I have been rather quiet over the past couple of weeks. I apologise for the radio silence – as they say, life happens while you’re making other plans. Or something.

Anyway, it is important that today, of all days, I do a round up of the posts that have been bubbling underneath the surface but never made it into electronic form. Today being White Ribbon Day.

For those not in the know, White Ribbon Day was created by a group of Canadian men who wanted to encourage men to speak out about violence against women. It began on the second anniversary of the École Polytechnique massacre, where, on December 6th, 1989, a lone gunman, Marc Lépine, murdered 14 women and injured 4 men and 10 women during a shooting spree at the college, before turning the gun on himself. His suicide note stated he was ‘fighting feminism’, that feminists were ruining his life, and listed women at the college whom he believed were feminists and wanted to kill. It inspired a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in Canada, and was made an International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women ten years later.

There has been a lot of public exposure lately of incidents of violence against women within celebrity couples; most notably concerning Rihanna and Chris Brown. In particular, and unsurprisingly, the media handling of this situation is deplorable.

Rihanna recently gave a tv interview, which, at most news agencies, was was reported on responsibly, noting that Rihanna wished to set an example for her fans and let young women know it’s O.K to speak out about intimate partner violence. However, some entertainment websites, which are aimed specifically at young women, chose to take the angle that Rihanna didn’t want to send any kind of message at all about domestic violence, as if she wanted to sweep it under the rug.

What kind of message is that sending? Do they not think it’s completely irresponsible to paint Rihanna as a woman who believes that domestic violence should not be spoken about, after such a public beating? It’s true that Rihanna’s exact words were, “I don’t want to be a big domestic violence spokesperson”, because she didn’t want it to define her as a person – and rightly so. A victim of intimate partner violence should not have to carry the label the rest of his or her life, otherwise the abuser continues to abuse.

Nevertheless, she went on to explain that she wanted to show girls in the same situation that they should not accept intimate partner violence and they should not be silent. She told Diane Sawyer about her brief reunion with Chris Brown:

“When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that part. I couldn’t be held responsible for telling them to go back. I just didn’t realize how much of an impact I had on these girls’ lives.
…

Don’t react out of love. F love. Come out of the situation and look at it third-person for what it really is and then make your decision. Because love is so blind.”

There was no mention of that in either of the entertainment articles, which makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth.

It’s that kind of obfuscation and lack of obvious role models that lead to incidents like Greg Bird’s girlfriend maintaining that the ‘glassing’ incident was an accident, despite the fact that the story keeps changing, and they initially tried to blame someone else. If it was an accident, and someone asked you what happened, you wouldn’t think twice about telling people it was an accident, and would be confused as to why anyone would think it was anything else. If you, instead, tell people you didn’t think they would believe you, chances are you weren’t telling the truth in the first place.

Also, how fucking hard would it be to glass yourself?!

Of course, it’s not surprising that women in such situations think they just can’t win. When Rihanna came out strong after her ordeal, the media had to smack her back down again. In the same week as her recent TV interview there was cause to write a whole fucking article about one bad photo. Why the fuck do we care? Why was it picked up internationally? Why does that bullshit completely overshadow the important message she was trying to convey?

Oh, I know exactly why – we love to see someone fall from the pedestals we put them on. It’s not enough that her privacy was violated in such an intimate way, we have to humiliated just that little bit more, to make ourselves feel better. It’s always women, too. How much beat up have you seen about any male celebrity’s cellulite?

One thing that must be mentioned, is there is a fine line between speaking out about domestic violence, and ignoring someone’s right to privacy. White Ribbon Day is all about speaking out, but women don’t need to have their abuse relived over and over, once it gets in the public eye. Rihanna has spoken about how hard her abuse was to deal with once the press got wind of it, and how disappointed she was to hear that the individuals, who leaked the photo of her injuries to the press, were women. These and other very good points are mentioned in this AlertNet opinion piece.

In the end, all of this means nothing unless everyone understands the point of today. Buy a white ribbon, speak up about domestic violence, and look after your friends.

moar funny pictures

At FWD: No, Actually, “Eat a Sandwich” is Not “Feminist Activism”…

Because the policing of women’s bodies, whether you are being cheeky, or saying it to a plastic doll, is not cool. It’s hurtful and not useful, and has no place in feminist discourse. Can we move past that point? Huh? That’s a pretty Kindy thing, IMNSFHO.

*ahem*

Change.org’s Women’s Rights Blog: Women Have Been on Subs for Years: It’s Time to Integrate the Service

Here’s a little news flash: Women have been serving on subs for a long time in the United States Navy. Maybe not in the capacity in which they are about to be, but they have been there for years, serving in short stints, and they have somehow managed to not destroy the Navy as we know it with all of their girly bits.

Also, I have a petition up at Change to urge Congress to put the Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act back on the table. If you are so inclined…

That’s what I have been up to … what have you been up to?

My husband and I were discussing hanging up some framed photos on Sunday night, and we had this (approximate) conversation:

him: I’ll have to check and make sure I have the right hardware. I have a few different kinds of hooks, but these frames need nails, and I don’t know if I have the right kind.

him: oh yeah, probably. They wouldn’t have them for sale separately at Fred Meyer.

So that was that. Last night he checked, found that we didn’t have what we need, and today I headed over to Home Depot.

And? They didn’t have nails you could buy individually. They had boxes. Gigantic boxes, with thousands of nails. Medium boxes with 500 nails. The smallest boxes had about 200 nails. So I didn’t buy any. On the way home, I stopped at Fred Meyer for a few last minute Thanksgiving things, and bought a box of 50 nails.

On the way home I reflected on this little story, and my own internalized sexism it betrayed. When we had our conversation on Sunday night, I just assumed that I was wrong about Home Depot carrying individual nails. Logically speaking, I shouldn’t have assumed I was wrong. We’d both had experience buying nails and hanging frames on walls. We disagreed about the likelihood that Home Depot would have nails for sale individually, and we should have remained agnostic about who was right and who was wrong about that fact.

What I am NOT saying: I’m not saying “oooh look! I’m a girl who knows boy stuff! That makes me cool!” I am not saying that, because that perpetuates the sexism that claims there is “boy stuff” in the first place.

What I AM saying: I am saying that I assumed that he was right about a topic involving hardware and pounding things into walls for no other reason than because he was a he and because society has labeled hardware and pounding things into walls as “he things.” That, folks, was my internalized sexism. And even if he had been right, it still would have been a sexist assumption for me to make initially.

It seems like a “small thing,” but I am not really convinced that that means it’s unimportant. After all, it’s in the small ways that we show our love for one another (e.g. do we argue over the remote or find things on TV we both like? Do we call each other if plans change or we’re running late or do we leave someone waiting or worried? Do we try to be quiet while the other is asleep or make as much noise as we feel like?). The “small things” are our daily reality. They make up the glue that binds us together. This is true in marriage and in any other human relationship. It is relatively easy to feel loving and generous at the big times; holidays, weddings, births of children. But it is in those day-in-and-day-out interactions that we truly live out our love (or, sadly, lack of love in some cases).

So where to go from here? Obviously I can’t just promise myself that my internalized sexism will never rear her head again, but I think being able to notice it, and be aware of it, is a gigantic first step. Because maybe next time, even if I make the assumption, I’ll notice it a little earlier than I did this time.

Brief descriptions of queerphobia, transphobia, racism, and violence follow.  Nothing too graphic.

I am queer by choice.  I am trans by choice.  I’m speaking for my experiences, and I know that some folks would like to argue with me about this.  I don’t mean to speak for anyone else.  I am interested in hearing others’ experiences, but I ask that others not speak for me.  A lot of people think of themselves as trans and queer genetically, or from birth, or socialization, or for a political statement, or that it doesn’t matter, and many other beautiful ways and reasons.  I affirm and honor others’ experiences, and I think that my experience of being queer and trans by choice are congruent and mutually affirming with others’ ways of being.

