I'd argue that the use of the word "sex" to label both the deleterious role of patriarchy-informed genital/cranial exploitation and manipulation, and the activity between loving, consensual adults, is unhelpful.
My background is in domestic violence and coercive control, and my reference is to the work of Canadian and Australian¹ thinkers who regard "sex" as the positive, healthy expression of physical intimacy between caring adults.
For crimes of violence, such as rape, they use the term "sexualised," arguing that using genitals to commit acts of violence does not constitute "sex," but rather a gross and extreme perversion of the mutually-healthy activity described above.
A significant factor in all this is the place of neurology. The manipulation begins in our brain, and from there extends to our genitals. Without that initial manipulation can the rest follow?
Thank you for this excellent article. Gives me lots to think about. I was a 16-year old Catholic high-school student run by an incredible group of very liberal Immaculate Heart nuns when I attended a talk by a visiting speaker - none other than Gloria Steinem. I credit these women and the times we lived in with our development as strong, intelligent and very independent women. In hindsight, however, I have always felt that the drive to empower women did just that, but it left out men, and it should not have. The fact is that we need each other, and we need each other to be at our best and at our fullest.
One piece of trans ideology that I will never understand is the pressure put on the wives of suddenly demanding, crossdressing men whose secrets got discovered or he revealed. Anyone else remember the Oprah shows with those couples on, the man in a wig explaining to this always receptive host that he's going to wait patiently while his wife "adjusts?" The seamy side that Oprah never brought up is the pornography, the kink and the role play expectations of the wife, as part of this "now female" husband's "embodiment goals." Let me put this another way; I was sexually harassed by my then husband's therapist in 1995. She told me what I needed to do in bed, what I need to watch with him and, in her words, "spice up your sex life" in order to "keep your family together." I said no. The words she then used to describe me, to my face, were "spunky yet traditional." Trans widows who "tried it out" for a time have much more to get over after leaving this untenable marriage. Some were unwittingly lured into dangerous rough sex.
I know, I'm part of a support group with women all over the world who refuse to say "she/her" about the ex husband in our own recovery therapy. The last therapist I rejected in the initial phone call said, "Oh yes, that's standard now." when I asked about the expectations regarding how I discuss recovering from my former husband's (and his therapists') gaslighting. I have a fantasy of seeing these "sexologists" on the stand in testimony before Congress regarding their sexual harassment of the wives in service of their lucrative trade. I pick Rep. Nancy Mace for this investigation.
"Instead of accepting that men must aggressively seek dominance in competition with other men and should always seek control over women. . ."
The need to compete with other men has nothing to do with always seeking control over women, unless the men are specifically competing with other men for the prize of who controls women the most. Competition is not toxic masculinity. It can be an important and effective motivator.
"We can’t opt out of being male in a male-dominant world," so opting out of competition is futile.
I wrongly disagree. You make completion a primary human condition when actually we only survive through coperation. How else is the long period of human childhood survivable we have unique capacities read each other because we need each other
This is not an honest argument; : Freedom is not doing what YOU want to do...its doing what I think you should do.'. That is the creed of every dictator since Lenin. If you debase the language of Liberty what concepts will you have to argue against someone who comes forward to say something like 'True freedom for a woman is not going going out to work, but fulfilling her destiny by having children and making a home for your husband'. You won't have the language to point out the value of each individual making their own choices, to achieve their own ends according to their own values. Remember Every bad argument you make can and will one day be used against you. After the experiences of the last 5 years, no feminist should need this to be pointed out. And for the record I disapprove of pornography, prostitution, radical feminism, dictatorships and I don't believe there is a patriarchy. But I LOVE being straw-manned. So have a go!
The oppressive 'gender roles' that are imposed and ENFORCED so forcefully from the minute we are born and the mindset that it is INEVITABLE that one group has to be on 'top', keeps us all in this terrible struggle for domination: men over women, one class or religion or ethnicity or country over another....the brutality and destruction goes on and on. It is NOT INEVITABLE!!!
As far as I know, no one articulated and fought for deep, revolutionary change to all of this more eloquently and courageously than Andrea Dworkin.
Macmillan/Picador is reprinting (3) of her books in February, 2025 - people are finding their way back to her. She is compassionate, brilliant and INSPIRES us to think and ACT!!
