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  • MONDAY APRIL 10 2006 4:37 AM

Feminist Author Says Piercings and Tattoos Are Mutilation, Blames Gay Self-Hatred

Submitted by NoThanks

Edited by NoThanks

Think your tattoos or piercings are harmless fun, simply cool or pretty? Nuh uh, says Sheila Jeffreys. The British feminist and author who teaches at the University of Melbourne in Australia is claiming nipple piercing, tattoos, breast implants, cutting and amputee fetishes are all expressions of the same pathological impulse, one triggered by an abusive, male-dominated society. It’s self-mutilation, whether you do it yourself or pay someone else to perform the act for you.

The cutting up that girls do secretly in their bedrooms, the nipple piercing that is performed in high street studios, breast implant surgery, sex reassignment surgery, are connected. They are all forms of self-mutilation, and increasingly the cutting is carried out by proxies for a profit. They are responses to low social status, sexual and physical abuse or severe emotional distress created by a male dominant society which does not accept women’s varied body shapes or condemns homosexuality.


Apparently this trend entered the mainstream due to the influence of self-hating homosexual men.

The forms of injury provided by these studios and independent operators ranged from bellybutton piercings to the extremes of spearing straight through the torso as carried out by the Californian ex-advertising executive Fakir Musafar. The practices stemmed from two main sources, punk fashion and gay male sadomasochism.
Gay male fashion designers placed pierced models on their catwalks, and helped to inscribe a practice that had symbolised gayness, onto the bodies of conventional young women and some young men.

The practices of mutilation that are being carried out on the bodies of women, girls and vulnerable categories of men in the early 21st Century are savage and increasing in their brutality. Underlying the demand for these practices is the despair of those with low social status, particularly women and gay men. The harms of misogyny, sexual and physical abuse and gay-hating, create the ability of those who self-mutilate to disassociate emotionally from their bodies, and to blame their bodies for their distress.


Jeffreys, who became a lesbian in 1973 not because she wanted to fuck women but instead to show her commitment to feminist revolution, also claims 10 to 15 percent of piercings become infected, breast implants were invented to make Asian women sexually attractive to westerners during the post-WW2 occupation of Japan and that heterosexuality is more oppressive than apartheid. At least one of her critics seems to think she blames lesbians who enjoy make-up and pornography for derailing feminist revolution.

Someone should hook her up with a complementary SuicideGirls membership. It'd give her enough source material to generate books and papers and proclamations for the next hundred years, if her brain didn't explode on first contact.

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Comments
benjiB

benjiB

Richmond, VA
November 2004

APR 10, 2006 10:12 AM

Well, it's good to know there are feminists just as eager to stick their foot in their mouth as the groups they're against.

MetaTag

MetaTag

United Kingdom
September 2002

APR 10, 2006 10:32 AM

If men are the master race, why does this picture make sense?

wink wink wink

deathcultreject

deathcultreject

United Kingdom
December 2005

APR 10, 2006 10:54 AM

Sid said:
i think i just threw up a little. fuck her. frown



Same here.

Personaly I think that her opinions are the product of a mutilated sexuality.

How come anthropologists who work with non repressed cultures report that they practice body modification or scarring as rites of passage and marks of dignity and honour?


Lior

Lior

United Kingdom
August 2005

APR 10, 2006 11:01 AM

Ugh. Some of that rot she is spouting sounds just like my mother.

Especially the crap about body mods being mutliation.

puke puke puke puke puke

Lorelei

Lorelei

SUICIDEGIRL

Tennessee, USA

APR 10, 2006 11:29 AM

"Jeffreys, who became a lesbian in 1973 not because she wanted to fuck women but instead to show her commitment to feminist revolution.."


Ooookay.

Spica

Spica

SUICIDEGIRL

I'm lost

APR 10, 2006 11:41 AM

The problem with feminism (and it's male counterpart) is bigotry. You don't do what you do because you love someone else, you do it because you hate them.
Women don't need to be empowered; being equal to men (who happen not to be anyone's enemy) should be the goal.

This lady is just like some 15-year-olds I know: she proclaims herself a lesbian just because she's too scared to touch a penis.

