‘Heterosexuality Is the Structure That Keeps Sexist Oppression in Place’

‘Heterosexuality Is the Structure That Keeps Sexist Oppression in Place’

 

“According to feminism the role of heterosexuality is what structures the male-female relationship. Heterosexuality is the structure that keeps sexist oppression in place in the private realm; where sexism in general operates to also oppress in the public sphere. In other words heterosexuality reinforces the hierarchy established by sexism to keep women dominated in ‘sexual interaction, romantic love, marriage, and the family.’”
— “Heterosexuality: The Role it Plays in Feminism and Lesbianism,” 2007

That quote is from a Portland State University student enrolled in a course (“Gender and Critical Inquiry,” WS301) in the department ofWomen, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The syllabus of that course shows that the assigned text was Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim, 2002), and the readings included such radical lesbians as Charlotte Bunch, Monique Wittig and Audre Lorde. The student quotes from “Separating Lesbian Theory From Feminist Theory,” an essay by Cheshire Calhoun in the textbook, where she says that “from a feminist perspective, sexual interaction, romantic love, marriage, and the family are all danger zones,” being patriarchal institutions that “serve male interests.”

Trying to explain feminist theory to a stranger Saturday night at theProject Veritas CPAC party, I realized he thought I was a lunatic. What most people think of as feminism — a commitment to “equality,” understood as basic fairness — bears little resemblance to what is taught in the university Women’s Studies programs that enroll more than 90,000 students on some 700 campuses in the United States. Women in these courses learn to despise motherhood, to celebrate abortion, to fear men as perpetrators of sexual violence, and to consider heterosexuality a synonym for oppression. When you try to describe this paranoid anti-male belief system to people, they look at you like you’re crazy. Maybe Iam crazy to read Women’s Studies textbooks like Feminist Frontiers,Women and Gender, Rethinking Sexuality, Gender Trouble, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State and Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions, but it is impossible for anyone who hasn’t read this stuff to believe how extreme academic feminism has become. So when I summarize these theories — the social construction of the gender binary within theheterosexual matrix — people look at me as if I’ve slipped a cog.

As insane as it may seem, however, this radical ideology is what the word “feminism” now means on campuses. Ideas Have Consequences, as Richard Weaver warned us, and the consequences of feminist ideas are manifest throughout academia, e.g., the University of Pittsburgh:

In the spirit of free speech, Pitt’s Student Government Board passed the microphone [March 1] to a line of students speaking out about a controversial speaker whose visit SGB partially funded.
At its public meeting in Nordy’s Place, students packed the William Pitt Union’s multipurpose room to speak their piece on Milo Yiannopoulos’ lecture [Feb. 29]. . . .
SGB President Nasreen Harun amended the agenda at the meeting to allow for more time for student comments. . . .
Board member Everett Green said, in his three semesters on the Board, this was the first time he had seen a student response of this magnitude at a meeting. . . .
Marcus Robinson, president of Pitt’s Rainbow Alliance, said after leaving the lecture on Monday, he felt unsafe on campus for the first time.
“So many of us shared in our pain. I felt I was in danger, and I felt so many people in that room were in danger. This event erased the great things we’ve done,” Robinson said. “For the first time, I’m disappointed to be at Pitt.”
Robinson suggested that the University should have provided counselors in a neighboring room to help students who felt “invalidated” or “traumatized” by the event. . . .
“This is more than hurt feelings, this is about real violence. We know that the violence against marginalized groups happens every day in this country. That so many people walked out of that [event] feeling in literal physical danger is not alright,” Claire Matway, a social work and urban studies major, said. . . .
In response to student comments, Harun said, with teary eyes, said the best way to make an impact on campus was to begin conversations like this with the Board.
“Now is a good time talk about [amending the allocations manual]. It starts here and we can take it from there,” Harun said. “We’re very sorry people are feeling the way they are and it was not intended … and we’re sorry people are not proud to be at Pitt.”

This kind of rhetoric — students claiming to be “traumatized” and “feeling in literal danger” because someone contradicted their opinions — shows how ideological conformity has made universities a bubble, a cocoon where students never encounter criticism of “progressive” dogma. Consider this mission statement:

The University of Pittsburgh Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program is an interdisciplinary academic program focusing on excellence in teaching and research relating to gender, sexuality, and women. The Program is committed to promoting feminist and LGBTQIA activism, pedagogy, and scholarship that engage with the larger local, national, and global communities. Program offerings provide opportunities for students and faculty to explore the historical development, cultural variations, and changing representations of gender and sexuality as they organize identities, interactions, and institutions and intersect in complex ways with sex, race, class, ethnicity, ability, age, religion, and nation.

Notice that this academic program is “committed to promoting feminist and LGBTQIA activism” — it is a department with a political agenda. Among recent events on the department’s calendar was a book release party for the program director’s new book that claims to be “the first sustained and comprehensive study of Renaissance textual responses to Platonic same-sex sexuality.” Another event was a lecture by Professor Susan Wells, “In Search of the Clitoris: Writing and the Body in Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Permit me to suggest that nobody smart enough to go to college should require a lecture about where to find the clitoris. And despite my enthusiastic interest in female genitalia, I’m not sure what Professor Wells could have said on the subject that would have added to my knowledge. If students at Pitt need enlightenment in this regard, a quick Google search should suffice to cure their ignorance.

