Strong Medicine; Dilute with Water

Twisty Faster of I Blame the Patriarchy reads bell hooks and draws some conclusions.

Thus has feminism more or less unraveled into this pro vs. anti dealio. Meanwhile, into the gaping void left by prude-silenced pro-sexers has shimmied, with stripper pole and Brazilian wax complete, the phallocentric antithesis of feminism: funfeminism. hooks refers to it by its 1994 moniker “new feminism,” describing it as a mass-media “marketing ploy to advance the opportunistic concerns of individual women while simultaneously acting as an agent of antifeminist backlash by undermining feminism’s radical / revolutionary gains.” She identifies funfeminism as a commodity sold to a public made queasy by the thought of a sexual dynamic that doesn’t fetishize oppression. It is “being brought to us as a product that works effectively to set women against one another, to engage us in competition wars over which brand of feminism is more effective.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: funfeminism isn’t a movement, it’s a consumer lifestyle, and it’s male-identified to boot. It appropriates the tired old patriarchal model, announces “I choose to be degraded, so shut your pie-hole!” and is rewarded with approbative dudely analyses praising its practitioners for having the sense to be antifeminist feminists. That it’s still raunchin’ strong 15 years after hooks lambasted it pretty much proves her point, that feminism got behind the 8-ball with this sex thing and just couldn’t recover.

Must be time for lunch.