dim hopes of completing himself, in the mystical belief that by touching gold he'll turn to gold, the male craves the continuous companionship of women. The company of the lowest female is preferable to his own or that of other men, who serve only to remind him of his repulsiveness. But females, unless very young or very sick, must be coerced or bribed into male company.
>2. Supply the non-relating male with the delusion of usefulness, and enable him to try to justify his existence by digging holes and then filling them up. Leisure time horrifies the male, who will have nothing to do but contemplate his grotesque self. Unable to relate or to love, the male must work. Females crave absorbing, emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity […] What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it.
I think reading "bullshit jobs" by David Graeber is a good idea to elaborate on how many jobs there are which are the equivalent of digging holes just to fill them up, but Solanas said it first!
>3. Power and control. Unmasterful in his personal relations with women, the male attains to masterfulness by the manipulation of money and everything controlled by money, in other words, of everything and everybody.
The state, capitalism and hierarchy are inherently patriarchal and used to control women by dangling access. A lot of feminists want to fight to get access to patriarchal systems instead of destroying them, which is why Solanas wasn't popular with other radfems.
>4. Love substitute. Unable to give love or affection, the male gives money. It makes him feel motherly. The mother gives milk; he gives bread. He is the Breadwinner.
>5. Provide the male with a goal. Incapable of enjoying the moment, the male needs something to look forward to, and money provides him with an eternal, never-ending goal: Just think of what you could do with 80 trillion dollars – invest it! And in three years time you'd have 300 trillion dollars!!!
Isn't it sad that they can't just enjoy life? We could be living like the Moomins or the Hobbits if we didn't have to deal with scrotes and their constant need to accumulate more to fill up the hole in their hearts.
>6. Provide the basis for the male's major opportunity to control and manipulate – fatherhood.

>Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual nu becoming a `rugged individualist', a loner, equating non-cooperation and solitariness with individuality. There is yet another reason for the male to isolate himself: every man is an island. Trapped inside himself, emotionally isolated, unable to relate, the male has a horror of civilization, people, cities, situations requiring an ability to understand and relate to people. So like a scared rabbit, he scurries off, dragging Daddy's little asshole with him to the wilderness, suburbs, or, in the case of the hippy – he's way out, Man! – all the way out to the cow pasture where he can fuck and breed undisturbed and mess around with his beads and flute. The `hippy', whose desire to be a `Man', a `rugged individualist', isn't quite as strong as the average man's, and who, in addition, is excited by the thought having lots of women accessible to him, rebels against the harshness of a Breadwinner's life and the monotony of one woman. In the name of sharing and cooperation, he forms a commune or tribe, which, for all its togetherness and partly because of it, (the commune, being an extended family, is an extended violation of the female's rights, privacy and sanity) is no more a community than normal `society'.
>A true community consists of individuals – not mere species members, not couples – respecting each others individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally – free spirits in free relation to each other – and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of `society' is the family; `hippies' say the tribe; no one says the individual.
>Having no sense of right and wrong, no conscience, which can only stem from having an ability to empathize with others… having no faith in his non-existent self, being unnecessarily competitive, and by nature, unable to co-operate, the male feels a need for external guidance and control. So he created authorities – priests, experts, bosses, leaders, etc – and government. Wanting the female (Mama) to guide him, but unable to accept this fact (he is, after all, a MAN), wanting to play Woman, to usurp her function as Guider and Protector, he sees to it that all authorities are male. There's no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders.
>Competition, Prestige, Status, Formal Education, Ignorance and Social and Economic Classes: Having an obsessive desire to be admired by women, but no intrinsic worth, the make constructs a highly artificial society enabling him to appropriate the appearance of worth through money, prestige, `high' social class, degrees, professional position and knowledge and, by pushing as many other men as possible down professionally, socially, economically, and educationally. The purpose of `higher' education is not to educate but to exclude as many as possible from the various professions.
Universities used to have a monopoly on knowledge, but thanks to the internet, anyone can educate themselves. You can find all texts on the deep web for free. The problem is that we're being overflown with information, but the formal education system is based on religious institutions and hierarchies and mainly exists to gatekeep access to jobs and pay raises nowadays. Now you need a degree for everything, even things which don't make sense, just because so many people have gotten a degree now. It has made it useless so then they come up with more post-masters you have to earn and it just never ends. The system also devalues the knowledge gained outside of the institution.

