Another Earnest Feminist Toadstool Sprouts in the Pasture

Briefly noted:

Please surf over to Remasculation and absorb the following:

http://remasculation.blogspot.com/2010/05/calling-all-trolls.html

All of you political 'weather-watchers' will doubtless note the shift in the political wind which is here betokened. (I've seen the trend developing for some time now; this is further confirmation.)

After you have pondered and digested, hearken unto Snark's suggestions if you've a mind to do so.

Fixed

I have uploaded a different copy of the CF12 podcast. It is available HERE:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/JPGewctH/_2__CF12.html

I was not happy with the audio quality of the originally-posted file, but I just happened to have a backup copy that was free of later editing changes which, in retrospect, I should NOT have made. The above-linked version is better. Trust me. . . it is better!

So, if you are a serious connoisseur, you'll want to throw out the first version and keep this one.

Links in the previous post have been updated to reflect the change.

CF Podcast - The Twelfth

Here is the podcast version of The Battle for Feminism's Soul - Part 2




Personal copies of the MP3 may be downloaded from the following source:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/JPGewctH/_2__CF12.html


The Battle for Feminism's Soul - Part 1 is available from the link below. You should listen to that podcast also, if you wish to understand fully what the discussion is about:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/ljHlWEfO/CF11.html

The Battle for Feminism's Soul - Part Two

Hello. Fidelbogen here. To my fellow workers in the vineyard, worldwide, greetings!

The title of today's talk is The Battle for Feminism's Soul - Part 2. So, as you might guess, it is the continuation of a talk that was commenced in the podcast immediately prior to this.

In part one of this talk, I made a couple of points that I would like to re-visit, and to enlarge upon.

In the present talk I will discuss the first of these points, which concerns the axiomatic counter-feminist equation that feminism equals female supremacism.

So, what is female supremacism? It is the moral attitude, whether openly stated or merely implied, that women are superior to men and that the ruling power in most areas of life ought to be a female power. This is a truly revolutionary doctrine because it overturns many things and modifies the details of life in a radical and far-reaching way - more than I have time to describe here . .

The accomplished outcome of female supremacism would be a state of female supremacy. Female supremacism and female supremacy are therefore separate things: the latter is what the former would, if given the chance, swing into practice in real world terms.

I would make bold that female supremacism as a system of social energy is objectively real; it EXISTS; it is out there in the world, ranging freely in one guise or another, covertly or overtly. I can attest from my own observation that many people harbor this culture virus either strongly or weakly. I would further attest that it overlaps with "feminism" , and more than just a trifle.

It is rhetorically formulaic to declare that feminism "seeks equality between men and women", and whether or not you consider that an honest descriptor of feminism, it is the one most commonly invoked. Yes, you hear it all the time. It is what a lot of people want the world to believe that feminism is.

So, if you believe that feminism is "about equality", then you would naturally suppose feminism and female supremacism to be mutually exclusive. Yet counterintuitive as it seems, nothing rules out their cohabitation in the same individual mind. And why? Because "equality" is an essentially contested concept. The possible meanings of "equality" are so varied, so flexible, and so ambiguous that (given the right mental gymnastics) they can easily admit female supremacism in close moral proximity. That is especially true if the thinker does not expressly call supremacism by its correct name, or harbors the doctrine latently, as a logical consequence of unclear thinking in some other area.

Consider also, that feminism is a movement which advocates for women's interests; who would dispute this? And female supremacism, if you wish to call it a "movement", certainly does likewise; how could it possibly do otherwise? Therefore, feminism and female supremacism converge upon the point of advocating for women's interests. The only difference is that female supremacism, unlike "equality", doesn't sound respectable. Most people would not openly admit to it, but still, for reasons I have suggested, cognitive dissonance can be rationalized. And such being given, the terrain of women's advocacy is left wide open as a zone of conjoined political effort.

So, feminism (arbitrarily defined as "sexual equality") and female supremacism may coexist in the same individual mind—and I have only lightly sketched how this might happen. But the next step up from the individual is the collective: what is true of the individual mind could as well be true of the group mind, for what is a group mind if not (among other things) the sum of individual minds composing it?

