She mirrors the mysterious Moon,
every woman’s confidante & sacred sister,
such pale beauty,
tell me true, do you not sometimes weep for it?

She is a Goddess-made tapestry,
each thread a divine gift & blessed quality,
in her resides every face of woman,
your mother, sister, wife, lover, daughter, friend…

for she is beautiful and necessary,
beautiful and strong, beautiful and precious…

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.

woke this morning feeling strange

dreamt that you were going away

maybe we are traveling at different times

a lonely spirit* that sometimes collide

i don’t want to hold this fear anymore

i want to leave the past behind

i don’t want to hold this pain anymore

i want to trust what i begun

i want to leave the past behind

***

ps. thanks kindly to Barbara http://barbaraelka.com/

…i’ve been collecting dolls and images for my graphic novel.

I do not want to “frame you for assault.” I do not hate men.[1] I don’t want to strong-arm you into paying me alimony or, if you could miraculously get me pregnant, child support. I do not want to make you bow down to my indomitable feminine will.[2]

To a TERF:

I do not want to assault you or to override your autonomy. I am not a woman hater; I can be self-loathing, but as a result of unrelated depression, not self-directed misogyny. I understand the value of female-spectrum only places. I am not an instrument of the kyriarchy. I do not want to make you bow down to my indomitable feminine will.[3]

To be quite honest, I wouldn’t really care about your bigoted opinions if you weren’t so damn insistent on acting upon them and shaping the world into your own images.

I am both an activist and a feminist, though I do not fly under the banner of either of your loud-mouthed and regressive ideologies.

Here is why.

CONTENT WARNING: Below the fold are mentions of ableism, sexual harassment, bullying, a cissexist slur, and homophobia.

TRIGGER WARNING: In addition to that, there are more graphic descriptions of verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse.

I’m going to go about this list in a vaguely chronological order. This is only a quick run-through of many of the things I’ve gone through and I’ll probably end up writing about many of these in greater depth later.

1. I’m a feminist because He-Who-Sired-Me divorced She-Who-Bore-Me after a car accident caused her to lose sensation and motor function below the waist.

   From what I’ve heard, he did this because her not being able-bodied and the recovery period from the accident made her less of an asset in the social circles in which he traveled.

2. I’m a feminist because, if I remember correctly… In first grade, we had a costume day for Halloween at my school. She-Who-Bore-Me tried to dress me up in a mummy costume and was disappointed when the literal act of doing so scared me.[4] She told me that such fear was silly and not befitting of a proper boy.

3. I’m a feminist because years after they’d divorced, She-Who-Bore-Me and her parents emigrated and came here to the united states, bringing me with them.

   The problem?

   They only alerted He-Who-Sired-Me, who had visiting rights, that this would be a permanent move after we were situated here. I’m actually grateful that this happened, since being who I am in my native country would be infinitely more dangerous than it is here, but it was still a fucked up move.[5]

4. I’m a feminist because in elementary school, I was a bully to one particular kid. I didn’t know how to foster true friendships with people, so I pulled an Azula; I trusted power over intimacy.

   That was fucked up of me to have done. I wish I could apologize to them and I would if I had any idea of how to find them nowadays.

5. I’m a feminist because during all of middle school, I had an incredibly unhealthy school and no-one was there to help steer me through it. I was essentially a Nice Guy and when I look back at how I acted and how I felt, I’m ashamed.

   It wasn’t okay, even though my best friend eventually forgave me for how I acted. There are essentially no proper societal or pop culture models for healthy relationships and/or how not to be a complete asshole to people. That’s fucked up.

6. I’m a feminist because, again, during middle school, I knew less than nothing about sex, even after three years of sex-ed in health class. Don’t believe me? Here’s the mechanism by which I thought that two people with penis-y things had sex[6]

   • FYI: In my head, both penis-y things were composed of two independently moving parts: a tube — the pink, fleshy part where all the wiring’s held — and a sheath — the foreskin and protective skin.

   • Penis-y Thing #1 would retract/fold itself up into the sheath. That is, it would work like one of those folding telescopes and recede into itself.

   • Penis-y Thing #2 would then enter the other person’s sheath

   • Pumping actions would then ensue.

7. I’m a feminist because I got into my first “relationship,” (read as, a couple in name only) this exchange happened almost word for word.

   Her: Do you think you’d ever kiss me?
   Me: Well, maybe, if I loved you enough

   I was still under the effect of the pseudo-Catholicism with which I was raised and so anything short of true love was immoral, promiscuous, and completely execrable!

8. (tw: sexual abuse(?))

   I’m a feminist because when I was younger, I was subjected to “cleanliness checks.” I would have to strip from the waist down and present my genitals to She-Who-Bore-Me and her mother to make sure I was keeping good enough care of them. A “justification” for this was that two of my cousins had to be circumcised after they got an infection in said parts.

9. (tw: sexual abuse(?))

   I’m a feminist because when I was young, I had tickle fights with She-Who-Bore-Me’s mother. That was okay — they were fun, even! — but sometimes involved really, really uncomfortable crotch cupping and stimulation. I said that I really didn’t feel comfortable with that, but it took more than a few times for that message to get through. (And I know that by virtue of the fact that it did get through, I’m luckier than many.)

10. I’m a feminist because I once thought that it was okay to express my frustration at one of my current best friends’s ‘capriciousness’, on whom I had a crush at the time, was “damn, I wonder if she’s on her period.” Thankfully, another friend to whom I was talking at that time promptly disabused me of that notion.

11. I’m a feminist because a friend and I used to bat the slur h************ around as if it were a funny alien concept.

    Obviously, no-one like that could exist and so the very concept of it is just funny, right? Because even if someone like that existed, they must be a joke.

    No.

    It was not funny and it was not nice. I’m so, so sorry that it happened and, worse, that some remnants of it exist on the wobs. I can’t in good conscience wash my hands of my statements, but I can state that I damn well regret them and know that they weren’t anything but privileged jabs at a marginalized group.

    I’m sorry.

12. I’m a feminist because, as much as I fought against it in my head, as much as I knew that it was wrong and hateful, I succumbed to using the slur r******* for a few weeks.

    And then later, after its ableist roots were evident to me, I regressed to using the words lame, idiot, or moron. I know that not as many people are bothered by those words, but I don’t find it too much of an inconvenience to change my language, a relatively easy thing, in order to avoid hurting others.

13. (tw: sexual abuse and rape culture)

    I’m a feminist because someone I used to think of as a friend came to me once and admitted that he had raped his girlfriend, Lara. I didn’t urge him to turn himself in — I rationalized it away by thinking, hoping!, that she would report him first — and instead I tried to calm him down: in part so he’d be not-broken when the cops came and in part because I couldn’t handle having him breaking down in front of me after making this huge revelation.

    I didn’t turn him in and neither did she. He went on to rape her a few times afterwards and when he was finally turned in, the cops gave him a warning.

