gender queer CULTure.

Today I received my first hard copy of SCUM Manifesto.  I’ve read it online before, but decided it was one of the best things I ever read and wanted to honor it with a place on my top shelf.

Having already read SCUM Manifesto before, I was (initially) pleasantly surprised to find that the version I bought had a Forward written, and I curiously read through it.  What I read started out strong, but a couple pages in devovled into gender queer bullshit.  The writer (Michelle Tea) starts off telling us about how after finding out that her “cool guy” step-father was spying on her in her bedroom and bathroom through tiny holes in the walls.  After which her mother “stood by her man” and defended him.  After she ran away to live with women.  After she exclaims her understanding of how men wage war on women in so many ways, even writing… “A man could move into a family and [violate] the daughters for years and when the truth comes out, nothing really happens…He [stays] and the daughters have to flee.  He keeps the wife [that] the daughters will never again be able to trust as a mother.  He came into the family like an invasive parasite, killed it, and inhabited its dead body” (bolds mine). Then she explains how she, at one point, was seriously considering blowing up a frat house because “going totally fucking insane is a completely rational outcome for an intelligent woman in the society“.  After all that…..she then takes a severely sharp left turn and basically thanks gender queer/dyke culture for preventing her from becoming like Valerie Solanas.   PREVENTING her from being a radically thinking, feeling, and acting woman.

I think that says it right there.  Gender queer culture STOPPED her.  She seems convinced that she was saved from tragedy.  But the tragedy is that she was (like many women) re-captured while on the brink of doing the one thing in this world that is the most “evil” thing a woman under patriarchy could do (second only to abortion or infanticide).  The one thing we probably should do because I just don’t see our freedom happening without it.

Gender queer CULTure does diddly squat to challenge, or undermine, or fight, or escape patriarchy.  It lives cozy, right smack in the heart of patriarchy.  It does nothing to reveal men’s lies.  It only piles more lies on top of the standard lies.  It doesn’t SEE with clear vision what MEN ARE and what MEN do TO WOMEN.  It just uses smoke and queer-ors to obscure WHO is MAN or WOMAN.  Who is victim, and who is assailant?  Who is parasite, and who is host?  Gender queer CULTure wants us to be confused and not notice who is who, or at least pretend to be confused and oblivious.  But it does not want us to be so confused and oblivious as to ACTUALLY break free of the double standards that our subconscious still employs.  In fact, Gender queer CULTure is COUNTING on that subconscious training to do its job, keep the women vagina-havers subordinated to the men  people with very important dainty penis feelings.

In other (actual) words, gender queer CULTure serves men.  It’s only slightly better at obscuring that fact than its conservative or macho CULTure counterparts.

At least macho male CULTure is mostly honest about what it is and what its values are.     And I am glad for its audacity because it allows me to see with unclouded vision WHAT men are, and calibrate my understanding, calculate my strategies.  Macho male CULTure be telegraphin’ like a mofo.  And when you point out what macho male CULTure is doing, it basically employs the narcissistic defense mechanisms of a neanderthal, saying “yea, so?” or “no I’m not…YOU are” or “shut up bitch, I’ll (insert violent threat)”. And then just continues on with business as usual.

Gender queer CULTure is a slightly sneakier beast that uses cheap carnival tricks and jargon confetti to distract, dazzle, disarm, and confuse.  And the more you try to point out what it’s doing, the more you help it learn new tricks, the better it gets at con-ing.   I can see what gender queer CULTure is doing despite the smoke and queer-ors, but every time I stumble across it again, this ever-evolving beast seems to have learned a new trick or two, co-opted and contorted more words, and swallowed up a new sector of would-be radical thinking women.