Tag: feminism

Interesting Take on Gender and Feminism

tekanji

I came across this untitled post in the feminist_rage LJ about anti-feminist misconceptions about feminism (the OP specifically addresses a white, heterosexual male that she is aquainted with for her rage). One commenter’s words just sort of jumped out at me as interesting [emphasis mine]:

“All feminists really want to do these days is make women into men.”

Oh, wow, that’s hilarious! They just don’t get it, do they? Feminism is about making it okay to NOT be a man. It’s about saying, ‘oh, you’re not a man? Well that’s okay, because you’re still a person.’

[From a post in feminist_rage, comment by nonahs]

I’ve looked at the gender democracy angle from several points of view, but this kind was fresh to me. I’m not sure it would be a useful discourse against an actual anti-feminist, but it’s something to think about at the very least.

Angry Blogging Musings

tekanji

A looooong time ago, Sour Duck did her first post on inhibited writing, in which she reveals some of her own concerns about criticizing Kameron Hurley:

In other words, I became concerned that if I disagreed with her, she might come on over to my blog and leave a hostile or semi-hostile comment, or post one at her blog. This concern/fear/anxiety, as you can imagine, greatly inhibits your writing.

Now, I’m the kind of person who speaks her mind and damn the consequences. Sometimes that means that I find myself needing to apologize for unintentionally hurting someone. When that happens, I apologize for what needs apologizing and move on. I am an angry blogger. This is not going to change any time soon; there’s too much in this world to be angry about. I try to be an intelligent blogger (although I’m not above making a couple crap posts here and there when I feel like it). I try to live up to my own standards when it comes to eradicating divisive discourse. I don’t always succeed. But I’m only human here!

Anyway, one thing I’ve been finding is that the reaction to me criticizing a group or an individual is a lot different to the reaction of any number of my other angry posts. I can blog in generalities and only my fans care enough to comment on it. The moment I go into specifics – whether it be American Apparel, Suicide Girls, or referencing an article by Charlotte Croson in a post berating transphobic feminists – suddenly random surfers have a vested interest in me.

Now, don’t get me wrong! I’m not against people coming on here and voicing dissenting opinions. It’s part of what makes blogging interesting. And, let’s face it, if the whole world agreed with my opinions then I wouldn’t have anything to blog about. I just think that it’s interesting that my anger doesn’t merit discussion until I, to steal from Sour Duck, step on some toes.

Transphobia to the left of me, Anti-feminism to the right…

tekanji

For all my talk about not tarring and feathering those feminists (you know, the ones not like us), I must confess that there is one type of feminist that constantly gets under my skin. The transphobic one. Ye gods I wish I could go to all those who think that transgendered people don’t deserve a place in feminism because they aren’t “real women” (whatever that means) and say to them, “You! Out of my feminism!” I guess a part of it is because in order to believe what they do about the transgendered population, they must first believe in gender essentialism — an ideal not compatible with liberation, as one poster on the feminist LJ pointed out.

But are my exclusionary tactics any different than those who try to tar “radical” feminists with the same brush? Who cry to their critics, “I’m not that kind of feminist, don’t blame me!”? I’m not sure. The so-called “radical” feminists’ biggest problem is that the media has chosen them to caricature, while the transphobic feminists try to exclude transwomen (and transmen) in a very real way. Of course, I have said in the past that not all feminists hold 100% feminist values. I know that, despite my best efforts, I still hold some anti-feminist values.

But is there a line to be drawn? When does an “anti-feminist value” grow so large that it taints the entirety of a person’s, or group’s, feminism? Feminists for Life, if they ever indeed were feminist to begin with, crossed that line with their hate propaganda.

So where does that leave feminists like Charlotte Croson, whose article Sex, Lies and Feminism had so many ignorant assumptions about the transgendered community (as well as the BDSM community) that I couldn’t even finish reading the article? Or this so-called feminist group, FIASCO (Feminists Involved Against Sex Change Operations), whose spokesperson posted Women’s space colonized, a treatise on how transsexuals are “violating” women’s spaces in order to look at them sexually. No joke. I’d wonder how she’d feel about me, a bisexual woman-born-woman, going into bathrooms. I might, — gasp! — be there to “[undress] the innocent women with [my] eyes and [lust] after their bodies to be [mine]”, too!

