The Pervert's Guide to Feminism
An Unauthorized Critique
What do femininists want?
Patriarchy is history—retired by the changing forces and relations of capitalist development. But feminism still acts as if The Patriarchy is alive and well—more virulent than ever. I mean, Andrew Tate! Dylan Mulvaney!! Hello!!!
This series critiques the libidinal economy that keeps feminism going—even though roughly 90% of the world’s women now live where they have equal rights under the law. Women and men alike make their own choices, and neither gets to choose the conditions in which those choices are made.1
Feminism promises liberation and relies on scapegoats. The line between wanting to liberate women and wanting to control them is thin, fuzzy, and often crossed. Women desire power too. Women discipline other women. The will to power is not just a man’s game.
Yes, sex matters—sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. But class matters much more than “toxic masculinity.” The key antagonisms today are economic. Unfortunately, class analysis doesn’t deliver the same hit of enjoyment as complaining about The Patriarchy does.
Feminism, like all successful ideologies, is not just a discourse. It is also an libidinal economy. So, we must shift registers to grasp the appeal of The Patriarchy. This is not an epistemological issue, but a libidinal one. The Patriarchy anchors feminist desire… It is their political unconscious… And what sustains feminist fidelity to this fantasy is not veracity, but enjoyment. . .
🔥 Series Articles:
Feminists to the Patriarchy: We Hate You, Don’t Stop in the 11th Hour Blog
Feminism’s Fetishistic Disavowal in
Enjoy Patriarchy! The Feminist Libidinal Economy in
Feminism’s Woman Problem: An Unauthorised Political Psychoanalysis in
Taliban Nights: The Erotics of Imperialist Feminism (June)
The Rise and Fall of Patriarchy: A Historical Materialist Acount (July)
Turning Feminism Inside-Out with Lacan’s Four Discourses (July)
"Men make their own history, but not under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past." Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte