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Today’s Feminism
Saw this on Twitter this evening and got to thinking.
The topmost tweet is that one that caught my attention. I’ll quote it in case it’s difficult to read.
Most gamers seem to support equality feminism. What they reject is today’s male-bashing, propaganda-driven, female chauvinism.
#GamerGate
I read a lot of claims about “modern feminism” or “3rd wave feminism” or even “4th wave feminism” being somehow separate from “equality feminism”, but I don’t usually see much else. It’s just sort of thrown out as though it’s self-evident that mainstream feminism today has abandoned the old standard of “the radical notion that women are people” and become an excuse for male-bashing by ugly, uppity women.
Actually, I’m pretty sure people have been saying that about women’s rights movements since before “feminism” was a word.
Honestly I do have an actual point to get to, but first I have to wonder: is “male-bashing, propaganda-driven, female chauvinism” actually a thing? I mean, I’ve seen a couple of websites that describe themselves as “radical feminists” and do seem to be openly hostile towards men, but they seem to be fairly isolated and don’t attempt to, you know, actually oppress men in any way. I just haven’t seen any of this male-bashing in a position of actual influence, you see, and certainly not to the point that you could describe it as though it were the primary voice of feminism today.
But moving on, the bottommost tweet added some context, which really must be appreciated.
I always expected other liberal-minded scholars to join me in exposing 3rd wave feminist lunacy.Never happened.But now the gamers r here.
Just so we’re clear, is there some other clash between feminists and gamers, or is she actually talking about the waves of hate and abuse Anita Sarkeesian has been receiving for the heinous crime of creating a video series examining common sexist tropes in video games? You know, the shit that’s gotten so bad that blogging about the death threats she’s received is enough to bring death threats of your own down on you?
Because to be honest, I’m not really seeing that as “exposing 3rd wave feminist lunacy”. Not even a little. It really looks like pure reactionary anger to me.
Look, I’m not all-knowing. Maybe I’ve missed some vital context here.
Truth is, lately I’ve gotten lazy about checking sources & background on anything to do with feminism, because it’s always boiled down to a bunch of guys with a sense of entitlement whining. I think the turning point was a kerfluffle about a conference instituting a sexual harassment policy for the first time. The outcry wasn’t over the content or implementation of the new policy, it was that they had a sexual harassment policy at all.
Not that it’s really relevant, but from what I recall the policy itself was pretty boilerplate. Instructions to staff dealing with complaints were basically, “Document everything, and call the police if someone asks you to.”
It’s gotten increasingly difficult for me to take this sort of thing seriously since then.
Catholics vs Girls
First up, an Arizona high school forfeited the championship baseball game rather than play a team with a girl on it. This would honestly bother me less except that they played two games during the season and made her sit out, rather than offend delicate eyes with all her femaleness. Apparently asking other schools to keep girls out and refusing to play if they don’t are more or less standard procedures for this one.
I’m a little upset at how far people are going out of their way for these assholes, they made her sit out twice and are working really hard to be respectful. Look at this,
“I respect their views, but it’s a bit out of the 18th century,” said Mesa Prep athletic director Amy Arnold
See myself I’m feeling that I don’t respect their views, because it’s a bit out of the 18th century. I also really wish her coach had refused to bench her, or even dignify the request with a response, when they first asked her to sit out. It’s one thing to respect someone’s idiosyncrasies, but coaches should really stand by their team.
Strictly speaking this school isn’t Catholic, but run by the Society of Saint Pius X, who broke away from Rome back in the 80’s because they thought the church wasn’t medieval enough. I note the distinction because details matter, but to be brutally honest it just feels like it’s the old Catholics from before Vatican II.
Our second story is real genuine Catholics being pushy assholes. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched an “official inquiry” into the Girl Scouts. Apparently they’re upset because GS material has links to groups like, I shit you not, Doctors Without Borders.
I swear it feels like these guys live in a twisted, backwards world where everything that I see as good is clearly bad and wrong to them. I mean if I were going to name a single group that does nothing but good and couldn’t be considered controversial, that’s it. Apparently supporting birth control at all is now considered controversial. We’re moving backwards, people.
“I know we’re a big part of the culture wars,” said the Girl Scouts’ spokeswoman, Michelle Tompkins. “People use our good name to advance their own agenda.”
“For us, there’s an overarching sadness to it,” Tompkins added. “We’re just trying to further girls’ leadership.”
Sadly, just that is probably enough to piss off most patriarchal groups. Conservative groups have been working very hard in the last year to push back women’s rights, and undermining a group that teaches girls leadership would be a strategic advantage there.
I really don’t understand why anyone pays them any attention or gives them any power at all.