It’s one thing to not understand transgendered issues (Emma, piny, and I had a long conversation on that in a feministe thread), and quite another to espouse the kind of exclusionist hatred found in the two articles linked above. Is it enough for me to say that women like that aren’t “real” feminists? Probably not. But, their feminism is so tainted by gender essentialism and transphobia (as if it’s somehow more acceptable than sexism, homophobia, racisim, or what-have-you) that I’m also loathe to include their narrow ideals in what I see is a plural movement focused on equality.

Feminism is about equality for all, not equality for some. It’s not just about the middle-aged, upper class, white, straight, [fill-in-the-majority here] women. It’s about the young and the old, the middle class and the poor, the black, the Asian, the Latino, the gay, bi, and trans. It’s about us, and them, and so much more. How can you, or I, be a feminist and then stand up and say, “But I don’t like you so you’re not allowed in the club!”?

Yet, if there’s no line to be drawn, then what happens when simple critique just doesn’t cut it? This isn’t the feminist not understanding why a woman would want to be a stay-at-home mom, this is the feminist who marches up to those women and lectures them on how useless they are for their choice. What, if any, amount of hurt should we be allowed to heap on others and still adhere enough to our goals to be called feminist?

And, after all this, I still don’t know. I know that hatred is not right. I know that it’s not useful. But I also know that it is so hard for me not to hate those who seek to hurt others.

Acknowledging Inersections: MRA's, Feminists, and Gender

tekanji

Hugo posted on MRA’s (Men’s Right’s Activists) and marriage on his thread, Querying the MRAs about marriage. He quoted a few of his resident MRA posters, and I decided to address a (possibly unintentional) implied undertone to one of the quotes about not wanting to be yet another person’s plaything. To which I asked the semi-rhetorical question, “But, somehow, it’s ok for women to go through this?”

For those of you unfamiliar with MRA’s, they’re men belonging to various specific organizations that focus primarily on men’s rights (or lack thereof) in the family court system. On the surface, it seems like a noble goal. And I’m sure for some in their ranks it is just about achieving equal representation in the way the legal system views divorce and child responsibilities. However, where the disconnect happens for me is that most of the MRA’s I’ve come in contact with have wrongfully blamed feminism, and sometimes Western women in general, for their problems.

One of the beliefs that some of them hold that I find to be particularly abhorrent is quoted in Hugo’s post:

As Fenn writes, many men are choosing to pursue immigrant girls from more established cultures who are comfortable in their own less-complex skins and bring their own flourishes of exotica and mystery with them.

First off, calling foreign women (although I’m sure they’d lump the men into a similar category) “less-complex” is insulting and, frankly, wrong. Anyone with a working knowledge of any foreign country would know that people are people, no matter where they live. Coming from a different culture in no way invalidates one’s personhood; it just makes it hard for people ignorant of everything but their own culture to understand the person in question.

Second of all, this whole Othering of (foreign) women is so 1950s. “Exotica and mystery”? Come on. All that is just a pretty way to saying that they don’t want to be bothered with someone they have to see as a human being. Far better for them to do the mail-order bride thing (a term that by its very nature calls up the idea of buying and shipping property rather than a human being) than actually have to build a relationship with someone who they see as their equal.

While I hope that the whole “mail-order bride” idea is an extreme example of their ideals, it does illustrate a notion that I’ve found expressed in one way or another in all of the MRA posts that I’ve read. All MRA’s seem to support a gender caste system and, indeed, for many of them it is a very strict gender caste system. In general, they want their men and women to subscribe to the cult of masculinity and the cult of femininity respectively, meaning breadwinning patriarchs supported by submissive housewives.

They rage on and on about court systems that support just that notion (female as “natural” mother, male as monetary provider) but refuse to acknowledge that a gender democracy is needed for those systems to change.

In Hugo’s thread I accused them of hypocrisy:

I just don’t understand how someone could be more than willing to see their own oppression while being unwilling (unable?) to see how their exact circumstances apply to women – indeed how their exact circumstances have applied to women for centuries.