It is clear that both equalitarians and supremacists may converge upon the zone of women's advocacy—and that is a lot of overlap. And in the battle for feminism's soul, the question that occupies us above all, is to know which of these principles is quintessentially constitutive of the feminist movement as a group mind.

Consider once again the uncertainty of the term equality, and its doubtful utility as a category of understanding. A movement built upon the "quest for equality" would be a house built on mud or shifting sand, or worse, a cloud-castle built on thin air. So-called equality, if it is to mean anything at all, must be operationalized; it depends entirely on what is being done, when it is being done, how it is being done, and where you set the zero in the equation. Equality is infinitely plastic in its applications; the goal-posts can always be shifted and the parameters can always be reassigned. It is inherently fickle and flakey.

Now consider the meaning of female supremacism. It is easy to cognize, and in practice it would offer no puzzling quirks or moral uncertainties. The guidelines would be coherent and crystal clear—reducible to whatever gives women the upper hand in a given situation. Consider also that supremacism in its naked form would be starkly elemental and devoid of hypocrisy, because unburdened by the need to appear respectable.

So which of these two, sexual equality or female supremacism, would compose the stable foundation for a movement?

Clearly, female supremacism would be the winning ticket. And yet, female supremacism sounds nasty! It does not sound respectable, and any movement that openly endorsed it would have a public image problem.

By contrast, sexual equality is a flakey concept that means little if anything, and yet. . . it sounds noble! It sounds wonderful! It sounds high-minded! And most of all, it is so very, very unseemly to disagree with!

A movement built upon either female supremacism alone, or sexual equality alone, would not be viable. But if you roll them up together in the same joint (so to speak), then hey man, that'd be some righteous shit!

The so-called "quest for equality" would fizzle out in very little time if it were not animated by a malignant will. It would not be infinitely greedy; it would not "want it all"; it would be satisfied with a clear, definite list of things, after which it would roll up the tent and call it a day. And more, it is doubtful that such a movement would even get airborne at all when you consider, once again, what an unstable concept this "equality" really is.

Female supremacism, on the other hand, wants it all. It is a malignant will that will not quit, but keeps on coming back for more and more and more. It is able to stay the course; it is able to go the distance; it never sleeps and never takes a day off, and ultimately, it will leave no stone unturned! But again. . . it is not respectable!

Or at least, not if it walks around naked!

And that is why the rhetoric of equality is so very, very important: because it drapes the sagging, bulging, obscene flesh of female supremacism in a decent bathrobe.

So once more, both sexual equality and female supremacism advocate for women; that is where they converge into a conjoined political effort. And their relation is symbiotic. If plenty of feminists did not have supremacist motives, the movement as a whole would have no stable foundation, no cohesion, nothing to give it permanence, and finally it would lack a reliable engine. Yet if the rhetoric of equality were missing, female supremacism could never travel; it could never leave the house without getting arrested! Equality rhetoric not only veils female supremacism, but permits it to operate almost unhindered in a multitude of forms because equality as a concept is capable of unlimited shapeshifting.

Female supremacism and equality rhetoric: what a team! Neither the bathrobe nor the obscene flesh would log any mileage at all without the other.

So, is "equality" the soul of feminism? Or would that title go to female supremacism? Ask yourself, where does feminism get its real muscle? What is the true animating principle? Is feminism powered by any so-called quest for equality, and is such a thing even possible considering the vacuity of equality as a concept? Does the so-called quest for equality exist as anything more than a RHETORIC of equality? And finally, what does this RHETORIC of equality in fact serve? Does it serve actual "equality" (whatever that is)? Or does it in fact serve female supremacism? Please think about these questions.

And that concludes today's talk. In my next talk, part three of this series, I will enlarge upon the second of the two points that were given near the end of Part 1—namely, the counter-feminist theorem that whatever is respectable about feminism is not original, and whatever is original is not respectable.

I hope you will join me for that talk.

Fidelbogen . . . . out.