I wholeheartedly agree with Dr Jensen's assessment of the sex "industry's" harm toward women, children, men and poisoning the relationship between them all. But my position doesn't originate in prior-held ideological positions such as the concept of patriarchy, it is simply consequentialist - these things clearly result in harm, so I'm opposed to them.
The demand that people accept a binding ideological framework to explain social dynamics also results is them demanding very narrow solutions to whatever problems result. And this is the part where things go wrong because you can't right young men onto a better path by haranguing them. The RadFem approach to fixing young men isn't working - it is only pushing them into the Tate's and co. You cannot change men by labelling them eternally "bad" anymore than you can get Americans to vote Democrat by keeping eternally calling them racist and stupid.
The final conclusion is positively comical in its lack of self-awareness: it asks men to stop seeing Radical Feminism as an enemy - but makes no demand of the other side to stop seeing men as such. IE it demands men cease treating women's advancement as zero-sum, but does not make the reciprocal demand.
Please avoid using the term "radfem". That is a modern version, actually a reversal, of the original and best ideas of the second-wave women's movement. It indicates that you don't know much about actual radical feminism other than what's been presented to you by postmodernist popular culture. Patriarchy is not a concept, it's a reality. Because you don't want to see it, it doesn't mean it's not there. And it harms women, children and men, and I think that was Robert Jensen's point. There are women, as well as men, who uphold the "values' of patriarchy, so no one needs to blame just men or all men for the state of things. But it is a problem adults are to blame for, like it or not, and it's a tradition of values and behavior that has been forced onto society generation after generation.
Frederick, you seem to understand the harm from pornography and prostitution to all of us. So do feminists. They use the word Patriarchy to encapsulate those harms as well as others in a system of individual and institutionalized male dominance over females. It's simply a word that allows us to understand the big picture so that we can find solutions to alleviate or perhaps even end oppression.
You're right. We need to be much more careful about what is taught to boys and young men. They need to understand that their own personal choices either help society find solutions or make the problem worse. Children are being taught their “category” is the defining characteristic of who they are. That their innate characteristics such as sex or skin color are what makes them good or bad. Kids in school are taught that white men are the most evil group in the world. How can white boys grow up to be responsible, ethical adults if nothing they do can negate society's denigration of their ethnic group or their sex? Children are taught that if they are not part of an oppressed group then they are automatically “the oppressor.”
Teachers, parents and idiots on the Internet need to stop doing that. Everyone has personal choice, and youth need to learn that their own choices positively or negatively impact others. Schools should reinstate the concept of individual responsibility. It's absurd to group all white people together as if they all think alike or act alike or even have the same advantages. Black people who have received generational wealth have huge advantages over poor white people who didn't. It's racist to assume white people have automatic advantages over other groups. We need to understand the complexities of the world and teach those concepts to youth.
The worst part of this indoctrination of children is that we are creating a generation of people who are desperate to be part of some oppressed group in order to alleviate their guilt for being part of the “oppressor group.” Perhaps this is why so many youth are opting into the lgbTQIA2S+ alphabet soup. The A is now an A3. The 3rd A stands for Allies. Whoo hoo, everyone can now join the group!
Radical feminists look to the root of problems to fix them. The root of this desperation to belong to an oppressed group is the inane teaching in our schools that obliterates personal responsibility and assigns blame based on innate characteristics like skin color, sex and ethnic ancestry. Kids need to be taught that not all boys seek to be he-men and not all girls are as stupid as the despicable misogynist Dylan Mulvaney portrays. Not all black and brown children struggle to take tests and not all white children have easy lives. Poor kids of all colors have challenges.
Let's teach the complexities of life, instill a sense of personal responsibility and give all our kids the chance to be functional members of society. Also, ban porn. Especially on kids' phones.
Dear Sally - thank you for taking the effort to write. I am actually quite supportive of Radical Feminists due to their fight against gender ideology - which is what brought me to read JB’s work. Although in many areas she isn’t my cup of tea there are 3 really string reasons I follow her work: GC advancement, fight against commercialisation of sexuality (and birth) and the strong stance she takes for the working class perspective. My motivations mostly stem from my own mum’s difficult path through life.
