PIV is always rape, ok? (Idiocy. Pure and simple.)

This is a developed recap from what I’ve been saying in various comments here and there in the last two years or so. as a radfem I’ve always said PIV is rape and I remember being disappointed to discover that so few radical feminists stated it clearly. How can you possibly see it otherwise? Intercourse is the very means through which men oppress us, from which we are not allowed to escape, yet some instances of or PIV and intercourse may be chosen and free? That makes no sense at all.

First, well intercourse is NEVER sex for women. Only men experience rape as sexual and define it as such. Sex for men is the unilateral penetration of their penis into a woman (or anything else replacing and symbolising the female orifice) whether she thinks she wants it or not – which is the definition of rape: that he will to do it anyway and that he uses her and treats her as a receptacle, in all circumstances – it makes no difference to him experiencing it as sexual. That is, at the very least, men use women as useful objects and instruments for penetration, and women are dehumanised by this act. It is an act of violence.

As FCM pointed out some time ago, intercourse is inherently harmful to women and intentionally so, because it causes pregnancy in women. The purpose of men enforcing intercourse regularly (as in, more than once a month) onto women is because it’s the surest way to cause pregnancy and force childbearing against our will, and thereby gain control over our reproductive powers. There is no way to eliminate the pregnancy risk entirely off PIV and the mitigating and harm-reduction practices such as contraception and abortion are inherently harmful, too. Reproductive harms of PIV range from pregnancy to abortion, having to take invasive, or toxic contraception, giving birth, forced child bearing and rearing and all the complications that go with them which may lead up to severe physical and emotional damage, disability, destitution, illness, or death (See factcheckme.wordpress.com for her work on the reproductive harms of PIV, click on the “intercourse series” page or “PIV” in the search bar). If we compare this to even the crappiest online definition of violence: “behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something”. Bingo. It fits: Pregnancy = may hurt, damage or kill. Intercourse = a man using his physical force to penetrate a woman. Intention / purpose of the act of intercourse = to cause pregnancy. PIV is therefore intentional harm / violence. Intentional sexual harm of a man against a woman through penile penetration = RAPE.

If we look at the act in more detail (skip this parag if you can’t take it), PIV is a man mounting on a woman to thrust a large member of himself into her most intimate parts, often forcing her to be entirely naked, banging himself against her with the whole weight of his body and hips, shaking her like he would stuff a corpse, then using her insides as a receptacle for his penile dejection. How is this a normal civilised, respectful way to treat anyone? Sorry for the explicit picture, but this is what it is and it’s absolutely revolting and violating.

The term “fuck you” is not an insult for nothing, men know why – it’s the worst thing you can do to a human being. It is in itself an extremely physically invasive act, very often painful, generally at the beginning before the pain may be cut off by the genital arousal; causes all sorts of tears, bruises, swelling, discomfort, STDs, vaginal infections, urinary infections, genital warts, HIV and death. Not to forget the additional sado-gynecological interventions/ costs of PIV-maintenance, and all the secondary physical mutiliation and financial costs that go with our duty to make ourselves look decorative for male sexual consumption – such as hair removal, make-up, starvation or forced feeding, torturous limb deforming or cutting up, etc.

The fact intercourse causes so many infections and tears and warts attests to the unnaturalness of intercourse, that it’s not meant to be. The vagina’s primary function isn’t to be penetrated by a penis but to eject a baby for birth. They are two muscle tissues / sphincters pressed against each other to help the baby be pushed out. Penetration of the penis into the vagina is completely unnecessary for conception.

There’s a reason men need to groom us into it, and why this grooming takes so long- because it’s so grossly violating and traumatising that we would otherwise never submit to intercourse. The only reason we may now not feel raped or have the impression we desired or initiated PIV, is because men broke down our barriers very skillfully and progressively from birth, breaking down our natural defences to pain and invasion, our confidence in our own perceptions and sensations of fear and disgust that tell us male sexual invasion is painful, harmful and traumatic.