This isn’t the Middle Ages anymore. If the church isn’t going to move with the times, people really need to start leaving it. And I know that most won’t, and that makes me sad. There’s too much human suffering already and yet churches like this seem determined to add as much as possible.
Oh look, more angry depressing shit
A friend sent me this link, calling it “blog fodder”. I guess that much is true, but sometimes you read something and just want to kill the messenger.
Georgia passed the “Women as Livestock” bill. I had to check the date on that, but it says March 31 so I guess there’s not much hope that it’s just a very bad April fools prank. It bans all abortions past 20 weeks. There was a slight concession made for cases when the fetus was dead, not expected to survive, or likely to kill or physically injure the woman. What she wants, how she feels about things, her own pain and suffering? Irrelevant, they aren’t addressed at all. She’s just a vessel, nobody cares about her wishes.
For extra fun, they stipulate that during an abortion procedure the fetus must emerge alive. Seriously, these shitheads give us the bullshit line of “fetal pain”, and then set up the law to cause as much as possible.
Man, fuck Georgia. Read the rest of this entry
The Hypocratic Oath in Texas.
By now you may have heard about this week’s Doonesbury storyline, the one that many newspapers aren’t publishing. Here’s a link to the beginning of it, you can click on the strip itself to see a larger image. Just click through and read it.
All done? Good, now read this actual account of an actual woman going through that actual nightmare. Especially if you’re Texan, Republican, or male, don’t make excuses, fucking read it. Imagine it, try to visualize going through that. Imagine someone you love having to do that. Read the rest of this entry
Untitiled
Today’s topic is burlesque. Specifically, this question a friend tossed at me while I was whining that I didn’t know what to write about.
blog on whether burlesque is a celebration of female sexuality or an objectification of women, and is it really objectification or just good advertising if it’s consensual and it’s the woman herself who is objectifying herself?
On the first part, the short answer is “it depends”. Burlesque is simply too broad a category, taken as a whole, to be classified like this. You’ll find shows that are either, neither, both, or even “reply hazy, try again later”. Worse, celebration & objectification are both subjective concepts with fuzzy edges. Thanks to confirmation bias, watching the same show with different expectations could give radically different opinions. Read the rest of this entry
From the Stars, and #NudePhotoRevolutionary Calender
Couple of neat things.
First, I found this video at Bad Astronomy.
It’s always fascinated me to know that we literally came from stars, and Neil Tyson explains why very clearly. Truly awesome in that the thought inspires genuine awe. Read the rest of this entry
Turning back the clock on sex.
So, I was looking at this page about a GOP Rep lying about the morning after pill and whining that religion should have some privileged place in the law. I looked at the links in the sidebar, so many of which are about political attacks on women. I thought of Rush Limbaugh’s insane demand for sex videos from women who use birth control. And I tried to imagine the world these assholes are trying to create.
It made me think of My Secret Life. First published in 1888, this anonymous sex diary is a fascinating uncensored look into the side of Victorian culture that was so carefully hidden in published work from that era. “Walter” holds nothing back in describing his sexual adventures and it can be uncomfortable to read at times. Read the rest of this entry
Making others live by your rules
I’d meant to just toss that video up with a short paragraph and call it a day for blogging, but I foolishly clicked a link I saw on Twitter. I’m going to quote the bit that made me too angry to do anything more productive than this.
Asserting conscientious objections, nurses in New Jersey have said they would not check the vital signs of patients recovering from abortions.
I want to make it crystal fucking clear what I’m seeing here. I’m seeing that nurses, people who are well-trained professionals in taking care of sick or injured people, will not make the basic checks necessary for the safety and well-being of their patient if they don’t like the procedure that patient is in for. And they’re calling it a decision of “conscience”, apparently without irony.
How dare you call that conscience? The word should die on your tongue. Read the rest of this entry
Susan G. Komen Abandons Women
As you’ve probably heard by now, breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure is ending all grants and funding to Planned Parenthood. Here‘s Greg Laden on it, and here‘s NPR. I don’t really have anything to say that you can’t get from them.
I read someone cheering this decision, claiming it was the right choice because “life matters”. What life? Women are going to die because of this, not blastocysts that could potentially become women, but real whole living breathing women. You have the audacity to say that’s good because “life matters”? Fuck you.
Could someone please explain to me why so many people have such a fucking hard on for screwing Planned Parenthood, and all the women who depend on them for their health?
Seriously, what is wrong with people?
Found this on Pharyngula, under the heading “Female genital mutilation has medical benefits?” and my first thought was “Oh how cute, those sick girl-cutters are copying a page from the sick boy-cutters and claiming bullshit hygiene improvements”. And at first it seemed to be exactly that, it started with some bullshit about secretions that accumulate causing an odor that leads to infections (odors cause infections? What?), but then I read this:
Circumcision reduces excessive sensitivity of the clitoris which may cause it to increase in size to 3 centimeters when aroused, which is very annoying to the husband, especially at the time of intercourse.
