Read Fems is available on Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Google podcasts is being discontinued, but the Google podcast app does allow you to export your current shows to YouTube Music.
References
Scottish hate crime bill doesn’t consider hatred of women hatred
If you want to read more about how progressive liberalism comes from Protestantism, read Tom Holland’s Dominion (or if you really want a long read, Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age)
The corruption of the best is the worst (Ivan Illich)
“All flesh shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:5)
Read Fems on Dworkin; recent article in The Free Press (We called her a prophet first, just saying!)
Silvia Federici on the violent transition from feudalism to mercantilism (We read about this in this excellent special issue of New Polity,)
Robin Hanson, “Imagining the End of the Word” (Louise Perry’s Maiden, Mother, Matriarch)
Quotes
What is real?
What it reminded me of was geography classes, at my own high school thousands of years before, where they showed movies of the rest of the world; women in long skirts or cheap printed cotton dresses, carrying bundles of sticks, with babies slung on them in shawls or net slings… These movies… made me feel sleepy, even when men came onto the screen, with naked muscles, hacking away at hard dirt with primitive hoes and shovels, hauling rocks. I preferred movies with dancing in them, singing, ceremonial masks, carved artifacts for making music: feathers, brass buttons, conch shells, drums. I liked watching these people when they were happy, not when they were miserable, starving, emaciated, straining themselves to death over some simple thing, the digging of a well, the irrigation of land, problems the civilized nations had long ago solved. I thought someone should just give them the technology and let them get on with it.
Aunt Lydia didn’t show these kinds of movies.
Sometimes the movie she showed would be an old porno film, from the seventies or eighties. Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around their necks, women hanging from trees, or upside-down, naked, with their legs held apart, women being raped, beaten up, killed. Once we had to watch a woman being slowly cut into pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach slit open and her intestines pulled out.
Consider the alternatives, said Aunt Lydia. You see what things used to be like? That was what they thought of women, then. Her voice trembled with indignation.
Moira said later that it wasn’t real, it was done with models; but it was hard to tell.
What is freedom?
Luke knelt beside me and put his arms around me. I heard, he said, on the car radio, driving home. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s temporary.
Did they say why? I said.
He didn’t answer that. We’ll get through it, he said, hugging me.
You don’t know what it’s like, I said. I feel as if somebody cut off my feet. I wasn’t crying. Also, I couldn’t put my arms around him.
It’s only a job, he said, trying to soothe me.
I guess you get all my money, I said. And I’m not even dead. I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre.
Hush, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I’ll always take care of you.
I thought, Already he’s starting to patronize me. Then I thought, Already you’re starting to get paranoid.
And Acton’s rewrite:
My boss handed me my paycheck… “Don’t worry, You’ll get used to it, he said, slapping me on the back. You used to fritter away all your time fishing, sauntering slowly after your cattle, getting drunk on saints’ feast days — but now you can be really productive and responsible, become a decent Christian instead of a lazy-ass Catholic, and earn some cash.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” I said. “I feel as if somebody cut off my feet and my hands.” I wasn’t crying, I was pissed.
“It’s only some farm land, and some of the woods” he said, trying to soothe me.
“I guess you get all my land,” I said. “And I’m not even dead.” I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre.
“Hush,” he said. “You know I’ll always take care of you.”
I thought, “Already he’s starting to patronize me.”
And then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “Just remember, if you quit, you starve. And so will your wife and kids.”
What is desire?
First “fiction”:
No preliminaries; he knows why I’m here. He doesn’t even say anything, why fool around, it’s an assignment… He’s undoing my dress, a man made of darkness, I can’t see his face, and I can hardly breathe, hardly stand, and I’m not standing. His mouth is on me, his hands. I can’t wait and he’s moving, already, love, it’s been so long, I’m alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending. I knew it might only be once. (261)
Second “fiction”:
He says nothing, just looks at me, unsmiling. It would be better, more friendly, if he would touch me. … Let’s be practical.
“I don’t have much time,” I say. This is awkward and clumsy, it isn’t what I mean.
“I could just squirt it into a bottle and you could pour it in,” he says. He doesn’t smile.
“There’s no need to be brutal,” I say. Possibly he feels used. Possibly he wants something from me, some emotion, some acknowledgment that he too is human, is more than a seedpod. “I know it’s hard for you,” I try.
He shrugs. “I get paid,” he says, punk surliness. But still makes no move.
I get paid, you get laid, I rhyme in my head. So that’s how we’re going to do it…. We’re going to be tough.
“You come here often?”
“And what’s a nice girl like me doing in a spot like this,” I reply. We both smile: this is better… We’re quoting from late movies, from the time before. And the movies then were from a time before that: this sort of talk dates back to an era well before our own. Not even my own mother talked like that, not when I knew her. Possibly nobody ever talked like that in real life, it was all a fabrication from the beginning. Still, it’s amazing how easily it comes back to mind, this corny and falsely gay sexual banter. I can see now what it’s for, what it was always for: to keep the core of yourself out of reach, enclosed, protected. (261-2)
Final “truth”:
It didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened; not exactly. All I can hope for is a reconstruction: the way love feels is always only approximate.
Partway through, I thought about Serena Joy, sitting down there in the kitchen. Thinking: cheap. They’ll spread their legs for anyone. All you need to give them is a cigarette.
And I thought afterwards: this is a betrayal. Not the thing itself but my own response. If I knew for certain he’s dead, would that make a difference?
I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
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