-----------------------------------------

This is the script for CF Podcast No. 12.

The MP3 file is available HERE:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/JPGewctH/_2__CF12.html

Reiterations

My present failure to post energetically is due not to laziness but rather its opposite. Hence, the fruit of my labor will drop from the tree when ripeness attains its pinnacle.

In the interim, I must feed all of you greedy, snapping piranhas out yonder. Readers, I mean!

So go HERE:

http://remasculation.blogspot.com/2010/05/iteration.html

Go forth, my little finny ones!

You know you want to. . . !

After All, Feminism has Two Wings

Feminism has two wings: a left one and a right one.

And just for the record, the left-right distinction in political discourse never did much impress me. As Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said somewhere once, the only REAL political parties in this world are the "winners", and the "losers". Yes, in the end it is about power!

So in the end, Left and Right are only different schools of thought about gaining power, and which technique they'll use when they finally carve you up.

Back to feminism. The only difference between leftwing feminism and rightwing feminism is that the rightwing feminist wants to "wear the pants in the family", and you can't do that if you haven't got a family in the first place . . right?

The leftwing feminist and her rightwing feminist counterpart differ only in how they want to exploit men, but not in the defining agenda to do so in the first place. They are both female supremacists. They are both "matriarchs".

And they both have their retinue of lickspittle male supporters. The leftwing feminist has the pro-feminist men's movement. The rightwing feminist has the socially conservative traditional male—whom many are now calling "White Knights". Both of these male groups ought to make you very, very ill!

Feminism is nothing new. It is as old as the world; as old as the proverbial "battle of the sexes", and that is very old indeed!

Leftwing feminism is the most recent variation, and it arose in tandem with the rise of leftism in general. Its purpose is to perfect and extend the methodologies of exploitation to new and unparallelled heights. That is all. A central prop of its programme is to transfer many of the functions of old-fashioned "chivalry" to the government, which streamlines the exploitation of men in keeping with a more totalitarian model of the state.

Many are now referring to leftwing feminism as Chivalry 2.0.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

You might enjoy the following:

http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/05/21/frontier-feminism/

And following that, the following too might prove eye-opening and productive of thoughtfulness:

http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/05/19/time-for-men-to-abort-fatherhood-at-will/

How to Build a Man Bomb

A very "spot-on" piece recently appeared in Men's News Daily, and since I am sure that not all CF readers are MND readers, this would be a good opportunity to broaden some horizons. The title of the MND article is How to Build a Man Bomb, and I hope that intrigues you as much as it intrigues me. Following is a sizzling snippet from the article in question:

"The members of the matriarchy, like social terrorists, are partnering with and guiding government toward the inevitable explosion, and when it goes off, they will be the first to point the finger at men, even at MRA’s, for the fallout.

"It won’t help them, though. Because whatever tragic end this comes to, it will not be at the hands of MRA’s, it will be in spite of our efforts to prevent it.

"If the streets erupt again, as they have so many times before, they will be filled with average men who never heard of the men’s rights movement. They will just be poor men, many of them young and fatherless due to the current system, acting out their rage against a world that includes and idealizes women, but that treats them like social pariahs."

Read the rest of it HERE:

http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/05/12/how-to-build-a-man-bomb/

I am "happy", in a grim sort of way, that the editor of Men's News Daily sees virtually the identical future-scape from his own perch that I see from mine. That said, I will send you to the following CF article, written waaay back in 2008 (I think), which sings a remarkably similar song, and touches upon a few other things as well:

http://tinyurl.com/4afkt6

After that, do enjoy the rest of your day. ;)

Open Message to Non-Feminist Women (Redux)

About 2.5 months ago, I posted an item called "An Open Message to Women of the Non-Feminist Sector." It is time to revisit this item, and just for the occasion I have bundled it into a 97kb PDF file which is available HERE:

http://www.4shared.com/document/Ke9ST_d3/Message2NonFeministWomen.html

You will find that PDF format makes it a very different reading experience—a better reading experience! There is a lot to be said for black text on a white background, and for bumping up the font size in your PDF reader as big as you want to make it. It is not only visually different: it is emotionally, psychologically and intellectually different. You find that your brain sucks up the information more greedily!