Now, after all my discussion on how the MRA movement supports a gender caste, how it blames feminism/Western women for their woes, and how it wants its advocates to be the sole victims of the system, I’m going to turn around and apply my quoted statement to feminism.

I have been witness to several feminists denying that sexism against men (both institutionalized and individual) exists. Indeed, while feminism is in general a movement that focuses on not only female oppression, but also the way that many different oppressions (racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc) intersect, many feminists have a hard time acknowledging links between one or more of these oppressions. Heck, if I dug deep enough I’m sure I would have a hard time linking at least one oppression to feminism.

To be fair to the feminists I’m referring to, their statements were always in reference to men coming into their spaces and trying to de-rail their discussions by whining about how they were hurt by x, too. It wasn’t about these men’s experiences, though, it was about monopolizing the conversation and taking the emphasis off of the issues at hand. This, understandably, made the replies angry and harsh. To be further fair to the discussion, the valid concerns that occasionally popped up lead a few of the feminists to create an offshoot community called Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too. The fact that it’s not a very active community is likely a testimony to how many of those “but men are hurt by x, too” debates weren’t real comments to foster discussion, but rather hurtful attempts to halt meaningful examination of topics.

But, for all my fairness, the reality exists: some feminists either refuse to acknowledge that the way the patriarchy oppresses men directly relates to the oppression of women, or even that the patriarchy can oppress men at all.

Of course, the most obvious expression of the patriarchy oppressing men is already given in my MRA primer: gender caste. The cult of masculinity operates on the principle that a man must be “masculine” because being “feminine” is beneath him. I challenge any reader, feminist or no, to demonstrate how that isn’t 1) male oppression by the patriarchy, and/or 2) directly linked to the oppression of women.

The governing principle of a gender caste system is to force all people to worship at the altar of its gender cults. That means that while the cult of masculinity affords men many more privileges than the cult of femininity affords women, it takes away men’s choices in self-expression as readily as it takes away women’s choices. Indeed, living in a society where second-wave feminism has gained me the right to enter the male sphere, I’d say that ostensibly that the cult of masculinity was more rigid than its sister cult. Of course, being the gender that is seen as “lesser”, I’d say that women are still getting the short end of the stick. I just acknowledge that the goal of freeing women from oppression will also free men: in a gender democracy I won’t be the second sex and, therefore, all men will be free to explore their “feminine” sides without fear of being seen as inferior.

On the MRA’s end, that means that equality will be achieved in family court because relationships will be seen as partnerships instead of hierarchies. Of course, equality will come at a high cost for those who believe in gender caste; in order to get equal representation, they must first accept equal responsibility: in the relationship, in and outside the home, and in raising the children.

Parents are from Mars, Non-Parents are from Venus

tekanji

I’ve suffered from yet another Attack of the 50-line Comment, so I decided to make a post about it instead of cluttering Jenn’s comment box. Jenn has done what I’ve come to believe is tantamount to death in many feminist circles: she has spoken up for her rights as a non-parent in her post, baby wars. She was firm in her opinions, harsh (perhaps too harsh) in her judgement, and made the mistake of bringing up breastfeeding. Her criticism of our baby-worshipping cultures brought the attention of Dru Blood, a mother very much concerned about parental rights. If you can stomach the tense exchange, I recommend reading it. Just keep in mind that this post is a general response to the arguments, so I’m not pulling quotes or anything. Anyway, on with the show.

One of the main arguments from the non-parents is that we don’t hate parents (or kids), we hate bad parents. The kinds that refuse to teach or discipline their kids, who let them run wild in inappropriate places (sometimes to the point of endangering the kids and those around them), and who freak out at even the most polite suggestion that they, I don’t know, at least keep an eye on where their children are. Overall, I support this stance; kids are kids and therefore it’s the adult’s responsibility to make sure they’re protected and as well behaved as possible. This is, more-or-less, the stance that Jenn took. Dru, arguing for the parents’ side, pointed out that there’s a fine line between parents trying and failing and not trying at all. In many cases it simply is not easy, or possible, to tell which is which. And, she’s right. If the world were black and white, we wouldn’t need to be having these kinds of conversations.

