Two problematic feminist memes I wish would go away

I apologize if this gets a little bit rant-y, one of them just popped up in another discussion elsewhere and it got me thinking.

I’m not sure where this stuff comes from, exactly. It’s not like there’s a Feminist Textbook that’s teaching young aspiring feminists these bad things, but it seems like I see feminists continue to fall into these traps when we discuss matters online. And they bug the hell out of me. It’s tempting to say that I only hear this stuff from people who are new to the feminist movement, but alas, it is not necessarily the case.

I’ll keep it to two, because otherwise I could rant all day.

In a discussion about accessibility/likability of feminists:

"I don’t understand people who think that all feminists are a bunch of man-hating killjoys. That’s like saying all civil rights activists are Black Panthers."

This one bothers me on a number of levels. First of all, second-class citizens are rarely given their rights by a benevolent ruling class out of the goodness of the brc’s heart. Rights are often a result of the people of the second class getting up, getting angry, and demanding their rights in a way that makes the ruling class uncomfortable.

In our hurry to distance ourselves from the Scary Radical Feminists (for… I dunno, I guess so the boys will like us), we trample the very real reality of our situation as well as the very real situation of people of color.

Take, for example, Melissa Batten. She was a developer for Microsoft who had taken out a restraining order against her estranged husband when he began harassing her. He even broke into her office. Yet he was allowed to walk free, and he eventually shot and killed her before shooting himself.

Now, she did exactly what she was supposed to do. She went to the police. She filed a report. Hell, he even made it easy when he committed felony B&E. But the police failed at their duty to protect her and she was a sitting duck. If she had decided to arm herself, and if she was able to shoot him before he shot her, would we call her a ball-busting man-hater for defending herself?

Because the Blank Panthers were more or less the same thing, to be historically honest. When you look at the history of the police brutality in black neighborhoods, there comes a point where people have to stand up to that sort of treatment and that’s what the Black Panthers was about. It wasn’t about "killing whitey," or going into white neighborhoods to start shit. Hell, the Black Panthers even had white members. It was about self-defense in the face of a broken system that wasn’t keeping the community safe (or was actively persecuting the community). Hell, the Black Panthers even had white members.

More often than not, when you talk to a radical feminist, she’s not advocating killing all the men, she’s advocating women’s safety and security in a society that does not value women’s safety and security. So I guess that makes radfems a little like the Black Panthers.

But it’s not like that’s a bad thing.

In a discussion about paroled rapists who are repeat offenders:

"These guys make me so sick! We should just cut their balls off!"

I hear this one far too often. I suspect it’s more of a conventional wisdom spout-off than one that actually has roots in feminist culture, but we do take our cultures with us when we traipse off to Vaginastan to get our feminist branding, I’m afraid.

Castration rhetoric, apart from being inflammatory, is completely wrong-headed. The problem with rapists lies not between their legs, but between their ears. Rapists derive pleasure from the sensation of domination and abuse, not from the actual sexual stimulation of intercourse. As such, removing testicles (apart from the fact that men can still sustain erections without their nuts) will not prevent men from raping women.

But more than that, there are plenty of cases where convicted rapists have ;asked the parole board to castrate them as a condition of parole. So what’s wrong with that, you may ask? Well, it’s a great way to sidestep any culpability or responsibility for your actions. If you can just blame your genitals, and how your sex drive makes you a monster, and if you can just remove your gonads everything will be fine, you’re just sidestepping your own accountability in the matter as a human being. If there is to be any hope for rehabilitating rapists, the solution lies in intense counseling and therapies, as well as reviewing post-parole institutions.

I’m all for tougher sentences for violent sex offenders: As far as I’m concerned, a lot of them should not have the option of parole (which won’t happen as long as we focus our mandatory minimum sentences on drug offenders, but that’s a rant for another time). But this notion that cutting off the testicles of a rapist will somehow make things better doesn’t have a place in feminist discussion. Rapists won’t stop raping if they have to use a tool to rape instead of their own genitals, and furthermore, the state should not have the ability to exercise power over another person’s bodily autonomy.

So what about you? What "feminist" conventional wisdom do you wish would just go away?