The message in this 16-page tract is aimed especially at the ladies, but the gents should read it too! After you have finished, and if you find the sentiments very much as you yourself might have expressed them, then you can be of help to yourself and all of us if you spread this culture virus to as many politically like-minded women (and men) as possible—via e-mail, link postings, CD-ROMs, or whatever your ingenuity might dictate.

Might I recommend a pyramid scheme? You know, give the PDF to ten people, and each of those ten give it to ten others, and etc...etc.....?

Here Is Something

And something is good, since I have posted nothing for a few days. Anyway, in my web burrowings I have serendipitously stumbled upon the following—it is a blog on Wordpress. The post is not directly about feminism, yet politically borders upon it pretty closely. At any rate, we counter-feminists ought to have a broad intellectual lens; we ought to feed our heads from many sources, so that we may bring a wealth of background understandings and conclusions to bear upon our foreground task. We think about plenty of things (far more than we publicly talk about!) and we only SEEM to be narrowly obsessed with feminism, feminism and feminism! But go now and imbibe:

http://tinyurl.com/2aycppt

I have added my own commentary to that post, and at the time I posted there appeared to be only two commenters ahead of me on the thread. My comment is awaiting moderation, but regardless if it survives there, it surely does appear below for your dining pleasure. Bon appetit! ;)

"PC is a tool used by the right to control dialog."

Another school of thought says that PC is a tool used by the LEFT to control dialogue.

Terminology such as "patriarchy, heterosexism,white supremacism, etc. ." certainly does smack of PC, but it does not smack of the Right. However, including "the state" on that list of bad things DOES smack of the Right, since the logical endpoint of Leftism can best be summarized by Mussolini's famous dictum: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contra lo Stato”.

(In other words, both Mussolinism and Leftism posit the state as Good. So the presence of "the state" on a list of Leftist devils in a purportedly Leftist piece of writing can only be interpreted as a rhetorical feint.)

Therefore, as to the post here under consideration, it smacks too much of "loveburger fascism" for my liking. I'm instinctively looking at my watch, waiting for the big moment when the mask will drop away and reveal the totalitarian face beneath.

To say that "good exists" is as inane as any other leap of faith. Philosophers have been arguing for ages over the meaning of "good".

I suppose the funky, lurking question in the background would be "who gets to be the cancer cells". (i.e. the devil). Beaming love and acceptance at your adversary is all very well in theory, but calling him a "cancer cell" in the first place (or even covertly defining him thuswise) pretty much defeats the purpose.

A final note: in the part where I say "purportedly Leftist piece of writing", I should rather have written "seemingly" in place of "purportedly".

Business is Booming!

The following e-mail arrived yesterday:

Hello,
I am Mr Garry Cook and i will like to order Counter from
your company and can i know their prices in range and the
method of payment you do accept,I wish to start business
with your good company and look forward for your valued
reply ASAP.

Have a nice day !

Best Regards
Garry Cook

Yes, Mr. Cook, I would especially recommend our formica counters! And the oak model is not half-bad, either! :) There is nothing quite like the counter business; in fact, I recommend it to everybody!

Jenn Redux. Or, MRAs Took a Crap On Her Blog!

I think it is a fair bet that many current CF readers are not up to speed about things that happened four months ago. If such be your own case, you ought to acquaint yourself with the following—and if you are an ardent foe of feminism, then, trust me, it is worth your while. Read the below-linked CF post and all comments attached to it, but even more importantly, follow the featured link to the feminist blog. At the feminist blog, you may or may not chose to read the actual post in question, but it is imperative you study the comment thread with a keen eye. It shall be a great profit to you. Kindly read it, and then return:

Go and See How it's Done

Very well, you are back? Good. So now, if you please, I will share more of the back-story. The "XXBlaze" blog which you have recently visited is published by a certain "Jenn", and Jenn and myself are old friends from waaay back, you might say! ;) Indeed, I have 'zapped' her (with my cabal of MRA hooligans) two times in the last two years, and I am about to do it again!

My first Jenn-zapping was waaay back in mid-2008—before Jenn started her own blog. Jenn (a "fat radical feminist lesbian"—her words!) was and maybe still is a contributing writer to a feminist blog called Female Impersonator. On that blog (in mid-2008) Jenn wrote a very assinine post about MRAs, and I tweaked her nose for it. At that time, she went by "Jen" rather than "Jenn", but she added the extra 'n' shortly thereafter. Very well, go now to the following:

http://counterfem.blogspot.com/2008/07/another-feminist-mra-expert.html

All right, back to January 2010. I stumbled upon that particular XXBlaze post in the process of digging around and studying mine enemy—you know, one link leads to another—and if Jenn doesn't want MRAs stumbling upon her old blog posts and possibly hanging them in the breeze to twirl like old ripe laundry, well then, why the hell doesn't she delete them? I know it troubles ME not a hair if people read stuff in my archives from 2 or 3 years ago, and leave comments there! It would never occur to me to call such an action "cowardly", so what the hell is Jenn's problem? Another piece of feminist parochialism, or was she simply inventing an "issue" out of thin air?

After I posted the January CF post, a great rush of CF readers went yonder, to Jenn's blog, to witness the wizardry of the now legendary "D". The word of this spread like wildfire in MRA land—we've got a pretty amazing 'bush telegraph'! CF is mirrored in a bunch of different places, and the link was re-posted quite a bit, so within 24 hours Jenn received a glut of MRA commenters on her old, forgotten post. Plus, who knows how many silent visitors. And for several days afterward, Jenn regularly returned to CF to check out what my commenters were saying.

And that brings us up to the present. Just. . yesterday, I think it was, I was burrowing around in cyberspace in my usual serendipitous way, and I happened upon the following post on Jenn's blog—from, yes indeed, January 2010, not long after I posted "Go and See How It's Done". I'm sure the following title will capture your interest right off the block, and if it doesn't, then, as the saying goes, "I don't know Arkansas":

MRAs took a crap on my blog

Well. Jenn quotes and responds to you, John Dias. And you, Karl. And you, Factory. And several others. Yes, at least twenty putative MRAs went to Jenn's blog at my instigation. And left comments there too—although not at my instigation. (I only wanted them to "read 'em and reap".)

So, what was Jenn to do? Her little D-gate scandal was all the buzz in MRA land, and the comment thread was massively archived in the MRM library. She could have just ignored it all; she could have just blown it off. But no. . . she felt driven to respond, and went to a fair bit of trouble to write what she wrote.

And what did Jenn write? To be honest, nothing of interest. Her responses were weak, puerile, evasionary, obfuscatory, and largely irrelevant—consisting in the main of huffy feminist dogmas mingled with flip-sounding insults that were clearly meant to come across as witty and devil-may-care. But in fact, the whole production sounds like she is merely saving face. After all, she couldn't merely delete or alter the original post where 'D' appears—not after the MRAs had seen it and widely archived it; her reasons for doing so would have been transparent to all the world. So yes, one gathers that Jenn is quite sensitive to non-feminist opinion. Furthermore, the eight comments left on the post—all by apparent feminists—had the ambience of a communal reinforcement huddle.

I would suggest that the referenced post be archived—and indeed I have already done this myself. Meanwhile, Jenn is certainly ever so much more than welcome to take a crap on my blog. I mean, hey, when ya gotta go, ya gotta go, right? I'm fine with that. And I know damn well that my cabal of Freddy Krueger-style MRA hooligans would be tickled witless to watch the fat radical feminist lesbian taking a crap. I aim to please my constituency! ;}

What's Paul Trying To Do, Inflate My Ego? ;)

My great admirer, "Julian Real", whom I blogged about several posts ago, is at it again. Actually, he was at it some time ago, but only just today did I discover this. Here, go follow the following link and see what I am talking about:

http://www.xyonline.net/content/fidelbogen-antifeminist-asshole-proof-follows

I am honored and flattered that Seidman wishes to flatter and honor me so very highly, and has taken the trouble to cross-post his original blog post at the very. . . prestigious . . . XYonline website! Evidently he's in with that crowd, which is why he is able to post there.