We can perceive, however, that the “education” provided by such programs is not about the transmission of knowledge, but rather aboutindoctrinating students in terms of their attitudes and beliefs. There are no Republicans or conservatives on the faculty of Pitt’s Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, nor are there any professors in this department who advocate a traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of gender and sexuality. Pitt’s resolute hostility toward traditional morality can be seen from its events calendar, featuring Gabriella Lukacs’ lecture“Career Porn: Blogging and the Good Life” and Patricia Ulbrich’s “Hard Hatted Women & Wild Sisters: Lesbian Feminist Community in Pittsburgh.” A feminist student at Pitt will be applauded if she becomes a lesbian or a porn blogger; the only “wrong” choice she can make is to pursue a life that involves a husband and children. Feminists have never made a secret of their goal of destroying the traditional family.

“Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the Women’s Movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.”
— Sheila Cronan, 1970

“The nuclear family is the school of values in a sexist, sexually repressed society.”
— Andrea Dworkin, 1974

“No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”
— Simone de Beauvoir, 1975

“The first condition for escaping from forced motherhood and sexual slavery is escape from the patriarchal institution of marriage.”
— Alison M. Jaggar, 1988

“Women’s heterosexual orientation perpetuates their social, economic, emotional, and sexual dependence on and accessibility by men. Heterosexuality is thus a system of male ownership of women . . .”
— Cheshire Calhoun, 1994

“The term motherhood refers to the patriarchal institution . . . that is male-defined and controlled and is deeply oppressive to women.”
— Andrea O’Reilly, 2008

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 2014

“Heterosexuality and masculinity . . . are made manifest through patriarchy, which normalizes men as dominant over women. . . .
“This tenet of patriarchy is thus deeply connected to acts of sexual violence, which have been theorized as a physical reaffirmation of patriarchal power by men over women.”
— Sara Carrigan Wooten, 2015

Feminism is a death cult which exercises such hegemonic influence in academia that no one on the 21st-century campus dares to dissent from this anti-male/anti-heterosexual belief system. Because there are no professors who criticize feminist ideology and rhetoric, students are never exposed to evidence or arguments that contradict the cult beliefs propagated by radical academics “committed to promoting feminist and LGBTQIA activism.” Is there any professor — at the University of Pittsburgh or Portland State University or anywhere else — who doubts that heterosexuality is “the structure that keeps sexist oppression in place”? If there are such skeptics of feminist theory on campus, do any of them dare say a word in favor of heterosexuality? Can anyone name a professor who has spoken out in opposition to the claim that “marriage constitutes slavery for women,” or who defends motherhood against the assertion that it is “deeply oppressive to women”? Do any faculty dispute the implication that all heterosexual men perpetrate “sexual violence” to express “patriarchal power by men over women”? And is there anyone in academia today who loves babies, rather than despising them as the smelly “time-sucking monsters” Amanda Marcotte wants to abort?

Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, and the suppression of dissent is accomplished by terroristic intimidation tactics intended to silence opposition. Feminists like Amanda Marcotte do not hesitate to slander their critics as “rape apologists” and accuse opponents of “supporting rape because you hate women.”However, anyone who attempts to call critical attention to this anti-male propaganda by confronting feminist hatemongers will be accused of “harassment” and stigmatized as a “misogynist,” because disagreeing withAmanda Marcotte — or Anita Sarkeesian or Jaclyn Friedman, et al. — is considered proof that you are a woman-hating rape apologist.

“The feminist movement’s goal — ‘to destroy the structure of culture as we know it,’ as Andrea Dworkin said — is incompatible not merely with marriage and the family, but with the principles of democratic government. In order to obtain the androgynous ‘equality’ that is the objective of feminist ideology, religious freedom will have to be abolished, along with the free speech rights of feminism’s critics. Unless we are willing to oppose feminism now, we may find ourselves eventually living in a totalitarian society where such opposition is prohibited by law.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature

People think I’m crazy for taking feminism seriously, but this totalitarian movement is becoming increasingly powerful in American culture:

Students at Western Washington University have reached a turning point in their campus’s hxstory. (For one thing, they’re now spelling it with an X—more on that later.) Activists are demanding the creation of a new college dedicated to social justice activism, a student committee to police offensive speech, and culturally segregated living arrangements at the school . . .
WWU’s student-activist community — the frightening-sounding Assembly for Power and Liberation — made their demands publicearlier this week. . . .
The most substantial of the activists’ demands is a call for a new college that would essentially train students to become social justice warriors . . . WWU must meet the needs of this new “College of Power and Liberation” by immediately hiring 10 faculty members — subject to the approval of student-activists. . . .
Activists have also demanded the creation of an Office for Social Transformation, which would employ 15 students — young Robespierres in training — for the purposes of monitoring “racist, anti-black, transphobic, cissexist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and otherwise oppressive behavior on campus.” . . .
Keep in mind that WWU is already an extremely liberal campus with a number of social justice-oriented activities: it has a department of Education and Social Justice, a Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, a Queer Resource Center, a Social Issues Resource Center, and an Ethnic Student Center. . . .
At the heart of this effort lies a bizarrely totalitarian ideology: Student-activists think they have all the answers—everything is settled, and people who dissent are not merely wrong, but actually guilty of something approaching a crime. If they persist in this wrongness, they are perpetuating violence, activists will claim.
The list of demands ends with a lengthy denunciation of WWU’s marginalization of “hxstorically oppressed students.” The misspelling is intentional: “hxstory,” I presume, was judged to be more PC than “history,” which is gendered, triggering, and perhaps violent.

The public education system produces high-school graduates who know nothing of history, even if they could spell the word correctly. Mass ignorance benefits the taxpayer-supported intelligentsia who exercise hegemonic control within academia. Professors now indoctrinate college students with the kind of paranoid radicalism that perceives “oppressive behaviors” everywhere, and it is these progressive training camps that produce our nation’s future ruling-class elite.

“When you have a ruling class that doesn’t believe in — or even much like — the fundamental values of the nations it rules, things tend to work out poorly.”
— Professor Glenn Reynolds

Be afraid, America. Be very afraid.