The world is built to pressure me into being a cisgendered straight woman.  As a person with white and normatively abled privilege, if I had continued to identify as a cisgendered woman and if I had identified as straight, my choices and identities would have been affirmed and upheld as natural, right, and true by my society and most of the people, cultural forms, and institutions I interacted with.  So, I do not have to be queer or trans.  If there is anything in this world I have to be, it is a cisgendered straight person.  I choose not to give in, not to concede to every pressure, every checkbox I don’t know how to fill in, every mispronoun, every street harassment.

I make the choice, against all of that violence and pressure, to be trans and to be queer.  That is sheer fighting bullheaded stubbornness.  Holy shit, that means I am really strong, to withstand a world that says I do not exist, or if I do exist, that I should not.  I am powerful, and I don’t give in.   Being queer and being trans is so beautiful and though it’s difficult, I feel blessed that I can choose to be who I am: is there anything else more wonderful?

My position as a trans and queer man is informed by my privileges, as a white, U.S.-born, normatively able-bodied person, and all of these things make it easier for me to be out, in comparison with a lot of other trans and queer people in the world.  Experiences of racism, colonialism, and ableism, among others, change the modes and probability of different kinds of queerphobic and transphobic violence, and I do not mean to say that my privileged position applies to all trans and queer peope.  I honor the needs and choices of people who are not out or who express their queerness in different ways, and I recognize their strength, as they work to survive.

Now, I know that a lot of queerphobic and transphobic rhetoric relies on queerness being a choice.  The argument goes,”Well, you choose to be queer or trans, so you should choose to be straight and cisgendered.”  A lot of counter-arguments  are based on the helplessness of queer people to control whether or not we turn out queer.  I have problems with that counter-argument, because it concedes the point: queerness is an affliction, but my goodness, we can’t help it, and so please let us continue existing.

My counterargument (and I’m plagiarizing a bit from my sister) is that yes, I choose to be queer every day.  Also, folks who think my choices should change can kindly fuck off.  I don’t go into their bedroom and attempt to convert them to the virtues of sodomy.  Now that I think of it, maybe someone should do that for them.

There is a really thought-provoking article by Robin of Berkeley at American Thinker this morning about how the Left treat women.  Her point is essentially the promotion of feminism is by parasitical men to keep women available to be used.  Think freeloading men who “live with” women who are working to support themselves (and usually some kids of dead-beat “fathers”).   I can think of many who fit that category. 

What does this have to do with Palin Derangment Syndrome? 

Left must try to destroy [Palin].  And they are doing this in the most malicious of ways:  

By symbolically raping her.

 

Just like a perpetuator (sic), they dehumanize her by objectifying her body.   They undress her with their eyes.

They turn her into a piece of ass.

Liberals do this by calling her a c___t,  ogling her legs, demeaning her with names like “sexy flight attendant,” and “Trailer Park Barbie,” and exposing her flesh on the cover of Newsweek.

And from The Atlantic Magazine’s Andrew Sullivan:  “Sarah Palin’s vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy.”

Palin represents everything the left hates.  And worse, she defies the stereotypes.  She resonates with the middle class.  She scares the hell out of liberal because she is a clear and present danger to their agenda of keeping women serving freeloading men.

A few weeks ago, The Nation posted an article about female sexual dysfunction, written by Joann Wypijewski, titled Sexual Healing. Rachel of Our Bodies Our Blog covered it with a link and some commentary. I saw several problems with the article in question, and have written about some of these problems not once but twice. And when it comes to talking about FSD, I’m still not out of steam yet.

How can I run out of steam, when authors, interviewers, doctors, therapists, and yes even feminists, keep on cranking out & covering new material about FSD, yet continue to make some serious mistakes when doing so? Wypijewski’s article has been joined by another in its well-intentioned but short-sighted spirit - “Restless Vagina Syndrome”: Big Pharma’s Newest Fake Disease, by Terry Allen.

What a funny title for an article about female sexual dysfunction, or at least Kate Harding over at Jezebel and the eponymous Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose blog found the title giggle-inducing and “Brilliant.” I’m sure she is not alone in her amusement – After all, Restless Vagina Syndrome – it’s like Restless Leg Syndrome (Is RLS inherently funny?) except this time it takes place inside your vagina. At first glance, without any further information, the term sounds like it must be synonymous with a high sex drive and frequent easy orgasms. How could anyone possibly label that a medical condition?

Actually, Restless vagina syndrome isn’t talked about for the rest of Allen’s article at all; whoever came up with that title merely exploited a documented condition (which we’ll get to in a bit) because it made the article more eye-catching and amusing to some.
No wonder Kate Harding thought RVS is a joke – Terry Allen provides zero information about the grain of truth he is riffing off of, and by labeling it (and more broadly, FSD in general) “Fake,” he preemptively discredits anyone who says otherwise, even if that means effectively calling the women & researchers involved in studying FSD fools and liars. And, after having done a little homework on Allen’s claims, I think he was counting on readers not to double-check him.
(No one with FSD read the comments section at either the Jezebel or Alternet article, as some of the comments are even worse and may cause explody-head.)

Allen’s article spends more time talking about the kind of female sexual dysfunction we all know and love (except not really.) He and Harding raise concerns about Big Pharma trying to invent and then market “Female sexual dysfunction” (Harding leaves the term in skeptic/scare quotes,) which she at one point refers to as “Listless vagina syndrome.” (I think that’s supposed to be another joke except that it backfires against me since I identify as having FSD. Do you mean to say that my vagina is lazy too?)

Interestingly, Harding uses skeptic quotes when talking about FSD, even as she acknowledges that, okay, maybe some of us really do have sexual problems that merit treatment… after all, she herself benefited greatly from a proper diagnosis of ADHD. But overall, the sentiment in Allen’s & Harding’s posts is that FSD must be a fake disorder invented by Big Pharma, in order to generate more money from a previously untapped market. FSD couldn’t have possibly existed before modern medicine (except that it probably did.)

But because folks like she and I exist, people with “Real” medical problems (and here I’m using quotes because I’m not comfortable with claiming my problems are more real & valid than anyone else’s, just because I can back mine up with medical records, which have also been and will continue to have their value questioned anyway,) we are putting everyone else at risk of exploitation by Big Pharma. Because I want treatment for my sexual health problems, I bear the responsibility & burden of enabling Big Pharma sneaking its phallic tendrils into all of our bedrooms & regulating our sexuality. That regulation might come in pill form designed to increase our libidios – but never too much, for if we become too sexual, too promiscuous, we may just be diagnosed with the dreaded Restless Vagina Syndrome.

I was really curious; is Big Pharma really trying to develop and then exploit a new, fake disease, by piggybacking on something that sounds similar to restless leg syndrome? (Only, it’s the vagina that’s restless.) What is this?

So I started searching for more information on this so-called Restless Vagina Syndrome. Luckily we live in the age of the internet, so my first starting place was Google. That search didn’t yield me much hard information about whether Big Pharma ever put out any material about RVS though – mostly it just points me back to Terry Allen’s article.

I was able to find an RVS parody video – Tranquivag on YouTube. The video pre-dates Terry Allen’s article by about 2 years; it was originally uploaded to YouTube in 2007. Is this what he was referring to? Did he get duped by a group of comedians?
It’s a comedy clip, so it’s not meant to be taken seriously. Or at least, I sure hope it’s not meant to be taken seriously. The viewer is supposed to find it amusing that a woman could be disturbed by invasive genital sensations that interfere with everyday activity and periods of rest – after all, who would find such usually pleasant sensations so bothersome, that you would have to take a medication with major potential side effects? I think the audience is supposed to think something like, “What a foolish woman; if she is bothered by her restless vagina, she should just have sex or masturbate.”  That’s not the way I processed the video though; to me it looks like hipster irony that backfires by re-enforcing negative stereotypes about FSD & the women who have it.
The video directs viewers to www.ivegotmunchies.com, which features other videos.
But no, this probably isn’t what Allen is referring to.