Her point also brings up another issue. While I think that non-parent (childfree or otherwise) advice is valuable, since we offer an outside perspective, I acknowledge that it is that very outside perspective that makes it impossible for us to truly understand a parent’s situation. The same, however, can be said about parents talking to non-parents; yes, your kids may be your world, but that doesn’t mean that everyone wants to have a kid right now, nor or even ever. There is a point where parents and non-parents cannot truly understand the other, but I believe that, while it’s an important point, it is ultimately a superficial one.

In my studies on the matter as both a feminist and a childfree woman I’ve found that it is the very same parts of the patriarchy working against both sides of the divide: the institutions/social conventions that want to force mothers into some pre-conceived notion of motherhood (and punish them when they don’t fit into them perfectly) also work against childless and childfree women (and, to a lesser extent, they also work against fathers and non-parent men). One glance at the childfree livejournal community shows that, beyond the anti-[bad]parent venting, many posts are about the frustrations that childfree people face when total strangers shame them for not making the “right” reproductive choices. Having lived in mostly liberal areas, I haven’t personally encountered some of the worst horror stories, but I have had to get into more than a few terse conversations with my friends over my choice to be childfree. The worst I got was my uncle, who I love very much, calling me an “idiot” for wanting to get a tubal ligation.

Again, even though I tend toward the non-parent side, I fully believe that the parents’ arguments are valid, and furthermore I think it’s important for parents to bring some perspective to non-parents in this argument. But, just as I feel Dru Blood got hostile towards Jenn, so too have I felt in the past that many individuals in the feminist communities I lurk in are automatically hostile towards non-parents who are trying to understand but still refusing to slip back into the default value of acknowledging parents’ experiences as more valuable than our own. And, I guess, that’s what I feel feminist circles as a whole have a hard time understanding: individuals may get that the experiences of parents and non-parents are equally valuable, but society doesn’t.

No one is saying parents have it easy, far from it. The patriarchy is about control and it doesn’t care if the women are childed or not. But I would argue that the pervading opinion, in the US at least, is that having a child is the only way to become a 100% human being. And those without children are, by proxy, lesser and therefore we have to just suck it up and deal with it if our lives are intruded on by someone’s child. That doesn’t excuse some of the more extreme non-parent positions, just as the valid arguments of parents who want the ability to go out of their house with their young children doesn’t excuse the more extreme parent positions. All I’m saying is that the valid arguments parents have about their hardships are not exclusive of the valid arguments that we non-parents have.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go to a park and expect to have a nice, quiet stroll sans-children. I wouldn’t expect to go to a matinee G or PG movie on a weekend and not be surrounded by kids of varying age and varying rowdiness. I respect family-friendly spaces; heck, I think we should have more of them. Referencing a point that Jenn made in her original post about flying with a kid kicking your seat (my experience is with a kid dropping hirs pacifier on my foot), I would absolutely love for airlines to offer three kinds of flights: normal (like they are now), family-friendly (designed for kids, with G-rated movies and stuff), and adult-friendly (no kids under 13 allowed, designed for adults with PG-13 movies). With three choices, I see it as a win-win situation. Of course, with the airlines in some serious financial trouble it’s not feasible at the moment (too many people would get shut out of flight times they need), but I hold out for one day in the future.

Bottom line: I want to respect the rights of parents without giving up my own. I think our problem right now is entitlement complexes on both sides, with society goading us to fight each other so we don’t notice how badly our governments are shafting us. The problem isn’t parents or non-parents, per se, but rather a society that wants to control our choices rather than help us make them. An example of what I mean is that when Katrina blew through Miami schools were closed but my friend’s company was not. Because of this, the parents who didn’t have the luxury of having a stay-at-home spouse had to bring their kids in. The workplace had no daycare facility and was obviously not set up to handle children. In my friend’s work area there were four or five children, bored out of their skulls, making a ruckus and making it very hard for anyone to work. I don’t blame my friend for being annoyed (I would be, too). I don’t blame the parents for bringing the kids in (what other choice did they have?). I blame the company and our stupid government for not mandating that a company of that size have a daycare facility for the children of its employees.

