Feminism Sucks Part 7: Anti-Freedom

No person ever says "I do not believe in freedom" nor "I do not believe in free speech". Every person when asked, "do you support freedom and free speech?", will answer immediately without any thought "yes". This is not just true for individuals this is true for countries. All countries proclaim "freedom" and "free speech", especially the United States. But if we actually examine the polices of the United States there are anything but pro freedom, in some cases they even oppose free speech. Thus, "the land of the free" is not free, it only proclaims itself to be free. Other countries proclaim the same. Consider the Soviet Union, it uses the word "freedom" as well, but we know the USSR was an oppressive evil country. Yet it still called itself "free" and many people within the country believed the lie. No country will ever say "we do not believe in freedom", because that would not go well with the population, they would be angry and rebellious, so nations need to lie to its citizens and claim that they are free. To rule the citizens more efficiently the nation convinces the citizens they are free. We see the same phenomenon with individuals as well. You hardly ever come across anyone in your life who openly condemns freedom and free speech. There are people like that, for example, some fundamentalists Muslims and few overly religious Jewish who would say that, but in general, even the biggest deniers of freedom and free speech still say to everyone they believe in freedom and free speech.

Fascists never call themselves fascists. George Carlin said, "When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack boots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts." I love this quotation, it very nicely summarizes everything I said above. The last thing fascists want you to think is that they are fascists. They always claim that they are doing it "for your safety" and "for the children" and "for social progress" and if we do not do it "it will be chaos in the streets". I would be happy to finally see one fascist to openly deny freedom and free speech rather than being an apologist for more and more control.

When an individual says "I believe in freedom and free speech" we need to be extremely skeptical to that claim. We hear people say this all the time. In fact, we just heard conservatives come out in support of the Arizona immigration laws, which is a violation of liberty, pure and simple. The very same conservatives who complain about what Barack is doing because he is destroying freedom, come out and support an immigration law which is a pure contradiction to freedom. Even conservatives that I like, for example Michael Savage, who has good points with regard to economics, has supported this vicious law. We need to remember that what a person says does not really represent his true views. Rather we need to look at what he supports at what he really does if we want to understand his honest positions. And with conservatives we see this problem, when it comes to opposing government intervention in the economical realm because they say that intervention violates freedom (and it does) but when it comes to civil matters, such as the way we treat homosexuals, immigrants, capital punishment and so forth, they got no problem with government intervention. Thus, conservatives can preach as much as they want about freedom, that is irrelevant, what we need to do is judge them by their policies, their policies clearly contradict the positions they proudly spout.

Now we can return back to the subject of feminism. Feminists, in general, not even the radical ones, contradict freedom, and I shall demonstrate this case below. However, feminists will never admit that they are against freedom or free speech as explained above. We can ignore all what feminism supposedly say with regard to free speech and freedom; we must concentrate on the policies that they really support.

The first one that we will look into is sexual harassment. There is no need for me to go on one of my long off topic journeys (as I did above) to explain what sexual harassment is, we all know what it is. Important for us, is that certain speech can be considered sexual harassment. I am not really sure what kinds of words are sexual harassment or not but let us assume, for sake of illustration, that saying "wow you are really sexy" qualifies as sexual harassment. An employer (presumably male) who says this can get in trouble or fired from his job for this kind of speech.