    I’m sorry, Lara — not her real name, by the way — for not acting up. This is my biggest regret. This isn’t about me, though; it’s about Lara and the huge number of girls that were hurt just like she was.

    Go support RAINN right now; they’re good people and do good work.

14. I’m a feminist because Michael — also not his real name — once came out to the whole school and dated another kid for about three months, the high point of which was when they made out passionately at one of the school dances.

    The event?

    Michael later said that he was just kidding. He’d pretended to be gay so as to get data for a research paper he’d have to write in a year and a half.[7] The problem here can go in one of two ways.

    1. He pulled off a complex the most complex “it was just a social experiment!” that I’ve ever heard of, breaking one kid’s heart in the process and forever cementing his position in most of our heads as “that asshole who pretended to be gay”

    2. He actually is gay and went back into the closet. He comes from a very controlling, italian-catholic family and eventually does want to grow up to become a priest — which, yes, led to its own branch of jokes — which means that he dove back into the closet for the sake of his safety. He now goes from asshole to tragic.

15. I’m a feminist because while I was going through my long journey across the fifth-dimensional constructs of gender and sexuality, I had nothing to tell me that this sort of thing was natural.

    Because while my panamoury was first manifesting itself, I chalked it up to being so amazingly progressive and amazing that I could *ahem* make out with gents, feel nothing about it, and be completely comfortable with my gender/sexuality (when, of course, the exact opposite thing was happening.)

16. I’m a feminist because the thing that finally pushed me over the edge and helped me realize that I’m trans was a manga called Hōrō Musuko (alt: Hourou Musuko) and I was later ridiculed for that being the case.

    I wish I could find some book to “change you back!” — She-Who-Bore-Me

17. I’m a feminist because after they outed me and before I could escape — long story — She-Who-Bore-Me and her mother shamed me for the increasing frequency of depression related paralysis.

18. I’m a feminist because these same people — the ones who’d told me that they’d love me forever — spat out the phrase “why don’t you just go kill yourself now?” at the end of a three hour long The Reason You Suck Speech.

19. I’m a feminist because of the damn fact that had I not had a supportive family on IRC, I would have killed myself ten times over last year.

20. I’m a feminist because I had to withdraw from uni before the end of my first semester because of the flashbacks and stress that the abuse caused.

21. I’m a feminist because I’m pissed off that a letter I got after I graduated from the dean of my uni was a condescending screed that completely ignored the mental and emotional duress I went through in the few months I was enrolled and just said that I’d have to bust my ass to convince whatever dean is in power when I reapply to verify that I’m truly “committed to the program.”

22. I’m a feminist because a straight, male, cis, white, supposed ally tried to shame me during a discussion on election policy and alternative parties for being a victim of abuse.

    You wrote, “From a survivor of abuse, know that you are hyperbolizing (and therefore delegitimizing) your cause and minimizing everything I, my friends, and all sufferers of abuse have gone through.”

    Yet you have no problem using a combative tone and cussing at me in writing. That’s hypocritical and lowly of you. Hurt people hurt people as the expression goes. I empathize with you for having to resort to that.

    […]

    I did not make light [of your abuse,] liar. I called you out for being a hypocrite being verbally abusive online. Your evoking victimization for being stood up to was just one of the lowly tactics you use to try to deflect from your indefensible views that YOU were so insistent of trying to dominate me with. Good day : )

    Thinking of that interaction still makes me sick; whether that’s because I’m hurt as fuck by what he said, because I want to rip his head off for having said that, or both… I don’t know.

    All I’m sure of is that I’m damn disappointed that I faced that bullshit in, worst of all, the forum of a self-described hub of progressivism and a shelter for freaks, outcasts, and all marginalized people. I still don’t feel all that safe or comfortable listening to the show, amazing as it is.

I’m a feminist because…

because…

Because this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of everything I’ve done, abetted, or suffered. The reason this Goliath of a post isn’t even longer is that I don’t have the energy to keep throwing slings at the past and dragging out these events out to the light.

I’m tired, triggered, and hungry as fuck.

You might not think that some of the things above qualify as proper feminist topics. You might say:

Ableism, bullying, and gay rights aren’t issues that directly affect women

My response? If I may quote a wonderful phrase, MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT. There is no progress if we don’t try to dismantle all vectors of oppression by which the kyriarchy operates and propagates itself.

Mull it over. Pass it on.

Why would I bother, you ask?

I showed up to work yesterday, and mentioned to the (mostly conservative) guys that “CNN really p*ssed me off this morning”–it was relative to a story they “reported” about this idiot homophobe pastor guy–but I didn’t even get that far in the story.  One guy cut me off and said simply, “CNN should p*ss you off every morning.”  I asked him why, and he said something in response along the lines of CNN being a liberal newscast, and rattled off a few conservative talking points.  (This guy also has a tattoo of an eagle which reads, “Never Forget 9/11,” and says openly that he doesn’t like anyone who is Muslim because of the “feeling” he gets from them.)  You see now the kinds of people I work with.

No, the reason I have been watching CNN and MSNBC lately, and reading blogs by people who are focused on spreading feminism, anti Wall Street sentiments, anti [insert race/creed/sexual orientation here] sentiments, or any other activism is simply because I believe it opens doors into empathy for me.  If I have access to an open discussion among a crowd of people who are exploring a topic that I have already formed opinions on, I can begin to see why they do what they do, and how the “cause of their cause” came about.

I do not make a very good conservative.

Is this you?

I think gays should be able to get married, and I feel that way because I really don’t care what they do.  It just doesn’t affect me.  I do not think a woman must subscribe to a particular role in a marriage–I think whatever that role happens to be should be left up to the people in the relationship to figure out on their own.  My wife makes more money than I do, and I have no problem with that.  When folks like feminists discuss among themselves at length just exactly how they are living, and if things are a “feminist” thing to do, I sit in disbelief that someone needs a cause that badly.  My wife would be a really great role model for any feminist, actually–she is stronger than she knows, extremely intelligent, and sticks firmly to her opinions…but she doesn’t go around advertising that she is those things.  She just is those things.  She’s a female version of this.

But I make a terrible liberal, too.

These groups, these causes are a religion, like any other.  They all are.  Ever the activists.  What is the point?  Why do people feel the need to take their collective opinions and literally force others to be exposed to them?  What chemical is released in their head when they get on a soapbox about their cause?  Why can’t they just live how they want to live, and let me live how I see fit for me?

Why do these people think in their heads and in their hearts that making everything “fair” will solve all of our problems?  It makes me *facepalm* my own forehead when I come across people who cannot see past the myopia of their lives and recognize that a rising tide lifts all ships.  When free markets are allowed to work (and the government stays out of them), everyone prospers.  The beauty of this country is that if you are angry that someone is richer than you, you can find a way to change that on your own.  You don’t need permission to do so, either.