Maybe Google isn’t the best place to look for medical texts & research. I jumped through some hoops and got onto some online database systems. After several failed attempts on other databases, MedLine finally pointed me probably the right direction:

Waldinger, M., Venema, P., van Gils, A., & Schweitzer, D. (2009). New insights into restless genital syndrome: static mechanical hyperesthesia and neuropathy of the nervus dorsalis clitoridis. The Journal Of Sexual Medicine, 6(10), 2778-2787. Retrieved from MEDLINE database. [I'm linking to PubMed here instead of MedLine, since MedLine isn't accessible to everyone.]

Alas, even I don’t have access to the full text, and so I’m restricted to the abstract. Luckily, the abstract is useful for this discussion.
Based on what I’m reading in the abstract,
This doesn’t sound very funny at all… Restless vagina syndrome: “You keep on using that word. I think you do not know what it means.”

According to one sex therapist, RVS, or more properly Restless genital syndrome or Persistent arousal syndrome, sounds like it could be a form of pudental nerve damage.

I already know from reading other vulvar pain bloggers, that damage to the pudental nerve is serious – for some patients, it can be extremely painful to live with on a daily basis, and there’s no single cure for it. In this case, if nerve damage is the culprit for RGS, it manifests as hypersensitive genitals, prone to frequent orgasms even in the absence of actual sexual desire. There maybe other causes of restless genital syndrome besides nerve damage as well.

Regardless of the cause, the women involved in the study describe several related symptoms that would certainly cause me great distress -

Of 23 women included in the study, 18(78%), 16(69%), and 12(52%) reported restless legs syndrome, overactive bladder syndrome, and urethra hypersensitivity. Intolerance of tight clothes and underwear (allodynia or hyperpathia) was reported by 19 (83%) women…

To anyone who laughed at Allen’s title, did you even know what you were giggling at?
Why is this funny?
How is this fake?
Would you actually be comfortable having an orgasm in front of a stranger or in a medical setting, as three of the women in that study are reported to have experienced? What if you were sitting on a bus and the woman next to you started going into an uninhibited orgasm, what would your reaction be? Envy, discomfort, leering, slut-shaming… acceptance?
Why, when nothing else provides long-term relief, would this not merit medical research and possible treatment?

That doesn’t sound funny or something deserving stigmatization, nor does it sound to me like a condition that will be pushed onto the general, healthy population at large. I can only imagine how many doctors RGS patients are bounced around to in search of someone who is not dismissive of their concerns. And to be one of those women who lives with such a condition, and to read articles like this, must be humiliating.

PubMed offers just a few journal article abstracts about restless genital syndrome. The dates on the most relevant journal abstracts are all from 2009. That the dates are so recent, is probably why Terry Allen refers to it as “New.”
I get a few more research results when I search for an alternate term, persistent arousal syndrome. This is a relatively new field of study, according to Wikipedia. And, so far, I have been able to find one not-so-new article, from 2002, that details several other case studies of patients with persistent arousal syndrome, some of whom were desperate for long-term relief. One said of her experience, that it “Makes me so upset that I cry, as I cannot function normally; I make mistakes, get very hungry, and do not sleep… I would like the sensations to go away. I want to feel I can make plans and not have the strong sexual desire to make me miserable not knowing if I’ll get satisfied.” (She was also having difficulty reaching orgasm.)

Is Big Pharma really inventing this syndrome, or is could it be that only now is research being done, after years of neglect? I recall that in all my searches, I did not find much scientific research about Vulvodynia from years prior to the 1980s, and most of the books covering the topic in depth only started appearing within the last decade. Was vulvodynia such a controversial topic when the research was new, too? How long was its existence denied by so-called experts and laypeople? Perhaps that is what is going on here.

But really, RGS actually plays a very small role in Terry Allen’s piece. He just needed something that sounded interesting to grab the reader’s attention.

As is often the case, Allen’s article spends a lot of time talking about low libido and orgasm difficulties in women. Allen goes so far as to actually acknowledge that sexual pain exists, but he does not build on that topic. Allen even acknowledges the need to include the patient’s own feelings about their sex life in whether or not a diagnosis of FSD is appropriate. He gets this additional qualifier of personal distress needing to be present from a November 2008 article in Obstetrics & Gynecology, which pinpoints the statistic to about 12% of the population having FSD… but even this study excluded sexual pain in the researchers definition of FSD! I wonder how the figures would change if pain were included in the statistics.
(Also, as a side note, I’d like to point out here that when Jezebel covered that Obstetrics & Gynecology article, writer Tracie sounded shocked that more women aren’t distressed by their sex problems. I’m getting mixed messages here…)

Allen’s biggest concern, and one I’ve seen repeated elsewhere, is that Big Pharma has a vested interest in getting women to feel personal distress about their sex lives. The introductory line to his article goes so far as to claim that,

The pharmaceutical industry wants you to think that if you don’t have sex like a porn star, you’re in need of their drugs.

Even though I’ve been wandering the labyrinth of FSD for awhile now, I can’t say I’ve bumped into any doctors or reputable drug companies that say this to me. I’ve run into porn sites that tell me I should have sex like a porn star, and I’ve overheard conversations my peers have that tell me that. I’ve read that message in magazines and I’ve seen it on TV and in movies. And I’ve even gotten that impression while shopping for new sex toys. Sometimes, even the most sex-positive of sex toy stores, still manges to make me feel like I am somehow not measuring up, because I cannot or will not use one such toy or another, and because I cannot or will not have sex in certain positions.

Big Pharma doesn’t need to make me feel insecure about my sex life.
The culture in which I live does that already. Not only am I distressed by the experience of physical pain, but that pain is compunded by other messages I receive more broadly.
Why doesn’t Allen think about Big Porn, Big TV, Big Magazine and Big Body Image Distortion? For me, these are much bigger culprits I have to learn to navigate around in my sex life than Big Pharma.

Allen’s position is that if Big Pharma can get women convinced that there is something wrong with them for not having the sex life that Big Pharma (or, really mainstream media,) says they should be having, then Big Pharma can step in with cures, and thus make money. As examples, he cites the Orgasmatron, an accidental discovery stemming out of chronic pain treatment which has nonetheless been sensationalized by the media, (I wonder if the media raised the alarms when the Hitatchi Magic Wand first became readily available?) and LexaFem, an oral pill that has no entry on WebMD. (Must be an herbal stimulant or something. Not sure how likely it is that any doctor would prescribe LexaFem to me.) Allen is also sure to note Viagra’s use off-label for some women with FSD, and the dangers of using hormones to stimulate desire. (I’m not sure where that leaves me, as someone who had her hormone levels measured and found to be out of range for a healthy woman in her early 20s following birth control pill use. I’ve already used hormones, including estrogen & testosterone, to treat vulvodynia, although mine was a topical medication. That wasn’t in patch or pill form, but it’s still hormones. Am I supposed to be scared into not using them ever again? I still keep a little expired bottle of prescription hormone gel under my bed as a safety blanket.)

Allen then talks about conflicts of interest in medical research. Some of the studies on FSD have been sponsored by drug companies, including some of the bigger, more widely reocognized studies. It’s definitely worth taking a second look at these company-funded studies and thinking about how much influence that company may have had in the study’s outcome.

There’s two issues I can think of right off the bat that complicate matters regarding research independence. The first is, if these research studies, and others, about FSD including RGS are in fact independent of drug company funding, would Allen still be so quick to call FSD “Fake?” Does independence automatically redeem research? What about if independent studies draw the same conclusions that drug funded ones do?
One problem I myself am faced with is that, with the Restless Genital Syndrome articles I linked to above – I can’t tell from looking at the abstracts, whether these are independent research studies or whether they were sponsored by drug companies. I think I may need the full text to examine the full financial disclosure, if there is any provided.

The other issue I have with funding for research is, according to a recent NVA e-newsletter, some studies on Vulvodynia are also funded at least in part by drug companies. In this newsletter, I see Pfizer gave a financial award to Dr. Pukall of Ontario, Canada, for her research into vulvodynia & neuropathy.
Vulvodynia & pelvic pain conditions are still very much mysterious, misunderstood areas of women’s health. Can we afford to outright reject new research on vulvodynia and FSD broadly, on the basis that it is funded in part by drug companies? Or is it sufficient that patients, doctors and advocates be ready to closely examine these studies for possible bias?