FrankMask

FrankMask

Saint Paul, MN
June 2003

APR 10, 2006 11:50 AM

This is... silly. But good for her. When I make a scene and embarass myself people just shun me and try to pretend I don't exist. She's managed to bank some notoriety out of it.

Wolfmaen

Wolfmaen

Roswell, GA
May 2004

APR 10, 2006 11:52 AM


They are responses to low social status, sexual and physical abuse or severe emotional distress created by a male dominant society which does not accept women’s varied body shapes or condemns homosexuality.



This whine-line was tired circa 1973. It seems like this 60's extreminist never really was able to change with the times.


Jeffreys, who became a lesbian in 1973 not because she wanted to fuck women but instead to show her commitment to feminist revolution



...aaaand that's about where I stopped taking this article seriously.


she blames lesbians who enjoy make-up and pornography for derailing feminist revolution.



...Or should she really be blaming herself? Isn't this the same person who, in the 80's, openly supported those activists who busted up a lesbian S&M bar in London and assaulted the patrons with crowbars... in protest of violence against women?


Someone should hook her up with a complementary SuicideGirls membership. It'd give her enough source material to generate books and papers and proclamations for the next hundred years, if her brain didn't explode on first contact.



Yes, explode or lock up faster than Windows '95. robot

Wolfmaen

Wolfmaen

Roswell, GA
May 2004

APR 10, 2006 11:54 AM

mitchclem Congratulations, Ms. Jeffreys, you're the reason women still can't even get a raise or a court date for a rape charge. Girl power!



Sadly, word. frown

Wolfmaen

Wolfmaen

Roswell, GA
May 2004

APR 10, 2006 11:55 AM

Dove said:

mamet said:

Dove said:

Kore said:
whatever, she should realize that she can't define people's actions so broadly, especially without actually hearing from said people. it's ridiculous. whatever



+1

her theories are biased pseudoscience and just rather silly.



Stop being glib, Dove. You don't know the history of nipple piercing. Sheila Jeffreys does.




long lost siblings?





AGGGHHHH CUT IT WITH THE FRAKKING TOM CRUISE JOKES!

...if you make another joke about Tom's beliefs, the TERRORISTS WIN

Wolfmaen

Wolfmaen

Roswell, GA
May 2004

APR 10, 2006 11:56 AM

Otoki said:
I think people who change their orientation for political reasons destroy the whole point of being queer: it's the way I am.



Word. It also establishes them forthwith as obvious, pretentious phonies.

solipsistic

solipsistic

United Kingdom
November 2005

APR 10, 2006 11:57 AM


I presume she gets paid to come up with and publish this stuff, more than enough to live on I imagine unlike the women (and men) who clean her office, take out her rubbish, or sit begging for her change in the street.

I wonder how much time and energy she expends attempting to redress the social inequalities that give her a privileged academic lifestyle she lives, a much harder target than people who pierce, tattoo etc.

Wolfmaen

Wolfmaen

Roswell, GA
May 2004

APR 10, 2006 11:58 AM

Spica said:
This lady is just like some 15-year-olds I know: she proclaims herself a lesbian just because she's too scared to touch a penis.



Ah, fear: the root of all true bigotry.

Whoa echoes of Freud anyone?

joker_

joker_

Minneapolis, MN
October 2005

APR 10, 2006 11:58 AM

I stopped taking this article seriously before any mention of this womans ridiculous life choices. I suspect that you might be able to find every single one of these fallacious arguments in her spiel:

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

In fact, we could make a game out of it. Find a fallacy in her little spiel and then explain why. By the end I suspect the only piece that will hold water is her personal choice to become a lesbian (regardless of how silly her reasoning in that choice)..

mmm

mmm

I'm lost
March 2006

APR 10, 2006 12:00 PM

solipsistic said:
I wonder how much time and energy she expends attempting to redress the social inequalities that give her a privileged academic lifestyle she lives, a much harder target than people who pierce, tattoo etc.



She's too busy attempting to redress the social inequalities that always prevented her from getting laid in college.

Edited because I spell crap-like.

[Edited on Apr 10, 2006 by Flinty]

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