>All diseases are curable, and the aging process and death are due to disease; it is possible, therefore, never to age and to live forever. In fact the problems of aging and death could be solved within a few years, if an all-out, massive scientific assault were made upon the problem. This, however, will not occur with the male establishment because:
>1. The many male scientists who shy away from biological research, terrified of the discovery that males are females, and show marked preference for virile, `manly' war and death programs.
>2. The discouragement of many potential scientists from scientific careers by the rigidity, boringness, expensiveness, time-consumingness, and unfair exclusivity of our `higher' educational system.
>3. Propaganda disseminated by insecure male professionals, who jealously guard their positions, so that only a highly select few can comprehend abstract scientific concepts.
>4. Widespread lack of self-confidence brought about by the father system that discourages many talented girls from becoming scientists.
>5. Lack of automation. There now exists a wealth of data which, if sorted out and correlated, would reveal the cure for cancer and several other diseases and possibly the key to life itself. But the data is so massive it requires high speed computers to correlate it all. The institution of computers will be delayed interminably under the male control system, since the male has a horror of being replaced by machines.
>6. The money systems' insatiable need for new products. Most of the few scientists around who aren't working on death programs are tied up doing research for corporations.
>7. The males like death – it excites him sexually and, already dead inside, he wants to die.
>8. The bias of the money system for the least creative scientists. Most scientists come from at least relatively affluent families where Daddy reigns supreme.

>If all women simply left men, refused to have anything to do with any of them – ever, all men, the government, and the national economy would collapse completely. Even without leaving men, women who are aware of the extent of their superiority to and power over men, could acquire complete control over everything within a few weeks, could effect a total submission of males to females. In a sane society the male would trot along obediently after the female. The male is docile and easily led, easily subjected to the domination of any female who cares to dominate him. The male, in fact, wants desperately to be led by females, wants Mama in charge, wants to abandon himself to her care. But this is not a sane society, and most women are not even dimly aware of where they're at in relation to men.
The government is Big Daddy (play on "Big Brother" from George Orwell's 1984)
>The conflict, therefore, is not between females and males, but between SCUM – dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe, who have free-wheeled to the limits of this `society' and are ready to wheel on to something far beyond what it has to offer – and nice, passive, accepting `cultivated', polite, dignified, subdued, dependent, scared, mindless, insecure, approval-seeking Daddy's Girls, who can't cope with the unknown, who want to hang back with the apes, who feel secure only with Big Daddy standing by, with a big strong man to lean on and with a fat, hairy face in the White House, who are too cowardly to face up to the hideous reality of what a man is, what Daddy is, who have cast their lot with the swine, who have adapted themselves to animalism, feel superficially comfortable with it and know no other way of `life', who have reduced their minds, thoughts and sights to the male level, who, lacking sense, imagination and wit can have value only in a male `society', who can have a place in the sun, or, rather, in the slime, only as soothers, ego boosters, relaxers and breeders, who are dismissed as inconsequents by other females, who project their deficiencies, their maleness, onto all females and see the female as worm.
This is why there was conflict between radfems and Solanas. Many wanted to beg the government (to her "Big Daddy" a play on "Big Brother") for reforms, meanwhile she wanted to take the patriarchal government down.
>SCUM will not picket, demonstrate, march or strike to attempt to achieve its ends. Such tactics are for nice, genteel ladies who scrupulously take only such action as is guaranteed to be ineffective. In addition, only decent, clean-living male women, highly trained in submerging themselves in the species, act on a mob basis. SCUM consists of individuals; SCUM is not a mob, a blob. Only as many SCUM will do a job as are needed for the job. Also SCUM, being cool and selfish, will not subject to getting itself rapped on the head with billy clubs; that's for the nice, `privileged, educated', middle-class ladies with a high regard for the touching faith in the essential goodness of Daddy and policemen. If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.
She's explicitly calling for direct action and sabotage. She is the anarchist wing of radical feminism, following the footsteps of Emma Goldman, in opposition to the Maoist wing of radical feminism (Polilez) and Neoliberal version (NOW). I don't agree with her points on sex, but I think they are informed by her trauma and it's understandable she was sex repulsed. Sex between women is fine and healthy. Some of her language can also be considered misogynistic, but I'll give her some slack considering the situation she was in.

