Christopher Hitchens talks Feminism (1994)

you know I mean I think I was certainly one of the very few men I knew maybe the only one who had a new sympathy for the tempestuous and missus bobbitt because if you recall the first German statement that she made basically a poor woman fairly uneducated and immigrant to this country not very not very powerful not very well plugged in nor free well-connected very unhappy and lonely first day when she makes to the police about the organ which she'd separated from mr. Bob it was that while it was attached to him it had been pretty much no good to her that as she put it he always finishes first and never cares about me never way in otherwise it wasn't that she felt threatened or menaced by this settled and or coddled or brutalized but but sort of let down by disappointed by I thought what more men should have paid more attention to that the Uniting good morning wait the way that no no I was she was in every sense apathetic improbably quite a nasty woman it seems to me but but as much we pitcher there's everything else the only way that you can't get any sense out of this discussion is if you assume that that she was wrong to say that in other words the women are asexual which is the assumption made that seems to mean a lot of the date-rape literature and a lot of the Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin type commentary the women are are basically not sexed and this they don't say this is where the reason why a lot of men abuse are driven to the right so to speak with sexual right it's because they always know that it's a sexual right I mean where is the sexual right I mean is in hating women and thinking that they'll plan to cut the things off or the attacks on feminism and all of that is that we're under fear right here and boring and boring endless of Rush Limbaugh type joking about it that's catching on is that men so know that that's not true and that it's um hypocritical and they know that women would order they ought to know I would like to argue anyway that women would be the losers if the chaperone came back on campus and fortunate gets made it's a sexual assault epidemic and how do we acknowledge that fight it and claim that women are sexual agents sexually curious can be sexually objectifying that we are not Saints nor should we have to be just before we leave this Antioch thing because I was as surprised as you were to and to read on the front of the New York Times the words may I put my finger in I never expect read that on the front of the good old gray times and I noticed that it followed instantly it was the stage for after me I remove your bust yeah no doubt they call it about you I don't wait there's anyhow I thought myself there were at least three things wrong with this one is from the male point of view it's insulting because you have to do all the work on this assumption from the female well if you think it's insulting was it means the men also had to do all the talking and third and let's see if we can say this on the ER or not it seems to me that it had and not accidentally it had abolished the clitoris right there was no there was no it was engine let me put it like this then the clitoris had been alighted in this now I can't believe that that's the next thing because if you mention that you mentioned that women are in some sense keenly motivated for sex themselves and that's the thing I think Antioch is as reluctant to face as the absolutely southerners mean to say cover thing go ahead are you against a straw man what a defensive patient - yes yeah close it seems to me was I'm not trying to gallant believe me um boom Gallinger could come to you Christian as well he's I'm getting on you stupid and indeed my decade was as must be only too painfully obvious the sixties when when feminism began and I remember being it I presently in are perfectly where well I don't freaking Mary Wollstonecraft good yes I know that but for people around this table I think you said that's my per gun yeah um so you allowed my my um please your point is yes um what I remember was violently resisting all of us different ways the idea that the university could be in loco parentis as it was to go and so the university lay the role of your of your life parents and if you had a beef against another student of any kind it was considered kind of babyish to want to go to the dean the entire time and complain about your feelings but now it seems to me that not just on sexual matters but on quite a lot of other things lumped under the heading of correct attitude everyone in the university seems to want to have more authority over themselves so we have more complaints procedures to have more therapy and more litigation and I would say for heaven's sake there's enough of all that in the wider society as it is and you can't defy this by reference to microorganisms I'm sorry to say it's not viruses that are making people behave this way it's it's a regression to Infanta lism that's going on and i think it's a real shame crying so not morally I thought she made that point excellently in the in the book yeah no I think you can be much more effective than that terrifying they say sir I mean I don't think I know any any guy worthy of the name so to speak who hasn't at one time or other in his life said to another guy you heard her you heard the lady leave her alone shut up move on you know I mean that's part of what it means to be a man is to be able to do that and therefore I think and by the way can I mention a piece I've written since everyone else is plugging this dope it's coming up soon about the work of a feminist author who isn't here but who I admire very much called Elizabeth Fox University and she's reviewed you in French and she would say oh she says one of the reasons why um so many women are not described themselves as feminists these days is because it's not relevant to them because the struggle for existence women at the moment is quite grim and it's usually centered on very important fact of bringing up children not only can you not get hold of a kid without a man but you you very hard have a very hard time bringing one up without a guy and many of these women I think of the working class so I can use another phrase that's hardly ever heard on TV night clitoris and penis and self um working class working class job you know I've been up here they they see the feminism is something that maybe is bad-mouthing their brothers and their husbands and their fathers and other hard-working guys who they know and quite nice this is all men sitting around in the work we are collecting moon and wrong and I'm eating their chest into a dress but that's not a yeah but it's just wait just wait a few seconds that that's the next thing that's gonna happen what we will be infantilizing infantilizing I was talking about yeah he's gonna happen men will say what if women can go to the Dean if they feel they've been felt up or whatever I'm gonna start complaining - everyone's gonna start being dominant and we'll one man will want to share in the intervention hood business it will be unstoppable and completely negative very boring does the victim business issue that point let me would you this is about sense of both angelic in the demonic and human nature and female natures why don't find it is easy just be as if I was a cat as you do and I can't say we let scattering but I'm