I have gained a greater understanding of the way many people think by seeing and reading the things that make me want to throw things at my TV, but I am better off for it.  The more opinions you hear, the better you will be at understanding (and relating) to people.  You may not have a clue how to relate to someone, but I am sure that they have a clue how to relate to you.    You need to get good at it, because soon, those who prefer to stay within their own little tribe and shun the outside community will be the proverbial rock in the river.

The truth is that no matter who the media tells you to be, or how to act, or what to think, you are culpable for yourself.  Killing someone because [insert cause here] told you to doesn’t let you off the hook.  Robbing the rich to pay the poor makes you a thief, no matter how you choose to extrapolate it.

You should ignore the media’s messages, and create one of your own.  Read as much of others’ opinions as you can, and filter them into your view.

I guess, on some level, I am telling you to be a feminist, or a masculinist (is that a word?), or any kind of activist that suits you…just don’t get in my face about it.  Let me choose to find it on my own.  (The irony of my message, and the way in which I am delivering it, by the way, is not lost on me.)

Ciao!

But then, I found some traffic coming to me from this tumblr post about my original post, so I decided to read it. And I magically found that these folks had decided to take away my agency, interpret my post into their own view of the world, and basically tell people that my supportiveness was based on social constructions of being a nurturing woman.

My answer? FUCK YOU. I would have loved to have this conversation here, on my facebook, on my twitter, you name it. But no, you decided to talk about me, and place your judgement on me for all your followers to read with no opportunity for me to share my feelings. So here they are. Enjoy.

a) My partner has been out as genderqueer for years. To be frank (as I was in my original post), for most people it is easier to pass as a trans person than as a genderqueer person living between the boundaries. One reason the transition is so easy for me to support is because I have been supporting Leo on his gender journey for years now; transitioning is just the latest step. I support him unconditionally.

b) As I mentioned (again, in the original post), while I AM 100% supportive of his transition, it is not going to be all sunshine and unicorns farting rainbows. I am already read as straight all the damn time. With a partner that passes as a male, this will happen significantly more often. As I said, I’m not super psyched about that. As I’ve talked about as well, I’m not excited about Leo’s first experience with anesthesia, taking care of him when he’s in pain and cranky, and I’m a little anxious about what taking T will look like for his temper. I am absolutely aware that this is not perfect and la-di-fucking-da, but honestly, nothing is. I prefer to talk publicly and privately about my support for my partner because I fucking love him and would support him in pretty much anything (obviously, not if that involved moving back to AZ, felonies, etc).

c) I am allowed to make my own decisions, think my own thoughts, and support my partner however that looks like. Yes, I am a nurturing person (not just for my partner, but for many of my friends and chosen family as well). Is some of it socially constructed? Perhaps…but I also like taking care of people…except for myself sometimes. I also am a tough partner to support as well. Leo is ALSO nurturing of me, his woman identified partner. He’s the one who brings me my meds and ice packs, lying in bed, stroking my hair when I have multiple migraines a month. He’s the one who advocates for me when the location folks picked has a flight of stairs, and my knees just can’t do it. He’s the one who sits with me and calms me down when I have panic attacks. One reason I am so fucking excited to be able to REALLY support my partner in his transition is because he supports me so much unconditionally every day of our lives. So for you to assume that my support stems solely from being a cisgender woman in a society that wants me to be nurturing, especially when I now have a partner who presents as male, your assumptive privilege is showing. I have had partners, “friends” and co-workers who could have cared less about my disabilities and my anxiety, whereas Leo combats ableism in our community for me and with me on a regular basis. Support and nurturing goes two ways, but clearly you didn’t care enough to figure out who we are or how our relationship works before placing your judgements on me and my reaction.

Not that you’ll be reading this, because of course, what could I say, the robotic, socially constructed woman that I am, that might be of interest. Clearly, anything I write is controlled by the patriarchy, and I’m clearly just recreating a heternormative relationship by defending my support for my partner. That being said, fuck you for making assumptions about me, my motives, and trying to steal my agency.

-Shanna

12 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Marry Him

1. He interrupts what you are doing to demand his dinner. He demands his dinner. He seems to think his dinner is your priority/responsibility.
2. He interrupts what you are doing to demand anything.
3. He expects things from you he wouldn’t do for you, and doesn’t do himself – e.g. washing his clothes, caring for his children, paying for or “helping” him with his large bills/expenses.  He does not share equally in what would be the tasks of a marriage.
4. His “affection” is always aggressive and only manifests when he wants something.  He withholds attention, and if he does give it, he expects/requires you to respond positively to his advances. Sisters of Resistance place coercion on the spectrum of sexual harassment, assault and rape. In our experience coercion is common and we call it when we see it. (In the case of rape, help is available. International Resources)
5. He cuts you off from your friends and family. Tactics may include: judging your friends and relatives, telling you who he likes and doesn’t like, or who you are allowed to see and when, if at all. (See:  Narcissist Abuser).
6. He has cheated on you.  Or when you got together, he was cheating on someone else.
7. He doesn’t have a life. (See: Peter Pan Man)
8. He puts you down, ridicules, or degrades you.  This wears away at your self-confidence while keeping you trying harder to win his love.  He may say he is just joking, but that shit ain’t funny. (Men have sayings that relate directly to this one: “Treat her mean, keep her keen” UK /  “You treat a girl like dirt, she’ll stick to you like mud “ USA) (See:  Narcissist Abuser).
9. He is always negative/moaning/feeling sorry for himself.  He expects you to carry this emotional burden.
10. He only speaks badly of his exes and past relationships, painting them always as being in the wrong.  He accepts no responsibility for the ending of past relationships and breakups.  (He probably doesn’t accept much responsibility anyway.)
11. If he already has kids, and he has not raised them well, why would you (possibly) want to make more with him?
12. If things have only gotten worse since you moved in together, why get married and make that shit permanent?

***FURTHER AND FOUNDATIONAL READING***

Feminists have long critiqued marriage as the oldest patriarchal institution and enabler of capitalism, as they emerged over the same historical time period.  A woman getting married is literally and symbolically “given away” by her father to her husband, as property and breeding stock handed from one man to the other. Radical feminists are known to regard and reject marriage as a form of legalised rape or prostitution. 

For a foundational socioeconomic and political critique of marriage, refer to Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State – Frederick Engels, 1884. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm

The below is reposted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_marriage.

According to Gerstel and Sarkisian, domestic violence, isolation, and housework increase for women (1) [as a result of marriage].

Some feminists seek the end of formal marriage: “The institution of marriage is the chief vehicle for the perpetuation of the oppression of women; it is through the role of wife that the subjugation of women is maintained.”⁽²⁾

Individuals such as Sheila Cronan claim that “[f]reedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage”⁽³⁾ and point to historical, legal and social inequalities of wedding, family life and divorce.