Through an all-pervasive and powerful male propaganda, they stuff our minds from infancy with the idea that PIV is normal, desirable and erotic, before we can even conceive of it as something horrifying, and make sure we never see any alternative to their lie – or that if we do, we can no longer take in the information, are punished for thinking and saying otherwise. The fact we may not immediately feel raped doesn’t mean it’s not rape, objectively speaking. To give a classic example, many women in prostitution may not identify the act of prostitution as rape, except if the act wasn’t paid for. It doesn’t stop us from saying that all prostitution is rape. We know that our subjective feelings or thoughts may be colonised by men’s perspectives and as radical feminists we don’t let that override and erase the objective reality of violence. (PS -The reason why ONLY the lack of payment is defined as rape is because the offence here isn’t against the prostituted woman but the pimp who was deprived of his income. Rape comes from rapt, which is an old word for theft of woman-as-property.)

Lastly, from a structural point of view, as a class oppressed by men, we are not in any position of freedom to negotiate what men do to us collectively and individually within the heterocage. Men, by whom we are possessed, colonised and held captive, are the sole agents and organisers of PIV. Men dominate us precisely so we can’t opt out of sexual abuse by them; intercourse is the very means through which men subordinate us, the very purpose of their domination, to control human reproduction.

Contents

The SCUM Manifesto consists of an introduction, a list of grievances, and a conclusion.[20] The manifesto opens with the following declaration:[33]

“Life” in this “society” being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of “society” being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex.

Solanas begins by presenting a theory of the male as an “incomplete female” who is genetically deficient due to the Y chromosome.[34] According to Solanas, this genetic deficiency causes the male to be emotionally limited, egocentric, and incapable of mental passion or genuine interaction. She describes the male as lacking empathy and unable to relate to anything apart from his own physical sensations.[35] The manifesto continues by arguing that the male spends his life attempting to become female, and thereby overcome his inferiority. He does this by “constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live though and fuse with the female.” Solanas rejects Freud’s theory of penis envy, and argues that men have “pussy envy”. Solanas then accuses men of turning the world into a “shitpile” and presents a long list of grievances.[36]

The bulk of the manifesto consists of a litany of grievances against the male sex. The grievances are divided into the following sections:[37]

War
Niceness, Politeness and “Dignity”
Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society
Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity)
Suppression of Individuality, Animalism (domesticity and motherhood) and Functionalism
Prevention of Privacy
Isolation, Suburbs and Prevention of Community
Conformity
Authority and Government
Philosophy, Religion and Morality Based on Sex
Prejudice (racial, ethnic, religious, etc.)
Competition, Prestige, Status, Formal Education, Ignorance and Social and Economic Classes
Prevention of Conversation
Prevention of Friendship and Love
“Great Art” and “Culture”
Sexuality
Boredom
Secrecy, Censorship, Suppression of Knowledge and Ideas, and Exposés
Distrust
Ugliness
Hate and Violence
Disease and Death

Due to the aforementioned grievances, the manifesto concludes that the elimination of the male sex is a moral imperative.[38] It also argues that women must replace the “money-work system” with a system of complete automation, as this will lead to the collapse of the government and the loss of men’s power over women.[39]

In order to accomplish these goals, the manifesto proposes that a revolutionary vanguard of women be formed. This vanguard is referred to as SCUM. The manifesto argues that SCUM should employ sabotage and direct action tactics rather than civil disobedience, as civil disobedience is only useful for making small changes to society. In order to destroy the system, violent action is necessary: “If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President’s stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”[40]

The manifesto ends by describing a female-dominated utopian future in which there is no money, and disease and death have been eliminated. It argues that men are irrational to defend the current system and should accept the necessity of their destruction.[41]
SCUM as literary device

In 1977, Solanas told Smith and Van der Horst, “[”’the society’”] .... [i]s just a literary device. There’s no organization called SCUM—there never was, and there never will be.”[42] Claire Dederer said, “Solanas ... described [the term] SCUM as a kind of ‘literary device.’”[43] Solanas said to Smith and Van der Horst, “’[she] thought of it as a state of mind .... [in that] women who think a certain way are in SCUM .... [and] [m]en who think a certain way are in the men’s auxiliary of SCUM.’”[44]
Reception and criticism

