The majority of the time I dismiss far-left exhibitionist feminists as “fembots” as they are utterly incapable of original thought, let alone nuance. However, when Clementine Ford is published in mainstream media referencing Andrea Dworkin, it’s time for an intervention.

Dworkin was an American radical feminist, activist and writer. She was so extreme her views were widely criticised by many – including liberal feminists.

It was once claimed she “personified hate” and was “insane”.

She certainly hated men, hated sex and hated sexual freedom.

In “Woman Hating” she wrote that women’s oppression came in “Plucking the eyebrows, shaving under the arms… learning to walk in high-heeled shoes, having one’s nose fixed, straightening or curling one’s hair – these things hurt. The pain, of course, teaches an important lesson: no price is too great, no process too repulsive, no operation too painful for the women who would be beautiful.”

The fact that all of these things are optional and personal choice seemed to escape her.

“Women are the only… group that shares a bed with their oppressor,” she said.

“Men especially love murder. In art they celebrate it. In life, they commit it,” she said.

“Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine,” she said.

“Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so,” she said.

Get the picture?

Dworkin wrote repeatedly around what she described as a double standard that “a man can show how much he cares by being violent… a women shows how much she cares by how she’s willing to be hurt…”

She focused on what’s now known as “lean-in feminism”, which focused on the ability of privileged women to climb and liberate from there.

Essentially this enables wealthy women with fabulous lives to claim they are correct and should be obeyed for the greater good (shout out to Jane Caro).

Dworkin, the unapologetic, furious extremist died of heart failure in 2005 at the age of 58, which speaks volumes about how good radical feminism is for one’s health, let alone state of mind.

In her latest rant, for the supposedly mainstream Channel Ten, Ford writes:

[A]s Andrea Dworkin once observed, “I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If it did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.”

Ford is seriously quoting Andrea Dworkin on us?

And Channel Ten is publishing this?

Is anyone else sadly reminded of Lenin’s one bit of wit: “Left-wing communism: an infantile disorder”?

This isn’t victimhood on steroids.

It’s showing off of the most disconcerting kind, not that removed from self-harming.

God only knows the state of the likes of Ford who dish this mess up — let alone those who gulp it down.

At a Melbourne feminism festival on Sunday, Egyptian-American author Mona Eltahawy (of recent Q&A acclaim, in case you missed) stepped up the self-loathing. The Australian reported, “She lambasted white women, a considerable portion of the crowd [chortle, chortle], for being the ‘foot soldiers of the patriarchy’, urging them to ‘burn the patriarchy down’.”

She also slammed our Prime Minister referring to him as being “a white supremacist Christian evangelical prime minister”.

“Asked by an audience member whether it was possible to use white privilege to change attitudes to women from within the system, Eltahawy urged her to ‘find ways every day to defy, disobey and disrupt,” The Australian continued.

She also criticised white women “for failing to appreciate that their whiteness is a form of power and privilege in itself”.

Are these poor me women now indulging in self-flagellation?

Feminism is our new religion – and it even has rituals now?

Is this the new Netflix and chill; women whipping themselves as they atone for their sins?

Is repentance the new empowerment?

Is remorse the new liberation?

Is absolution the new promotion?

Are shackles the new woke?

Tell me again how this foul religion has anything to do with equality or empowerment.

Honestly, I despair.

Illustration: Twitter.

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