>>5303
The fifth author is Emma Goldman. She is like a secret of the first wave and more based than most second wave feminists. She already said that the vote wouldn't be enough or wouldn't help at all, but the suffragettes wouldn't listen to her. The most dangerous woman in America wrote this in 1911:
>WE BOAST of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it not strange, then, that we still believe in fetich worship? True, our fetiches have different form and substance, yet in their power over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of old. Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent diety. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity!
>Nietzsche’s memorable maxim, “When you go to woman, take the whip along,” is considered very brutal, yet Nietzsche expressed in one sentence the attitude of woman towards her gods. Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her nature and fettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no greater supporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe to say that religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the lives of the people, if it were not for the support it receives from woman. The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless missionaries the world over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of the gods that have chained her spirit and enslaved her body.
>Then there is the home. What a terrible fetich it is! How it saps the very life-energy of woman, – this modern prison with golden bars. Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as wife, mother, and housekeeper. Yet woman clings tenaciously to the home, to the power that holds her in bondage.
>It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better Christian and home keeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very Gods that woman has served from time immemorial.
>What wonder, then, that she should be just as devout, just as zealous, just as prostrate before the new idol, woman suffrage. As of old, she endures persecution, imprisonment, torture, and all forms of condemnation, with a smile on her face. As of old, the most enlightened, even, hope for a miracle from the twentieth-century deity, – suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom, independence, – all that, and more, is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotion woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.
>Woman’s demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that “golden opportunity” that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians.
>The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these disastrous results of the twentieth-century fetich have taught woman nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured.
>Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman’s greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.
>As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of universal suffrage have come to realize that all existing systems of political power are absurd, and are completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one who is herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner. In her able work on Equal Suffrage, she says: “In Colorado, we find that equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system.” Of course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of voting, but the same applies with equal force to the entire machinery of the representative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either herself or the rest of mankind.
>The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle? Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage accomplishments.
>On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason.
>The brilliant leader of the English suffragettes, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, herself admitted, when on her American lecture tour, that there can be no equality between political superiors and inferiors. If so, how will the workingwomen of England, already inferior economically to the ladies who are benefited by the Shackleton bill, be able to work with their political superiors, should the bill pass? Is it not probable that the class of Annie Keeney, so full of zeal, devotion, and martyrdom, will be compelled to carry on their backs their female political bosses, even as they are carrying their economic masters. They would still have to do it, were universal suffrage for men and women established in England. No matter what the workers do, they are made to pay, always. Still, those who believe in the power of the vote show little sense of justice when they concern themselves not at all with those whom, as they claim, it might serve most.
>The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people. Thus Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an exceptional type of woman, was not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor; nor did she hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, she advised women to take the places of striking printers in New York. I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death.
>There are, of course, some suffragists who are affiliated with workingwomen – the Women’s Trade Union League, for instance; but they are a small minority, and their activities are essentially economic. The rest look upon toil as a just provision of Providence. What would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage-workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?
>Nothing is so dangerous as the dissection of a fetich. If we have outlived the time when such heresy was punishable by the stake, we have not outlived the narrow spirit of condemnation of those who dare differ with accepted notions. Therefore I shall probably be put down as an opponent of woman. But that can not deter me from looking the question squarely in the face. I repeat what I have said in the beginning: I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot improve on man’s mistakes, why perpetrate the latter?
>In the darkest of all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism, woman has become man’s equal, not through the ballot, but by her will to be and to do. Not only has she conquered for herself every avenue of learning and vocation, but she has won man’s esteem, his respect, his comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained the admiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not through suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her ability, willpower, and her endurance in her struggle for liberty. Where are the women in any suffrage country or State that can lay claim to such a victory? When we consider the accomplishments of woman in America, we find also that something deeper and more powerful than suffrage has helped her in the march to emancipation.
