I’ve spent the night perusing various radical feminist websites, ranging from the ulta-misandrist ravings of I Blame The Patriarchy to the friend-of-twisty look-a-like to the aptly named Rage Against the Manchine.

My conclusion runs that radical feminism is actually a far more binary obedient movement and ideology than it likes to imagine. This became clear fairly quickly, indeed grew immediately apparent simply from the wariness shown towards male contributions. This was both upon an structural level (comments policies making men feel clearly unwelcome) and upon an ideological one (the endless reference to “male privilege” make it fairly clear that the accounts of men are going to be treated with a scepticism women will not be subjected to).

To their credit the radfems are at least believers in the binary. Indeed Andrew Dworkin described biological essentialism as “the most pernicious ideology on the face of the earth” and it is pleasing to know that the absolute anti-assimilationist elements she recalls encountering in that accounts have mostly faded into historical characters. This does nothing save reinforce the absurdity of the present approach towards gender reconstruction by Dworkin’s ideological inheritors, who seem to have taken her urging to “Fuck up” the Patriarchy by gathering in small, thoroughly sealed groups of like minded ranters, who remind themselves constantly, incessantly, of the divisions within society that they can outline with immense eloquence but seem to wish to identify and emphasise more than they do to move beyond, transcend or obliterate.

In short, embittered cliques are established, then fiercely sustained.

The radical credentials for this are highly limited: the notion that the best fashion in which to attack the binary is assembling into websites which are written by women and commented upon by women is surely both utterly disingenuous and entirely self-defeating. To attempt to destroy a set of prejudices (indeed, a set of concepts, or even identities) that by their very nature apply to all of humanity using a single half of it is a bizarre approach, doomed to failure.

Perhaps this leads us to my core difficulty with feminism in the contemporary Anglosphere: it has become virtually impossible to further women’s rights, as is the aim of feminism, without attacking the gender binary. But feminists are largely hesitant to do exactly that, distracted by focusing upon what the successes of their movement have left unaltered instead of noting the vast amount that has changed.

This realisation of progress made since death of the 1950s is at the heart of post-feminism, and brings us onto my next point:

C.G. Brown, in his magnum opus ‘The Death of Christian Britain’, posits that the cause of the demise of the titular religion within this nation was the collapse of the concept of “Pious Women” during the 1960s. Prior to then women were seen as the sole source of active religiosity: men could be saved, but only once sufficiently strong-armed by the earnest females filling their lives (be it wives or mothers). Christianity could not recover as there was only a conception of female piety, as “Boys would be boys” and men would inevitably run awry unless carefully instructed and trained. Men were depraved creatures incapable of controlling themselves and it was only through the positive influence of femininity that salvation could be brought to the coarser sex.

Now this concept had a shadow side: men as corruptive, women as pure beings that men could degrade. A large amount of the concepts of seduction, deflowerment and general robbery of innocence seem to be tied tightly to this.

It is here that the rhetoric of radical feminism strikes the most noticable harmony: women are beings which the creation of pornography tears down from some imagined state of purity and defiles, argue the radical feminists. There are deeds that can not be done without besmirching the actor, and pornography insists upon their performance, by women. However, is it possible to miss the assonances with the other side of this ideal? Think of the attitude feminism takes towards the supply side of pornographic matter. Through feminism the otherwise helpless, base men may be rescued from their own masculinity. Rescued, that is, by pious women.

Men alone are incapable of recognising their foulness. They must be shown. Men involved in the production are demonised, in the acting conspicuously disregarded.

The women engaged in pornography are flecks of foam upon the ocean, pure and borne aloft, swept along by grand cultural forces, then thoroughly befouled.

Had they not kept their movement so purged of penises (men are at best “allies” that could well be fradulent and merely adopting the mantle of “feminist” falsely, to gain advantage and unearned trust, to avoid confrontation) or had they not engaged with the women who choose to participate in the sex industry in a fashion so starkly devoid of any acceptable of female autonomy (and I speak here as a determinist) in a way that makes it clear that they simply wish to avoid thinking of women opting to participate in the process at all except as a facet of the Patriarchy’s endlessly insiduous influence, had they not held an equally damaged and lacking view of the men involved that sees them as otherwise helpless masturbators that only feminism can save, or their utter indifference to the implications for the men involved within the process then perhaps the similarity not be so striking.

