I shame the matriarchy

OK, so now I know what they mean by "triggering".

Pandagonhas something to say to all of us coffee-cup feminists.

And so does Gayle, another commenter, on a more touchingly tender personal level:

"You rip up threads and purposely stymie legitimate discussions with all your mock outrage because you have a personal vendetta."

Well, dip me in marinara and call me Six-Fingered Tony - indeed I do. But I'll get to that later.

Look, I didn't want to have to do this. I didn't want to bring the good and productive discussion down to a pointless and self-indulgent personal level while grinding my own personal axe. I didn't want to indulge in the masturbation of grief and shame out here in public in front of God and everybody. And I sure as shit didn't want to have to think about the seven worst years of my life ALL DAMN DAY, re-living every detail like I was back there again, experiencing it all over again like some sadistic Groundhog Day of my own mind.

But I feel like I have to speak up, say something, ANYTHING, anything to make the discussion real and tangible and connected to the human experience, if for no other reason than to remind us all that it's not just the words that are thrashing it out on the blasted heath of the Interweb. It's not just a matter of our dueling participles and wrestling metaphors - we're all real flesh-and-blood-and-soul people out here behind our keyboards and in front of our screens. The only way I can think of to remind people of that is by sharing. Well, oversharing, probably.

Nonetheless, once more into the breach...

For about six and a half years, between 1996 and 2002, I was a coffee-cup feminist. And a good one. Everything I did, said, typed, read, cooked, ate, shit, flushed, purchased, sold, wore, stripped, sucked, fucked, choked on, accepted, rejected, inspected or selected was controlled utterly and totally by my husband at the time.

I've spoken about him before, Mr. AbEx. He's the reason why I know it sucks to have to clean up your own bloody vomit after oral sex. He's the reason why I know that it's sometimes just as dangerous to be a housewife as a prostitute. He's the reason why I lived, and why I almost died.

But that was my life. I was okay with it, for a while. Over time I became less okay with it. Over time I had to do ever more exotic mental gymnastics to bend around and through and over and under the crazy situation I put myself in.

The important thing to know here is that immediately prior to meeting him, I was one out-n-proud queer-ass radical-feminist womyn-with-a-y. Seriously - one day I was pasting up flyers for the Pope Protest (yes, I threw condoms at Pope John Paul II - gives you an idea of just how ancient I really am), the next day I was packing my heels and pearls and teetering off to go be Mrs. America.

But he's the reason I know, deep in my fractured bones and in my damaged brain and in what remains of my shattered heart, that your philosophy will not protect you.

What - you think you can hide under a book? a pamphlet? a manifesto? an idea? You think raising some magic umbrella of consciousness will protect you from a rain of humiliation or a hailstorm of fists?

Feminism did not shield me, because The Patriarchy wasn't beating me. A human being was beating me. He was, his fists were, both true and real. He was not a figment of the collective imagination. He was not a concept, a generalized sort of shorthand to symbolize centuries of suffering. He was a fellow human being.

Do you blame Communism for some mindboggling number of Ukrainians slaughtered in the thirties? No - you blame Stalin, the man himself.

Do you blame Agrarian Utopianism for the slaughter of millions of Cambodians? No - you blame Pol Pot, the man himself.

Nobody blames Nazism-the-ideology, Nazism-the-philosophy, Nazism-the-shorthand for inexpressible evil, Nazism-the-word for the horrors of the Third Reich. We blame Hitler, his lieutenants, his adherents, those willing to take his philosophy and make it real in human terms.

As for me, what's left of me, I blame the Patrick-archy. I hold him personally accountable for everything he's ever done to me. I don't care where he learned it or who he learned it from - other men live perfectly well without learning to be monsters, and women learn to be monsters equally adeptly. I don't care about his illusory privilege or his brother's privilege or his assumed life of plush entitlement that amounted to ring-around-the-collar wage slavery.

As much as I blame him, I have to blame myself. I know that. But I thought - I knew - that if only I tried harder I could be the sort of woman he could be proud of, admire, not hit.

The strange thing is, I felt the same way about my female partner. That's important in this discussion too.

Let me ask you something, all-a-y'all - did you feel it when he hit me? Did somehow his fist hit your face? wrap around your swanlike neck? break your fragile bones? Did his words assault your ears with the force of all the sticks and stones of all the schoolyards of your life? Did my behavior, my striving, my working to please him, PUT A SINGLE BRUISE ANYWHERE ON YOUR BODY?

I can't claim the title Radical Feminist anymore, if even I ever could. Ultimately feminism in all its flavors asks more questions than it answers, at least for me.

But now I'm a woman with a "why". I'm okay with that.

And that brings me to my personal vendetta.

As my husband, Antiprince The Gentle*, often says - "blog comments are often edited to give the appearance of hegemony." (or words to that effect - correct me if I'm wrong, darlin'.)

Often, editing is not even needed, if enough people (six or eight, that few) whomp up enough affirmations in the comments section, it looks like the whole world agrees with the blogger, and only a drooling halfwit or truly reckless vandal would disagree.

I got news.

I disagree. Strongly.

And I know there are others out there who disagree too. So what looks like a personal vendetta is not only a personal vendetta (brought about by allowing myself to get insulted about stupid shit - meh, I am as god made me) but an attempt to make sure all parties are represented. ALL parties.

Feminism, radical or otherwise, is not hegemonic. It just ain't. Too many different people have had too many different experiences to make it so.

OK - I've had enough. I have a headache. if you've made it this far, I, Six-Fingered Tony, salute you.

Basta!

* Antiprince the Gentle is also Antiprince the Decent, the Brave, the Musical, the Handsome, the Human - I did not mean to reduce him to a single quality in service of this essay (of rather dubious quality anyway). Forgive me, darlin' for using you as a rhetorical device, but I had to attribute the quote somehow.