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice.—Andrea Dworkin

Early second wave feminist literature specifically opposed to marriage include: 

• Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1969)
• Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (1970)
• Marilyn French, The Women’s Room (1977)
• Jessie Bernard, The Future of Marriage (1972)
• Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970)

Credit: Mariam Armisen

I’ve been an admirer of Unoma Azuah’s writing and activism for quite a while, so when I got the opportunity to be introduced to her, I grabbed it. I spoke with her a number of times to get to know her and her work. I started by asking her to tell our readers a little about herself. 

Who is Unoma Azuah and what drives her?

Unoma Azuah was born and raised in Nigeria; she is now a college teacher in the US. She believes in equal rights for all human beings, hence her near-preoccupation with rights issues for all groups of minorities, whether ethnic, racial, or gender, but especially sexual minorities.

Why sexual minorities in particular?

Sexual minorities challenge people’s notions of fixed genders and sexual identities, so they are a kind of “grey area.” I understand that the grey areas of life are something most people find puzzling because some of us live our lives trying to fix and fit people into boxes we think they belong in or should belong in. We try to force them into those boxes to fit our notions of what they should be. But hostility towards what is neither black nor white does not change the variants in life. Things are not always cut out in straight and simple forms. Hence, I preach respect for all.

Unoma, it is an honor for me to interview you for the first issue of Q-zine, the first magazine by, for, and about sexual minority groups in Africa. One of the main goals of the Queer African Youth Networking Center is to participate in the development of a queer women’s movement in Africa, so I would like to center our interview on queer women in Africa. You have written a number of articles about LGBTI/queer people in Nigeria, especially women. Specifically, what do you think are the priority concerns or issues for queer women in Nigeria?

Homophobia is the primary concern. If people are living a lie for fear of being “outed” and attacked, blackmailed, becoming a victim of extortion or even, in extreme cases, killed, this has got to be their primary concern. Where women don’t feel safe, they can’t achieve their potential. Until you are safe and can live your life openly, you can’t make much progress in other areas, so we have to start by fighting this homophobia that hold queer women back.

Can you give us a brief history of the evolution of queer women’s activism in Nigeria? Is this activism connected to larger women’s activism or feminist activism?  

I don’t know that there is an active queer women’s activism in Nigeria yet. Therefore, it cannot be said that any form of activism in this regard is connected to larger women’s activism or feminist activism. As I’ve said in a number of my articles on queer issues, feminism both as an activist movement and as a body of ideas is what Pinkie Megwe, in her article “Theorizing African Feminism(s): The ‘Colonial’ Question (Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy, Vol 20, 2006),
 describes as “ideas that underline the need for positive transformation of society such that women are not marginalized but are treated as full citizens in all spheres of life.” But feminism is a very diverse movement, of course, with all kinds of schools of thought, even just within contemporary “Western” feminism—liberal, radical, Marxist, social feminism, and so on. However, across these designations there is a belief in some quarters that feminism is the theory while lesbianism is the practice. Therefore, the feminist movement in Nigeria is held in much suspicion. For instance a writer like Buchi Emecheta refers to it as “foreign” and prefers to have the F in her own brand of feminism come with small letter f.

Does this mean queer women in Nigeria are not necessarily part of the feminist movement?

I think that’s right. For example, a writer like Zaynab Alkali would outrightly reject the feminist tag, while a writer like Akachi Ezeigbo would rather be called a “womanist.” In other words, the feminist movement in Nigeria is fraught with so much controversy that it has not yet become a firm platform for women to fight patriarchy. There is no activist group formed to that effect. Apart from the underground weekly or monthly gatherings of the LGBT communities where individual and group problems are discussed, queer women in Nigeria fight their fights as individuals.

Credit: One in Nine Campaign

What are some of the major difficulties of starting and sustaining an activist movement in Nigeria and the rest of West Africa?

Because West Africa has such an entrenched patriarchal system, just like most of the African continent, it is almost impossible to break away from the expected gender norms and live comfortably. In addition, many people misinterpret such movements as a threat to the family, which is not the case. If only the general public could once again recognize that there is strength in diversity, things would be much easier.

Are we not making any progress then?

Oh yes, we are definitely making progress despite these problems. The process is slow, but things are gradually changing. Women are becoming more independent and more assertive all the time. They no longer necessarily hang their self-worth on patriarchal expectations. More and more women are breaking the so-called gender identity norms. Some are shifting these boundaries, while others are dismantling them altogether. So where there were vacuums in the past, the hope of gathering and organizing is rising. And this hope of course is based on the fact that some people will be who they are no matter how many of them are rejected or tormented or even threatened to be wiped off the surface of the earth!

Sometimes people feel restricted because of policies and a political atmosphere that criminalizes certain sexual orientations and gender identities. What do you think are some ways that queer women—and their allies—can help to create change, given this environment?

Some have suggested that the most single most important thing is that people should begin by “coming out,” especially to their families. And in as much as coming out may be a very difficult thing to do based on the reality of living in a highly hostile environment, it does help. Imagine for instance if a president’s son or daughter were to come out to his or her parents. Eventually those parents would have to accept the fact that their child is queer or different, and so they would see that queer children are just children and that queer people are people like everyone else, not freaks or monsters. They would cease to view sexual orientation as an illness and accept it as a natural human phenomenon. A president who has a queer daughter will obviously think twice before supporting or enacting a law that would criminalize or kill his queer child!

“Non-hormonal is important, the researchers say, because some conventional male contraceptives that rely on disrupting production of the male hormone testosterone can cause side effects such as mood swings, acne and irritability.”

hahahaha.  If protecting mens’ natural hormonal cycles is so damn important that they’re actively working to make non hormonal, long term, reversible options for men,  then why is traditional hormonal birth control pushed on young women even though there is a viable nonhormonal option available?

Okay first off. If I don’t think I’m a player but someone perceives me as so, maybe the situation is that they actually just don’t like me. I have spent a lot of my life feeling guilty for flirting too much or trying to be less sexual towards people or trying to act in different or more appropriate ways. But at the end of the day, as hard on myself as I can be, I have sort of just come to terms with the fact that this is who I am. I can change my behavior and make sure I am not rude, taking advantage of people, or offending everyone in my path, but at the end of the day, I am just a highly sexual, highly flirtations, very overtly loving person. It’s the essence of who I am, and it’s just me.

So of course some boys don’t like how I act towards them or approach them, thinking I am too flirtatious or direct. But some boys don’t like me.

While I often choose to believe that boys do like me and just can’t handle my approach, I have to know that I am consciously doing that to save my fragile ego and sense of confidence.

I really truly don’t actually think I’m a player. Or even really that slutty. I’m sure I’ve had less partners than most people assume, and probably less than you. Given my history, I really usually care about anyone I am going to make out with, at least in some capacity. Or I at least feel safe and trusting of them. I have to.

