Babbling Brookelet

Fashion is a Feminist Issue: Greta Christina (via tulletulle)

(via cultofjupiter)

(via motherjones)

Let me clear up a few things before we get started.

• First: If you want to have an intelligent debate about Twilight, especially in the contexts of literature, feminism, and art, I welcome all comers. I don’t care if Twilight was your favorite book or your least favorite, as long as you can talk about it with an open mind, respect, and intelligence I want to hear it. Anything else is not welcome.
• Second: I read Twilight, so don’t tell me to “give it a chance” or try to suggest I “don’t know what I’m talking about.”
• Third: You are welcome to share, quote, print, redistribute, whatever as long as you cite appropriately. The journal website is here and the full text of the journal is here (pdf).

A little back story here. As an undergrad I was invited to participate in something called The NOMAD Project through my department. The project lets undergraduates submit essays on a pre-selected topic, present those essays at an academic conference, and publish the essays in a journal. The process was not easy and only 13 of the initial 21 participants made it to publication. You can learn more about NOMAD at the website. The other articles are excellent, by the way, and I recommend them all.

On to the essay. Enjoy.

I am so sick and fucking tired of people using the terms “hetero-normative” or “cisgendered” as though they were dirty words.

Fuck you.

I love my body and my body looks good in skirts. My body looks good in high-heeled shoes and V-neck blouses and tight pencil skirts. I love my long hair and I love wearing it up and down and curling it and straightening it and playing with it. I love my breasts and my legs and my stomach and my neck and my face, which has a pretty little mouth and nice big eyes and a pointy Jewish nose. I wear makeup when I feel like it, and I don’t wear makeup when I don’t feel like it.

I see no reason to hate my body because it falls into the hetero-normative category of “feminine” or “sexy.” Stop trying to make me feel like a spoiled, privilege-denying bitch for being born this way. You were born the way you were and you love your body. I was born the way I was and I love my body.

I like men. I like the way they taste and smell and look and sound and feel. I like their different types and sizes, fat and thin and short and tall and brawny and scrawny, and the way they talk and the way they move. I like the way they talk to me and move with me, on me, around me. I like the way they make me feel, and I like the way I make them feel. I can find a woman’s body aesthetically pleasing or admire her hair or her makeup or her outfit or even her body and still not have the least desire to do anything more than give her a hug.

I am, after much consideration and even a little experimentation, straight. I am not ashamed of my attraction to men, and I am not embarrassed that they find me attractive. I don’t care who you fall in love with, I don’t care what your adult and consensual sexual antics are. Stop trying to make me feel like a closed-minded, homophobic person for not being interested in women. I respect your right to live your life the way you want. Respect my right to live my life the way I want.

I am a feminist. I support marriage equality, and I support a person’s right to choose whether they want to get married or not. I support women in combat positions in the US Army, and I support paternity leave. I support a person’s right to identify themselves however they wish, as he or she or hir or whatever that person may choose. I support the fight against size-ism, age-ism, class-ism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and hatred and oppression in all their forms.

So stop trying to make me feel guilty for not being you. It’s my choice to dress and act the way I want, in a way that makes me feel comfortable, just as it’s your choice to do the same.

I am on your side. I am fighting for you. I am fighting with you. Don’t condemn me for “falling for their lies” or “doing what everybody else does.” I’m a self-aware human being. I assume you are, too. I have made my choice. I am a straight, feminine, woman. That does not make me your enemy.

Please, for your sake and my sake and the sake of future generations, stop treating my lifestyle as toxic. Stop condemning my choices as impinging on your rights as a human.

And fuck you for trying to make me feel the way they make you feel.

(eta: In the morning I’ll probably regret posting this but right now it feels damn good to get it off my chest.)

harkinson:

In recent years, the term “nanny state” has become a favorite putdown on the Right. Conservatives routinely trot it out to defend their freedom to eat trans fats, inhale tobacco, or blaze incandescent light bulbs. Even the administration of Arnold Schwarzenegger fell prey to the label in more ways than one. But can the meme last? Dissing big government is one thing, but why bring nannies into it? Somebody’s bound to get spanked. And that’s pretty much what happened on the floor of the Texas House yesterday when a Democratic state Representative discovered that one of her bills was being opposed by a flyer depicting a baby nursing a bare breast beneath the words: “Don’t expand the nanny state.”

(via motherjones)

In the link I just shared the author uses the example of a man walking past a group of women and not fearing catcalls or leers or being sexually propositioned. If he did walk past a group of women and that happened he would probably be flattered and may even stop to continue the flirtation. On the other hand, if a group of MEN did that to him he would probably be scared.

Because women are smaller than him. They’re weaker than him. If he doesn’t want their attention he can extricate himself by force if he needs to. If a man wanted to grope him or ogle him or make sexual suggestions, physical or verbal, the man would be in bigger trouble. If he’s lucky he could fight off one man, but a group of men would beat him up.

I think this is the root of so much of the unreasonable homophobia straight men feel towards their gay counterparts. Straight men have heard their sisters and their girlfriends and their friends talk about the fear they have when a man calls out to them or gets too close. They know that women get raped and attacked by strange groups of men. And most of the time they have no personal fear of it because they think, “I have nothing they want. I don’t have anything to worry about.”

But he may be attractive to a gay man. Despite the fact that gay men are almost certainly less likely to sexually assault a partner (I have no statistics on this so forgive my vagueness) and that gay men are not so hard up for sex that they will pick a random stranger off the street and rape him, anymore than your average straight man would do, a gay man may, in a hypothetical situation, be able to overpower another man and rape him.

This is an ungrounded fear. Completely. BUT it may be the first time a man has felt the fear that a woman does. Women deal with that fear, a wholly realistic fear, every day of their lives. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve crossed a street to avoid a group of men, or pulled my pepper spray out of my purse when I pass a group of men late at night. I am not a woman who paints herself as a victim. In heels I’m taller than most men. I’m fit and confident and know from unfortunate experience how to handle myself in a fight. And yet EVERY TIME I tense up when I see a man coming down the street towards me, because this could be the dangerous criminal that will grab me and beat me and rape me.

So to the men who are uncomfortable with the idea of a gay man looking at them, who think in a tiny corner of their mind that the man in designer jeans who is standing on the corner holding hands with his boyfriend could be that dangerous man who will grab him and beat him and rape him, I want to say, “Finally.” Maybe if more men realized what it was like to live in fear every day there would be less violence against women, less violence against gays, less violence against minority groups and alter-abled people.

(This is by no means advocating MORE homophobia. Only that people who ARE afraid of something realize what it means for people who have more to be afraid of. A white woman has less to be afraid of than a black woman; a white gay man has less to be afraid of than a black gay man; a young white man has less to be afraid of than a young Latino man; a Christian man has less to be afraid of than a Muslim man. If more people could see how their fear is related to another person’s fear, and by making the world less scary for somebody else makes it less scary for them, we might actually make some progress.)

A fascinating metaphor about privilege.