The blogger Fidelbogen likes to think of himself as some sort of grand theoretician of “counter-feminist” thinking. Which means that his posts are usually far too long and ponderous to read, much less to write about. His ideas – at least judging from the few posts of his I’ve had the patience to wade through — are really not much more advanced than your typical MRA; he’s just much more pretentious (and long-winded) about it.
He is, in other words, the sort of guy who could take 3000 words to explain the rather basic MRA notion that women control men with their vaginas.
I mean that quite literally. Our excitable MGTOWer friend MarkyMark recently drew his readers’ attention to a 5-year-old post by Fidelbogen with the enigmatic title “Ideas Which Go Against the Grain,” which offers, yep, a 3000-word précis of the evils of pussy power. Perhaps against my better judgement, I’ve decided to give it a detailed look. Strap in!
I’ll give him credit for one thing: despite his vague title, Fidelbogen states his thesis quite plainly at the start:
Female sexuality is raised high upon an altar like a golden calf. Male sexuality is looked upon as a ratty old kitchen chair with a cracked vinyl seat, under suspicion of mildew.
Well, ok, not the very start. Right about here:
This disparity, this imbalance, this . . . . inequality, accounts for most of women’s power over men. By extension, it accounts for a great deal of feminism’s leverage in the realm of gender politics.
In other words: vagina=power.
I leave it to the poets to wax lyrical about the mysteries of the eternal feminine, and to the psychoanalytic priesthood to plumb its shadowy depths. As a political tactician and theorist, it is my cold-blooded task merely to figure out how the world works, blabbity blabbity bloo.
Ok, those last three words are my paraphrase of his argument. Focus, Fidelbogen, focus!
The higher valuation assigned to female sexuality generates a seller’s market for women in the so-called game of love. That is how the world works; women do not queue or cluster in quest of men’s favors. No, it is nearly always men who act this way around women.
And this leads to, yep, the dreaded Pussy Cartel:
Deprived of euphemism, the case is this: women have cornered the market on sexual intercourse, and are able to dictate the price and the accompanying politics much as OPEC might set the terms for oil. …
Understand, that the higher valuation of female sexuality translates into both female power and loss of male power. Since female supremacy is feminism’s driving ambition, it makes sense that the women’s movement has undertaken to siphon power away from men using every siphon hose imaginable.
Normally, I would assume this last bit was some kind of sniggering reference to blowjobs. As Fidelbogen seems to be utterly without a sense of humor, I have to assume it’s merely a belabored metaphor.
So how do the evil feminists siphon away male power? By driving along some sort of road:
Certain lanes, deeply rutted by age-old usage, serve handily along feminism’s route to power.
So after siphoning their way down this road, we (and the evil feminists) arrive at what I’ll call (to keep Fidelbogen’s metaphor going) “Courtship Lane.”
The word “courtship” is revealing. Men are the “courtiers”, which is to say lackeys or sycophants who wait upon the pleasure of their “lord”. In courtship, more often than otherwise, women hold all the cards. Feminists, being women, are well aware of this. But they are also aware that the realm of courtship, while being women’s greatest zone of power over men, is likewise a critical link in the chain of power which binds men specifically to the designs of feminist domination.
After a bit of empty rhetoric, Prof. F continues:
Most women are aware of their superior sexual bargaining power. And many women have been politicized to some degree (more or less) by feminist ideology. This latter group will most certainly carry their politicized outlook into the sexual bargaining arena, and in their minds both feminist ideology and the knowledge of their age-old power will meld together into a troublesome sort of hybrid entity.
Fidelbogen, alas, does not take the opportunity to name this dastardly “hybrid entity.” Let’s just call it THE FEMIGINA!! (In all caps, with two exclamation points.)
At this point, Prof. F loses what little steam his argument has, and begins prattling about this and that and the evils of feminism. I will attempt to convey the gist of it with the following excerpts. In order to truly capture the flavor of it, I will replace the traditional ellipses – used to indicate excised material – with the phrase “blabbity blabbity.”
Blabbity blabbity to gauge the extent of feminist indoctrination among the female population would be like measuring the spread of a gaseous substance with a rubber band. Blabbity blabbity [f]eminism has blabbity blabbity secured a tremendous power over men by means of a momentous bio-political conjunction. Blabbity moral corona of the ideology blabbity female noosphere blabbity blabbity feminist-tinted spectacles blabbity blabbity the path lies clear before us.
