Exhausted White Womenhood....

There has been a lot of drama recently over the women of Jezebel whose drunken claims to the right to be raped, accept it as your fate, not report it, and assume if it happens again, who cares, were publicly declared a while ago on a late night TV talk show.  This in a battle with a woman writing at DoubleX, which Aunt Jemima's Revenge brought to my attention. So you don't have to read literally dozens of pages of angry bickering between the drunken hordes and (proud) whores or sluts as they call themselves over at Jezebel and the angry old guard at DoubleX, here's the the Jezebel's general argument: 

As the new feminist guard, they should have the right to full sexual liberation with no judgement. They can go home with whomever they want, do whatever they want, drink until they pass out, and engage in the same behavior men have allegedly been enjoying since time immemorial. They don't believe in age of consent laws, and at one point threw doubt on the claims to rape made by a 13year old girl against Roman Polanski since his giving her drugs was not the first time she had had them, and she was an aspiring actress after all. And since her mother arranged things, she had to know at least a little what was going on and went along with it... 

Very, very disturbing; and the tip of the problems is when you consider that these women are only speaking for themselves. They really imagine that what they are advocating for is what everyone should do. This is problematic not the least because of all that they do not even know they are ignoring - namely women of color!

Just when I think Feminism as a movement is realizing that you can't even think about any of the Issues (empowerment, sexual liberation, equality, etc) without considering against what these ideas are pushing, you get a mess like this! The establishment of liberty, in whatever form, in discussions of "Feminism" which are really about liberty for White women, cannot exist without the downtrodden quality of and regard for Black women! Mainly because in this country we know what we want to have based on what black women have been denied for so long!

This lends a very perverse element to these women's complaints at Jezebel. For, if what they want is the right to wild, wanton sexual lives, then we know at least in part, this is a throwback to the perception that Black women were/are endowed with some inherent super-sexual nature. We've all heard the arguments: That's why so many slave owners slept with their black female slaves. Not because it was rape, but because the women wanted it.  They were luring those men away from their wives. 

bell hooks talks about this phenomenon in Ain't I A Woman, and if you read her work, the way these women are shaping their demands is really sad. To want to be raped - as one of the Jezebel ladies did, so she paid someone to seem to take her by force - is to want a subjugation and oppression this country was once exposed to on a daily basis. White women's aspirations to be pulled from their pedestal and used as a sexual object is a desire that has roots going a very long way back.

What is even more perverse is that these women are unaware of this! They have needs and desires that they do not understand. They invoke or desire violence that, while not at all connected any true or universal sense of female empowerment, it is tied to the subtextual notions of American liberty: 

Basically, with so much actual freedom and control over the lives of millions in America, what White consciousness now requires is to be abused as those brown bodies were abused. The only missing "liberty" or "freedom" they now need is the right to suffer pain, degredation, daily  oppression, neglect and cruelty. That is why these women really 'want' to be raped. 

Much more to be said about this. But for now, this is depressing enough.