And that’s what it comes down to. Maybe it’s not really that I am whorish that is the problem, but that I am too innocent. I am so trusting in people and the world and assuming that they are loving and trusting also, so I let myself be vulnerable with them. Because at the end of the day, taking off your clothes and letting someone literally inside of you can be a pretty vulnerable situation.

So yeah, maybe I am a whore because I will fuck you on the first date or have sex with a friend who has never expressed any emotional interest in me. Or maybe I am just naive beyond my wildest dreams in assuming this person isn’t going to hurt me when I open up to them in this very intimate way.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think every sex act is and/or has to be intimate. I am just saying that given my history, I do approach each encounter with a certain amount of trust required to proceed.

Of course I have to trust myself and that is the most important aspect of it all. I need to know that I won’t let myself get hurt like I did in high school. I have to know that I am an informed and educated and responsible and sexual adult who is making her own choices and fuck I hope they are okay ones. At the very least, not destructive.

To be fair, the kid who called me a player was trying to point out the gender differences in the terminology. Like, if I was a boy, I’d be called a player, and that can been seen as positive. But since I’m a girl it’s slut or whore or easy, and those all have super negative connotations. But at the root of it, I still felt the judgement of not having one single partner that I will love and be sexual with forever.

So maybe I wouldn’t take it so personally if I didn’t feel like it was at least a little true. Like I am a little bit of a whore. And that is the part that pisses me off. We teach little girls that they are slutty. It’s hard to not internalize these things.

One of the angriest moments in my church going years was when my priest actually said “and you see these girls today in 7th grade and they are dressing like sluts.”

I was young enough to be horrified because I still thought of a priest as being someone in a position of power or as an authority figure who is assumed to have at least some level of divine wisdom. But I was old enough to be pissed as fuck and use that in my ongoing argument to my parents about why I would never attend church again.

Obviously I have gotten over my Irish Catholic upbringing enough to leave my guilt behind and make out with who I want to when I want to make out with them, but that doesn’t mean I am healed from a lifetime of being looked at askant for having any sexuality whatsoever.

Part of me is just so over being fucking polite. I am who I am, take it or leave it.

We argue over her, we admire and revile her – we constantly reinvent her. Henry VIII’s second wife is one of the most controversial women in English history

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel is the sequel to the Man Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall.

Anne Boleyn wasn’t exactly a Protestant, but she was a reformer, an evangelical; and the sixth finger, which no one saw in her lifetime, was a fragment of black propaganda directed at her daughter, Elizabeth I. In Elizabeth’s reign it was the duty of beleaguered papists to demonstrate that the queen’s mother had been physically and spiritually deformed. Hence, not just the extra finger but the “wen” on her throat, which supposedly she hid with jewellery: hence the deformed foetus to which she was said to have given birth. There is no evidence that this monster baby ever existed, yet some modern historians and novelists insist on prolonging its poor life, attracted to the most lurid version of events they can devise.

Anne Boleyn is one of the most controversial women in English history; we argue over her, we pity and admire and revile her, we reinvent her in every generation. She takes on the colour of our fantasies and is shaped by our preoccupations: witch, bitch, feminist, sexual temptress, cold opportunist. She is a real woman who has acquired an archetypal status and force, and one who patrols the nightmares of good wives; she is the guilt-free predator, the man-stealer, the woman who sets out her sexual wares and extorts a fantastic price. She is also the mistress who, by marrying her lover, creates a job vacancy. Her rise is glittering, her fall sordid. God pays her out. The dead take revenge on the living. The moral order is reasserted.

Much of what we think we know about Anne melts away on close inspection. We can’t say for certain what year she was born, and there are many things we don’t understand about how her violent death was contrived. Holbein created incisive portraits of Henry VIII and his courtiers, but there is no reliable contemporary likeness of Anne. The oval face, the golden “B” with the pendant pearls: the familiar image and its many variants are reconstructions, more or less romantic, prettified. The fact that some antique hand has written her name on a portrait does not mean that we are looking at Henry’s second queen. Her image, her reputation, her life history is nebulous, a drifting cloud, a mist with certain points of colour and definition. Her eyes, it was said, were “black and beautiful”. On her coronation day she walked the length of Westminster Abbey on a cloth of heaven-blue. Twice in her life at least she wore a yellow dress: once at her debut at court in 1521, and again near the end of her life, on the frozen winter’s day when, on learning of the death of Henry’s first queen, she danced.

Read more…

Whoops, it’s Feminist Friday and I didn’t write up the post I had planned! Instead, in honour of “Geek Pride Day”, I’m going write about some of my favourite geeky women, geek properties and resources. (I’m not sure I approve of the name of the day because of its use of the word pride, which to me has a lot of important LGBT connotations, thus the quotations. I’d prefer to call it Geek Day, but that is a whole nother drunk moose*.) But to keep it interesting, I’m going to endow each person/website/whatever with an award based on the reason I value them as a feminist/geeky resource.

Best Feminist Writer : Diane Duane

Diane Duane has been one of my favourite authors since I was ten years old and I got ‘So You Want to be a Wizard’ for Christmas. I chose her as my ‘best feminist writer’ because many of her books have female heroines, strong female characters, women who are friends with one another, and amazing mothers. And when it comes to geekery, Diane Duane is at the top of the famous fangirl list. Her love of Star Trek and Doctor Who only endear her to me further. She is also a great blogger, uses tumblr and twitter regularly, and is super sweet to her fans. She’s pretty inspiring, since she writes in a male dominated field and manages to keep her work wonderfully unique. I wish I could get everyone to read her books.

Runners up: Octavia Butler, Gail Simone, Jill Pantozzi of The Mary Sue

Best Feminist/Geek Video Series: Feminist Frequency

Anita Sarkeesian does a series of videos that are “conversations with pop culture”. They are both hilarious and informative. It’s great to see someone turning a critical feminist eye to pop culture in a different media format. Her videos are a great way to see first hand that being critical of something doesn’t have to kill your love of that thing. My favourite video is The Hunger Games Novel & Katniss Everdeen, which talks about Katniss’ character through the lens of her fer feminist knowledge. I am really excited to read her Master’s thesis, since her interests are actually very similar to my own. Check out her Kickstarter project for a Tropes vs Women in Video Games. It’s already passed its goal, but there’s another milestone she’d like to hit that would help her upgrade her equipment for further projects, which would be AWESOME. So if it’s within your means, help out!

Runners up: Target Women with Sarah Haskins

Best Feminist/Geek Website: The Mary Sue

About a year or so ago, a friend linked me to a post on The Mary Sue. I instantly fell in love with their website design, which included a rotating cast of geek ladies in a ‘Rosie the Riveter’ style pose in their header. Since then, I have read almost every one of their articles. They are consistently posting information that is relevent to my interests, and I find so many interesting goodies in their ‘Things We Saw Today’ posts. They stay up-to-date on many types of geekery, from comics to sci-fi to actual real science to anime. They’re a full service geek website with a focus on the geeky ladies who don’t get as much love! I’m glad I found them and hope they stick around for years to come.