Various critics and scholars have analyzed the Manifesto and Solanas’s statements regarding it. Daily News reporters Frank Faso and Henry Lee, two days after Solanas shot Warhol, said Solanas “crusades for a one-sex world free of men”.[45] Prof. James Martin Harding said she “propose[d]” a “radical program”.[46] Prof. Dana Heller said the author had an “anarchic social vision”[47] and the Manifesto had “near-utopian theories”[48] and a “utopian vision of a world in which mechanization and systems of mass (re)production would render work, sexual intercourse, and the money system obsolete.”[49] According to Village Voice reviewer B. Ruby Rich, “SCUM was an uncompromising global vision”,[14] in the Manifesto criticizing men for many faults including war and not curing disease; many but not all points were “quite accurate”;[14] some kinds of women were also criticized, subject to women’s changing when men are not around;[50] and sex (as in sexuality) was criticized as “exploitative”.[51] According to Janet Lyon, the Manifesto “pitt[ed] ... ‘liberated’ women ... against ‘brainwashed’ women”.[52]

Feminist critic Germaine Greer said that Solanas argued that both genders were separated from their humanity[53] and that men want to be like women.[54] Alice Echols says the Manifesto articulates gender as absolute rather than relative.[55]

Heller argued that the Manifesto shows women’s separation from basic economic and cultural resources and, because of psychological subordination to men, women’s perpetuation of that separation.[56] Robert Marmorstein of the Voice said that SCUM’s main message included that “men have fouled up the world” and “are no longer necessary (even biologically)”.[57] Jansen said Solanas considered men “biological[ly] inferior”.[58] According to Laura Winkiel, the Manifesto wants heterosexual capitalism overthrown and the means of production taken over by women.[59] Rich and Jansen said that technology and science would be welcome in the future.[60][61]

Jansen describes the plan for creating a women’s world as mainly nonviolent, as based on women’s nonparticipation in the current economy and having nothing to do with any men, thereby overwhelming police and military forces,[58] and, if solidarity among women was insufficient, some women could take jobs and “unwork”, causing systemic collapse;[62] and describes the plan as anticipating that by eliminating money there’d be no need to kill men.[63] Heller said the Manifesto would let drag queens live and be “useful” and “productive”.[64] Jansen and Winkiel say that Solanas imagined a women-only world.[65][66] Winkiel says the Manifesto imagines a violent revolutionary coup by women.[67] Prof. Ginette Castro found the Manifesto was “the feminist charter on violence”, supporting terrorist hysteria.[68] According to Jansen, Solanas posited men as animals who will be stalked and killed as prey, the killers using weapons as “phallic symbols turned against men”.[69] Rich, Castro, reviewer Claire Dederer, Friedan, Prof. Debra Diane Davis, Deborah Siegel, Winkiel, Marmorstein, and Greer said that Solanas’ plan was largely to eliminate men, including by men murdering each other, although Rich thought it might be Swiftian satire and that men’s retraining was an alternative in the Manifesto, Castro did not take the elimination of men as serious, and Marmorstein included criminal sabotage of men.[43][53][57][70][71][72][73][74][75][76]

According to Jansen, it called for reproduction only of females,[58] and not even of females once the problems of aging and death were solved so that a next generation would no longer be needed.[77]

While, according to Lyon, the Manifesto is irreverent and witty,[78] according to Siegel the Manifesto “articulated bald female rage”[79] and Jansen says the Manifesto is “shocking” and breathtaking.[80] Rich described Solanas as a “one-woman scorched-earth squad”[51] and Siegel says the stance was “extreme”[81][a] and “reflected a more general disaffection with nonviolent protest in America overall.”[81] Rich says the Manifesto brought out women’s “despair and anger” and advanced feminism[51] and, according to Winkiel, U.S. radical feminism emerged because of this “declaration of war against capitalism and patriarchy”.[3] Heller suggests the Manifesto is chiefly socialist-materialist.[82] Echols has argued that Solanas had “unabashed misandry”,[83] and people associated with Warhol (whom she shot) and various media saw it as “man-hating”.[

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto

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