Sunday, September 26, 2010

One Degree of Subjugation: A Response to Lloyd Marcus's essay "Off with [Christine] O'Donnell's head: left targets conservative women"

patriotic image of Lloyd Marcus is from here
Today marks what would have been the 64th birthday of Andrea Dworkin, had she not died unexpectedly of an infection to her heart in early April of 2005. I post this in honor of her.
Anti-feminism is also operating whenever any political group is ready to sacrifice one group of women, one faction, some women, some kinds of women, to any element of sex-class oppression: to pornography, to rape, to battery, to economic exploitation, to reproductive exploitation, to prostitution. There are women all along the male-defined political spectrum, including both extreme ends of it, ready to sacrifice some women, usually not themselves, to the brothels or the farms. The sacrifice is profoundly anti-feminist; it is also profoundly immoral...
Andrea Dworkin,"Anti-feminism," Right Wing Women (1991), pp. 230-231
From *here*:
Lloyd Marcus is the songwriter and vocalist of the "American Tea Party Anthem." He currently serves as president of NAACPC (National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color). Visit his website at http://www.LloydMarcus.com
Lloyd Marcus and most of the politically conservative white women he praises in a video below have a lot in common: both he and they are marginalised in a racist patriarchal society by at least "one degree of subjugation". White het men serve neither him nor the white women and women of color he promotes in his video which honors the politics of Right-wing women who he patronisingly prefers to consider "our girls". "Ours" in this instance is a possessive pronoun. Women and girls don't belong to men. That this actually needs stating here in this country is an indication of the sorry state of affairs we are living with: racist/misogynistic corporate media who will, when push comes to shove, dismiss Lloyd as any number of horrible terms just as swiftly as they'll toss any Right-wing woman under any bus should she not speak the way conservative WHM want them to speak.

I have poor white family members and non-poor family members of color. The white ones are racist to varying degrees. The men, not surprisingly, are sexist to varying degrees. The men of color are conservative. (There are no women of color in my family.)

What my poor white het male family members and the non-poor men of color in my family will not concede is that they have far more in common, structurally and in terms of political location, with working to middle class people of color, with poor people of all colors, and with women of all classes and ethnicities, than they do with wealthy WHM.

Wealthy white het men will do nothing for my poor white family except continue to try and convince them they they are brothers. The wealthy destroy the poor, slowly or swiftly, through many means--in fact by any means necessary--including classist corporate greed, through avoiding paying taxes by making themselves into corrupt corporations, by throwing their money overseas into a Swiss bank account, by buying up tracks of land that poor people live on, developing the land, and kicking the poor people out, by hogging resources such as health care, by making corrupt deals and supporting legislation that empowers them and disempowers everyone else, including by making lots of working people in the U.S. homeless and hungry.

Wealthy white het men will do nothing liberatory or justice-producing for any man of color anywhere in the world, as they practice genocide the way BP practices water and air pollution: with ease and insufficient or no consequence. Wealthy white het men, the conservatives particularly if not only, would not let Lloyd Marcus into their homes. They would not eat dinner with him. They would not shake his hand. You will note how few wealthy white het men who are conservative appear in his video with him--and of course that's due to the fact that he's saluting conservative women in the U.S. But it's not only due to that. It's because conservative WHM don't have to regard Lloyd as human any more than they have to regard any woman as human. They will use women like Sarah Palin, as has already been demonstrated during the presidential campaign, where we saw how wealthy conservative WHM treated her as an object to exploit as long as she said exactly what they wanted her to say.

Wealthy WHM who are conservative are positioned socially and structurally to be woman-oppressors--whether they actually hate women is entirely beside the point. Miss Daisy loved Holk Colburn, her chauffeur in the way that wealthy U.S. white women can love a poor African American man--with condescension and exploitation always at the ready.

No woman, no matter how conservative, will ever be regarded with respect or seen as an equal by wealthy WHM, especially but not only the conservative ones.