Runners up: No one compares. At all.

Best Feminist/Geek Blog: DC Women Kicking Ass

DC Women refers to not only to superheroes, but all the women within the DC world, including the creators. I love this blog because there are lots of detailed and well-thought out posts about every aspect of the beloved company. I love the annual poll to decide the best woman of DC, and I like the balance between talking about what they love about women in comics, and being critical of how they are handled by other characters and creators alike.

Runners up: 60% of the tumblogs I follow. None of them stand out as much as the above, but many are pretty cool.

Favourite Feminist Movie: Alien

Okay, so, this may be cheating because I just saw Alien for the first time two days ago but HOLY GOD. It’s the scariest movie ever made. But it also has a strong woman as the protagonist of the movie. Let’s put this in perspective: Alien was made in 1979. And it’s still one of the best female-driven geek films ever made! Ripley is a great character to follow because she has a strong passion for the rules, and doesn’t crumble when it comes to standing up to her superiors. I love this movie and once I get over how scary it is, I’m probably gonna watch it about a MILLION times…

Runners up: I can’t even think of another female led movie that I would consider to be great in terms of feminist ideas. How depressing.

Favourite Feminist Comic: Wet Moon by Ross Campbell

I love this comic. It’s female-driven, extremely diverse in multiple ways, and it primarily about a group of friends trying to live their lives happily. But it also has an interesting creepy side to it, and includes some really scary stuff in the later volumes. Ross is currently working on volume 6 and is posting it  online here. I suggest not clicking that link unless you’ve been reading already, because it is full of SPOILERS! Anyway, I love Ross’ work because he draws women of all different sizes and ethnicities and levels of ability, and he portrays each one as beautiful in their own way. This attention to their attractiveness can be problematic for some, but as a large woman of colour it’s really comforting to see someone view women who look like me as attractive without presenting them as slutty sexual objects. And it helps that Ross is a conscientious feminist himself, and is pretty aware of the different ways of reading his work. He’s my favourite comic creator outright, but he definitely deserves a place on my feminist list too.

Runners up: Y: The Last Man, pre-52 Batgirl comics

Favourite Feminist TV Show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy is my favourite TV show. I’ve loved it for years and years. I am also a big Whedonite. So believe me when I say that I am BIASED. And I am well aware of the many problems of female representation in Buffy overall. But I still consider Buffy a feminist show, and I’ll tell you why. Buffy inspires critical debate, puts a female character in the forefront, and has many strong women of different types who round out Sunnydale. While Buffy definitely falls short when it comes to ethnic/racial diversity, and differences in ability, it does have a lot of different female characters that I love. Take Buffy’s mom, for instance. Joyce Summers (in season 1) is a recently divorced single mother with a problem child who has just moved her independent business from a huge city where she was probably very successful to a small town where the dynamics will be very different. She works in the arts, is firm with her daughter, and takes an active interest in her life without controlling every aspect (like the way she dresses). Basically, Joyce is a great mother who makes mistakes, says the wrong thing, works hard and loves her daughter. To have such a normal, strong, intelligent mother placed in contrast to Buffy, the supernatural killer queen herself, is a really interesting way to portray the importance and strength of a mom. That is just one of the small reasons that I love this show. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. At least a little.

Runners up: I got nothing.

Favourite Feminist Novel: So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane

Is it cheating to list Duane as my favourite author AND one of her books as my favourite feminist novel? I’ll be honest, I’m just turning my focus from geek books in general to ones with a more feminist slant, so I’m not the word on feminist texts. There are many books that could be a better fit for this category that I haven’t read yet. But one of my interests is YA fiction, and this book was such a big part of my formative years that I am seriously considering it as a topic for research for Graduate School. Nita, the heroine of this novel, uses her love of reading and her outcast status to create a whole new life for herself. Nita’s journey into the magical world is not easy. Being a Wizard in Duane’s world is difficult; magic here is a combination of science and math and alchemy and spellcasting. You need a good memory, pay strong attention to detail, and be good with learning new information quickly. It is intelligence and perseverance that brings Nita her power. Another great thing about it is that her partner in crime, Kit, is a boy who doesn’t reference Nita’s girlhood as any sort of disadvantage, and is not her romantic interest in this book. Actually, this book is pretty much devoid of romance and is more about growing up. And I love that about it. Anyway, I could write all day about why this is the best series of books for a young person to read, but instead I’ll end by telling you that you need to read these books, no matter how old you are. I love them, and hope you will too.

Runners up: Fledgling by Octavia E Butler, Wicked by Gregory Maguire

For more intersection between my geeky side and my interest in feminism, check out my tumblr, where I am (usually, not this week) a rebloggin’ fool.

Later today I’ll be closing the comments on the Giveaway Day post. I can’t wait to draw the winner. I’ll likely post who it is sometime tomorrow. I’m excited! Until then, have a lovely weekend!

*Sometimes I like using extremely obscure inside jokes in my blog posts. Sorry. I can’t help it, it amuses me. If you want to hear the entirely silly story of why I use ‘drunk moose’ rather than, say, ‘kettle of fish’, feel free to ask in the comments.

This brings me to you.  My audience.  I thought perhaps you would like to know who you are.  WordPress is a facinating site that allows me to see where you are from, what search terms brought you here, and what you read; as I am obviously a data-oriented person (if that’s not obvious, just keep reading), I decided to give it a bit of analysis.

To date, 4,000 people have read my blog; 1,500 of them stick to my home page and archives, which means most of them get there through WordPress.  The other 2,500 people get there via links and search terms.  The following are the Top Eleven most viewed blogs:

Whoring Around Asia – 369 views

By The Sea Resort Hotel Review – 366 views

Aristotle’s Interpretation of Spartan Women – 293 views

Selective Service: A Feminist Perspective – 141 views

Clarkton Hotel Review – 93 views

Restoring A Sunfish Sailboat and Learning to Sail – 80 views

The Spiritual Growth of Hester Prynne – 72 views

Oasis Park Hotel Review – 62 views

Bluefields Alpha Hotel Review – 57 views

How Laws of Nature Define Animal Rights – 52 views

Opinion Essay on Animal Testing – 50 views

Dominance and Submission – 45 views

That means that my Top Eleven, when viewed without context, break down as follows: five academic papers, four hotel reviews, one on the Asian sex trade, and one on BDSM.

However, it should be noted that all hotel reviews were Philippines-based hotels, so the Top Eleven is really: five academic papers, five related to the Asian sex trade, and one on BDSM.