>It is just sixty-two years ago since a handful of women at the Seneca Falls Convention set forth a few demands for their right to equal education with men, and access to the various professions, trades, etc. What wonderful accomplishments, what wonderful triumphs! Who but the most ignorant dare speak of woman as a mere domestic drudge? Who dare suggest that this or that profession should not be open to her? For over sixty years she has molded a new atmosphere and a new life for herself. She has become a world-power in every domain of human thought and activity. And all that without suffrage, without the right to make laws, without the “privilege” of becoming a judge, a jailer, or an executioner.
>Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can help her see the light, I shall not complain.
>The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do the work of a man, but that she is wasting her life-force to outdo him, with a tradition of centuries which has left her physically incapable of keeping pace with him. Oh, I know some have succeeded, but at what cost, at what terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.
Her belief was that the ballotbox hypnotizes the underclasses into thinking they have actual power. It psychologically prevents them from striking and it causes them to psychologically give legitimacy to the inherently patriarchal nationstate. It deludes us into thinking we're more free now than when we were under absolute monarchy, but actually we've just been tricked into giving consent to be under absolute authoritarianism by the rich and in some countries still the monarchy. Women in politics aren't necessarily allies to other women, just look at the queen of neoliberalism, Margaret Thatcher. You can't vote or reform patriarchy away. Even Dworkin described how when women got access to the workforce, they are still expected to also take care of the household, so now work double shifts, one being unpaid. Every time you do slow reform, you give patriarchy and the nation-state time to come up with payback. Everytime you ask the government nicely, you are expected to also compromise. The only way to truly get what you want is to aggressively demand and fight for it. Her form of anarcha feminism was in part influenced by Max Stirner, who was a school teacher at an all girl's school and also wrote about how it's an oppressive environment to individuality. Some of her quotes are apparent of this
>People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
>If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
>Patriotism is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
>Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.
>No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.
>To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.
To Emma Goldman, marriage is just a societally acceptable form of prostitution, because many women don't marry because of love, but because they are memed into it by men or out of necessity. It's important to not condemn prostitutes and judge her as if it's a political choice, but realize that it's often done out of necessity or because the only alternative is to get married to a man you don't even love and just be a prostitute to one man. It's easy to shame someone from your high horse, it's more difficult to fight with her to end the conditions which cause women to prostitute themselves to either many or one man.
>The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.
>‎Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship.
>Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
Reformists always will call you utopian for dreaming of a better world.
>The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.
It's also completely useless when it comes to protecting women. Not many rape cases even end up in court, and many rapists are acquitted. Murdering women gets you a slap on the wrist, killing a dangerous scrote in self defense lands you anywhere from 20 years to the death penalty. The law exists more to protect the state, the rich and men, than it exists to protect working class women. Working as a feminist lawyer is some of the most soulsucking and depressing work you can do. Like Solanas said, we don't need the government, "Big Daddy" to protect us. It's actually what puts us in harms way and forces us in the arms of dangerous scrotes. It gives fathers ownership over daughters, husbands ownership over wives, yes even in the west. Go ahead, as a kid try to leave and live with a female family member or even run away with mum, the scrote can call the police to get you back and charge your family members with kidnapping, because children are treated like the property of their parents, but especially the father. Wives are pressured to stay with their husbands by the incompetence of the police, peer pressure from society to keep a perfect façade and be the perfect woman and economical control. If only we were allowed to protect ourselves without being punished.
>Politicians promise you heaven before election and give you hell after
>Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.
>Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged “innocence,” together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent.
>Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage. "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.”
She is harsh in her words, but her message is that we need to take our freedom, not beg men for it. She was so harsh about women of her time, not because she had internalized misogyny and was a massive NLOG, but because many women didn't dare to dream bigger. Solanas dared to dream big and continued her tradition, when other radical feminists didn't dare to dream big and instead started to work together with Republicans while condemning Solanas.

My dad just showed me the film Agora(2010) which follows neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician Hypatia (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD) in her journey teaching science/peace teachings until the war between the Pagans and Christians and the burning down of the Library of Alexandria where she tried to resolve conflict using logic and reason as she had a reputation as an impeccable counsoler.
Unfortunately she was stoned and dismembered after being accused of witchcraft by Bishop. Although no direct links, evidence highly suggests his smear campaign against Hypatia had inspired it.
Some of her known works include:
Apollonius of Perga - Commentary
Book III of Ptolemy's Almagest - Editor
In the time of the fire, it is assumed she and her father worked on saving classical mathematics and sciences rather than their presents work.

I cried when watching Agora and hearing about her, she isn't as well known as she should be for one of the first female mathematicians and philosophers and her bravery.

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this is singlehandedly the most valuable thread on this website thanks anons

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I need you to come back and cook some more

non contribution but i love this thread idea please anons come back and post more about female philosophers…
is there anyone you would recommend particularly ( and the reasons for your recommendation ) ? from any time period. i asked on cryscafe once and nobody answered me kek. i don't want to ask on moidchan for obvious reasons but i have scoured the archives a bit and picked up some books mentioned there