The lie white male supremacist Amerikkka tells so very well, is that it embraces all those who are willing to come into the fold of conservatism. And what, pray tell, has conservatism--as whites use the term--done for any person of color? What it has done for white women is important to understand, and to understand it, I recommend reading Right-wing Women by Andrea Dworkin. That Dworkin was an anti-racist and a critic of the male supremacist left is not recognised by Lloyd Marcus. I welcome him to read her book and respond to me here about its content. Here's one review from Amazon.com:
What's in it for them? Here is Andrea Dworkin to tell you in superb detail exactly why right-wing women stand against their sisters. She explains with in-your-face language how the right has managed to be highly successful in opposing women's rights. Dworkin pulls no punches and will never apologize for telling it like it is. This book is incredibly inspiring and significant. -- S. Mickelson


As I'm want to do, I'll interject my responses along the way, through Lloyd Marcus's entirely misogynistic essay.

September 25, 2010

Off with O'Donnell's head: left targets conservative women

By Lloyd Marcus

Here is the Left's latest attempt to fire up their base to vote in November — Obama Lies Productions in association with Media Sycophants Group and Black Civil Rights Mafia Productions proudly releases "Attack of the Racist White Tea Party People" starring that lovable crazy witch from Delaware, Christine O'Donnell; in 3D. Keep the kids at home on this one folks. It gets pretty scary when Christine's head does a 360 degree turn and pukes green slime at the audience.

Yes, the Left, so-called champions of women's causes, have launched yet another campaign to destroy another conservative woman, Christine O'Donnell; their blatant hypocrisy and hatred of conservative women boldly on display. ["The Left" is a nebulous term in the U.S., never really being used to mean much that constitutes the agenda of the white male supremacist left. What Marcus and virtually anyone else in media  means when he/they use the term "the Left" is "liberals". Sometimes that includes "progressives". From a Leftist point of view, neither of those groups comprise the Left. But this country is so far to the Right that Liberalism seems radically Left to Right-wingers who don't care to know what  lays just beyond their own ideology, should they take a few steps farther right. The ideology that awaits them there is fascism.]
The liberal media and weird thinking women on the Left [as you can see, he uses the "l" words interchangeably while demonstrating misogyny for women who do not fall in line with the male supremacist politics he promotes] accuse conservative women of being extremist outside of the mainstream. And yet, they are the ones who are anti-marriage, considers child rearing demeaning, seek to femin-ize men and are pro abortion. Rush Limbaugh says the Left's version of feminism is a religion and their sacrament is abortion. [Quoting Rush Limbaugh as some sort of sage is akin to quoting Charles Manson as a prophet.]

A nutty feminist professor said all sex is rape. Feminist commentator Maureen Dowd writes that men, especially white men, suck. Then, Dowd wrote a column about her difficulty finding a date.

[You may note that on other sites the above paragraph reads this way:
Nutty feminist professor Andrea Dworkin said all heterosexual sex is rape. Feminist commentator Maureen Dowd writes that men, especially white men, suck. Then Dowd wrote a column about her difficulty finding a date.
See, for example, *here* and *here*. What someone either edited for Mr. Marcus, or he edited for some websites, was a correction of sorts, perhaps due to the fact that Andrea Dworkin, other than once teaching a couple of classes in Minneapolis, was never a "professor"--nor nutty. The "professor" he may be referring to is Catharine A. MacKinnon, who has taught Constitutional Law. We may note that neither Andrea Dworkin nor C. A. MacKinnon ever said "all heterosexual sex is rape" and this is well-documented as a media lie begun in the pages of Playboy, perpetuated and maintained by some liberals who discuss white feminism in the 1980s. For more on the lie, see *this* at Snopes.com. One wonders why these conservative and liberal critics of Dworkin and MacKinnon can't seem to ever understand anything they ever wrote, let alone quote it accurately. Could it be because they've never read anything they published? I'll leave that for Lloyd Marcus and other conservatives and liberals to answer.]