One can ask me a question, "why is so bad that this male employee got fired from his job, he deserved it?". Well, maybe he deserved it, maybe he was insulting, however, he should have free speech. In the future I will make a post explaining what free speech is and is not because there is much confusion among people but for now I will say only this regarding free speech. Free speech means one cannot get in trouble for what he says by the government, that is to say, "speech is free from government control". Let us return back to our example regarding the male employer who told the female worker "wow you are really sexy". Do I think what he said was inappropriate? Of course I do, it is not an appropriate thing to say because many women would be uncomfortable to such a statement. Do I think the female worker can get him fired or in trouble for what he said? No, because free speech means that speech cannot be controlled by the government. Free speech certainly does include insulting speech, in fact, that is the entire point of having free speech support because no one ever objects to happy nice speech, it is the insulting and hurtful speech that people want to censor. Feminists are no exception, they want to censor certain kind of speech which is insulting. They may have good motivations when they want to impose sexual harassment laws but what they actually do is violate free speech. Consider the following example. Co-workers sometimes get into disputes with one another, they may end up insulting someone by calling the other person "stupid". Can the insultee take legal action against the insulter in that particular case? No, sorry, we do not legislate our feelings. I understand that it may be insulting, but nothing can be done, he has the right to free speech and so what he says cannot be controlled by the government. There is something so much more important at stake than our feelings, and that is free speech, it is a concept some are ready to die for, some have died for, and we want to get ignore it because we are concerned about our feelings getting hurt?! Also sexual harassment laws do not make much sense. Suppose a male worker gets insulted at a female worker and calls her "dumb". This is not sexual harassment and nothing would be done to him. However, if he says "dumb blonde" then all of the sudden she can take legal action against him. (My examples might be legally wrong, I am not familiar with which words are fine and which words are not fine, but that is irrelevant, the point that I am trying to make is all that is relevant). Why does inserting the words "blonde" suddenly turn the insult into something that would violate law? It makes no sense.

I think that I should explain what should be done with sexual harassment instead even though it is not really related to my post because some people would have questions for me about what a woman should do if someone harasses her. Also, if I do not explain my positions regarding harassment then people would think of me as I think that it is okay for men to harass women, so I will best explain what should be done in the case of harassment. First of all let us make something clear. Saying, "sexy hot thing" is not harassment, it is certainly impolite, I would never say it to a woman who is not my girlfriend, but it is not harassment. Harassment is when a your neighbor yells, insults you, and bothers you repeatedly because he despises you. Harassment does not need to be physical, but it still is a violation of another person's rights, the one who is harassed feels threatened and under stress. I certainly think that harassment in the way I described should be illegal, in fact, there is something known as a restraining law that reflects just that. However, "sexual harassment" is a dishonest name, because sexual harassment can refer to a single word or comment, that is not harassment, that is simply being impolite. Many laws in the US have dishonest names, like the "Patriot Act", "sexual harassment" is another example of one of those dishonest name for laws, but that would take me way off topic, and I do not want to go there, I am already off topic as it is. Now to return to my approach to what needs to be done about sexual "harassment". Well, as explained, if it is just a comment then nothing can be done, sorry, but people cannot make other people act unrudely to them by law. Just like one cannot use legal action for being called "dumb" one cannot use legal action for being called "dumb blonde". However, if a male co-worker is actually obstructive in a certain way, refer to above to what "harassment" means, then she can definitely take action against him. If it is only an impolite comment then she can take that case to her boss. Her boss has the power to fire the male co-worker, the government cannot here. It is true that some bosses might be impolite themselves, in that case she is working among rude immoral people, her best option is to simply leave as sad as that sounds. But this is not something that would be common in the workplace. Most bosses would want to ensure a work conduct. The reason is very simply, from an economic point-of-view. A boss, like most capitalists, wants to maximize his profits. To maximize his profits he would want to make sure that his workplace is nicely run, otherwise there be hostility among the co-workers, that would run him a loss. Thus, a boss, even if not for concern of his fellow workers, would want to make sure that his workplace is peaceful. Mean nasty bosses who hire impolite rude workers would run at a loss if they do not do anything about work conduct, he would punish himself economically, as he deserves.

Sexual "harassment" laws are not really laws for harassment but rather for laws against hurt feelings, thus, these laws are a violation of free speech. A feminist would of course, never ever say that "I do not support free speech", as explained in my opening paragraphs, but this is all irrelevant if we simply consider their position regarding sexual "harassment". In general, what people say, "I support free speech but not hate speech". How many times you heard people say that? I cannot count how many. Saying hateful thing most certainly is part of free speech. Watch this awesome video that shows the ridiculous position of people who say "I am for free speech but not hate speech": here. So please do not fall into the censorship trap of people who want to impose hate speech laws. Despite my long ramblings on this topic of sexual "harassment" I do not put much blame on feminists for sexual "harassment" cases, they are not the only ones who give major support for this issue, most people on the left-wing support such policies. Thus, feminists are excused from this criticism. But nonetheless my main objection that feminists are anti-free speech still is intact.