And then he comes to his point:
Men should cease to value female sexuality beyond a certain fixed rate. Once the cost exceeds this rate, the value should fall to zero—leaving the purveyors in their deserted market stall.
Yep. That’s right. He’s talking about what we here on Man Boobz know as the Cock Blockade.
Blabbity blabbity it would go against nature blabbity blabbity laborious gritting of teeth. Blabbity blabbity supremely human accomplishment. Blabbity blabbity we are more than simply animals.
And he comes to another point:
Devaluation of female sexuality would alter the balance of power between the sexes. There would come a point where a man, any man, could make the personal choice to cast loose from women altogether—in all but the peripheral aspects of his life.
Blabbity blabbity men would need to cut each other some slack blabbity blabbity stop competing with other men in the customary arena where female flesh is the prize. Blabbity blabbity. The question “are ya getting any?”, along with the adolescent mindset it signals, would be out of place in this altered scheme of things.
And this would put the ladies in their place – standing lonely in their vagina stalls, gamely trying to interest men in their now worthless vaginas.
Women would be the courtiers, the ones who queue and cluster. Deny women their fundamental age-old power, and feminism would find itself reeling in shock as though from a serious blood loss. The best way for men to free themselves from the boa-constrictor grip of feminism is to free themselves from the power of women.
So now I have the image of lady boa-constrictors with head wounds standing in a line, displaying their boa-constrictor vaginas with a sort of desperate hopefulness to the wholly uninterested men who pass by.
After a good deal of blathering so tedious it’s not even worth quoting in part, Fidelbogen begins to ponder the power of “no.”
[M]en must play hard to get. They must learn to exercise the very same option which has historically been the province of women, namely, the power to say NO.
Saying no lies coiled at the very heart of playing hard to get. Saying no signifies a withdrawal which generates a vacuum along its line of retreat, and this vacuum by its draft draws the other into a pursuit by default.
I feel a bit of a breeze myself, but I think that’s just because Prof. F is talking a lot of wind.
Let’s move from breezes to earthquakes:
The changes I am discussing here would amount to a tectonic realignment of unquestionably world-historic magnitude. An inversion of the Victorian pedestal.
The old way of doing things, Prof. F tells us,
I have decided to call it the pussy paradigm—a somewhat vulgar expression to be sure, but it has the common touch!
Ironically, the common touch is something hetero dudes will have to become masters at if they swear off the ladies. Prof. F continues:
So, this pussy paradigm belongs in the category of things which predate feminism’s arrival in the world. And when the feminists got here, they saw in a flash where their advantage lay, and they closed in, and they threw a harness around it.
They threw a harness around a paradigm?
The heart of feminism is female supremacism, and the heart of female supremacism is the pussy paradigm. Remember this if you remember nothing else.
So what does Prof. F call his pussy-optional way of doing things? The “optionality paradigm.” That is, dudes can have sex with women or not, whatever they want, and shouldn’t pressure one another to score with the ladies. (I’m not quite sure how, in Professor F’s economic model, the price of pussy can be reduced to zero if some dudes are still interested in it, but I confess that I only sort of skimmed that bit of his post. Life is short, and Fidelbogen’s posts are long.)
More blabbity blabbity:
The future, in theory, should see a migration of the optionality paradigm toward the center of the map within hetero-normative male culture, along with a corresponding displacement of the pussy paradigm toward the perimeter. This would exactly reverse the present disposition of forces. The optionality paradigm would, at that point, become the ruling paradigm.
After reading this turgid turd of a paragraph , I decided to cut my losses and skip directly to Professor F’s grand conclusion. Which turns out to be neither grand nor much of a conclusion:
My endeavor in writing has been to flesh it out somewhat. To write about it is to give it a form, to make the inchoate choate, to fashion an anchor of words that can hold things usefully in place so we can discuss them, if need be, with a view toward implementation and concrete action. The time to draft contingency plans is now. Put these ideas in your thinking cap and ponder their utility.
Even better, put them in a small bag, weigh it down with rocks, and toss it into the nearest large body of water.
Jesus, this turned into a long post. Still, it’s only about half the length of Prof. F’s original.