And, the numbers are the best part.  While at least 1-in-7 are visiting my blog to “gain inspiration from” (i.e. steal) my past academic writings, 1-in-four view my blog for the sole purpose of traveling to the Philippines to have sex – I know this because I see the search terms: here come your Top Eleven!

aristotle spartan women – 39 searches

the laws of nature and animal rights – 34 searches

aristotle on spartan women – 34 searches

feminism selective service – 12 searches

what is dominance and submission – 12 searches

by the sea resort subic – 11 searches

subic bay go go bars – 10 searches

subic bay sex – 10 searches

aristotle and spartan women – 9 searches

by the sea resort barretto – 9 searches

taichung outcall – 8 searches

Again, we see the pattern.  3-of-11 are about Aristotle’s view of Spartan women – to be honest, my dissertation on the subject is some of the best you will find.  But I wouldn’t reccommend plagarizing it too much.  Professors can use Google, too.  Anyway, because there are countless search terms that bring visitors to my site, let’s focus on the fact that there were 188 searches included in the Top Eleven.  Nearly half were about Aristotle and Spartan women.  Far fewer than that number searched for terms relating to sex in Asia, and yet, we know the numbers on my “Asia Sex Trade” blogs are massive – this comes from a huge assortment of random search terms that did not make the Top Eleven.  The facinating search, to me, was the one on BDSM, because I know I only have one blog about BDSM; it is awesome to know that I am eduating people on the subject.

So, where does that leave us?  I’ll tell you.  By my estimates, a quarter of you are high school or college students looking to rip off my academic writings.  At least half of you are mongors (people who travel abroad for sex).  The rest of you, however, are some of the coolest people on the internet.  You’re people who search for things like “us defense budget timeline” and “change is not always progess” and countless other random quests for knowledge that lead you here to my blog.  I appreciate you, the most of all.

You keep reading and I’ll keep writing.

I liked it because it was interesting, true, and not hating on men for being so blessed as to have such a thing as a Male Privilege. The list also brought up some really interesting points that made me start thinking about my life as a woman.

Namely Privilege 8: On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are.

That is, without a doubt, a privilege.

I never thought of how much of my time I spend thinking about the need to protect myself when I’m doing normal things. When I was still working in a nightclub, I wouldn’t walk myself to my car at four am, even if I only had to walk 20 feet.

Even going to a nightclub is scary. A good family friend of ours was DD’ing for her friends and went outside at the end of the night. She was calling one of her friends who had left early to make sure she was home okay and outside of the bar in front of at least 100 people a big man grabbed her, bear hugged her from behind and just picked her up and started walking away. When she started screaming at the top of her lungs he just told everyone that she was his girlfriend, and very drunk. He almost got her into his car, and would have, had her friends not come outside and screamed at the bouncers that that was their friend who did NOT know that guy.

At four or four thirty in the morning I wouldn’t dream of walking anywhere alone (not even 20 ft), especially downtown. The risk of getting raped, abducted or worse just shoots up for me. It’s something that as a woman I have to keep in the forefront of my mind, and if you are a woman I bet you’ve had the same thoughts.

When my Mom used to jog every morning she started to carry pepper spray after a car with two men in it slowed right down to her jogging speed, leered at her, made some rude (and not worth repeating comments) to her and followed her for a block.

I don’t know many women who would feel comfortable walking alone at night, but I know plenty of men who wouldn’t think twice about taking a walk around town at three am and feel perfectly safe. I don’t hold it against them, I mean it’s  not their fault that they don’t have to worry (as much) about getting raped, robbed or assaulted as much as I do.

If you’re a man reading this, just remember how lucky you are to not have to feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you’re walking alone in a parking garage.

If you’re a woman reading this, how often do you think about your safety when you are alone, or at nights?

Maya Paris: Lightbird exhibit on Minerva

To begin, you have the option of wearing a bird mask and wings, which does get you into the mood of the thing.  You should also change the time of day to sunset or midnight (I prefer midnight).  To do this, go to >>world  >>environment settings.  Then, click on the sign at the entrance for your free mask and wings, follow the instructions on the notecard, and just participate in the art.

You may feel a little silly, sitting on an egg with a beak on your nose, but that’s part of the fun; you have to let go of your self-image a little before you can freely participate.  You can also fly high in the air and dance with dandelion clocks.  There are a lot of sounds to listen to, words fly by, and the whole thing is very provocative.

Maya Paris’ exhibit will continue on Minerva until June 20.  All are welcome; if this is the first time you have visited, see the help page.  If you’re an experienced virtual worlds explorer, just click the link:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Minerva/74/80/29

Dancing in the dark with a dandelion

I have a blog up on the Independent today about street harassment, you can read it if you like
Only 4 in 10? We Should Speak Up About Harassment

It would be a mistake to see these attacks as simply a backlash against women. This is about empire struggling for social control

Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 May 2012

Are women suddenly running rampant in the streets by the millions, threatening society in unexpected ways?

You would surely think so by looking at the pattern that is visible across the nation: state by state, a well-funded legislative war on women is being unleashed. Many of these new proposed bills, or recently passed state laws, attack in novel ways women’s rights to ownership of their bodies and their basic life choices, which second-wave feminists thought long won.

Planned Parenthood appears to be target No 1: Maine, Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, North Carolina and Kansas have all either had bills to defund Planned Parenthood successfully passed or else bills introduced to begin the process of defunding.

Target No 2 is abortion rights. Since 2011, 92 new laws against abortion took effect, in 11 states: some states, such as Tennessee, are passing creative new restrictions on abortion rights. On 12 April, Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a new law banning abortions later than 18 weeks after fertilization, and imposing new regulations making abortion more difficult to obtain.

Other bills impose waiting periods for women after they have sought medical help – so that they are forced to “think it over” in a manner, and for a period, mandated by the state. A law in Utah requires women to wait 72 hours after receiving medical counselling, for instance, before having an abortion. A similar law is passed in South Dakota.

Finally, some bills – in a way that defies the US constitution – limit or criminalize certain kinds of speech to pregnant women: a law in Kansas would allow medical professionals to refuse giving abortion-seeking women information about clinics and doctors.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/24/what-lies-behind-war-on-women-naomi-wolf

Both novels do what most fiction of this type does, and treat the idea of gender as largely redundant. The idea is that, in societies where gender dynamics were progressive pre-apocalpyse, in the face of survival gender roles will disappear. Being able to fight and to survive is more important than sexual equipment.

Alexie presents strong women, women without husbands, women who match their husbands drink-for-drink, women who are “warriors,” whose mere presence ends fights. Alexie’s book is filled with rage, filled with frustration at the reservation life. And, funnily enough, the reservations can be favorably compared to World War Z’s “safe zones”: places where humanity has retreated from the zombie hordes. After the zombies, large-scale populations have been forced to abandon the majority of their lands. After whites, Indians were herded into small scraps of land. Max Brooks’ women are also warriors, use guns or clubs to kill zombies as much as any man. Several of the military personel he “interviews” are women too.