As it is, one has to wonder whether the fixation radical feminism holds for pornography (note that RATManchine has made no less than nine essays on the matter, each of considerable length, and shows no sign of ceasing to churn) is truly based upon their wrath at women performing sex acts while observed by cameras on an entirely upon their disdain for the Patriarchy or whether it is more closely tied to long standing expectations of appropriate womanly conduct.

Not that this argument is anything new, this one has been raging for a very long time. But, as far as I am concerned, the irony lacing the prospect of women imagining themselves to be the fiercest critics of Patriarchal structures while in fact behaving as inadvertant, unaware throw-backs to the time when the Patriarchy still existed remains quite delightful.

The following proposal is vile:

THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.

That’s the equivalent of allowing a policeman into every living room to listen to every conversation, without a warrant. The vagueness of the legislation simply invites abuse. Police may indulge in this espionage if they “believe” it’s “proportionate”; that is, whenever they feel like it. There is no check on this power, and so no check on its abuse.

And the idea comes from the EU Council of Ministers - which means, if previous experience is anything to go by, it’ll be quite hard to shift. Are they really trying to put the entire internet off the entire institution?

There’ll always be yet another far-left group to laugh at.

Check out the fraternal criteria for MonkeySmashHeaven, a website pointed my way by a “Libertarian Socialist” yesterday during a Gaza Protest (which I will write up later today). I assure MSH that any snideness in what follows is simply a consequence of embitterment at us clearly not being fit for fraternity.

This bunch seem to be intent upon agitating the international proletariat, by which they mean “Third Worlders”. Their take on the American working class poor can be found here. Their “Gender Line” is here and here. In the last document they do at least admit that “We need to be more skilled at projecting our voice to the international proletariat.”

How exactly they managed to avoid the realisation that projecting to the third world poor via a weblog might not have been the best of ideas, though, is beyond SES.

Annoyingly his comments on homosexuality have allowed Benedict’s main thrust here to be disregarded. I know that the implications for gays are significant and doubtless some of the thinner skinned might find his words offensive, but it’s hardly the main jist. This follows a long-standing and much noted upon pattern: the Pope says something foolish which has implications for near enough everyone and only the elements related to a minority are picked up upon.

This is why you see gay Catholics as somehow seen as having some additional burden which heterosexuals are free from. In reality the straight Romans are permitted only the outlet of sex within a marriage where they intend to procreate, with everyone who spills a drop of sperm outside of those precise conditions a sinner. This should make it fairly obvious to all but the clinically naive that Catholicism is incompatible with virtually all strains of sexuality. Homosexuals who live other than chaste existences are only as defiant as their legion brethren who have disregarded the absurdly restrictive laws applied to them to.

So now Benedict assails gender theory (next up: mind) and much the same occurs: an edict which applies to the totality of humanity is presented as something which is worth discussing only with regards to humanity. This is clearly a foolish approach. When Benedict speaks of a matter such as this he speaks of everyone, there can be nobody excluded.

What makes it so frustrating that this was that his reason is so shoddy. Indeed he states “The Church speaks of human nature as ‘man’ or ‘woman’ and asks that this order is respected” without so much as a jot of evidence. Apparently the importance of this dichotomy and its inherency can be deduced by “Listening to the language creation”, although Ratzinger fails to elaborate, instead declaring that disregarding this mysterious linguistical muttering would mean “self-destruction”.

But on one thing, at least, we can agree:

The human being wants to make himself on his own and to decide always and exclusively by himself about what concerns him.

Precisely. And so, to content them, we should not assume their nature through minor physiological details.

Militant Islamist group al-Shabbab (”youth”) have outlined their international intentions to be executed once they’ve completed the conquest of Somalia. They begin reasonably enough:

We are fighting to lift the burden of oppression and colonialism from our country … We are defending ourselves against enemies who attacked us…Once we are successful with that we will fight on and finish oppression elsewhere on earth,

So far, so standard.