Allen concludes his article with a quote by Liz Canner, mastermind behind the new film Orgasm Inc, which takes a critical look at the Big Pharma’s involvement in FSD. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that even though I don’t particularly want to watch this film and it will probably give me a brain aneurysm, eventually I’m not going to have any choice but to force myself to watch it sooner or later. Canner says,

“Maybe the best approach is not ineffective, over-hyped drugs with nasty side effects, but an end to disease mongering and a strong dose of comprehensive sex education”

Allen then tacks on, “Her film hits female erogenous zones that pharmaceutical fixes can’t find: your brain and your funny bone.”

What sort of sex education does Canner have in mind? How comprehensive are we talking here? In Canner’s sex education class, will we be focusing on the Masters & Johnson model of sexuality, or will we provided a wider variety of sex education materials? Will we be taking a Western point of view or a more global one that looks at many cultures and sexuality?
I ask because the sex education I went through a few years ago, was sorely lacking.
I would hope that Canner’s definition of sex education includes not just a critical examination of Big Pharma, but of the culture in which we live – a culture which both markets and condemns sexual activity. A culture that is uneasy talking openly about masturbation, consent and mutual pleasure. A culture which, in media depictions, often upholds sex and gender roles in sexuality, and leaves many subjects, such as BDSM, porn, open relationships, and certainly painful sex, taboo.

When Canner talks about sex ed, is she willing to spend any time educating the general public on the subject of dyspareunia, which can be (and for me is,) a form of FSD, and whether or not it’s worth treating? Or is dyspareunia to be overlooked in sex education the way it was during my high school sex ed, precisely because it can be a form of FSD?
I wish someone had taught me about vulvodynia earlier on. Would Canner consider that a form of “Disease mongering” too?

As for Allen’s last statement, he himself has to look a little harder to find my funny bone. Or perhaps I’m just one of those legendary dead-on-the-inside humorless harpy feminists, one who takes sexual dysfunction much too seriously.
Regardless, based on what I’ve seen Allen and others write about FSD & Big Pharma so far, I’m not so sure that I myself would find Canner’s film particularly funny. This is yet another example of an article about FSD which, rather than amuse and educate me, distresses & drains me.

Be cautious though, because I might bite off your entire face.

The internets have been in uproar because an USian politician was barred from taking the communion (also known as Le Cracker Game) for his pro-choice stance.

What, however, very few have noticed it that you will be barred from communion for being pro-choice, but not for being pro-death penalty or starting a war, actually:

3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

The pope Palpatine wrote this memo before he was actually pope. It is however pretty apparent that his opinion has not changed much, at least not for the better. And, by all means, go and read the entire thing!

What you will find: you can also not be allowed to take the communion if you voted for a politician who supported women’s rights was pro-choice because of the fact that they were pro-choice.

So, let me get this straight. It’s OK to kill people and kill moar people just because your country tells you to, but as soon as so much as squeak out that maybe a woman should have the right to decide what happens to her body, you’ve committed a grave sin?

How nice to be reminded about the priorities that the Catholic Church has. Really nice!

I can remember the sayings “Nice guys finish last” and “Women like bad boys” from the time I was a child. I remember the “Fonz” on “Happy Days” getting all of the women and Hollywood bad boys like James Dean. One of the main problems with America is the average person’s inability to know when they are being manipulated by the media via social engineering. Then peer pressure from all of the other people who have been manipulated to behave in a certain way gets to the people, including myself sometimes, who know better because they want to fit in because being alone is one of the worst ways to exist as a human.

The fact is that women do like bad boys because they are animalistic and uncontrollable. They represent manliness in a shallow manner and that attraction is deeply rooted in womens’ genes and psyches via evolution. The problem with that natural instinct in a modern world is that it is counterproductive to a financially secure lifestyle and maybe to womens’ physical safely. Many women do not need a man to take care of them financially but almost ALL women (straight ones that is) need a man to take care of them emotionally. What is more important? And when did “care” come to mean money instead of love? It depends on the person and their priorities which are largely influenced by a hyperconsumptive culture but honestly you should not want someone that puts money before love because that means they will put it before you eventually. We all say that love is more important than money but very few of us actually behave in a way that demonstrates we really believe it.

Most women don’t want to be physically or emotionally abused by dominating and controlling thugs but to many of them it does bring excitement to their boring lives if they are alone and have no interests outside of bemoaning not being able to find a good man when in fact they are standing in their own way. It is a poor substitute for a healthy relationship and actually prevents a healthy relationship from forming but it nonetheless fills in the blanks temporarily. Thugs are nothing but sex substitutes for real love. They don’t care about themselves even though they profess bravado to the contrary. Real men don’t have to pretend to be hardcore to get women. but women hate being alone much more than men do. They intensely fear it so even though they know it’s a dead end many women engage in these sexual and emotionally abusive relationships because to them it seems better than nothing plus that animal instinct turns on most women. Thugs basically trick women into getting aroused without having to actually care for them. A thug does not have to wear baggy jeans, a grill, dreadlocks, Tims and a gold chain. He can be a brother like me with a college degree and a full time corporate job. As long as he demonstrates a lack of concern for and interest in the welfare of the female at all times nonsexual he can be considered a thug. If women want a real man that acts thuggish since it’s such an aphrodisiac then women should stop trying to emasculate men. Then thugs will become worthless because women will not need them. I met a girl last night who admitted she liked being booty-called by thugs but then she turned around and asked me if I could submit her resume to my company for employment. Why? What is she going to do? Get on her financial feet and then blow it on the legal fees for a thug? Is she going to get knocked up and then get mad at all good black men because the thug doesn’t want to even see her during the day? You have to be healthy yourself to have a healthy relationship. It takes two healthy people. Two unhealthy people just make each other more unhealthy.

Women are being confused by their natural instincts, social engineering and what they know is good for them and Oprah isn’t helping. They want the thug to avoid the loneliness and emptiness. They want to be independent because of hyperfeminism and so men don’t think they’re golddiggers. They also want to be genuinely loved. The problem is women are trying to solve long term problems with short term solutions. Mature women don’t date little boys. Thugs are little boys. They act that way only to attract silly women who are easy to seduce because they have been watching too much BET. Real men are manly without being abusive and neglectful. They have interests outside of women but make time for the right woman in their life. That is the way it should be. It should have nothing to do with money but compatibility. If money is one of your compatibility factors then you are a shallow, empty, hollow shell of a human that does not deserve a good man. You will in time be your own undoing. If women want love then they have to let go of feminism. Feminism is not the same thing as equal rights and equal pay for the same job. It is gender neutrality that ignores critical differences between the sexes that allow us to complement each other. It goes against nature and against God.

Sometimes I do feel sorry for the plague of women addicted to thug love substitutes. It’s like those women that live in the city and use their tiny dogs as boyfriend substitutes but just like money thugs can never make you happy. They can make you feel excited only because of the contradictions between having sex with them and their subsequent neglect. Women are enthralled by not being about to control thugs and the challenge of changing a man but are never attracted to a man that they actually do change. Quite ironic isn’t it? But thugs do not own the market on being their own men. In fact they are really just doing a poor imitation of real men. Real men listen to women but are not controlled by them. Real men do what they want. They just make room for women in their lives and the women makes room for them. I am a real man. I never sit around waiting on women. I spend my time improving myself in any way that I can whether it’s learning new things or staying in shape or whatever. It’s not done to impress women. I don’t care what ALL women think. I only care what the woman I love thinks because I know I could never love an insecure, needy woman who has no idea of how to treat a real man. Real men don’t have to take care of women. They want to take care of real women. Real women don’t have to take care of themselves. Real women want a man to take care of them. When I say “care” once again I mean emotionally, not financially. Money matters only to people who make it matter. Ultimately thugs are not real men. They are boys dressed up in men’s clothing and it’s usually twelve sizes too big for them. If you have one or more I suggest you pawn them and start saving up for a real man. You won’t find us on BET.

Story from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Working women have long complained that their man doesn’t pull his weight on household chores.

