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New York, 8:16 AM
Sun Nov 8
22 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/05/09
Pro-choice: "Life continues after birth." #feminism
11/05/09
I'm just wondering when they'll be protesting in favor of prenatal care for all those precious, precious snowflakes? Or well-child checkups so we can address our skyrocketing infant mortality rates? I suppose a kid getting a vaccination isn't as "dog-bites-man" as some douche doused in red food coloring wearing a plastic baby doll like neck bling.
I weep for our future. #dianaroccograndi
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[www.youtube.com]
I don't know how to embed this sucker...
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Re: Feminism being a "dirty word". My first exposure to the term was in a Spice Girls autobiography book (called Girl Power) or something, when I was 9-10 years old. There was a big block quite from one of the girls (Geri I believe) that said, "Feminism has become a dirty word now, girl power is a new way of saying it" or something like that. I had NO IDEA what feminism meant or was, so I thought "dirty word" = "curse word" and I would hide that page of the book from people whenever I was reading it in public so they didn't think I was reading something naughty. Now that I look back on it, I think that book planted the seeds of feminism in me, even if I thought it was a swear word. #feminism
11/05/09
So many women and men appear (by their actions--or more exactly, lack of action) content with where western culture stands today. So many women seem cowed by "feminism"-shaming into accepting that they're equal, when all signs point to the contrary. So many people seem to think things are good enough or to not appreciate how much better they could be. We're lacking consensus about what the next issues are and so we're kind of stuck in this dialogue of sex liberation and little else.
Men were content to give us our quasi-sexual liberation (They get laid more!) and happy to forgo chivalry (Cheaper! They can keep their seats on the train!). But what about the things that seem increasingly to recede in the future: Equal pay. Real help for working mothers. Equality in domestic tasks.
We're at a point at which losing the right to choice seems not impossible. And where is the mass consciousness among women? We're all taking our husbands names and neglecting to vote instead of being thankful every day for where we are and being aware of how much further we have to go.
Ok, not you. But maybe some of the women you know. The ones who make you feel like a caricature for wondering why you're worth less. #feminism
11/05/09
The language itself makes me feel like most people think feminism is unnecessary and that equality has been achieved.
I know it's a loaded term and I might not be using it properly, but I just can't accept it, use it or like it. #feminism
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It's as ludicrous as it would be to say "post-civil-rights era," which I believe was briefly tried after Obama's inauguration. Having your head in the sand must be comfortable.
11/05/09
A big problem comes when things are too often discussed in theory, without enough women and girls talking about how these everyday issues actually affect us personally. I know just being on this site every day for over a year now and reading the posts and comments has opened my already-feminist eyes to the inequalities we still face.
It's similar to how some people are totally homophobic until they discover that someone they know and love is GLB or T. Suddenly it clicks that these are real people, not just theoretical characters.
11/05/09
I got on my feminist soapbox and was like, "Don't apologize for yourselves. Women are judged based on what they wear in a way that men aren't. Women have to adjust their clothing for slight differences in the atmosphere of restaurants and locations, men have basically 3-4 options and don't have to worry about being judged for their clothes and appearances the way women do, so please don't apologize for this because it isn't you fault, and dad you need to shut up because it's not them as much as the world they live in." My mom, who hates that I'm a feminist, and her cousin were basically looking at me like, "...yeah. Yeah!"
So I've found that the best way to talk about feminism is to talk about what it means to be a woman, especially for women who are hostile to the concept of feminism--my mom, for instance, is vehemently anti-abortion, so feminism means baby-killing to her. This isn't the first time I've done stuff like this with her--talking about how she is more frustrated than my dad because her options are more limited than his, she was always expected to be a 100% mother and 100% worker, when that was impossible, and how she is judged by the way her house looks in a way my dad isn't--hell, she's judged on the way my father looks in a way that he isn't. I know my mother frequently feels like she's going crazy, and is sad, and is frustrated, because of her gender. But she can't express or acknowledge that right now. So trying to accept her for who she is, trying to allow her to recognize that her frustrations aren't her own personal problem but are understandable, is a good way to be a feminist.