As long as we continue attacking each other, nothing will get done. It’s not helpful for us to get all up in each other’s faces about the little things because we’re all fighting for the same reason: we want to be heard and acknowledged. We want society to fix our problems because we can’t do it ourselves. Discourse is good, but not if all it does is divide us further. Neither sides can respect each other as long as we continue to fight as if we’re diametrically opposed. We need, as Jenn has proposed, to communicate with each other. There is common ground and both non-parents and parents alike need to find it. Because otherwise it’s just all of us being oppressed, inconvenienced, and just plain getting the short end of the stick.

Complicitly exploiting young women NOW

tekanji

I was starting to feel bad about dragging my feet in support of NOW (National Organization for Women), but not anymore. Well, I’ll let my letter speak for itself [link added]:

I’m a young feminist who has been aware of NOW for quite some time, but I haven’t made the decision whether to join yet. I was browsing through your catalogue and seriously considering buying a few items until I happened upon your “We do it for Money” shirt. I noticed that it was made by American Apparel and, frankly, I would like to know why NOW, a feminist organization, supports a company that exploits young women in a softcore porn-esque advertising campaign, has more than one sexual harassment suit filed against the CEO, and is known for it’s anti-union bullying.

I also added the following links to the bottom of the e-mail:

For information on AA’s advertising practices:

Info on the sexual harassment lawsuits:

I’ll post a reply when (if) I get one, but until I have a darn good explanation and/or they pull their support of American Apparel, they aren’t getting one red cent of my money, nor an iota of my support.

Update [2005/10/22]: I received a reply from Olga Vives, Executive Vice President.

Thank you for your comments. We are discontinuing the American Apparel
shirts. Looking for a comparable shirt.

My reply[link added]:

Thank you for your prompt response.

If you haven’t already, I suggest considering No Sweat Apparel as one alternative to AA’s gear.

I look forward to seeing the AA shirts replaced with those from a better company.

I’ll keep an eye on the site. Hopefully they’ll replace the shirts soon, ’cause some of them really were cute. Now if only I could find a really nice looking “This is what a feminist looks like” shirt…

Gender: Making a Caste System Into a Democracy

tekanji

For so long I’ve wanted a good way to articulate the battle feminists wage over gender. Too often we are accused of wanting to make everyone “the same” (aka. “like men”), but that’s neither possible nor, in my opinion, a helpful discourse in any way. People are not the same. Period. It has very little to do with the sex that they are born into and a whole lot to do with their individual traits, which are influenced but not dictated by primary and secondary sex characteristics. Thus far, I’ve used the terms “cult of masculinity” and “cult of femininity” as shorthand for society mandated gender roles, but they reference more the specific traits seen as “essential” to either gender and less the reality of what forcing people to follow these strict gender binaries really is.

Enter a comment on a mostly unrelated post on the feminist LJ community [emphasis mine]:

There are feminists who believe that the way to solve sexism is to do away with gender, but i think a more practical, interesting, and diversity-friendly approach is just to make gender voluntary or democratic, as opposed to the rigid “caste system” we have now, where your gender is determined by a doctor at birth and is seen thereafter as eternally immutable.

[From Not a REAL FEMINIST!!!, comment by sophiaserpentia]

And there it is, in black and white terms that any one should be able to understand: democracy vs. a caste hierarchy. Who, among Westerners at least, would claim a rigid system with little mobile ability to be superior to a system that purports to champion the individual’s pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness? And if you support democracy in your governmental institutions, if you support it for yourself, then you have no leg to stand on when it comes to supporting a caste system over a democratic one when talking about gender.

Even if you believe in gender essentialism – a belief system yet to be proven, or even strongly supported, by science – then giving people the choice to act in a way that befits them hurts no one. If boys are “naturally” suited to x and girls are “naturally” suited to y, then in a neutral environment they’ll gravitate towards that anyway. If girls don’t like science, then why go through extraordinary measures to keep them out? If all boys are so tough, then why take such extreme measures to shame, and in some cases injure, those who show their feelings or other “weaknesses”?

But, the truth is, gender essentialism is a crock. The very existence of intersexed and transgendered people proves that a person’s identity is more than their chromosomes, or their primary sex characteristics, or even their secondary sex characteristics. We see further evidence of this in the visible correlation between more freedom for people to find an individual identity apart from the traditional one assigned their gender and the increased in varied expressions of gender.