All right, so I am a god in Paul Seidman's heart AND in the XYonline pantheon now. Whoop-de-doo-dah! But I reckon I'd best not get a swell head over that. . . eh?

In case you are not familiar with the Radical Profeminist blog, then by all means do get acquainted, HERE:

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/

The False Rape Strike Force

I should have posted this announcement a couple of weeks ago, but better late than never.

A new—what shall I call it?—online activism project has been inaugurated. It is called the False Rape Strike Force, and is the brainchild of Snark (of Remasculation)—in conjunction with the False Rape Society crew and, I am honored to say, myself! :)

The FRSF is what is quaintly termed an "attack blog", and the title is, I trust, explanatory. Certain people and entities must be sensitivity-trained on the subject of false rape accusation, and the profile of the issue must be raised in the mind of the world at large. So in the days and months ahead, the FRSF blog will publicize various "offenders" who may possibly benefit from the experience of worldwide web exposure. For that purpose we wish to recruit "soldiers" for e-mailing and forum-swarming campaigns and you, gentle reader, are invited to participate. ;)

I should scarcely need to add, that here is a chance to grow some political muscle. In fact, we've got that muscle already, as the outcome of the first FRSF project has demonstrated. The project, as you will see, was cancelled for thoughtfully considered reasons—but not without first making itself smartly felt! As Snark has written:

"On the positive side, this does actually show what level of force we can mobilise - considering he took the time to write to us asking us to stop."

All right, here is the address. Get thee yonder and read all about it:

http://littlewhiterapelies.blogspot.com/

My own intro post, which is not half bad if I do say so, is HERE:

http://littlewhiterapelies.blogspot.com/2010/04/false-accusation-of-rape-social.html

In conclusion, I think Snark's idea, that we should NOT set ourselves up in opposition to those advocating for rape victims, is politically very solid advice; such a dichotomy would ill serve us indeed! Still, if such activism as ours accomplishes anything in the long run, it would be (among other things) that rape victim advocates would feel obliged to "show their colors" on the subject of false accusation rather than passing over the issue in silence.

CF Podcast: The Eleventh

Here is the Podcast version of The Battle for Feminism's Soul:



As always, here is the URL for downloading personal copies—especially if you have a primitive browser that can't handle the audio widget:

http://www.4shared.com/audio/ljHlWEfO/CF11.html

And finally, the embed code:

<embed src="http://www.4shared.com/embed/282555124/2503a057" width="420" height="250" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always">
</embed>

The Battle for the Soul of Feminism

What is feminism? What ISN'T feminism? These are vital questions, and controversy has swirled around them for years. This controversy is no storm in a teacup, for I can assure you that much rides upon the outcome.

When a non-feminist encounters a feminist, the mood is sooner or later bound to get testy. To state that another way, each party carries a psychic atmosphere of her own, and these atmospheres are bound to clash. The encompassing social ambience will not accomodate both of them; one or the other must yield. As they say in the old western movies, "this town ain't big enough for both of us."

The unspoken tension between feminist and non-feminist will eventually come to a head and show itself openly. This regularly happens in a small way, in the social microcosm. It has not yet happened in a grand, conclusive way, in the societal macrocosm, although it is our job to accelerate the arrival of that day. But on whatever scale it occurs, the confrontation rides upon a mutual assessment between these two parties or, if you will, between these two principles.

Hence the typical pattern of interchange between a feminist and a non-feminist. The non-feminist will make known her feelings about feminism and the feminist will, mildly or otherwise, "get defensive". So what is happening in these discussions? Clearly, the talkers are talking past each other because they are talking about two different things. The feminist's "feminism" is NOT the same thing as the non-feminist's "feminism". Each conversant has a different mental picture of what the word feminism signifies in real world terms.