Now let us have more fun and talk about porn. Porn is a particular kind of free speech. The first amendment really applies to religious and political opposition, but it does not have to, that was the intention of the amendment but it can always just as well apply to porn. Porn is not thrown in your face. Porn is available online, on TV, on magazines, and so forth, so if you want to, you can watch it, if you do not want to, you do not have to watch it. Simple as that. One group, the porn watchers, which we would call the "males", are minding their own business, another group, the non-porn watchers, which we would call the "females", are minding their own business. The males do not make the females watch porn nor do the females stop the males from watching porn. There is a peaceful harmony between the males and females, how can anyone be against this?

It turns out there is one more group of people besides the males and females, and that group ironically consists of females that want to become males, we will call that group the "feminists". The feminists are against porn. They either want to ban it or limit porn. As a result, the feminists are against freedom of speech, it does not matter that they say "I believe in free speech but not ___ ", they may say that all they want, the situation is that they oppose the freedom of speech because certain kind of speech bothers them. But they will never admit their opposition to free speech for same reason the US will never admit that it is not "the land of the free", because fascists do not call themselves fascists.

Feminists oppose porn because they say that it depicts women as sex objects and it dehumanizes women. Okay, but here is the nice thing about free speech, if you do not like it, do not watch it. If you see porn as dehumanizing to women then do not watch it. I do not think of women any less when I watch porn. Actually, I watch all kinds of porn, straight, gay, bisexual, because I happen to be a bisexual guy after all. And not once have I thought of girls or guys as sex objects. I look at porn because it is sexually pleasing to masturbate to, not because I want to dehumanize women after that. I never treated women in an inferior manner because of porn. The feminist objection to porn is something they pulled out of their own anus. The feminists fail to realize that people have different ways of interpreting art, beauty, pictures, and so forth. The way the feminists interpret porn, is their own way, the way other people interpret porn is their own way. So it is unfair for a feminist to interpret porn in the way she see it and think that the same interpretation goes through the mind of a guy who watches porn.

There is a certain kind of porn which has "rape fantasies" or whatever it is called. Basically, it is porn in which rape is acted out. It is not real rape! It is just an act that looks like rape. Some guys like that kind of stuff. I have no idea why they like that kind of stuff, I never seen it and never plan to see it but there are guys who are turned on by that kind of stuff. And again we hear from the feminists that this kind of porn needs to be banned. They try to frighten us into thinking that it will influence men to be rapists. Their argument is ridiculous, consider the following example. We have murder movies and books, we have movies that depict theft and books that tell stories about kidnapping. Are we influenced to steal, kidnap, or kill by watching these movies or books? No. The same with rape fantasy porn. The guys who watch this only are interested to watch it, in their minds they know it is wrong, the fact that they watch it does not turn them suddenly into rapists.

I want to make this very clear. Even if it can be empirical shown that crime goes up because of porn, which is not true at all, I will still not support banning porn. For two reasons. First of all prohibition does not work and it will lead to more crime as we have seen in history. Second, and more importantly, is that the situation is still a matter of free speech, the fact that someone has a chance to become a criminal after watching porn does not give us a permission to ban porn. There is a chance that people after drinking alcohol can do dangerous things, but we do not ban alcohol. We cannot be afraid of what indirectly can happen as a result of something and ban it. If we want to live in a society that is free and has free speech we must be willing to put up with inconveniences for the sake of protecting freedom.

To be fair, not all feminists want to ban porn. The feminists are split on this issue. Some feminists are for either banning porn or limiting it, while others will not do anything about porn. But it still is a pretty big number of feminists who want to get rid of porn and they are not even radical. There is an even bigger number of feminists who want to use the state to control the content of porn. This is almost as much of an assault on free speech as the ones who want to get rid of it entirely. Because those who want to control the content of porn will now have control over what is shown in porn, thus, they would be able to over time impose more and more restrictions on porn so that porn will be much less in number. Therefore, my complaint about feminist assault on free speech is addressed only to the feminists who want to ban or control porn. If a feminist is willing to leave porn alone despite that she does not like it, then good for her, I have no complaint to give to her. However, plenty of feminists today are part of the anti-porn movement, my professor in college was an anti-porn feminists herself. There are not rare, they are very numerous indeed. Be careful of these feminists, they stand as a threat to free speech.

