Men need to realize that they are not hearing the word ‘no’.
And men and women both need to recognize what pressure looks like. It’s not rape as we commonly think of it. It’s not violent, it’s not by a stranger, and it’s not usually malicious. I don’t think men do this because they are misogynistic or because they hate women or because they don’t respect us. They just don’t realize that they are making us defend ourselves, that they are making us resist them, over and over and over again. That is pressure.
"Carrie is, in many ways, a boogeyman; she is what professional women, and particularly ones in male-dominated professions, have been taught never to become - emotional, hysterical, crazy. Emotion is how women who want to be taken seriously are undermined and dismissed. Even if you’re perfectly sane, being emotional - and most especially, being angry - devalues you and your professional contribution. A woman can be called crazy simply for behaving like a normal human being rather than a robot (and of course, if she behaves robotically and unemotionally, she’s a cold bitch). But Carrie isn’t simply emotional (though she is that too, and worst of all, she allows her feelings for a man to cloud her judgment) - she actually is crazy and hysterical, in the proper clinical sense rather than the exaggerated one which attaches to any feminine display of emotion, and profoundly pathetic and unattractive in that state. And she’s completely right, she’s the only person who figures out Brody and Abu Nazir’s plans and motivations, and the person who saves the day by being hysterical, infecting Brody’s daughter with enough of that hysteria that she calls her father and convinces him not to blow himself up.
It’s certainly possible to read this arc as purely tragic, Carrie’s self-destruction being the cost of saving the world (though this is a character arc that is applied to men as often as women), but to my mind its effect is more complex. It makes a crazy, hysterical woman into a hero without in any way mitigating her craziness or hysteria, and thus defangs the argument that emotion in women is a weakness.
"“I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”
-Patrick Stewart
So let me get this straight:
They killed off the male hero in FTL and sent four fierce women… well, three fierce women and one woman with anger issues… on a journey on their own. And Snow White is an archer. And they talk about all kind of things that do not revolve around men at all. And those conversations magically do not turn into “how do I knit cardigans and have sex with my hand” convos, either? They talk about being a family and friends and allies and they advance the plot. And being a mother is nothing that puts a woman in the kitchen where she belongs. But a woman whose goal is not to be a mother isn’t looked down on at all, either. They all have their autonomy, no matter what.
Does this show actually exist or am I making things up?
Because this one hour every Sunday feels like vacation for my soul.
Just to clarify this: The obvious race problem is not the only thing OUaT doesn’t handle well. I’ve yet to see LGBTQ* characters and I sure hope it’s not going to be that token gay guy. But thanks for ignoring that on behalf of the topic that actually concerns you.
This post was about OUaT’s unashamed feminism and I stand by that statement.
What men mean when they talk about their “crazy” ex-girlfriend is often that she was someone who cried a lot, or texted too often, or had an eating disorder, or wanted too much/too little sex, or generally felt anything beyond the realm of emotionally undemanding agreement. That does not make these women crazy. That makes those women human beings, who have flaws, and emotional weak spots. However, deciding that any behavior that he does not like must be insane– well, that does make a man a jerk.
And when men do this on a regular basis, remember that, if you are a woman, you are not the exception. You are not so cool and fabulous and levelheaded that they will totally get where you are coming from when you show emotions other than “pleasant agreement.”
When men say “most women are crazy, but not you, you’re so cool” the subtext is not, “I love you, be the mother to my children.” The subtext is “do not step out of line, here.” If you get close enough to the men who say things like this, eventually, you will do something that they do not find pleasant. They will decide you are crazy, because this is something they have already decided about women in general.
"I’m a guy, and I need feminism. Not “men’s rights.” Feminism. Here is why.
Everything that MRAs talk about that men can’t do or are socially punished for arise directly and immediately from misogyny. Not “misandry.” Misogyny.
Whether I am expressing my emotions, playing with children, baking, having sex wherein I am penetrated in any way, wearing the wrong color, talking the wrong way, moving the wrong way, being sexually harassed/assaulted, or paying too little attention to looking like I’m not paying attention to how I look, when society punishes me or derides me or marginalizes me for these things, it is happening because they are things women, not men, are expected to do, and our society at large fucking hates women.Has that sunk in yet?
Men, can you even think of a single goddamn way you have ever been mocked that wasn’t related to something that a misogynist society sees as feminizing? Even when large men are mocked for their bodies, they are referred to as having “man-boobs,” for fucks sake.
How do you expect to improve those things with “men’s rights?” What right are you fighting for? I can tell you what I think you’re fighting for. I think you’re fighting for the right to contain and control misogyny, and direct it back at women, where you think it belongs. You want to maintain your privilege but erase its consequences, and that’s why your movement is farcical; it’s a big fucking feedback loop. How do you expect men to be free from the peripheral effects of misogyny when you refuse to even fucking believe it’s real?
Feminists have always been accused of hating men because it is a very effective way of silencing a very threatening movement. In a society where women’s value is based on our ability to please men, and where men hold almost all the cards, the worst possible thing we can do is hate them. So when feminists point out and object to the oppression, abuse and discrimination perpetuated by men against women, this is framed as man hating in an attempt to silence us, in an attempt to ensure that we are vilified and ignored by the rest of society, so that male oppression of women and male privilege can continue unchecked.
No matter how we frame our arguments and no matter what kind of image we seek to project, as long as we highlight, object to and fight misogyny, feminists are going to be called man haters.
So I’m not going to waste my time trying to prove that I’m not.
"In defense of Caitlin Moran and populist feminism
feminism is, and to an extent always has been, a white, middle class movement
Oh fuck you.
Feminism is a universal value. By claiming that feminism has been an accomplishment of mainly white, middle class women, you are erasing the work of so many women of color who have striven for the same rights as you have all throughout history. And what an incredibly and disgustingly ethnocentric claim to boot.
The Iranian feminism movement began in 1910.
The Egypt Feminist Union was founded in 1923.
Qiu Jin, who is considered China’s first feminist, and a personal hero of mine, began the Chinese Women’s Journal in 1906.
You erase Sojourner Truth. You erase Amrita Pritam. You erase Faye Wattleton, who was not only the first African-American president of Planned Parenthood, but the first woman to be president since Margaret Sanger founded the organization. You erase a rich history of women within and outside of the United States who not only fought on the front lines for women’s rights, but also had to deal with oppression of their gender that is unique to their experience as women of color.
Sojourner Truth’s experience as a black slave informed her feminism in ways that activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton just wouldn’t have been able to understand. There were women present during Sojourner’s famous Ain’t I a Woman speech who begged Frances Dana Barker Gage not to let her speak.
Gage recalled:
“Don’t let her speak, Mrs. Gage, it will ruin us. Every newspaper in the land will have our cause mixed up with abolition and niggers, and we shall be utterly denounced.” My only answer was, “We shall see when the time comes.”
White women have contributed much to feminism, but feminism does not belong to them. When you decide that our voices are not important or that intersectionality “fractures” the movement, you are not only adding to a system of oppression, but you are denying yourself an invaluable perspective from women who have been marginalized in ways you can’t even begin to comprehend.So fuck you.
Melissa McEwan, of course, on the terrible bargain. My life as a woman, as a queer person, as a fat person, is not your thought experiment. (via sanitywatchers)
Fucking this. This. This. This. “Why are you yelling?” BECAUSE IT’S MY LIFE. AND YOUR WAY OF THINKING MAKES ME WONDER IF YOU EVEN SEE ME AS HUMAN.
(via itscandidlycara)