As Space Pope, I feel obliged to point out the terrible policies of the Galactic Empire.
http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/ATL%20Docs/Sep-Oct11/Ward.pdf
I mean really, Palpatine, did you spend too much time in the Senate listening to defense contractor spiels or what?
Also, Han shot first.
Haec Dixit Spatio Papa
Ginmar what’s your opinion on Ahsoka Tano? 😀
I LOVE LOVE LOVE that they finally added a female main char that has powers and isn’t meant to be saved to the canon 😀 And I LOVE that she kicks butt and goes through a heroes journey like so many of the male heroes do :3 My only fear is that they seem to be pushing her to the dark side so she can be killed by Anakin in season 4 and that would just RLY RLY anger me, cuz how many women have to be fridged to push Anakin to the dark side -_- (alrdy he has his mom and Padme)
I also dislike her new costume change. I actually was fine w/ the skirt and tube top cuz she got the leggings underneath… if nething this new change makes her look more sexualized, not less. But she’s still an awesome char and I love her 😀
I wonder what you think of her? Also Clone Wars in general has been really good to the female chars, including Padme, whose had a number of great episodes, and introduced new female chars who aren’t just fodder. :] Plus Ventress gives them a main female villain as well 😀
And this may have hit a nerve, but I am pretty sick and tired of getting “Chicks can’t like SF&F because it’s dude stuff” from one side, and “Feminists can’t like SF&F because it doesn’t meet my stringent standards for ideological purity” from the other. Almost no cultural product is absolutely irredeemable; you can still enjoy something while critiquing the troublesome parts.
Also Clone Wars in general has been really good to the female chars, including Padme, whose had a number of great episodes, and introduced new female chars who aren’t just fodder. :] Plus Ventress gives them a main female villain as well
Cool. Back when Clone Wars came out I heard it was poorly written and never watched it. Do you think it’s picked up / gotten better / never was as bad as I was told?
Excuse me.
I did not realize that the Temple of Star Wars was not to be entered by an infidel such as myself. Please, forgive me. I will accept my punishment as the “Ultra Feminist” who does “not like anything at all”, as well as being ‘berserking’, and ‘one of the most notoriously absurd feminists of all.’ Please educate me.
You sound just like NWO. It’s the very same note of “Well then, I guess you’re all perfect and I’m a horrible monster!”
…And the very same selective blindness to an issue that’s been pointed out to you so many times I know you didn’t just miss it.
…good lord. You don’t even realize who you sound like, do you?
I can’t watch this anymore.
Ginmar, now you’re sounding exactly like NWO.
Ha!
You guys beat me to it, By mere seconds.
Clone Wars was never badly written (IMO), and I even liked the movie (I have a post about how Ahsoka isn’t a mary sue, b/c the SW fanboys were all like “GASP STRONG FEMALE CHAR IN STAR WARS MOVIE OH NOEZ!”) 😀 I LOVE Clone Wars and imo, it’s one of the best things on TV 😀 (ppl just think it’s kiddy, but it’s pretty maturely written… and Anakin’s actually LIKEABLE in it! ) I suggest watching it for yourself to see if you like it 🙂
I did not realize that the Temple of Star Wars was not to be entered by an infidel such as myself. Please, forgive me. I will accept my punishment as the “Ultra Feminist” who does “not like anything at all”, as well as being ‘berserking’, and ‘one of the most notoriously absurd feminists of all.’ Please educate me.
So you’re not even going to try to engage a discussion? Fuck it then.
Ginmar:
I think Ozy said it best a little bit upthread: “It is possible to recognize that Star Wars is problematically feminist and simultaneously like Star Wars and appreciate these aspects of it which are feminist. Movies are very rarely binary Social Justice Win/Social Justice Fail, you know?”
Seraph’s reasons for liking Leia aren’t the best thought out I’ve seen, but your reaction isn’t even On. Fucking. Topic. How is the fact that you were in the Army even relevant? Why are you saying we’re accusing you of being fat and having cats when we haven’t even done so? (Also, it’s not like it’s a bad thing. A lot of us ARE fat and already own SEVERAL cats. :P)
Ginmar! D: But *I* want to talk to you 🙁 Talk to me! 😀 I have a Tent of Star Wars, and I have marshmallows 😀
Stop berating the other feminists for not adhering to whatever level you want them to and go after the actual MRA’s like DKM who just said a woman who once dressed up like a zombie deserves what she gets.