The last case I want to consider is prostitution. Thus far everything that I was speaking of applies to free speech. Prostitution is not a free speech issue, but it is a freedom issue. The idea is very simple. Two people, a male and female, make an agreement. The male says that he wants some pussy, the female says she is willing to give him pussy, but the female demands a price for her pussy, so the male negotiates with the price and they come to an agreement. They have entered into a contract by voluntary mutual consent. They are not bothering anyone, they do it only among themselves. Freedom does imply that one has the choice to set up a contract with another person with the terms that both agree.

Anyone who is against prostitution, for whatever reasons, is violating the concept of freedom. The concept of freedom was explained in the previous paragraph. But more than just violating freedom such a person makes no sense whatsoever when he says "prostitution should be illegal". George Carlin, summarized this as, "having sex is legal, selling is legal, so why is selling sex illegal?". Basically, his point was that, why is it illegal to sell something which is perfectly fine to give away for free? It makes no sense. Anyone who is against prostitution runs into this contradiction, it would make sense with anyone who is opposed to prostitution to hold the view that casual sex should be illegal too.

But along come the feminists who are unhappy about freedom and common sense. They want to get rid of it. And again, repeating myself for like the fifth time, they never openly say "we are against freedom", they always hide behind a different argument. Their arguments include that the female prostitutes are taken advantage of, they argue that prostitution is a violent business, and that prostitution denigrates the perception of women.

So let us examine their silly arguments. We already got the freedom issue out of the way so let us look into what the feminists claim. First, that women are being taken advantage of. I want to ask how? How are prostitutes being taken advantage of? They are not forced into being prostitutes. They choose to become prostitutes. They get good pay for their service. They help themselves financially. Second, that prostitution is a violent business against women. If feminists actually understood a bit about economics they would not make such a ridiculously stupid argument. Why is it violent? That is the question that is not asked. Prostitution is connected to crime precisely because it is illegal! There is a demand for prostitution but because it is illegal a supply meets the demand in the black market. Thus, there are no laws to protect women, and so this is precisely why prostitution can be linked with violence and crime. If prostitution was no longer illegal this problem of crime would go away because enterpreneurs would set up businesses for prostitutes where they would be protected and taken care of. Third, that is denigrades the perception of women. This is another dumb point from the feminists. Perception is a subjective view. Some of us might look at prostitutes in a negative way and some of us might look at prostitutes in a positive way. I, for instance, do not look at prostitution as a negative job at all. Prostitution is an important service to have in society, women who perform this service should be praised for the job that they do, I have respect for prostitutes. My perception of women is not any lower by knowing that some of them are prostitutes, my perception of women gets lower when I see feminist professors of sociology, angry ugly women who are opposed to freedom and common sense. So perception all depends on the person who does the percieving, it is not an objective refutation at all in regard to prostitution.

What confuses me about feminists is that they claim they want to make as many choices open to women as they can. But in actuality they limit their choices, either when it comes to making porn movies or selling themselves for sex. Feminism is clearly not for pro opportunity of women, something I been saying in my early posts. Thus, what we have from these feminists regarding prostitution: an assault on freedom, no reasonable objections, and taking away opportunity choices from women to make money. What more needs to be said?

What is interesting is that the early feminist movements have often favored prostitution. But there is a difference between modern feminism and what feminism used to be. To be fair again there still remain feminists today who are in favor of prostitution. However, the number who are against prostitution is high within the feminist movement. Thus, my criticism of feminism here does not concern the pro-prostitution feminists, only the anti-prostitution ones.

I realize that I been all over the place with this post. But I made the point that I wanted to make. That feminists, at least a big percentage of them, are against freedom. They oppose freedom of speech with various speech codes. They oppose freedom of speech by trying to get rid of porn. And they oppose freedom and opportunity for women, paradoxically, by trying to ban prostitution. Thus, as much as feminists like to preach that they are the champions of women, in all actuality they harm them. Even I, who is not affiliated with feminism whatsoever, am a bigger champion for women than feminists are.

I want to post two videos from a TV show called Penn and Teller's "Bullshit". Both of these videos have sexual content in them. But it is a good watch with good points:
War on Porn
Prostitution