obviously in the cache we were straight white male straight white male person right it's why people start talking about how about the power that this gives me that I begin to wonder if slightly too much of a compliment isn't being paid rather is when some women talk about the penis is a sort of noisy engine or cruise missile or something you think well I wonder where they get this idea but I do think there is and the reason why many I will speak for what I think many male straight pipe types do fear is that there is must be some relationship between this empowerment talk that they keep hearing and potency there's got to be some hidden subliminal connection some latent connection there's got to be the thing so they back off a bit so as we began to say I will you know someone said that that this whole thing has two parts one women are saying I'm going to enjoy sex and I'm gonna enjoy sex on my own terms I'm gonna make demands and you're saying when that takes place therefore it affects it goes to the heart of male performance and the beneficient ation is then gonna be better self pity you'll say well actually you know I don't not all that powerful and sometimes I don't feel all that potent alright and the things and it's only the male organ presence a is actually rather capricious vulnerable and why are you both are sort of a relishing and reveling in the fact that he's talking about male performance and male potency we don't bond rebellion we don't you want this order to be in good shape that's what I'm saying about testosterone I'm sorry to say none of us could be here oh well that's very Pagliacci I really I don't think that you know member not rebelling has apply yet oh my god five other fun denigrating selfishly but I mean different well yeah I do think I don't have to become your party or indeed me to say it's a truism I'm making animal rights point basically I mean we are we are an animal species we are programmed to reproduce men particularly program to in seminary they can't seriously help it that's just as well really because without testosterone interactions and other things of the sort none of us would be here now I think that rather as you pulled me up by saying and being there was feminism before the 60s I've quite rage of knowledge I think that point was understood will come here palea well but actually agree to that and assault on their maleness and manhood and that's where we need to go and if that's true then we ought not have this conflict that you talk about the rage and saying it will be confident need not be a war in other words nature is dialectical right and if you marry a man and a woman you don't get a synthesis of male and female unless you get either boil right up right and for this reason the powers gonna come right back to blowing the preparatory fight no no no good days when I come right back to a mechanism I'm having yield but I was really gonna say that what I was said about Elizabeth folks general basis point about all the men that they have to be in a woman's life apart from sexually and the number of masculine roles that men can play for women holds true conversely I mean men have platonic girlfriends who they like they have mothers they have sisters daughters even things like that their relationship with women is always going to be extremely complicated we you can't reduce it to a conflict of interest she I think objectification is enough to be stupid when I'm fed up with it I speak overused like empowerment when I look at that picture if you won't hold it up again yeah I've got a similar offer just goofin what I see there is not just a social object though undoubtedly she is an object everyone else's is an object to everyone else yeah but I also see a subject um I needed to choose a great subject sex is a great subject right women are with male conversation a tremendous subject I'm told the same is true the other way around yes objectified in other words if people talk a little less about themselves and how the personal is political the whole area of contestation is all to do with their own psyche and their own needs and threads and feelings now and a bit more about society how much are the others I think we might get on a lot better such a hard conflict to do for most of us depends on how much I trust my god I sound old-fashioned I mean and crusty to but just lightly used to be an argument you know among feminists but can it be true the story of arrow was written by a woman you must have will have this audience I'm gonna read it and so I think so here was written by a woman but I think was written by a woman with men in mind some women will admit we might even ask you since the wedding we'll hang out having rape fantasies that aren't completely pleasure us but that's up to them it doesn't mean that it doesn't agree that I knew we got doesn't mean but they're entitled to do that it may it may be pleasurable so nice to imagine being ravished but it doesn't that doesn't mean anyone has the right to jump out while you're trying to get the groceries home in Manhattan I do know that part of the reason women have this fantasies is that Hollywood puts a glamour eyes sexy rape in one movie out of eight so little girls grow up not seeing images that you know dissolve met women ooh you think it's just mash it would I be I have been told by women who trust me another one yeah okay yeah they do have such I think it would be insulting to me to say oh I see you have this fantasy you've been watching too many movies there would be an incredible thing but there'll be a very poor reward for a woman revealing her intimate thoughts to win it accused of being a Christian I just think it's obvious yeah absolutely I'm not founded by the Clinton but since we're on the subject you know it's a vine the plains neither Clint okay but there's a detector there is an attractive story about how they met which is told by her we're just there in the library mmm Lowell I believe and she gets up and walks over to this guy bill as it happens and says if you're gonna keep looking at me like that it's time you knew my name there's a story about the lies that I've heard that I like right I don't do nothing well you know when you think of and when you think of what you know it should be that way what is now going on in the libraries and campuses of this country where men and women are so sitting on opposite sides of the soil looking at each other sort of I tell the children I'll I'm glad to hear you know there's a very important counterpoint to that which which offends a lot of civil libertarians of all genders which is not the redefinition of rape the redefinition of evidence and the idea also that you can be accused by someone whose name you don't know right that's problematic I think yeah the anonymity of the one it conveys corresponds to the to the proclamation of the other you you can be accused by an anonymous person that's against we're dealing with it's against the Constitution

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

Views: 622,295

Rating: 4.8436317 out of 5

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Id: f9EggTX-Jbk

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/brainburger]

Here's the whole thing:

https://youtu.be/Or1_13OZhh0

[u/palsh7]

This was submitted and discussed on June 11th in full without cuts.

[u/CollumMcJingleballs]

Hitchens totally charmed that entire table.