The non-feminist looks upon feminism as the less desirable option; that is what makes him not a feminist. Meanwhile, the feminist looks upon feminism as something sacred, and for that reason looks upon the non-feminist standpoint as akin to sacrilege. Please bear these points in mind.

Again I put it to you: what is feminism, and what ISN'T feminism? We need to address that pesky little question with exactitude in order to reach any over-arching conclusion about feminism's desirability or lack of it. Therefore feminism, the object under examination, must be pinned down, immobilized, and forced to become a definite something; only in that way does it become examinable and susceptible to evaluation. So answers need to arrive, and they need to arrive from authoritative sources. Consequently, the question of authority itself comes to the fore, as does the question of questioning authority.

Briefly then, who has authority to tell the world what feminism is or is not? Does the feminist have such authority? Does the non-feminist have such authority? Or do they each in their own way have such authority?

In the present talk, my contention is that any person at all may at least presume to speak with authority on the question of what is or isn't feminism. Anybody may set up shop in this trade, and there are no licensing requirements. Self-declared participation in feminism itself is no prerequisite for this. If that word (feminism) points to any discoverable object at all, we must allow that the pathways of discovery are manifold and not subject to any monopoly. Anybody may compete in this market, although success will vary according to the governing criteria. So, it is the governing criteria which are now under consideration.

"But wait!", I hear some feminist interject. "Only a feminist has any true authority to say what feminism is or is not, because only a feminist has participated in feminism and truly LIVED feminism. No outsider has any authority to tell ME what feminism is or is not!"

I would reply, that your communal experience among self-styled feminists grants you no authority but to speak of what you and others underwent in your time together, and what you felt and concluded from this. Your particular viewpoint and your especial path of knowledge are in no sense privileged. Neither is it taken on faith that you would evaluate your position honestly. Hence, your authority is merely clubbish, a compound of social memories mingled with selective awareness and possibly wishful thinking. And while these club memories might constitute authority of a parochial sort, there are other forms of authority, from other sources, which must not be neglected. Do not forget that others can view your club from an outward aspect—does that count for nothing?

"But wait!", I hear that feminist interject again. "I have studied feminism for years, and I have read all the books, and I have earned a degree in women's studies. Don't tell me your authority equals mine, mister!"

I would reply, that if in addition to hanging out with supposed feminists, you boast of a scholastic or intellectual authority, you must remember that you aren't the only one who can read books and think about things. Others, very different from you, are avid readers and thinkers also—and they do not have the same emotional filters that you have. So they are free to follow their own unblinkered genius, to quaff from fountains of knowledge that would not occur to you, to generalize, to factor-analyze, to string the dots together and formulate conclusions that might differ markedly from your own.

"But wait!", our feminist chimes in for a third time. "I am a WOMAN! How dare you tell me what feminism is or is not!"

I would reply: "Quite right, you are a woman. And I am a Sagittarius."

And I repeat: ANYBODY may presume to say what feminism is, or what feminism is not. It adds no weight to your claim to merely call yourself a feminist. It gives you no head start in the game. After all, anybody can say "I am a feminist". Talk is cheap, and whether you call yourself a feminist, or call yourself a two-headed Patagonian, has no bearing on your claim to expertise.

And again I say, that a lot rides upon the outcome of this controversy. We must eventually decide in very exact terms what feminism is or is not, and the question is so important that I have given it a special name which hints at the magnitude of it. I call this question the battle for feminism's soul, and I wish to make known why I do so. And as I have already suggested, we seek not only to discover what feminism IS . .. but to determine whether it is right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, noble or ignoble.

I would therefore have you understand, that no mere working definition of feminism can ever be considered separately from the question of feminism's inherent desirability or lack of such.

So in the end, we aim to establish two things: firstly, what feminism IS. . . and secondly, whether it is DESIRABLE. Up until now, the feminists have asserted a monopoly of discourse in this realm, thought-policing the avenues of conversation leading into it or out of it and transforming the world of respectable mainstream opinion into an echo chamber where only feminist questions are permitted to be raised, and only feminist answers permitted to be formulated.