But his lack of effort on the domestic front could actually be a myth created by his partner, researchers have found.

According to a major study, female breadwinners exaggerate their partner’s uselessness around the home because they feel guilty about devoting too much time to their career, and not enough to their role of wife and mother.

By nagging their man over his alleged shortcomings, women feel more feminine because they can control the traditionally female role of maintaining the home and family, experts say.

‘Working women who provide the majority of the household’s income continue to articulate themselves as the ones who “see” household messes and needs as a way to retain claim to an element of traditional female identity,’ said Dr Rebecca Meisenbach, professor of communication at Missouri University.

Dr Meisenbach questioned 15,000 American female breadwinners for the study, to be published in the journal Sex Roles this week.

I posted on a related topic recently, regarding a new study showing that children of working mothers live unhealthier lives.

Finding a job is tough… in any economy. So if you’re looking now, it is NOT pretty. YWM however encourages job-seeking women (and men) to use this time to re-evaluate the type of environment that you need for your next career step.

Things to consider:

1. Do you volunteer?
2. Are you married?
3. Do you have children?
4. Are you a student or plan to be?
5. Do you provide caregiving for relatives?
6. Do you travel?
7. Do you exercise? 

 Answer these questions and do your research. Make your next workplace one that is supportive of your life commitments.  Take great care to target companies that boast innovative workplace policies and pratices- those are the ones that support women, families, veterans.

A happy employee is a great one- employers recognize this even if they are slow to act.

Other things to consider

Settling into the middle seat, I cracked open my book on the cosmos and waited for the plane to back out of the gate and take off to Tucson. I half-listened to a couple behind me talking idly, mostly commenting on the suitcases the crew below was loading. They made a joke about hiding bodies in golf club bags and did a lame impression of Sylvester the cartoon cat. Staring blankly at the pages of glossy galaxy photos, I started planning out the hours ahead when the man behind me gesticulated angrily, bringing my full attention back to him.
            “I’m so tired of this ‘Going Green’ stuff, everybody’s going green! I want to make a shirt that says ‘Anti-Green,’ you know?”

            I sat rigidly. My irritation for him was potent enough to spend the next ten minutes fantasizing about telling him how much of an idiot he is.

            Thinking about it further—and filling in the blanks with my own conjectures to make sense of his nonsense—I came up with the root of his problem. More than likely he owns a large truck or a Hummer and has had people tell him he should consider a more fuel efficient car. But, he’s probably waited his entire life to own this behemoth vehicle and has recently acquired a high enough income to purchase it and continue to spend upwards of fifty dollars a tank maintaining it. The initiative to downsize and do more with less is therefore infringing on his happiness (a core democratic value, after all) so he’s taking his anger (and maybe even traces of guilt?) out on the entire idea. An idea that’s being exploited by large companies doing little to decrease their footprint but wanting to catch business of the new-age hippies, but a hopeful and promising idea nonetheless.

            At least I hope that’s the case, otherwise he’s just a hateful tightwad.

            I can understand how the efforts to preserve the environment requires a type of change people might not be ready for, since in many ways it asks them to step out of their box full of creature comforts. However, I’m still disturbed by how much people want to put their personal happiness above the health of the whole world and future generations.

            In a much more disturbing and serious example, a videogame exists (actually exists) in Japan that revolves around rape. You, as the player, are a man hunting down a woman and her two daughters, a teenager and a twelve-year-old, and raping them until they start to enjoy it. That’s the entire premise of this twisted, horrific game. You can read more about RapeLay and the effort to get it off the market here: http://www.equalitynow.org/english/actions/action_3301_en.html

            When did the entertainment of a (hopefully) small group of sick individuals become more important than the rights and respect of more than half of the population?

            When I talk to my roommate about turning transportation in America on its head by phasing out personal vehicles and creating larger networks of trains and trolleys she always has the same reaction:

            “Yeah, that’s a really nice idea, but it’s not going to happen.”

            I usually get annoyed by her pessimism (or maybe it’s more like realism) and stop dreaming out loud. But, I hold out hope that the green initiative will make a difference over time and that I’ll be able to take a train from Texas to Tucson without a problem someday.

I just hope there’s not someone dreaming of a world without disturbing anime and videogames emphasizing sexual violence like Rapelay who’s being met with the same reaction.

Written for Hyphen on November 24, 2009.

For most of my life, I’ve acted the part of the fiery feminist activist. At age 10 (before I even knew “feminist” as a word) my surprisingly cogent defense of biblical Eve moved my evangelical father into surrendering his argument that women are the root of all evil. At age 16 (when I only knew “feminist” as a term of derision) I scandalized my Filipino teachers by conducting an (albeit amateurish) study charting gender discrimination within Republic Central high schools. And by age 19 (when I proudly donned my first signature “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt) my transformation seemed complete. In those enlightened times, I was fond of telling people, “You’re probably a feminist — you just don’t know it yet.”

So thrilled was I to have found a word — an ideology, a movement! — which embodied my long-standing belief system that I didn’t realize until much later the foolishness of such a proclamation; feminism isn’t, after all, defined by one’s inherent, unarticulated views on gender (however progressive those may be), but is rather a conscious, political choice one makes after considering and asserting those views.

These days, a much more educated, experienced, and cynical Me teeters on the fence. Some days, I hear feminism derided by an ignoramus with a beer and the beast inside rears its rosy head in indignation. Other days, my oft-broken heart smarts at the memory of old friends and activists whose feminist ideals didn’t stand in the way of their marginalizing a person of color, or objectifying another woman, or even downplaying the sexual assault of a friend. Most of the time, my commitment to social justice advocacy doesn’t feel as though it requires a label so I have the room to vacillate.

However, my indecision piques about every six months.

Every six months, you see — almost by the minute hand — a media storm about “the death of feminism” inexplicably erupts. Ten months out of the year, feminism is a dormant issue, old hat, a moot point, insignificant in both the grand scheme of world news and the narrow sights of newsmakers. But every six months, respectable news magazines and mainstream newspapers alike dedicate valuable column inches to 1) redundant and irrelevant assertions that feminism is, in fact, dead and 2) rebuttals that, in 2000 pretty words, re-tell the “forgotten” history of feminism while claiming that feminism is still thriving — if nowhere else than online. Sometimes the catalyst is a particularly well-timed article, while other times it’s a Hillary Clinton sound byte. This month, it’s a combination of Sarah Palin fever and the recent release of women-themed books by Gail Collins, and Leslie Sanchez.

The agitators are different each round, but the debate is always the same and so, accordingly, is my response: mild enthusiasm at a subject that interests me, with a zesty pinch of irritation at the tediousness of this cycle. But both sentiments are quickly overshadowed by disappointment, because, in almost every case, this tiresome debate about the death of feminism is a debate between white women (and the occasional white man) who are defining feminism according to their own experience. I suppose there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with writing about one’s own experience (I do it all the time), but the problem is that when these circular debates roll around, that unacknowledged white feminist experience becomes the only visible feminist experience.

Among these dozens of mediocre articles, a few have stood out because of their beautiful composition and thoughtful arguments…but even those few leave me wanting something more, prolonging my indecision rather than resolving it. Last spring, my favorite “Is feminism dead?” piece was an American Prospect article called “The End of the Women’s Movement” which argued very eloquently that there will not, and ought not, be a singular women’s movement in this country today because such a movement could not adequately represent the growing diversity of communities, beliefs, and women in this country. Great point. Except that the point is built on the notion that a time actually existed when a singular women’s movement did adequately represent the diversity of women in this country — and that’s simply not true.

One of American feminism’s greatest failures is the exclusion of women of color, of poor women, of women without privilege. To paraphrase bell hooks, who do you think took care of the middle class white woman’s children when she became too empowered to just be a housewife? 2009 isn’t the first time our country has entertained a vast diversity of communities, beliefs, and women — there has always been diversity here, though the smiling white faces at the forefront of the last U.S. women’s movement might have us believe otherwise. Asserting the present need for diversity within feminism without recalling the marked exclusion of women of color from past feminist waves isn’t a step forward so much as a whitewashing of feminist history. And that makes me wonder where I fit within this paradigm.