At some point during the reading of that sentence, part of my brain started screaming and hasn’t fully stopped yet.
The site is called Islam Question and Answer, and is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a place to ask questions about Islam and have them answered by people who presumably know what they’re talking about.
Ok, first of all, listing the removal of an annoyance to her husband as a health benefit for her seems like a joke in very poor taste, considering the flimsy excuses abusive spouses use to justify their violence. Also it really suggests that the woman isn’t being considered a person in her own right, but rather a thing belonging to her husband, to be modified for his pleasure. My little fucktoy, or something. I want to emphasize that the part about considering a woman a person in her own right is more important than what follows, even though I’ll spend less time on it.
Second, I want a serious show of hands from any men in the audience who have ever been annoyed by a woman’s clit during sex. Seriously, as they say on Wikipedia, citation fucking needed! How is that even supposed to work? Read the rest of this entry
The Dangers of Feminist Marriage!
Wow, this is a special kind of crazy. From Manboobz we find this post from David Usher of the Center for Marriage Policy explaining the latest reason you should fight against the evil tyranny of same-sex marriage: It’s a Trojan horse to allow “Feminist Marriage” which will destroy America! Read the rest of this entry
“a violent society, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy”
A couple days ago I wrote about Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, a young Egyptian woman who posted naked pictures to her blog to “call attention to a violent society, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy”. I believe I called her one of the bravest people I’ve ever heard about, and I stand by that statement. It probably doesn’t surprise you at this point to learn that some Egyptians want to have her whipped.
Look, if someone says that you are violently oppressive and their stance of defiance against your alleged violent oppression is to publicly post photos of themselves, then calling for them to be brutalized, possibly executed, really just tells the world that they’re right.
I’m far too tired to do this subject justice. So I’ll just ask you a question. What’s more obscene, posting public naked photos, or having some publicly whipped?
Naked in Egypt
Aliaa Magda Elmahdy is an Egyptian student who posted nude pictures of herself on the internet in the name of women’s rights. Here’s an article about it, and here’s Elmahdy’s blog, which now has many pictures of naked people. It’s caused a surprising amount of backlash: surprising to me, at least.
The comments on her blog are in many languages, so I’m stuck with using Google Translate to get the gist of most of the discussion. And most of them are from outside Egypt, outside the Mid-East, even, and are overwhelmingly supportive.
That gives me some hope, maybe the hardline Muslims will look at that and have a moment of introspection. Maybe they’ll think “If the rest of the world sees our policies as oppressive and archaic, relics of a dark age, could we be mistaken?” I know that’s pretty unlikely, not only because religious fundamentalism leaves little room for introspection but because these movements to expand religious power and take rights and freedoms away from people are expanding. Read the rest of this entry
The Fucking Patriarchy, Part 5
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, this is the end of Fucking Patriarchy Week. Whatever I still have to say on the subject after this post (and there’s still a lot more) is just going to have to wait for another opportunity. Read the rest of this entry
The Fucking Patriarchy, Part 4
“Boys don’t cry. Man up and grow some balls, you sissy, or are you just gonna cry like a girl?”
More than anything else, the fucking patriarchy hurts and oppresses women. But if we’re going to take in the scope of the thing, we have to look wider than that. Because the fucking patriarchy hurts and oppresses everyone.
Women are inferior, therefore anything a man does that is at all like a woman diminishes him, is something for him to be ashamed of. This has led to some of the most ridiculous stereotypes, since the ideal woman is clean, well-dressed, and able to do all the cooking and cleaning on top of whatever else everybody is doing, the stereotypical man is slovenly, unwashed, and lazy. I can speak to this one from personal experience, when I go out in public clean, well-groomed and stylishly dressed, it’s almost certain that someone will assume I’m gay.
Gender roles are silly things. The idea that your sex is also a job, that it comes with responsibilities specific to it, is an old one. It can be found all over the world, but no two cultures seem to agree just which duties are “manly” and which are “womanly”. There’s no practical reasons for them, we could easily just ignore these tired old social conventions and be who we like, except we still have this ghost of a dinosaur telling us to conform, conform, conform.
Conformity is a powerful force in the human psyche. When someone refuses to conform they’re ostracized, demonized, and frequently targeted for violence. The fucking patriarchy survives on conformity, and has mechanisms to defend itself from iconoclasts.
Another short post, I’m sicker today than I was yesterday. At this rate I’m going to have to stretch this out. Maybe that’s for the best, talk about something else tomorrow and get back to this subject. I’ll think about it later, for now I’m going back to bed.
The Adventures of Leo Tarvi 