That said, there are differences in the way men and women experience these post-apocalyptic societies, and those differences revolve around fertility. I once read an article that argued women in a post-apocalyptic society would never be warriors, but would rather be carefully protected because they were needed to restore the race. Losing a few men, reproduction wise, is evolutionarily acceptable, but losing women means the end of the species.

In Alexie’s book, men and women live equally on the reservation until white doctors show up. Two of only three female characters are sterilized involuntarily by the doctors who delivered their first children. There is a subtextual awareness of the importance of women to the survival of the tribe, and where Indian men are unthreatened by their women white doctors choose to end their reproduction. The apocalypse continues, quietly, in women’s wombs.

In Brooks’ book, women’s experience is rarely addressed. The survival of the race rarely comes up because often large proportions of the population successfully survive. Most planners focus less on ensuring reproduction than on securing large safe zones. Everything west of the rockies is safe in the US, so no one worries about babies. The only exception to this rule is the “Holy Russian Empire,” which after the end of its war drafts women of childbearing years to live in camps and reproduce as much as possible, with as many men as possible. The female “breeders” are an example of the ugliest results of the apocalypse, the victims of the new world order.

Although both of the novels touch on women’s experiences, both of them are distinctly masculine stories. Almost all of Alexie’s characters, and all of his POVs are male, as are the majority of Brooks’ characters. All the leaders Brooks writes about are men. Each author has different reasons for this: For Alexie, the story he is trying to reach, the story he is groping for, is how to deal with the loss of his past. He uses masculine generations to try to tell this story. Brooks, however, is writing about the depths to which humanity would sink if faced with a zombie war. Most, if not all, of his stories are about the grotesque realities, the horrific choices, and their individual impact on the men who had to fight re-animated corpses and the men who had to figure out how to fight zombies. The decision makers had to figure out how to save as many people as possible, and had to decide which of their citizens would die.

While many of the hand-to-hand zombie fighters are women, the decision makers are all men. I think this traces back to a discomfort with some of the nastier implications of equality. If men and women are equal, then we are both capable of the same horrendous acts, the same perversions of humanity. Brooks shies away from this idea of women, and falls back into the familiar male pattern. That said, he is portraying a world which is an extension of our own, and in our world the majority of decision-makers are men. Nonetheless, I think the novel could have benefited from a good villaness.

Read the hell out of World War Z: you’ll think about it for days.

Read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven if you want: it’s an extremely angry, frustrated read.

That’s right, I really just started this post with that turd stain of a song. I apologize for the horrifying way in which this has begun, but please believe that there is a method to my madness. I’ve heard plenty of disposable CD singles in my day, but I feel that this is the icing that tops the diabetic, gluten free, nasty, made by your least favorite relative, fruit cake. It’s an atrocity of a song that does nothing but empower the “Butch’s” of the female spectrum. I have nothing against “Butch’s”, I just feel that they are powerful enough as it is, and do not need the encouragement of an anti-feminist like Sara Bareilles. I’m sure she’s a “talented” songstress and all, just like the rest of them, but I have a few bones to pick.

What’s wrong with this song?

1. This woman is blatantly disregarding the sanctity of love. If one partner has a request of the other, then they should hands down, no questions asked, oblige them. But WAIT ****** RECORD SCRATHCES ****** she’s flat out refusing to submit to her partner’s wishes. Would Stephen Hawking give Martha Stewart a standing ovation for her stock trade decisions? I think not, so what makes Sara Bareilles think she can get away with this injustice?

2. Perhaps it was a bit presumptuous of me to assume that she was speaking to a man in this song. Ok, well let’s pretend that she isn’t, and that this song is ambiguously geared towards her fans in general. I know, I know, she may not even have fans, but let’s imagine, for the sake of this point I’m trying to make, that she does. When you are a “cute/quirky” female pop singer, I would have to think that refusing to compose a song that is specifically geared towards her genre is almost certainly career suicide. No?

3. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel as if nobody had even heard of this songstress until A) this song came out, and B) I blogged about this song coming out. It seems to me that someone of her social status should not be making orders, or refusing requests. I mean this chick is no Jessica Black.

So I’m curious Mrs. Bareilles, what exactly will it take for you to write me (or any man/woman for that matter) a love song? Every woman can be bought, so name your price. A brand spanking new pink hummer? No, too cliché huh? I’ve got ideas for days, but I’m going to take one of them and throw it out there in hopes that it will sway you.

Alright Sara, you self-righteous scamp. Taking no for answer has never been a strong suit of mine, so I’m bringing my “A” game with this one. Ready? OK.

What if this was a picture of me? I’m your cute little puppy that waits at home for you every day thinking you’ve abandoned my overly dependent butt. Every evening when you walk in the front door after performing one of your anti-love concerts to a few of your dozens of fans, who is there to greet you? Me and only me. Know why? Because people don’t love haters, but puppies do. Puppies love anything because they are juvenile, unintelligent creatures that can’t even speak English. So as I (the puppy) lay curled in your lap doing cute puppy dream twitches, I would think that somehow you would be swayed to finally express your love for another living being. The only thing that I could think of that would deter you from wanting to write a love song in this scenario, is the fact that puppies make poopies. They don’t understand the concept of controlling their bowels because they aren’t the ones that have to clean up the mess.

Hmmm…. this actualy sounds a lot like well, you, now that I think about it. Dropping a deuce of a song just because you feel that you need to get it out there. Not caring where or how it was released, as long as you felt better afterwards. Fully aware that people all over the country would hear it and be offended. Sure, don’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks because your record label will come behind you and clean up the mess. They’ll wipe off that ugly mark you left in the music industry. Go ahead, drop that single to relieve all that pressure that’s been on you. You’re a musician, you don’t have to take anyone’s crap.

Sweet Relief

What inspired this blog was the movie Mirror Mirror with Julia Roberts, directed by Tarsem Singh. Although it didn’t get the greatest review on Rotten Tomatoes I thought it was fantastic. This is going to give away some details of the plot, but I won’t give away anything too major!

Melisa Wallack and Jason Keller rewrote the story of Snow White, which typically shows Snow White as a helpless, poisoned beautiful princess waiting to be saved by ‘loves first kiss’ to show her as a strong, smart and independent young woman who is very capable of helping herself.

It was so refreshing to watch a movie that passed the Bechdel Test, and that managed to show young women in such a positive light. There was no waiting around for a prince to save Snow White. She took matter into her own hands, and even has to save the Prince.

I hope when I have daughters there are more movies like this one for them to enjoy. Every girl is a Princess, but none of us should be waiting around for our Prince Charming to save us. I’m glad other movie producers, writers and directors are finally getting on board with this.  Hopefully our next generation of little feminists will have no trouble being a princess, but know they will be taking the world into their own manicured little hands. Screw you Disney.