Fast-forward to this month, and I’m both fawning over and wincing at the beautifully-composed New Yorker piece written by Ariel Levy (of whom I am a huge fan), which argues that identity politics gets in the way of real progress because it is primarily concerned with representation:

[Identity politics are] a version of the old spoils system: align yourself with other members of a group — Irish, Italian, women, or whatever — and try to get a bigger slice of the resources that are being allocated.

Such a narrow view of “identity politics” fails to consider the critical role they play in engaging people of color in feminist (or any other kind of) activism, and assumes that “representation” is a relatively straight-forward idea. For many second and third generation citizens, for example, representation isn’t as simple as sex and skin color, but entails the confrontation of colonial histories and racial and cultural hierarchies that have followed us across generations.

I know many second and third generation Filipina Americans who retain a colonial mentality with regard to our mother country that prevents them from undertaking Filipina-specific feminist work — despite the admittedly profound need for such work. Melinda L. De Jesus addresses this in the preface to her book, Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, discussing the ways in which “a heritage of dual colonization…coupled with American cultural imperialism, has left an indelible mark on the Filipino American psyche,” causing them to regard their cultural heritage as inherently inferior to that of the United States. She reflects on some of the experiences that informed her own colonization experience as a second generation Filipina American:

The arrogant white feminist professor chiding me that I shouldn’t “ghettoize” myself and my academic training by “just doing Asian American Studies.” My parents telling me that “Filipinos had no culture before the Spanish came.” […] I learn to forget that my parents have accents, that they speak a language I don’t know — a language they did not teach me. I learn than it’s better to be “here” than “back home,” that bad stuff happened during “the war.” And because my parents have so many dreams for my American future, I learn to distance myself from my history. When asked, I say, “My parents are from the Philippines, but I was born here.” So this is the American dream — living in the perpetual present, moving through life without a past, swallowed whole, invisible, but unable to deny the lingering ache of absence…

De Jesus’s experience is not unique among second and third generation Filipina Americans in the Diaspora; many of the contributors to Pinay Power describe similar feelings of inferiority, alienation, and invisibility, which prevented them from connecting to, and activating around, their heritage. One contributor argues that the only antidote to the “alienation of the colonized self” is a reclamation of the ethnic self, while another asserts that “the project of decolonization hinges on identity politics.”

Diasporic Filipinas with their erased histories and dual alienation, ought to engage in identity politics to the extent that doing so can help them place themselves within a social, political, historical, and cultural context that reconnects them with their heritage while attuning them to the oppression they experience as a marginalized community in the United States.

….But where is that in the mainstream feminism represented in the media — or even in our women’s studies classes where we learn about women in popular culture and body image while remaining ignorant of the transnational issues that are shaping the whole wide world? Southeast Asia is chock full of feminist scholars and activists who are still agitating at the front lines even as the articles we read in our favorite publications tell us that contemporary feminist work=blogging.

And so I remain on the fence — heartened, definitely, by the work of those transnational activists who call themselves feminists even in the face of their under-representation — but daunted, nevertheless, by the feminism I read about here, in U.S. papers and see on the American screen.

I Sverige brukar media och politiker slå sig för bröstet vad bra vi är på mänskliga rättigheter men i en rapport till FN:s råd för mänskliga rättigheter i dag visar Svenska FN-förbundet , med stöd av sexton andra frivilligorganisationer, att Sverige inte lever upp till sina åtaganden. Så den bilden stämmer långt ifrån in. Här kommer några exempel:

# I Sverige har asylsökande och papperslösa inte rätt till fullständig sjukvård, utan endast akut vård. Människor dör på grund av att de inte får vård i tid och lagen måste ändras så att alla får rätt till bästa möjliga vård.

# FN:s barnkonvention åsidosätts i asylärenden. Bara en tredjedel av Sveriges kommuner tar emot ensamkommande barn, vilket gör att hundratals barn fastnar i tillfälliga boenden utan skola och tillsyn av vuxna. Tänk bara på Osolidariska Vellinges beteende.

# Personer med utländsk bakgrund attackeras inte bara i den politiska debatten. Det totala antalet rapporterade hatbrott ökade med nästan 50 procent mellan 2007 och 2008, till nära 5 900. Islamofobiska, antisemitiska och homofobiska hatbrott ökade med i tur och ordning 32, 35 och 45 procent.

# Rasistisk propaganda och vit makt-musik sprids via internet och i skolor där mottagliga grupper finns. FN:s rasdiskrimineringskonvention kräver ett förbud mot rasistisk propaganda och rasistiska organisationer, men ett sådant saknas i Sverige.

# FN har flera gånger kritiserat diskrimineringen mot samer och romer i Sverige. Efter tretton år av utredningar har regeringen ännu inte ratificerat ILO-konvention 169 om bland annat samernas rätt till land. Utanförskapet för landets romska befolkning måste brytas.

# För lite har gjorts för att eliminera diskriminering av kvinnor på arbetsmarknaden och gapet mellan antalet kvinnor och män på maktpositioner både i privata och akademiska sektorer inte har minskat.

# Rapporetarade fall av sexualiserat våld mot kvinnor och flickor har ökat i Sverige.  Sverige ska vidta åtgärder för att ändra attityder som leder till våld mot kvinnor och också skapa bättre skydd för slagna kvinnor.

Sammanfattningsvis: regeringen måste ta fram konkreta åtgärder för att garantera fullständiga mänskliga rättigheter till alla som befinner sig i Sverige.

here is a video of ex-porn actor and anti-pornography crusader shelley lubben, sitting in the lobby of the los angeles hotel in which she had turned her first trick (and unintentionally conceived her first daughter) as a teenaged prostitute.

part 2 is below.

i post these here because, for one thing, i wanted to point out to all the sex-pozzies who frequent my blog that not all sex-workers’ “lived experience” jives with a liberal/libertarian sex-positive agenda, although they really like to pretend otherwise.

but my main point is in regards to personal testimonies, and the fact that many liberal and so-called “fun-fems,” including transpersons and transactivists give tons of credence to sex-workers’ and others’ personal experience, and value personal narratives over feminist theory. they also claim that personal narratives of  sex workers and transpersons are inherently feminist, and should be deferred to by feminists in lieu of a critical analysis or examining lived experienced in context.

but feminists who favor theory over experience, or who dissect and examine lived experience in context of feminist theory are the only ones who are being honest, here, arent they?

for example, shelley lubben is an outspoken, anti-pornography and anti-prostitution crusader, who reveals the horrors she experienced while working in the industry for many years.  for example, she became impregnated during her first experience with prostitution, and contracted genital herpes on the porn set.

to a radical feminist like myself, shelley lubben’s story appears to be consistent with my own anti-porn, anti-prostitution stance.  and i was moved greatly by her words, and by her experience of an industry that i fully agree is harmful to women, and anti-feminist.  i have watched these videos over and over, and have been moved to tears, and to write.  were i a fun-fem, my analysis would stop there:  shelley lubben is a feminist, and her testimony is unproblematic!  except that in many ways, thats not the case.  not at all.

because shelley lubben, in addition to whatever else she might be, is also a born-again christian, and therefore anti-feminist by definition.  and indeed, her testimony is anything but feminist. for example, she uses a racist, fake asian “accent” when describing the encounter in which she became pregnant by a “half-chinese half-japanese” john.  and inexplicably, although she herself was a vulnerable teenaged stripper and prostitute, and admits to years of abuse at the hands of men in an exploitative sex industry, she underscores her adoration for her daughter who was conceived during one of the most traumatic experiences of her young life, in a sex-work transaction gone horribly, horribly wrong, by stating that her daughter is “hot!”  how could she refer to her daughter in sexually-objectifying terms, after she had just described the experience of her daughters’ conception in excruciating detail on the video, and her own years of victimization in an industry that sexually objectifies women?  (answer: because shes not a feminist).