We obviously agree on the need to point young men in a better direction, what frustrates me is the same things never work but the policy-makers invariably double down and continue them. Such approaches make young men feel demonised and they will not heed Jensen’s words in such a context.
I think the overuse of ideology is a problem because it is precisely what painted Lib feminists into the TWAW corner. Maybe I sounded overly cranky because I just received another in a long line of job rejections and let my frustrations run too far…
One thing is for sure, years ago the young man Robert Jensen heeded the words of radical feminists and that changed the course of his life for the better (his words, not mine). Once he realized feminists did not reject all men out of hand, and started to listen to radical feminism's core and best teachings, he realized he'd been mislead about what those teachings were/are, mislead by popular culture and "competing" interests. As long as a person, male or female, accepts pop culture's version of feminism, what you seem to be calling "Lib" feminism, they will not be able to speak quite coherently about this topic. The core teachings of radical feminism are challenging. Robert Jensen has been up to the task, unlike most men and many women, for whatever reasons, some valid, others not. That's people for you though. C'est la vie unfortunately.
I always find these articles strange, no matter how well written, since 100% of the men I know who are or were involved in pornography and paid sex found it rewarding personally and economically.
I’m speaking of perhaps hundreds of men over four decades.
How can an activity which is trivially easy to see is categorically utterly banal for gay men be categorically catastrophic for women (and apparently straight men) - that’s what I’ve never seen answered, or even addressed.
I the world of research it’s called a natural experiment. to identify the factors which are different.
Apparently that’s in the decades since the routine establishment of the fact that presence of pornography in multiple countries worldwide is associated with marked reduction in sexual violence isn’t evidence enough that the result is not quite as catastrophic for men and women as discussed.
I really a[[reciate Jensen's work. it looks through fads and stays trained on the essntials of power.
Thank you Julie, a great read and good to know that good men can grasp the messages of radical feminism.
I'd argue that the use of the word "sex" to label both the deleterious role of patriarchy-informed genital/cranial exploitation and manipulation, and the activity between loving, consensual adults, is unhelpful.
My background is in domestic violence and coercive control, and my reference is to the work of Canadian and Australian¹ thinkers who regard "sex" as the positive, healthy expression of physical intimacy between caring adults.
For crimes of violence, such as rape, they use the term "sexualised," arguing that using genitals to commit acts of violence does not constitute "sex," but rather a gross and extreme perversion of the mutually-healthy activity described above.
A significant factor in all this is the place of neurology. The manipulation begins in our brain, and from there extends to our genitals. Without that initial manipulation can the rest follow?
Late note:
¹ To my huge embarrassment, I can't remember the relevant names ...
Thanks for never giving up Robert .
Thank you for this excellent article. Gives me lots to think about. I was a 16-year old Catholic high-school student run by an incredible group of very liberal Immaculate Heart nuns when I attended a talk by a visiting speaker - none other than Gloria Steinem. I credit these women and the times we lived in with our development as strong, intelligent and very independent women. In hindsight, however, I have always felt that the drive to empower women did just that, but it left out men, and it should not have. The fact is that we need each other, and we need each other to be at our best and at our fullest.
One piece of trans ideology that I will never understand is the pressure put on the wives of suddenly demanding, crossdressing men whose secrets got discovered or he revealed. Anyone else remember the Oprah shows with those couples on, the man in a wig explaining to this always receptive host that he's going to wait patiently while his wife "adjusts?" The seamy side that Oprah never brought up is the pornography, the kink and the role play expectations of the wife, as part of this "now female" husband's "embodiment goals." Let me put this another way; I was sexually harassed by my then husband's therapist in 1995. She told me what I needed to do in bed, what I need to watch with him and, in her words, "spice up your sex life" in order to "keep your family together." I said no. The words she then used to describe me, to my face, were "spunky yet traditional." Trans widows who "tried it out" for a time have much more to get over after leaving this untenable marriage. Some were unwittingly lured into dangerous rough sex.
