Just because you have freedom of speech, it doesn't absolve you of thinking.

There's an unending load of drek filling the internet. A limitless expanse of posturing, propaganda, and shallow thought with small clusters of wisdom, knowledge, and expertise all but lost amid the dross. Look upon the night sky and imagine the depthless black and bright sparkle of the stars were transposed. Tiny pin-pricks of darkness set in the remorseless sea of light. Unless one knows where to look, they'd never know anything but brightness existed. Thus the internet looks to me.

Yeah, yeah, very pretty/poetic/overly complex, but what the balls does that have to do with this particular blog, right? Well, other than my hope that my efforts here are not contributing to the ambient light level, it's that somehow at some time, something peripherally connected will cross the radar. The monstrous odds almost guarantee that something will be drek.

And so it has transpired. Trouble ran across a manifesto that set her teeth on edge, which from reading her blog for a while indicated it had to have been a real doozy. I was not planning on impaling someone's opinion on a nice, sharp thorn today but after seeing this steaming pile, I can't resist.

Here is the crux of Yawning Lion's post.

Feminists:

• put women first in as many ways as they can all the time
• oppose the oppression of women in all its forms
• refuse to participate in patriarchy as much as possible
• consider, evaluate, and make the choices that are available to them according to a knowledge that those choices make a difference in the lives of women everywhere
• take actions that embody their political beliefs as often as they can
• recognize ways in which they collude with patriarchy and actively work to change in those areas

Feminists oppose (among other things):

• pornography
• prostitution
• rape
• weight-loss diets and fatphobia
• heterosexism
• lesbophobia
• male violence
• violence against women and children
• sado-masochism
• child sexual abuse
• pedophilia
• compulsory heterosexuality
• heteronormativity
• bestiality
• coercion
• oppression
• racism
• ableism
• ageism
• anti-Semitism
• slavery

Feminists support:

• accountability
• responsibility
• safety
• friendship
• respect
• community
• consensus
• connection
• love
• consensual, non-violent, non-commercial sex
• creativity
• clear, honest communication
• working through differences
• ethics
• knowing what feminism is and is not
• women
• holistic health care
• equal access
• sustainability
• revolution

Feminist behaviors (and non-behaviors) include but are not limited to:

• not wearing make-up
• not shopping at WalMart
• shopping as little as possible
• planting, supporting, and tending organic gardens and farms
• resolving conflict peacefully
• letting body hair grow on legs, arms, armpits, and face
• refusing to wear high heels
• refusing to give any more energy to men than is absolutely necessary
• loving the body in which she is born
• not having sex with men
• not having children
• being Lesbian
• being celibate if she won't be Lesbian
• writing about feminist topics
• reading feminist writing
• listening to women
• destroying pornography
• taking good care of herself
• analyzing privilege and power in her own life, society, and relationships
• leveraging her privilege to lessen the burden of other women
• taking pro-women stands
• drawing pro-women lines in the sand
• not raping women, even if they want it, ask for it, consent to it, beg for it: Rape is rape.
• not hitting/beating/tying up/torturing women even if they want it, ask for it, consent to it, beg for it: Violence is violence.
• not justifying abuse of women through misleading terms like "sex-positive," "liberal," "progressive," "open-minded," "queer," "inclusive," or "pro-life": Abuse is abuse.
• not saying that feminism "means whatever you want it to mean": Feminism is feminism.
• challenging and opposing malestream culture, including (but not limited to) pornography, sadomasochism, prostitution, and capitalism
• telling the truth about her life, and hoping that the world finally will split open.*

*adapted from the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser

That's one hell of a definition.

Since this I work in the adult industry. I'm going to ignore the rampant hypocrisy of "liberating" women by stuffing them into another imposed standard. I will overlook the circular definitions. I will not touch the usurpation of terms that have no logical connection to the definition of feminism. There's more than enough meat for me to tear into without getting into those.

For example.

So a "true" feminist is opposed to pornography? Why? I've heard all the claims that it demeans the gender, objectifies women, etc. ad nauseous. I've also heard the counter claims. Personally, I find it unlikely that a woman in her early twenties who owns her own house, car, and is now producing movies, such as Kimberly Kane, is victimized. My personal theory is that no matter how it is presented, the reality is a logic chain. Bad things happen because of men. Men like porn. Therefore, bad things happen because of porn. In some cases, I think just the "men like pornography" part is sufficient for some "feminists" to want to stamp it out.

Or we could get into prostitution; we can't forget that as a big evil now can we. Merriam-Webster defines the term to mean "the act or practice of engaging in promiscuous sexual relations especially for money". How horrible. It's not like adults around the world don't perform service of one sort or another in exchange for money. That bored teen-ager at the fast food joint making your burger is doing it purely for the joy of breathing rancid grease and filling condiment bottles. Oh wait, it's not performing some chore in exchange for monetary compensation that's the problem. It has to be the proximity. So a hair stylist is to be opposed because they're manipulating another person's body for pay. Or mayhap it's all tied up with genital contact, therefore a urologist or ob/gyn needs to be shunned. No, it's all because it has to do with sex. It's OK to pay someone to take a bullet, but not to take a penis.

I could take days tearing her bullet points apart one by one, but I have a life.

What I take exception to most from this self-proclaimed messiah of all things feminine is the summation that to be a "real feminist" a woman MUST be a sexually conservative lesbian hippy. A woman cannot dress up in any way that is not accepted by the rabid vagina-terrorists because that would be feeding into "androcentric" power. That having children is counter to being a woman.

Hell, there are strong implications that anything other than female on female sexuality should be actively shunned. Forget that most humans are set for heterosexual preference, that default should never be acknowledged. Forget tolerance for people's desires. She even expresses a belief that women should be FORCED to be lesbians. Ya know, when you're so irrational and polarized that you're advocating what you'd be outraged to hear coming from any other group, you're in wack-job territory.

Sometimes the hardest part of free speech is knowing when to shut the fuck up. But what do I know? I have a penis.