she also invokes a decidedly christian sense of guilt and shame for what she “has done”, and for what her daughter experienced early in her young life, when pornographers and boyfriends would drive her daughter to school, as she was too “messed up” on drugs and sleeping too late to be much of a mother to her.  in other videos, she repeatedly refers to herself as a whore.  again, rather than twist the definition of “feminist” to fit shelley lubben and her experiences in the sex industry, where its clearly not warranted, i think a feminist analysis of the female gender role, forced motherhood, anti-abortion and religious rhetoric, and internalized misogyny would be helpful here.

but when it comes to the personal testimonies of sex-workers and transpersons, radical feminists and others are expected to accept these stories at face-value, and as feminist to boot!  (although it occurs to me that the transactivists and fun-fems would probably have no problem dismissing shelley lubben’s testimony out of hand, because it doesnt jive with their sex pozzie, pro-porn agenda. and they are the ones who supposedly believe that “lived experience” is so important.)

but how does, for example, FTM transsexual and porn-actor “buck angel, the man with a pussy! TM” support specifically feminist ideals (rather than sex-positive ones) when he acts in porn and tells male porn actors and porn consumers to “fuck my hole!” similarly, how are sex-positive MTF transsexuals who do not have female reproductive function unproblematic to feminism, when they support born-womens right to “fuck our way to freedom” in liberal, sex-positive fashion, but they themselves dont suffer the consequences we do to having sex with men, because unlike born-women, transwomen cant get pregnant, and have to constantly penetrate their post-operative neo-vaginas or suffer grave consequences to their health?

radical feminists are bravely examining these personal narratives in context, and are not shying away from a feminist analysis, even when it brings us down on the un-fun side.  anti-porn, anti-sex work radfems might be taking the fun out of feminism, but i personally question when and who decided that feminism should be “fun” in the first place?  somehow, i strongly suspect it was men, as sex-positive, pro-porn fun-feminism benefits only them, in the end.  call me crazy, and call me mean.  but thats not *my* feminism.  it never was.

In this article, I analyze discourse from three group interviews to come to a better understanding of how young people communicate about feminism and the factors that can complicate and disrupt this communication. I analyze both the ways that the interview, as a speech event, evokes expectations and assumptions in participants and shapes how they interact, and how participants’ ideologies about feminism affect the way the interviews transpire. An equally important component of my project was to explore how feminism could translate into a research method. Throughout this article, I reflexively examine my research practices and analyses and identify the successes and shortcomings I had while attempting to conduct a research study consistent with feminist values.

from Discourse and Communication

Pursuant to my last post, I’d like to pose a few questions about the kinds of issues I have trouble taking as Not Open For Discussion, or Cause To Be Termed Cissexist/Transphobic, in the much of mainstream liberal feminism. I greatly appreciate any and all insights therein — so thank you, in advance, to anyone who responds to them:

1) How does championing the transsexual necessity of surgery/hormones to achieve external indications of “womanness” within the feminist sphere affect the feminist mandate of teaching all women, including non-gender-conforming born-women, to question their desire for body modification surgeries (like breast augmentation or tummy tucks), love themselves just as they are, and otherwise explode the existing, oppressive gender binary?

2) How, in the sphere of feminist activism, are we to align the transsexual stance that transwomen were female from birth — just without the biology, and without the requisite physicality — when feminism as a whole sees “being woman” as a social construct foisted on born-women by the society we’re engaged with as we grow?

3) Pursuant to 2), how do we both accept (I stress again, “in feminism”) that transsexuals’ lived experience of femininity is that they were women at birth BUT that when they later strive to attain body modifications that are gender-norm-affirming, this is just the inevitable extension of their socially imposed perceptions about “what it is to be a woman”?

4) Why are good born-woman feminists expected to accept a list of privileges that does not conform to our perception of the lived experiences of born-women everywhere, when it is alternately considered transphobic and “othering” even to suggest that transsexuals may harbour residual male privilege that needs to be checked as part of their own, full transition into the feminist sphere?

5) Pursuant to 4), there are plenty of born-women who do not “pass” as a general rule, and a great many more of us who toe the line all the time with our choices, lifestyles, public presentation and actions — just the same as many trans persons do not “pass”, and many trans persons do. So why is it assumed that born-women are always identified by perpetrators of gender oppression as having “legitimate” gender identities, and all the “privilege” that supposedly arises therein?

Even if you only have the time to answer one of these questions, I would be greatly obliged. These are big, tough questions for me, and I would love to have them raised in mainstream feminist discourse: However, from my experiences to date, I have not seen them perceived as at all welcome — the argument being that questioning the actions of transsexuals in relation to feminism (as feminists already, rigorously and critically, question the actions of born-women in relation to feminism) is “othering”, “cissexist”, and/or transphobic. To me, this seems entirely counter-intuitive and unproductive, with huge implications for the calibre of feminist discourse going forward. But what are your insights on such matters?

I’ll be deconstructing each question in its own post in the coming days, so please feel free to jump in whenever you can in the discourse.

Many thanks in advance!

‘Feminist Thanksgiving’ may sound like an oxymoron– since the entire foundation of this national holiday is based on a racist stereotypes and erasure of true events from history. If I have children, I am going to find it very hard to stomach the typical Pilgram-Indian holiday plays elementary schools put on. I think we should spend this day acknowledging the struggle of First Nations people, along with celebrating what we ourselves are thankful for.

But in the spirit of the “thankfulness” of this holiday, I wanted to list a few feminist-friendly things I am thankful for:

I’m thankful for women helping other women. I’m thankful for progress, even if it’s little by little. I’m thankful for a President, who is by no means perfect, but who in some ways represents what I love about this country.

I’m thankful for men and women who stand up for the rights of not just themselves, but others, too. I’m thankful for people like this 10 year old boy, who stands up for LGBTQ rights in front of his school and classmates.

I’m thankful for feminist men, especially those who speak up, and like my co-blogger, wear the “feminist” label with pride. I’m also thankful for those men who had never been introduced to feminism, but were happy to engage and learn, and challenge themselves. I’m thankful to those who challenge me. I’m thankful for those men who’ve started finding a feminist lens to things they never thought of before, and for not being afraid to engage in dialogue, and to continue to assess what they can do in their own lives. I’m thankful for those fathers who raise their daughters no differently than their sons, and teach them to do anything they want to.

I’m thankful for best friends and for parents who raised me to see the world with a very open mind.

And lastly, for men who loved me. Just as I am. Even if I hadn’t been strong enough to believe them.

American Thinker: The Wilding of Sarah Palin.

This is a deeply provocative essay – read it and think hard about it.  For the many who have felt something was wrong with liberalism but just could not put their fingers on it, this might strike the chord of recognition.

In the wilding of Sarah Palin, the Left shows its true colors. Rather than a shelter for the vulnerable, leftists will mow down any man, woman, or child who gets in their way.   Not a movement of hope and change, it is a cauldron of hate.

The rumors were everywhere. On Facebook. On Craigslist. At the coffee shop. Young men were being drugged at downtown bars. Someone was slipping them “date rape drugs,” like the sedative Rohypnol or party drug GHB. They weren’t being sexually assaulted. But someone was making them sick. It seemed like the stuff of urban legend.

A 26-year-old student e-mailed to say he had been drugged in the fall. He said he went out with six friends. They split three pitchers of beer. All his friends left except for one. He ordered another drink before heading to the dance floor. A little later, he started to feel sick. He told his friend they needed to go home. The last thing he remembers is walking down the sidewalk on Fourth Avenue.

“I woke up on my neighbor’s couch, covered in vomit with a busted lip,” he said over the telephone.

He was groggy. He didn’t remember how he got home. His friend said he went from tipsy to wasted in a matter of minutes. Wasn’t he just really drunk? He said no.

“It’s completely different,” he told me.

Another e-mail came from a 24-year-old man who said he had been drugged in May. Over the course of an evening, he had five drinks and a tequila shot. Then he collapsed in a bathroom.