I know, I'm part of a support group with women all over the world who refuse to say "she/her" about the ex husband in our own recovery therapy. The last therapist I rejected in the initial phone call said, "Oh yes, that's standard now." when I asked about the expectations regarding how I discuss recovering from my former husband's (and his therapists') gaslighting. I have a fantasy of seeing these "sexologists" on the stand in testimony before Congress regarding their sexual harassment of the wives in service of their lucrative trade. I pick Rep. Nancy Mace for this investigation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLhxvxm-a7o&t=7s
Great article. I'd sort of vaguely come across Robert Jensen - will now look him up for further reading.
Thank you.
"Instead of accepting that men must aggressively seek dominance in competition with other men and should always seek control over women. . ."
The need to compete with other men has nothing to do with always seeking control over women, unless the men are specifically competing with other men for the prize of who controls women the most. Competition is not toxic masculinity. It can be an important and effective motivator.
"We can’t opt out of being male in a male-dominant world," so opting out of competition is futile.
I wrongly disagree. You make completion a primary human condition when actually we only survive through coperation. How else is the long period of human childhood survivable we have unique capacities read each other because we need each other
Well there's a reason why feminism should rebrand itself as The Sisterhood of Perpetual Victimhood.
This is not an honest argument; : Freedom is not doing what YOU want to do...its doing what I think you should do.'. That is the creed of every dictator since Lenin. If you debase the language of Liberty what concepts will you have to argue against someone who comes forward to say something like 'True freedom for a woman is not going going out to work, but fulfilling her destiny by having children and making a home for your husband'. You won't have the language to point out the value of each individual making their own choices, to achieve their own ends according to their own values. Remember Every bad argument you make can and will one day be used against you. After the experiences of the last 5 years, no feminist should need this to be pointed out. And for the record I disapprove of pornography, prostitution, radical feminism, dictatorships and I don't believe there is a patriarchy. But I LOVE being straw-manned. So have a go!
Wonderful to read this: YES!
The oppressive 'gender roles' that are imposed and ENFORCED so forcefully from the minute we are born and the mindset that it is INEVITABLE that one group has to be on 'top', keeps us all in this terrible struggle for domination: men over women, one class or religion or ethnicity or country over another....the brutality and destruction goes on and on. It is NOT INEVITABLE!!!
As far as I know, no one articulated and fought for deep, revolutionary change to all of this more eloquently and courageously than Andrea Dworkin.
Macmillan/Picador is reprinting (3) of her books in February, 2025 - people are finding their way back to her. She is compassionate, brilliant and INSPIRES us to think and ACT!!
https://jaxsplace.substack.com/p/women-hating-back-in-print
I wholeheartedly agree with Dr Jensen's assessment of the sex "industry's" harm toward women, children, men and poisoning the relationship between them all. But my position doesn't originate in prior-held ideological positions such as the concept of patriarchy, it is simply consequentialist - these things clearly result in harm, so I'm opposed to them.
The demand that people accept a binding ideological framework to explain social dynamics also results is them demanding very narrow solutions to whatever problems result. And this is the part where things go wrong because you can't right young men onto a better path by haranguing them. The RadFem approach to fixing young men isn't working - it is only pushing them into the Tate's and co. You cannot change men by labelling them eternally "bad" anymore than you can get Americans to vote Democrat by keeping eternally calling them racist and stupid.
The final conclusion is positively comical in its lack of self-awareness: it asks men to stop seeing Radical Feminism as an enemy - but makes no demand of the other side to stop seeing men as such. IE it demands men cease treating women's advancement as zero-sum, but does not make the reciprocal demand.
Please avoid using the term "radfem". That is a modern version, actually a reversal, of the original and best ideas of the second-wave women's movement. It indicates that you don't know much about actual radical feminism other than what's been presented to you by postmodernist popular culture. Patriarchy is not a concept, it's a reality. Because you don't want to see it, it doesn't mean it's not there. And it harms women, children and men, and I think that was Robert Jensen's point. There are women, as well as men, who uphold the "values' of patriarchy, so no one needs to blame just men or all men for the state of things. But it is a problem adults are to blame for, like it or not, and it's a tradition of values and behavior that has been forced onto society generation after generation.
Frederick, you seem to understand the harm from pornography and prostitution to all of us. So do feminists. They use the word Patriarchy to encapsulate those harms as well as others in a system of individual and institutionalized male dominance over females. It's simply a word that allows us to understand the big picture so that we can find solutions to alleviate or perhaps even end oppression.