We wish to tell Bush and our opponents our real intentions.

Well, mention him all you can while he’s still there, I suppose.

Then they get ambitious:

We will establish Islamic rule from Alaska and Chile to South Africa, Japan, Russia, the Solomon Islands and all the way to Iceland, be warned, we are coming.

My immediate thought is that if they pooled their resources together and cut down on the kalashnikovs for a week or two they could probably afford Iceland. A fitting outcome for a nation seemingly entirely dependent upon the kuffah economics of usury.

Also, one has to wonder what the darling Solomon Islands have done to come to al-Shabbab’s attention. Still, it was nice to give such an unlikely target plenty of forewarning. Its perhaps the only one on the list (save perhaps the sparse sub-Arctic tundra of Alaska) that is near to managable for the Islamic guerrilas.

RedRooster picks up on something at LabourHome. To be fair to the NeoCons (a nicety I am sure that they would return to me) Putin did rig the last election so heavily that as many as a third of votes might have been lies. But the man who calculated that discovered that even with that taken into account Dmitry Medvedev and the UR still would have won even had he not bohered.

News from Italy:

The Minister of Justice in Italy has given prosecutors permission to use a Fascist-era law to punish a comedian for mocking the Pope.

Sabina Guzzanti is accused of “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person” of Pope Benedict XVI.

The satirist and comedian, during a routine at a rally in Rome in July, condemned the Vatican‘s interference in issues such as gay rights.

“Within twenty years the Pope will be where he ought to be, in Hell, tormented by great big poofter devils — and very active ones, not passive ones,” she said.

So, that’s censorship, racism and troops on the streets of Rome. Mussolini would be proud. The Catholic Church, as in the 1930s, is perhaps the only force strong enough to challenge the government in Italy. Berlusconi knows this well enough to enforce laws designed to appease the Vatican without actively diverting from his own purposes; social authoritarianism already forms part of his platform. When the government and its most active public critic share a desire, the very concept of opposition fails.

And so Italy suffers.

A rather startling piece by Matthew Yglesias. In it he explains how support for Palin is completely ideologically sound for Robert Kagan as neo-conservatives hold that knowledge of the issues under discussion may be detrimental to leaders making foreign policy decisions.

Unfortunately this reminds me eerily of the “Zombie Politics” currently practiced by the Conservative Party. In Britain what could perhaps be best described as a hybrid tactic (a mixture of Neo-Conservatism and its forefather One Nation Conservatism, with the jingoism of both downplayed, re-tuned and un-emphasised) has been used to great effect: no precision is required, instead the right noises are made simply (so vague to as to be possible to perform from behind a muzzle, through a gag) and the word “values” is tossed around like lettuce with salad.

Of course this is brilliant politics but leads to terrible policy. The effects of a Conservative government are highly unpredictable but presumably disastrous, while any Palin administration (a disconcertingly likely prospect given the age of her ticket-header) would be even more so.

But perhaps two years will be enough for Cameron to polish his policies and two weeks enough for Palin to confound Kagan by cramming. Given that the former has still not worked out the logical break in proposing securing more rape convictions through increasing the sentence for those who are convicted for rape and the latter is whispered to be receiving lessons from one Joe Lieberman we can safely conclude that the odds of ignorance reigning are worth betting on.

The BNP is using its internal youth movement to develop an armed wing.

By the time they’ve finished we’ll be begging for David Cameron to be in power.

Shocking news as anarchist activists near the Republican National Convention are mass arrested in a raid that was seemingly over nothing. Glenn Greenwald has coverage here and the group victim to the raids is giving updates here.

The story is startlingly similar to this event, where the Italian did their best to stamp out peaceful protest. Its also worth, once again, urging you to watch this and see how the police here in Britain treat those that protest.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that police force’s across the parts of the world that really have no excuse have taken to attempting to smash people organising peaceful towards a political end instead of doing their goddamn job of making sure that nobody gets hurt. What redress we can have for this tendency is uncertain, but for the time being we should at least watch. Perhaps even protest…