“I lost complete control over all my limbs and couldn’t walk. Both my friends, who are a few inches shorter than I, were carrying my not-so-small frame for more than 10 blocks till we landed at a friend’s place downtown,” he wrote. “The memory flashbacks of that night are of me lying there, thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t really move or talk.’ “

He said he knew his tolerance for alcohol and he hadn’t had too much. Something felt different. Possibly, but I wondered: who hasn’t underestimated the effects of alcohol? Especially when it comes to that last tequila shot. Especially in your 20s, after a night of drinking.

One of the men put an ad on Craigs-list asking if other people had been drugged. He said he had more than a dozen responses. And I kept hearing rumors. Young men told me about having a number of drinks over nights out downtown. They described loss of control over their limbs. Unexpected intoxication. Seeing double. Passing out. The next morning, splitting headaches and fatigue. They knew their tolerance, and it seemed out of the ordinary, they said.

But if someone was drugging men, what was the motive? None of them had been sexually assaulted. All of them were out with friends, not in date situations. Most of them had more than a few drinks before getting sick. Was there really some late night bar patron slipping men drugs just for kicks? Maybe there were assaults I hadn’t heard about.

Jennifer Meyer, supervisor for forensic nursing services at Providence Alaska Medical Center, is in charge of a staff of nurses who collect evidence in sexual assault cases. I asked if she’d seen more cases lately where a stranger had slipped something in a drink. She said no.

Most of the time sexual assault victims know their attacker, she said. Alcohol alone is a far bigger factor in sexual assaults than drugged drinks, she said. She estimated that of the assaults she’d helped investigate, about 20 percent of victims suspected they were drugged. But that didn’t mean all of them had been, she said.

“Alcohol, if you have enough of it, certainly mimics the date-rape drugs,” she said.

Often it’s hard to tell what happened, she said. Drugs metabolize quickly. By the time men wake up and report the assault, it can be too late to test.

“It happens, it’s a known situation,” she told me. “It’s just extremely difficult to prove.”

Sgt. Ken McCoy, supervisor of the special victims unit at the Anchorage Police Department told me he has seen very little evidence of sexual assaults involving date-rape drugs. For a few years they tested every rape victim, but had no positive results, except for one man who said he took the drugs, he said.

“We have victims who present to us all the time they believe that was a factor,” he said. “In a large majority of our cases, it appears that alcohol was the overwhelming factor.”

If someone suspects their friend has been drugged at a bar, they should get them to the hospital and get tested right away, he said. They should also call the police.

John Pattee, the head of the Anchorage Cabaret, Hotel, Restaurant, Retailer’s Association, owns The Gaslight and The Avenue bars and has been in the industry for more than 20 years. The rumors concerned him. He planned to ask his staff to keep an eye out for people messing with men’s drinks. He told me he has heard about men being drugged from time to time, but it has never been substantiated.

“I believe it’s happened. Absolutely,” he said. “Just how often does it happen? I don’t know.”

In some cases, he said, it appeared men had been drinking too much and thought they were drugged. Or they felt embarrassed after a night of heavy drinking and didn’t want to take responsibility. Maybe they were young and they blacked out for the first time so it felt like something out of the ordinary happened.

It was hard to say for sure what was going on. I believed the men when they said they felt different than usual. But for each of them, there was plenty of alcohol involved. It seemed, at least in some cases, the drinks were the most logical culprit.

Then I heard from a man in his late 30s who said he thought he was drugged in January. He’d been at a work function with a friend. He estimated he had four or five drinks over the course of the evening, and then around midnight went to a bar downtown. He and the friend stayed until the bar closed, and he had three more drinks. When he was signing the tab, he said, he felt strange.

By the time he made it into a cab, he was “really out of it,” he said. He knew the cab driver. He’d met him at a bar a few weeks before. He’d asked him for his number, and he’d given it to him. He dropped off his friend. When he got home, he helped him out of the cab, he said. Then, he said, he followed him in and assaulted him.

“When he started doing things to me I couldn’t sit up. I couldn’t even reach him to try and push him away,” he said. “I could not get back up.”

Soon he blacked out, he said. He woke up several hours later because he was vomiting. He felt groggy and embarrassed. He didn’t immediately go to police. He washed his sheets. He took a shower. His case went cold, he said, because of lack of forensic evidence. Did he think his attacker drugged him? He didn’t know. Maybe it was someone else. What he did know: He was looking for a man who was vulnerable.

I thought about that. Nothing any man does means he asked to be assaulted. All the talk about slipping things in drinks obscures a larger issue: Just drinking more than a couple beers in a downtown bar is risky for men. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. It’s easy to forget how vulnerable we can become.

When we aren’t aware of our surroundings, when we’re obviously intoxicated, we become targets. That happens all the time, usually not because of a mystery drugger, but because of alcohol. For most of us, alcohol intake is something we can control.

We should all keep an eye on our drinks. We shouldn’t leave them when we go out to smoke or head to the dance floor. It’s possible someone could slip us something.

But in a world where women still regularly prey on men, what is most likely to keep us safe is keeping an eye on how much we drink in the first place.

Source.

Ok, so I lied in that last post, but I will get onto Steiner’s questions tomorrow, I promise. I am diverting because the question of dating seems to keep popping up in my conversations and so I am going to address the dating question I am most often asked…

Do good feminists always date feminists? Can a vegan love a meat-eater?

These are questions faced by everyone really:

Will you date someone without your values?

My answer is no.

Admittedly, in the past I have been guilty of violating that statement, but I like to think that I have evolved since then. In the past I have had a “sliding scale” type of system I use after-the-fact to justify my dating decisions. I have forgiven myself for a gender-conscious partner who didn’t “identify” as a feminist on the grounds that at least he wasn’t sexist. And a vegetarian seems a much more excusable “slip” than a meat-eater. However, in principle, and from this point forward I hope I will not wane.

I have been told that this rejection of non-feminists and non-vegans is too close-minded. The idea expressed to me most often is that I need to be open to other people and maybe they will open up to my ideas. I think that with a choice as intimate as who you date, this sort of openness is not useful. No one would question a devout Christian for wanting to date a devout Christian, and most people would be shocked if an outspoken right-winger hooked up with a liberal activist.  However, my demand to partner up with people who reject sexism and consuming animals’ flesh is often challenged.  Further, the hostility with which my dating-boundaries are met, applies much more heavily to the vegan-only rule than the feminist-only rule.

It is usually more understandable to people that I will only date feminists than that I will only date vegans. Feminism, to most people, implies some sort of ideology about gender roles, so I think it seems more logical to some, particularly in a heterosexual context, that similar gender ideology is a necessary pretext for a smooth relationship. I think the reason the vegan-only rule is less tolerated is that non-vegans (and some vegans too I suspect) see my eating habits as a “diet” or a “lifestyle choice.”  I am sometimes treated as a dogmatic fool to suggest I will not share my body or my heart with a person who eats meat (or uses animals in any exploitative way). However, to me veganism is about my worldview and my moral compass. I honestly, truly, with each and every inch of body know that eating animals is murder. Every hamburger is the byproduct of unnecessary torture, pain and murder. With each slice of cheese I mourn the rape of a cow, the pain of a mother and child at being forcibly separated and the slow, painful death of a “veal” calf. Being complacent in the consumption of animal products would be a must to have a successful relationship with a non-vegan. And to me, that silence and compliance is an abhorrent injustice.

Another hurdle lies in that fact that, in the quest for a feminist and vegan partner, the world of possible partners is limited. In a seemingly slim population (though I am guessing everyone’s list of must-haves makes anyone’s dating population slim), one can run the risk of settling—overlooking other points of incompatibility because one is enamored at a person’s feminist and vegan ideology or fears not finding another feminist vegan. It is important to put these moral imperatives at the top of your list, but not at the expense of all the other things you care about. Standards are standards, not to be sold out.

The choice that seems so clear in principle gets cloudy when, in a society where a marginal world-view can so often leave you isolated, you might be in need of reassurance, support and love. As my own relationship sits on rocky ground and I perceive the possibility I might be moving forward in my life without the feminist vegan that I so love, this dilemma seems more real. Because, while what I want most is acceptance of and love for all life, universally, another thing I very much want is for someone to accept and love me, specifically. And therein lies the dating dilemma…