Wednesday, March 16, 2016

More of the Ladies Auxiliary sucking up to the bros

As promised, I've been keeping an eye on the Radical Chic Ladies Auxiliary. They certainly don't become any nicer as Hillary Clinton keeps winning more delegates than Bernie Sanders.

I haven't seen many direct attacks on feminists lately, except for this one by Amber A'Lee Frost against Amanda Marcotte.



What is more interesting though is how both founding members of the Ladies Auxiliary use euphemisms for testicles as signifiers of bravery.

Frost:



Featherstone:




Testicles signify bravery in our male-dominated society because men have testicles and women do not. By the same token, the word "pussy" is both a euphemism for female genitalia and cowardice. You can't get a more blatant example of sexist language than this common dichotomy of cowardice/bravery, pussy/balls.

And yet the Ladies Auxiliary persists in using this sexist language. My guess is that, as per usual, they want to demonstrate to their Radical Chic men that they are the good kind of feminists - the kind of feminists who don't see feminism the way "bourgeois feminists" do, as being about women's rights, but per Doug Henwood, they see feminism as being about peace and egalitarianism without focusing on all that unsightly girly shit. Continuing to use the term balls to indicate bravery has the double advantage of proving they aren't prudes and can use the rough language of the proletariat; and that they don't mind continuing the tradition of glorifying masculinity while putting femininity in its pussy place.

I hadn't noticed this before but on his blog Doug Henwood labelled Katha Pollitt, the one real feminist I thought he didn't hate - a bourgeois feminist.