Men like conservative women because conservative women like men. [Or need them. The irony is that conservative men need conservative women for much more than the women need the men. What women need men for, often enough, is the economic security and the illusion of safety. What the men need the women for is their fundamental daily survival.] They are grateful when we open doors, carry packages and take care of them. Such respectful behavior makes them feel like women and us guys feel like men. [One wonders how it could be that all conservative women feel one way about these or any other issues.] This biology driven relationship between the sexes in no way undermines women's role as leaders, bosses, governors or presidents. Conservative women are wise, well aware of the God given power of their femininity. [There's no biologically driven relationship that impels women to need men for economic security or a false sense of safety. Money economies and domestic, social, and international violence against women, committed by men, are not biological phenomena, at least according to radical feminists of all colors. If Lloyd wants to make the case for how such things are biological, I welcome him to do so. Women are neither economically secure or safe when living intimately with conservative men. For one thing, conservative men disproportionately procure women in systems of prostitution who have been infected with disease and illnesses passed to them by other men. For another, marital rape and battery happens "in the best of families". For another, conservative men who are fathers of girls (and of boys) do molest or incest their children. Not all of them, of course. Who would make a statement about all people in a group doing the same thing? Oh, yes: Lloyd Marcus would. And we might note the utter condescension of his statement that women are wise in being aware of the power a male sky-god gave them called "femininity" as if all women are feminine, and as if many men are not--"naturally". I'd argue the domestic relationships between men and women Lloyd Marcus is promoted does indeed undermine women's role as leaders, bosses, governors, and presidents, which is why so few women take those positions and why this country will not elect a woman president.]
Back in the sixties, bitter liberal women [when he writes "bitter" he is actually referring to "socially assimilationist", which is not an attitudinal issue at all] sold their sisters a huge lie, "Empowerment means being like men." [And then there's this classic quote by a white man named Timothy Leary: "Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition."] Unfortunately, many young men treat women as the feminists have instructed; without respect, no special concessions and saying anything in front of them. [That this makes absolutely no sense should be obvious. How he arrives at this conclusion is beyond me. This is akin to saying that if anyone of color believed in trying to be like whites, they were anti-empowerment for people of color, and that if whites treat people of color the way Civil Rights activists (and people of color generally) wished, this would result in people of color being disrespected by whites, people of color being offered no special concessions by whites, and whites being able to say anything at all in front of people of color. There are layers of truth in all this, but not for any of the reasons Mr. Marcus identifies. The truth he avoids is this: men, generally if not entirely, do not respect women as they do other men, no matter if the women are conservative or liberal. Whites, generally if not entirely, do not respect people of color as they do other whites, regardless of whether people of color are conservative or liberal.] Young male's lack of respect for women is evidenced in the numerous music videos which refer to them as "b----s and hoes". [As if white male comedians before the feminist campaigns of the 1970s had respect for women. Has he not seen "Mad Men"?! Mr. Marcus seems to believe that being a good old-fashioned patriarchal means entails being "respectful of women", which, really, when it comes right down to it, means opening a door for a woman and that's about it. That's not a sign of respect; it's an action layered with an assumption that women need men to do minor things, like pass from the outside into the interior of a building. If it were a sign of respect, men would regard it as such when other men of the same race do it for one another. When I hold doors for other white men, they just seem uncomfortable--as if I'm implying they can't do such things for themselves.]

The Left [who on the Left: women? men?] sold their feminist movement to America [from where: Europe? Asia? Africa?] as being about giving women options and freedom to choose their path. [Yes, like being able to be a senator, or, even, to run for the office of president of the U.S.--does Lloyd believe women can do this now because of white men's conservative agenda for women? I welcome him to outline that history and how, exactly, wanting women to be possessed and controlled and condescended to by men equals wanting women to be free to choose their own path.] If this truly was their mission, Sarah Palin would be their rock star; a strong confident woman who is extremely successful in and outside of the home. [She is respected for all of that by everyone I know. What she's not respected for are her professed values and political perspectives which are entirely white het male supremacist and not in the interests of women who seek liberation from oppression. Feminists I know also don't hold Margaret Thatcher up as any sort of feminist. But that doesn't mean they don't respect her as a human being.] But, rather than celebrating Palin's achievements, feminists despise her. Why? [Because she's a promoter of white het male supremacy, that's why.] Because it ain't about freedom, nor options. The Left's version of the feminist movement is about bitterness towards men, hatred of America and promoting a socialist agenda. [Well, nice try at tossing out the sound-bites from Fox News. But if Mr. Marcus read Right-wing Women by Andrea Dworkin--one of many feminists who never said "All heterosexual sex is rape"--he might discover what that one feminist did believe was going on with women choosing WHM supremacist conservatism over WHM supremacist liberalism.]

