The Dog Collar Murders, by Barbara Wilson

[lb_lee]

 Mori: I am reading another lesbian mystery novel, third in a series, from 1989. I want to make a proper post about the series when I'm done, but I just had to post this little snippet from pg. 93-4:

"Margaret and I saw a great movie," [protagonist's girlfriend] said, and named a romantic comedy-thriller that was currently very popular. "Really pleasant and old-fashioned: they meet, they fight, they reconcile. Vet satisfying."

I looked up sternly from my book. "It's beyond me how you can enjoy a film that just reinforces the heteropatriarchy. I've seen the previews for that film. So what if the woman is a district attorney? It's just a set-up to make it more titillating when the woman is saved by the jerky hero."

[Protag and girlfriend get to talking about the book protag is reading--a radical feminist anti-kink anti-porn book written by Loie, the murder victim. Quoth protag:]

"It's true what she says, you know. That men hate women--at every historical period, in every possible way."

"She makes a convincing argument [...] but it's outdated. For one thing she treats sexuality as if it were an unchanging paradigm: man screws woman in order to humiliate her. According to her men and women never act any different. Whereas in fact there is an incredible amount of deviance from that model. Men fucking other men, women fucking other women, transsexuals, fetishists, celibates, bisexuals, women who dominate men and men who like being dominated. Loie left out all the interesting bits. She didn't even put in lesbians, and she's one herself. And even if you accept Loie's main idea--men hate women--leaving aside the question of whether you can prove it or not--where are you going to go from there? If it's always been like this and is always going to be like this, then what's the point of trying to change specific things? You might as well kill yourself."

"No, you don't. You can fight back!"

"Yeah. Fight Back! Take Back the Night! Get Your Asses Out in the Street! To the Barricades, Womyn!... And then what? Not to sound a discouraging note, but politics, government and so on is slightly more complicated. I'm not convinced that the women who write some of these books would be my favorite choice for president. Or queen. I'm sure some of them would like to be queen."

"But we need people who can make us feel how intolerable things are. Otherwise we just accept it."

"Which is precisely the attraction of activists like Loie. They're fine as long as they're trying to inspire revolt and change--it's when they get specific, if they ever do, about how they're going to institute change that you realize that some of their ideas sound pretty feeble and/or fascist."

Comments

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[minoanmiss]

takes notes

[wolfy_writing]

Ah, clearly inspired by Andrea Dworkin. (She wrote a lot about men hating women in that particular style, and she identified as a lesbian, although she had a complicated relationship with a man she ended up marrying.)

[lb_lee]

Mori: Oh yeah, Dworkin, MacKinnon, and a bunch of other folks are referenced by name in this series. It's very much supposed to take place in our world with our media and people.

[lindsworldtree]

There's two books by indigenous people we sort of view as unintentional companion pieces, 'columbus and other cannibals' by jack d forbes and 'braiding sweetgrass' by robin wall kimmerer . The first lays out the 'scene' of u.s history from a indigenous view, and after providing suggestions asks what to do next. The latter briefly goes over the history and present day, before suggesting some answers.
We've yet to read the latter fully, but both in part argue the same point to a degree, the first explicitly;

As seen by many native peoples, 'religion' is not and can never be an institution; It is a way of life, a politic, a goal, a spirituality, and a morale code all in one effectively.

our phrasing in this is bad as not yet well practiced in it, but erm,
a second point is that many native societies were far more equal in their protrayals of power.

Which is to look at their lifestyle, their 'religion', to help perceive their end goal; Do not take a activists, or anyone's, actions in a vacuum, if discussing them.

We can understand why this occurs, though, to sort of expand upon the books point. After all, if the only attraction of these activists was their inspiration to change, they'd be quickly usurped by more vibrant ones- we think it worth pointing out that, as with the activists, the people who look to them have lifestyles too. 'religions' too even if they don't realize, even if the 'religions' are contradictory. And these can be hard to change all at once.

But they do often *want* change- they may not know why or how, but they want it. We don't think anyone enjoys internal contradiction in their lifestyle, not if its not by knowing choice at least.
So by majority, the people can fall into traps of only a few issues, only a few branches of the rooting poison. Even conspiracy theorists can be in this category often.


We've hence long considered to a degree, how best to combat that issue, how to 'teach' new 'religion' to the people. While we use those two books as a anchoring analogy, we feel it in our own actions and view personally at a very deep level. Our own 'religion' that we are still developing. Perhaps in part because we are plural, and so are going through a organizing process internally as well as externally by necessity, I don't know for sure.
There is precedent to indicate there are ways to go about that advocacy successfully that aren't mere 'volume of outcry'. That there are ways to craft empathy and load-bearing issues such that one can get through to those who can only settle for those activists and politicians who do only so much, those Loies of the world.
But we've yet to come to a conclusion much further then that.

thanks for reading :p
not that proud of this one since we really fumbled our words here, but feel its a point worth keeping around