Another version of this is telling women that they are not crazy when they say that they are crazy, like "I know it's crazy to expect my boyfriend to call me when he decides not to come over instead of just not showing up, and I don't want to be the crazy girlfriend who needs him to call me all the time, but it's so sad when I get all ready and he doesn't show." Or something. I try to say things like, "That's not crazy, you just want him to respect you. I hate this bullshit "crazy woman" narrative in which all emotions, especially women's emotions, are called crazy, which just delegitimizes women's feelings and thoughts." That response has also led me to be the secret keeper for lots of women, like "I have to tell you a secret about the time(s) I was raped." Women are so frequently dismissed that refusing to dismiss them is a radical feminist act. #feminism
11/05/09
@Cimorene: This might be the single favorite thing I've ever read here. YOU ARE AWESOME. #feminism
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I want to shout that from the rooftops, slap it on a bumpersticker, splash it across the evening news. #feminism
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I am a very quick packer. I've packer for month long trips in an hour. The reason I don't snark on women who take much longer to pack isn't the patriarchy, its because it is an asshole move. Not calling is again an asshole move.
I think a lot of this stuff plays into gender, but I tend to put the gender issues second to the rudeness. Not because the gender issues don't matter but because independent of gender some things are just dick. #feminism
11/05/09
* In an alternate universe where I have no impulse control or aversion to needles, of course. #feminism
11/05/09
It can get so bad that in many cases a woman actually believes that she is or is going crazy. It's referred to as "Gaslighting," after the 1930s movie of the same name. It's a very effective way of keeping women controlled, "in their place" and disrespected by culture at large. #feminism
11/05/09
The thing is that gender is so often removed from the equation when one just takes on "rudeness" or whatever, and so it larger cultural trends. This is a behavior that is so often attributed to women that to ignore the fact that gender is part of the equation when my father talks about it is to gloss over the fact that lots of behavior--and therefore the value attribution of said behavior--is inflected by gender.
It's like, my father gets pissed that my mother takes a long time to pack. Besides the fact that why does he even care, he definitely uses it as a "Oh, women!" attitude, in which women are irrationally obsessed with what they wear when men don't care what women or men wear. Pointing out that my father is being rude doesn't change my mother's own ambivalent or shameful understanding of her own relationship with her clothes, because then it's just about him being an ass. My mother obsesses about what she wears in large part because she's a woman, and is therefore judged by how she dresses far more than a man, and because she's fat, and is therefore shamed if she dresses in a way that doesn't downplay her weight. And not just shamed by other people, shamed by herself. But my father, just as fat as my mom, doesn't care, because his body isn't a political space on which gender and weight-related issues are getting played out.
So my mother not only feels anxious about what she wears and how she looks, which makes her obsess about her clothes, she also feels bad about feeling anxious about it and even worse about obsessing over her clothes, because that's supposedly an irrational behavior. Except it's not, if you're a woman, because you're right to think that you're going to be judged based on how you look. Much of our culture is structured around women being judged based on their bodies. So it's important to point out to my mom that she shouldn't feel bad, because her obsession/anxiety does not exist in a vacuum, it isn't just her that has this behavior, and my father isn't just being an ass, he's being an ass in a very specific, gendered way. To focus just on his assiness is to ignore the fact that his behavior is caused by and perpetuates gender stereotypes and value judgments. It's kind of like why calling someone an asshole or some other non-gendered, raced word, is less offensive than calling someone a n*gger, cunt, fag, dyke, etc. Because those words have a history, and the weight of a bigoted culture behind them, in a way that calling someone an asshole doesn't. Calling someone a [bigoted slur] is a dickish thing to do, but it's more than that, because it's part of a larger system in which individual dickishness is almost beside the point, because it becomes part of a culture that perpetuates this bigotry. #feminism
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