Not surprisingly therefore, the feminists have concluded that feminism is desirable and honorable. However, they have consistently shrouded in fog the plain and simple definition of feminism, making available so many so-called "answers", and such inadequate ones, that there is effectively no answer at all. And that, I submit, is the weak point where we as counter-feminist seekers of truth must begin our drilling operations.

But a difficulty bars our way at the outset—in fact, a double-bind. For in order to discover if feminism is good or bad, we must first establish what it quintessentially is. But in order to establish what feminism quintessentially is, we must first discover whether it is good or bad. It is a chicken-and-egg game, and such dilemmas cannot be unriddled by a linear, deductive style of investigation. Rather, the entire picture must come into focus all at once, holistically. We must dive into the question from both ends at the same time.

Our style of investigation shall be, in the main, inductive rather than deductive. As the expositor, I already know how the story ends, so my method shall be to reveal the finale (or parts of it), and then fill you in, step by step, on WHY the story turns out that way.

So here is our first sneak preview, and I have said it many times: the radical quintessence of feminism is female supremacism. I mean that feminism and female supremacism are completely interchangeable terms; they are synonyms. Everything you need to know about feminism cascades from this, and if you don't know this at the outset, you will stumble blindly in a midnight maze of never-ending conundrums. But if you DO know this at the outset, you will have a map, a compass, and a blazing torch to light the way.

The second plot-spoiler both illuminates, and is illuminated by, the first. It is, that whatever is respectable about feminism is not original, and whatever is original about feminism is not respectable. I will not enlarge upon this now, because I want to keep the talk brief. So I am farming the work out to you, the reader. I would ask that you load this idea into your brain and try it on for size. Explore it. Experiment with it. Work with it. Play with it. See how, when and where it fits the facts of the world as you know them.

Briefly, the "nice" parts of feminism are not feminism's soul, because they do not quintessentially belong to feminism. Rather, they belong to the world at large, and to the realm of liberal humanist bromide. They belong to the generally received body of traditional opinions about fair play, common decency and the like, and if they were broken loose from feminism they could just as well sail under their own flag. Certainly, they do not require a new-fangled monikker like "feminism". And yet, they serve feminism as a masking device because they obscure the vital presence of that OTHER feminism, the not-nice kind whose sole purpose is to boost the female-supremacist agenda.

Already, I can hear a howl of protest. "No! That's NOT what feminism really is!"

And I would reply: "Bad luck! You've had YEARS to tell the world what feminism really is. Now it is the world's turn to tell feminism what feminism really is!"

So again: the radical quintessence of feminism is female supremacism. That is to say, female supremacism is the soul of feminism. It is, by any measure, more significant, interesting, original and consequential than liberal platitudes—and politically more profound in its implications, by an order of magnitude!

The battle for feminism's soul, is the battle to define feminism's core minima in both a moral and practical sense and, by so doing, gain effective control over feminism's narrative in pragmatic, real-world terms. It is the world's turn to tell feminism what feminism is, and this will come about by shifting the center of narrative authority away from feminism itself. If you are a self-declared feminist, your supposed "inside" knowledge of feminism is worth no more than the "outside" knowledge which others are able to bring forward—THEIR knowledge can be as quintessentially revelatory or determinative as any other.

Accordingly, the nasty bits which outsiders may remark about feminism are not regrettable, accidental, outlying features. They are as much a part of "real" feminism as anything your friendly neighborhood Nice Feminist would urge you to believe. If these things are feminism's "excrescence", it is because they have been excreted, or forced out from the center, which makes the center their point of origin. Accordingly, our task as counter-feminist propagators of knowledge is to factor feminism's excrescence into its essence. Or as certain wits and wags will be quick to say: to feed feminism its own shit!

Yes. The world has long been an object of the feminist gaze, so it is time to flip the script, and make feminism an object for the world. They have been gazing into the abyss long enough; now the abyss is gazing into them.

Such is the battle for feminism's soul.

------------------------------------------------

If you found the foregoing profitable, you will unquestionably benefit from the following:

http://counterfem.blogspot.com/search?q=atlantis