Pretty simple thing to do Ginmar.
I think Ozy said it best a little bit upthread: “It is possible to recognize that Star Wars is problematically feminist and simultaneously like Star Wars and appreciate these aspects of it which are feminist. Movies are very rarely binary Social Justice Win/Social Justice Fail, you know?”
Incidentally, what I saw as an implicit binarization along those lines is what made me so angry at Tiger Beatdown’s piece on “Song of Ice and Fire.” (Well, less “angry” and more “reactive,” as I can’t handle confrontation sometimes and after a while the article started to terrify me, but you know).
“a Tent of Star Wars”
That sounds awesome. Is it made of vintage Star Wars sheets? 😀
It is also a pillow fort.
Yes! 😀 And Jawa Cloaks and Jedi Robes and Darth Vader’s cape! 😀
INDEED. I’ll check it out, thanks for the recommendation. And I can handle “kiddy” stuff; I’m in the middle of watching the new My Little Pony series with my boyfriend. (He agreed to once I told him that the reason he was embarrassed to see it was the patriarchy, and now he likes it)
Holly, are you going to respond to anything I actually said, or what YOU think I said?
Ami, I’m not familiar with that character. I’m big into zombies and apocalypses and Martians and shit like that but do you know how hard that is to find? It tends to skew rightwing, in fiction, and how much of that do you want to wade through? I actually like skirts plus leggings myself because if you’re wearing that stuff, you tend to feel kind of weird without the skirt. At least I do. Leggings are good for moving your legs around freely and that’s where women tend to have their significant muscle mass. Maybe I’m used to cargo pockets on the pants, but those are heavy. With a skirt you could have pockets that move around more? I guess? Pockets are a big deal. Also, in fiction and other stuff I tend ‘to look at….Um, ammo weighs a lot, how come they’re burning through it like that? Do they think it grows on trees?
VOIP, if you’re alluding to me saying anything like that, please note that that’s not anything I said. It’s what I was accused of. I tend to like monsters, Martians, apocalypses, zombies, werewolves and vampires—and not in the modern urban ‘my-boyfriend-is-a-dog-once-a-month’ sense. I like the Universal horror movies of the Forties, because those things are supposed to be scary, and what they lacked in CGI, they made up for in sheer atmosphere. If you have not seen the original The Creature From the Black Lagoon….run, don’t walk. I don’t want to raise your expectations, but that movie is amazing. Also, I love, love, love handheld, pseudo-documentary, first person-type horror movies, like Monsters and Cloverfield. Didn’t much care for Blair Witch, though. Had atmosphere, but….I dunno. Missed something. I think the others let you sort of witness it for yourself and in Blair Witch you had to filter it through the characters, who got in between the camera and you getting an actual glimpse of the scary witch. The others, they really had the characters almost on the side. I love that style of camera work.
If I have mice instead of cats, do I still get to be a feminist? They are very cute mice. Also, I am willing to install a Star Wars figurine in their house if that is nessesary. I am also fat, if that helps my cause.
“I did not realize that the Temple of Star Wars was not to be entered by an infidel such as myself. Please, forgive me. I will accept my punishment as the “Ultra Feminist” who does “not like anything at all”, as well as being ‘berserking’, and ‘one of the most notoriously absurd feminists of all.’ Please educate me.” – Ginmar
“I do so love coming here to find out how to modify my behavior so as to become more accepted by the perfect ones. Of course I could never actually achieve the infallibility of all women, yet know I might be accepted into the collective moral and spiritual greatness of womanhood for trying to elevate my behavior into satisfying any womans standards, warms my heart.” — our NWOslave
Look at your life, Ginmar. Look at your choices.
Molly, did you miss the post where he helpfully called me nuts? Oh, excuse me. He didn’t say nuts, he said I was berserking. I apologize for lying about that. Obviously I’m berserk, so that explains it. It’s dishonest to imply that there are other words that mean the same thing.
That barely makes sense. I mean I understand all of the words and the individual sentences but the whole makes no sense.
How about, “you never take me anywhere romantic or on vacation.” This would be a money exchange for sex.
How about, “you don’t listen when I talk.” Or, “why don’t you talk to me.” This would be behavior modification for sex.
So, then, the only way for a woman in a relationship with a man to avoid doing “X for sex” is to never complain about anything, ever?