Indeed, if we take a look at Southeast Asia, we find that their different views on gender has lead to a vastly different model than the Western one [emphasis mine]:

The concept of gender is much more complicated in Southeast Asia, with the complexities from social relationships, status, history and even religion. For example, it is often said that women in Southeast Asia has always enjoyed a higher social standing because of their roles in household management and their involvement in local trading activities. This means that it is difficult to establish very clear-cut distinctions between the polarity of male and female using gender roles. Both men and women often share these “traits”. Should trade and management of household finances be considered traits in exemplifying masculinity or femininity?

[…]

Based on my fieldwork on transsexual performers (kathoey) in Phuket, Thailand, I have found that there are many individuals who cross-dress, for different reasons and there are many kathoey (transsexual males) who are comfortable with having both penises and breasts. These people are therefore, satisfied to be in the “territory in-between” and see no need to transgress the gender boundary to become “totally women”. Gender can no longer be strictly defined in terms of possessing biological genitalia and the situational flexibility of gender and sexuality must be recognized. There has been a gradual increase in the number of people who have come to recognize themselves as constituting a separate “third gender” – the transsexual.

[…]

Rather than attempting to cross the gender boundary and passing off as a non-transsexual man or woman, many transsexuals are increasingly seeing themselves as a transgender individual, in a third gender category altogether. Some Western scholars such as Marjory Garber (1992) have advocated the need to escape from the bipolar notions of gender and use a “third category” to describe these new possibilities of gender identification. Transgenderism describes more than crossings between poles of masculinity and femininity. It means transgressing gender norms that are socially-defined. Gender definitions with clear boundaries are also not feasible.

[From Transgressing the Gender Boundary by Wong Ying Wuen]

Wong’s study of Southeast Asian comes to a conclusion that many scholars in the West are only beginning to understand: people are not easily pigeonholed into binary categories. Modern feminism has by and large already embraced this concept, at least from my personal experiences as well as the scholarship I have read on the subject. Because of this, it seems so absurd to me when non-feminists/anti-feminists claim that feminists want to make everyone “the same” – if we acknowledge that people cannot, and should not, be forced into a binary caste system, why on Earth would we advocate forcing them into a singular caste system?

No, what feminists advocate, and indeed what all people regardless of their stance on gender essentialism should advocate, is a gender democracy. Everyone should be allowed to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. What that means is that it should be ok for me to cut my hair short, play video games, and have equal opportunity in the job world if that’s what I want. It means that my friends should all be able to choose to be stay-at-home-parents or not, choose to be caregivers or not, choose to cry or not, regardless of their gender.

It’s not wrong to let an individual choose for hirself what is, and is not, good for hir. What’s wrong is when society takes away that choice with laws, traditions, and social pressure. Choosing a gender democracy over a caste system is a win-win situation; it allows for non-traditional genders to co-exist with traditional ones. The only losers in a democracy are those who are more interested in control than the good of the people.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

tekanji

Maybe I’m just ornery because my surgery got postponed (my doc wanted to do some more tests because my initial bleeding time test came back abnormal), but I was just reading a post on a blog I recently found (Athena’s Legacy). The post, written by Saralah, was entitled Haters Suck and was a defense against some pretty nasty ad hominem attacks that were sent her way.

I was with her all the way, feeling her pain and outrage, until I read this:

I am not a raging feminist. I do not scream about equality in the industry at the top of my lungs without pause, as some people seem to believe. Occasionally, I will post something on the topic here on the blog, and if those posts seem to get more attention, it’s because they usually draw the most comments.

Suddenly, I don’t feel that her blog belongs on our list anymore. No, it’s not because Saralah doesn’t want to be identified as a feminist; our very own Sarah also doesn’t identify as a feminist. I may not agree with it, but I recognize that it’s up to an individual to choose hir own labels. The reason I feel this way because she has chosen to degrade feminism as part of her defensive tactics. She may as well used the word “feminazi” for all the imagery “raging feminist” solicits, and portraying women who unapologetically fight for equality as “scream[ing]… at the top of [our] lungs without pause” is just a long winded way of accusing us of being overly emotional, “hysterical” women.