You're right. We need to be much more careful about what is taught to boys and young men. They need to understand that their own personal choices either help society find solutions or make the problem worse. Children are being taught their “category” is the defining characteristic of who they are. That their innate characteristics such as sex or skin color are what makes them good or bad. Kids in school are taught that white men are the most evil group in the world. How can white boys grow up to be responsible, ethical adults if nothing they do can negate society's denigration of their ethnic group or their sex? Children are taught that if they are not part of an oppressed group then they are automatically “the oppressor.”
Teachers, parents and idiots on the Internet need to stop doing that. Everyone has personal choice, and youth need to learn that their own choices positively or negatively impact others. Schools should reinstate the concept of individual responsibility. It's absurd to group all white people together as if they all think alike or act alike or even have the same advantages. Black people who have received generational wealth have huge advantages over poor white people who didn't. It's racist to assume white people have automatic advantages over other groups. We need to understand the complexities of the world and teach those concepts to youth.
The worst part of this indoctrination of children is that we are creating a generation of people who are desperate to be part of some oppressed group in order to alleviate their guilt for being part of the “oppressor group.” Perhaps this is why so many youth are opting into the lgbTQIA2S+ alphabet soup. The A is now an A3. The 3rd A stands for Allies. Whoo hoo, everyone can now join the group!
Radical feminists look to the root of problems to fix them. The root of this desperation to belong to an oppressed group is the inane teaching in our schools that obliterates personal responsibility and assigns blame based on innate characteristics like skin color, sex and ethnic ancestry. Kids need to be taught that not all boys seek to be he-men and not all girls are as stupid as the despicable misogynist Dylan Mulvaney portrays. Not all black and brown children struggle to take tests and not all white children have easy lives. Poor kids of all colors have challenges.
Let's teach the complexities of life, instill a sense of personal responsibility and give all our kids the chance to be functional members of society. Also, ban porn. Especially on kids' phones.
Dear Sally - thank you for taking the effort to write. I am actually quite supportive of Radical Feminists due to their fight against gender ideology - which is what brought me to read JB’s work. Although in many areas she isn’t my cup of tea there are 3 really string reasons I follow her work: GC advancement, fight against commercialisation of sexuality (and birth) and the strong stance she takes for the working class perspective. My motivations mostly stem from my own mum’s difficult path through life.
We obviously agree on the need to point young men in a better direction, what frustrates me is the same things never work but the policy-makers invariably double down and continue them. Such approaches make young men feel demonised and they will not heed Jensen’s words in such a context.
I think the overuse of ideology is a problem because it is precisely what painted Lib feminists into the TWAW corner. Maybe I sounded overly cranky because I just received another in a long line of job rejections and let my frustrations run too far…
One thing is for sure, years ago the young man Robert Jensen heeded the words of radical feminists and that changed the course of his life for the better (his words, not mine). Once he realized feminists did not reject all men out of hand, and started to listen to radical feminism's core and best teachings, he realized he'd been mislead about what those teachings were/are, mislead by popular culture and "competing" interests. As long as a person, male or female, accepts pop culture's version of feminism, what you seem to be calling "Lib" feminism, they will not be able to speak quite coherently about this topic. The core teachings of radical feminism are challenging. Robert Jensen has been up to the task, unlike most men and many women, for whatever reasons, some valid, others not. That's people for you though. C'est la vie unfortunately.
I always find these articles strange, no matter how well written, since 100% of the men I know who are or were involved in pornography and paid sex found it rewarding personally and economically.
I’m speaking of perhaps hundreds of men over four decades.
How can an activity which is trivially easy to see is categorically utterly banal for gay men be categorically catastrophic for women (and apparently straight men) - that’s what I’ve never seen answered, or even addressed.
I the world of research it’s called a natural experiment. to identify the factors which are different.
Apparently that’s in the decades since the routine establishment of the fact that presence of pornography in multiple countries worldwide is associated with marked reduction in sexual violence isn’t evidence enough that the result is not quite as catastrophic for men and women as discussed.
Wow!
Do you have proposals to right the wrongs you see ?