I don't know who the Left despises most; successful uppity black escapees from the liberal plantation or conservative women. [I'm not sure who the white Right despises more: liberal Black men, liberal women of color, liberal white women, liberal white men, conservative white women, conservative women of color, or conservative men of color.]

Conservative brothers, despite what wacko feminists and their metro-sexual media sycophants [that would be semi-cloaked an anti-gay male slur, in case you missed it, as well as an overtly misogynist one] say, managed testosterone is a "good thing." ["Managed testosterone?" What could he possibly be talking about? Is there a new birth control pill for men?!] My testosterone will not allow me to passively watch the Left brutally beat up conservative women. [Wow. And here I thought it might be your political views, what you've learned from observing social systems, or your pseudo-respectful empathy for conservative women. Nope: it's just your hormones talking.] The cowboy [and which cowboy would that be? One of those cowboys who killed Injuns?] in me proclaims, "Don't be messin' with our conservative women folk"; Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Marsha Blackburn, Michele Bachmann, Laura Ingraham, Frances Rice, Star Parker, Ann Coulter, Michele Malkin, Amy Kremer, Debbie Lee, Selena Owens and Sarah Palin to name a few. [I suggest he tell that to the white conservative men who are disrespecting and harassing them, exploiting them when convenient, tossing them under the bus when they get in any conservative man's way. Does Lloyd Marcus actually believe Sen. John McCain respects Sarah Palin?? I think she'd disagree, if able to be honest and not quickly and callously cast her under a bus for telling the truth about how he mistreated her during their campaign run for the White House.]

Guys, we need to rally around our awesome gutsy sisters. They are putting it on the line, defending the values and principles we hold dear; family, God and country. [Dysfunctional heterosexual families where men generally don't do shit most of the time--except to be abusive or neglectful, and, when divorced, fight for custody of children they do not want, trying to take them from the mothers of those children who the men have too often battered; a white male sky-god that listens with particular interest and responsiveness to the prayers of the  wealthy, white, or male; and a country that is founded on and maintains an heavy investment in rape, misogyny, heterosexism, racism, and genocide.]

"Democrat Judgment Day" in November is fast approaching. [With Republican Judgment Day curiously landing on the same date.] Democrats [and Republicans] are fearful, panicky and desperate which makes them extremely vicious and dangerous. [The most viciousness I've seen, especially with regard to racism, has been among white conservatives.] King Obama [cute] has sent out his decree, "Bring me the head of Christine O'Donnell!" [Well, not, actually. He's far too controlled by the Right for him to make any such pronouncement. And I assure you, dear reader, we will see her betrayed by her own brothers, not the liberal ones.] O'Donnell must be destroyed because she is the ultimate, birthed from the people, ordinary, and yet, extraordinary, conservative Tea Party Movement candidate. [She should go exactly as far as her capabilities and talents for governing allow her,  but probably not as far as she'd like, given that white conservative men have a thick glass ceiling just above her head.]

It is extremely crucial that O'Donnell and we, her supporters, keep our eyes fixed on and climbing towards the summit, ignoring the rocky path along the way. Go Christine, Go! We got your back! [I'll wait for the time when Lloyd Marcus has to defend her against the charges of incompetency that will inevitably come from the conservative men he claims respect women so very much.]

And to all of our courageous conservative sisters, we love you and you are beautiful. [And are the conservative brothers beautiful too, I wonder? Or is it only women who have to be beautiful for her men to appreciate them?] Enjoy my tribute song to conservative women titled, "Our Girls" [subtitled "Under My Thumb"]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFb3zW7-tU4

Remember. Resist. Do not comply. -- Andrea Dworkin






Some of the writing above is © Lloyd Marcus. Some of it is © Julian Real, 2010.