I am both shocked and disappointed that a blog that I chose to link specifically because of its laudable treatment of women’s issues in gaming would buy into that “I’m not one of those oversensitive women’s studies types” BS in order to… what? Appear less offensive to her misogynist critics? To show that she’s somehow “better” than those of us who chose to embrace the politically incorrect label?

It just makes me so angry that feminists are automatically the target of not only the misogynistic nutbags, but also of people like her who embrace our basic goals but have bought into the vitriol of the patriarchy and therefore feel the need to attack our movement anytime they are attacked by anti-feminist critics. Am I the only one who doesn’t see the earth logic in that? Attacking feminists because of… anti-feminist assholes. We’re not responsible for the continuation of the hate group that we are fighting against, so stop attacking us when they attack you!

I’m going to leave the link up for the moment and give myself some time to contemplate its removal. I had wanted to leave a note on her blog to see what her response would be, but it’s blogger only and I don’t have (or want) an account. I hope that ya’ll will weigh in with your opinions. When it comes down to it, I expect to butt heads with people who believe that women are lesser than men, but I’m just so tired of my group being constantly attacked by people who are, when all labels are stripped away, fundamentally in support of our cause. Like I said in the subject line: with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Update: I would, first and foremost, like to apologize to Saralah for my unnecessarily hurtful tone. While I stand by the general thrust of my post, I shouldn’t have let my anger (both at the subject and my own personal issues) be directed at her. I cannot in good faith sit here and de-link her for having an adverse reaction to people saying horrible things on her blog, especially when I have fallen victim to the same tactics in the past. I in no way condone what was said, but I understand that she’s human, as am I, and we don’t always say exactly what we mean (see her comment for clarification on her position).That being said, I think both issues (non-feminist women’s rights advocates attacking feminism as a defense, and feminists using negative stereotypes of feminism as a defense) are worthy of discussion and are relevant/related to each other.

What would I know? I'm just a potential host.

tekanji

Found this gem via feminist_rage [emphasis mine]:

Why dont [sic] you ever let the father decide if he wants to have his child. What gives you the right to decide if his baby lives or dies. It’s not your body your [sic] killing. You are killing another person with a heart lungs head ect… You are just the host.

[From Re: Women’s Rights on Yahoo! News Message Boards]

People like this are why feminism is still sorely needed, especially in the US. Until women are seen as people instead of walking uteruses I’m going to do my part in promoting equality.

"He's a man", "she's a woman"… So what?

tekanji

While I’m on my mental vacation I’d just like to point ya’ll to a post by alley rat entitled Why Do Women Cheat?. It’s a critique on a pop-science article that uses essentialism, bad evolutionary science, and a big dose of idiocy to say that since “monogamous” female birds cheat for supposed “reasons”, human women do it for the same “reasons”. Yeah. Right.

Anyway, the conclusion of the article caught my eye. It gave me a warm fuzzy, so I wanted to share it:

While I’m at it, I’ll just mention that I think that the absolute weakest explanation for anything people do is “well, he’s a man” or “well, she’s a woman, that’s how women are”. No, people. That may be how YOU are, but don’t include me in that. The reason I got interested in feminism when I was a teenager was because people kept telling me what I was like, and they kept being really, really wrong. People told me that I wanted to get married and have kids; people told me that I couldn’t enjoy sex without love; people told me that I was a romantic, delicate creature. People told me lots of shit that was supposed to be true because I was female, and that wasn’t true at all. And it wasn’t true of most of my female friends, but a lot of it was true of my male friends. And I realized that people had been telling me a bunch of lies, things that were “social convention” and things that were stupid rules that I was suposed to follow whether or not they actually suited me. And the same thing applies to every boy I’ve ever been close to, only probably to a more severe extent. They got told all kinds of untrue things about themselves too, because when you’re born people look at your genitals and they think they know who you are. But they don’t. And so, to close this rant, I’d just like to say a big “Fuck off!” to all the lies. Human beings are infinitely more complicated than our biology (whatever that may be, anyway) and if you ignore or downplay the role of culture in behavior, you are doomed to telling lies.

Right on, alley rat.