Something has been boiling my blood for the past few days; it is eating at me like a parasite - So-called “feminists” who literally do not care about women as a class, but only empowering themselves and completely disregarding how society affects ALL women. As many of you may or may not know, I video blog on youtube and I am constantly finding self-proclaimed ‘sex positive’ feminists who spend all their time harassing anti-pornography/anti-exploitation/radical feminists like myself. When they aren’t insulting us to get closer to their left-wing dude friends, they are defending the sex industry. Most of these ‘feminists’ are ex-sex workers, there is about a handful of them. They kowtow to dick constantly by saying how unfair so many feminists are to men, how empowering sex work is (despite the fact that they left it), how anyone opposing it is doing so out of repressed or prudish outlooks on sexuality and not because we actually care about women and defending any other patriarchal, individualistic, woman-hating philosophy you can think of. It saddens me to know that these women are so popular – people love their views and I’m sure if they had a chance, a radio would put them to the microphone or a magazine would take their words. I know why this is, why they are so popular and loved, particularly by left-wing bill maher enthusiast males – they support status quo ideals and thus will not be censored. I was reading an article from Genderberg.com on how common it is for today’s feminist writers to ignore topics like pornography, prostitution and sex trafficking because they feel it isn’t a feminist issue, or fear being censored.
Who is going to censor these women? Well…the magazines, of course…the radio…
Who runs the magazines, the radio…? Men do.
What I don’t understand is how these women want to use the label of ‘feminist’. Why, if they agree with everything that goes against feminist values, would they consider themselves a feminist? My theory of “why” stems from the fact that these women believe that they truly are feminists. This could be due to the fact that the term has been re-moulded by some in our rape culture. This “ifeminist” trend is growing and the term “feminist” is becoming hollow to so many people. It’s almost like the definition asks for one to fill in the blanks. The sex pos women on youtube and elsewhere speak of libertarian feminism, which to me sounds like a complete oxymoron. Perhaps they haven’t grasped what libertarianism means? I doubt it. Let’s look at what libertarian or individualist feminism means:
“[Define] individualist feminism in opposition to what they call political or gender feminism”
Feminism is political, is it not? Feminism deals very much with gender – in fact without challenging gender, the entire definition of feminism would be thrown out the window. I was surfing the net and found a website called, “The Association of Libertarian Feminists” and saw that they had listed, in point form, what it means to be a libertarian feminist:
The Purpose of ALF is to:
- encourage women to become economically self-sufficient and psychologically independent
- publicize and promote realistic attitudes toward female competence, achievement, and potential
- oppose the abridgement of individual rights by any government on account of sex
- work toward changing sexist attitudes and behaviour exhibited by individuals
- provide a libertarian alternative to those aspects of the women's movement that tend to discourage independence and individuality
This is strange. They want to encourage women to become economically self-sufficient yet they fail to look at women as a class and thus forget that millions of women are starving, poor and enslaved. I suppose this only applies to middle/upper class women. “Publicize and promote realistic attitudes toward female competence, achievement, and potential” that sounds great, I believe most feminists agree that women should be considered equal and be honoured for their achievements. How does this purpose differentiate this group of people? The next point is key to their philosophy, “abridgement of individual rights by any government on account of sex work toward changing sexist attitudes and behaviour exhibited by individuals”. Of course, because libertarians are willing to risk exploiting others to have their rights completely fulfilled – this is the mindset of a libertarian, “it’s all about me” - The support of capitalism to fully fulfill one’s desires at the expense of others. They fail to recognize the roots of sex work, which are blatantly patriarchal and capitalist. They fail to recognize that keeping women subordinate to men sexually only furthers our oppression and reinforces the idea that men should have access to women’s bodies whenever they want. They fail to take into account the millions of women who want out of sex work – who are abused, exploited and hurt. They fail to understand that women exist outside of their “lets get empowered” bubble.
The last point is ridiculous and redundant. An alternative to “aspects of the women’s movement that tend to discourage independence and individuality”, yet they fail to describe what part of the women’s movement does this. They also fail to recognize that feminism is about all women, not just about individuals feeling good about themselves.
Libertarian Feminists believe that feminism can equate to individualist ideals and spend their time defending institutionalized misogyny, not dissecting how women are treated as a group. This individualistic, sex positive (or as I like to call pro-exploitative) libertarian feminism is hurting women, not helping them. It’s focusing on women, mostly privileged women individually rather than all women. It cultivates philosophies that suggest female orgasms will liberate us, stripping poles will empower us, degrading other women through prostitution and pornography will unite us and playing it safe with the patriarchy will identify who we are as women. These are the women that embrace men who call feminists against exploitation, “feminazis” or “those ugly, crazy, prudish feminists”, the ones who are empowered by defending what is keeping us from liberation - the patriarchy.
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