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May. 25th, 2011 12:38 pmI've never really identified with feminists much*, partially I'm sure because I've chosen to be a stay at home mom to young kids in years gone by and because I'm naturally a (hetero)sexual submissive and I love to cook, and really if anything I've felt sort of attacked or alienated by the more vocal feminists I've encountered, online and IRL, historically. I mean I think it's wonderful and as it should be that women have equal rights where I live, and horrifying that women in other cultures still don't enjoy that, but I also can sit back and see both sides in some of the less politically correct debates about how we shouldn't be leaving boys behind in schools by focusing so much on girls, and this and that. I guess I've sort of had the (subconscious) attitude that feminism is a ship that has sailed, in the United States, and we're post-need for it and people need to calm down, now. I've heard some of the rhetoric about how people are gonna yell "man overboard" if a girl falls off a ship and how women have to struggle more to be respected in med school but none of that really provokes a strong reaction in me. When I was in high school a (black!) girl was valedictorian and my church minister was a woman and my Nana was manager of the warehouse where she worked with at least one guy under her and I guess the whole glass ceiling and discrimination seemed...off my radar?
That...is changing, in some significant ways.
1. I've never really liked movies all that much. I mean, there have always been a few movies I really love, but in general I'm not a movie-enthusiast who automatically jumps to them as a default idea for "something to do". In general I would say 80-90% of the movies I've watched in the last decade, I've watched because Grant wanted to watch them and I could stand the idea and so we watched them together (keeping in mind that Grant has still seen at least 3 times as many movies than I have in the last decade...he often watches alone or goes with Shaun). I've always thought that kind of totally passive way to be trapped for two hours was a waste of time when time is precious but I think it's actually way bigger than that, for me.
Exhibit A: A couple of years ago I heard of the Bechdel Test for movies for the first time. Basically it goes "does the movie have two female characters in it who talk TO EACH OTHER, about something other than a man?" That may sound sort of arbitrary but if you start thinking about it ALMOST NO FREAKING MOVIES PASS IT. The more you realize this, the more grossed out you (or I) become, realizing that women in movies exist to be either hot eye candy irrelevant to the plot, or some helpless no personality beautiful creature to be rescued. There's also frequently a female character who is long-lost, or unattainable, but basically a wisp of a male character's imagination either way. When you do actually get a real female character with depth or development, she almost always stands alone in an otherwise entirely male cast. BY CONTRAST, try to think of ANY movie that does not have at least two men talking about something other than a woman. It's basically impossible. This is nuts and to me it was a really radical eye opener about some embedded shit we try to pretend is long past but is really still in full swing. I'm not sure if this is about egocentric male film makers or real market research that shows "too many women" in films that aren't in tight latex make men think "chick flick" and run the other way, but IRL situations generally involve men AND WOMEN. I'm not, like, creating a chick-flick downer of a situation everywhere I go by existing, you know?
As someone who never sees action movies and has thus sort of ignored them completely, it is genuinely shocking and just...nuts, to me, that the way they in particular are is still flying in 2011! I mean, wtf?
Exhibits B&C: Both Disney movie crap. B, is for princesses needing to be rescued. Ananda and I talked about this the other day because she's picked up on me subtly steering Elise away from princesses at every turn and we were talking about it (Ananda never really liked princesses). We talked about how a Disney Princess is a creature that exists exclusively in fancy dress with flawless appearance and unrealistic body type, but also they exist to be RESCUED. They aren't Sarah from Labrynth, trying to get her brother back, or Hermione from Harry Potter, really out there fighting Voldemort, too (those are girls Annie can get behind) - they sit in a tower or castle or dungeon or dark forest until some guy comes along and saves them, with a very few exceptions. They also have very few personality traits - Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are ALWAYS pleasant and cheerful and kind, unless they're afraid. Then they go wide eyed and shriek O_o Jasmine at least has some spunk, although that's as far as it goes. Belle (the only one Annie ever liked) actually has a personality and independent interests, which is sort of fabulous. Anyway Annie really got this.
Annie and I also had a big talk about C, which is the complete and total and BIZARRE absence of mothers from Disney films. Whether tragic (Cinderella, Bambi, Pocahontas, Dumbo, Lilo and Stitch, Finding Nemo), unexplained (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast), the default (Pinnocchio, who only had a male maker and a male mentor/conscience) or "complicated" (there is a mother in Peter Pan but the lost boys are motherless; in Lady and the Tramp the peripheral human woman becomes a mother but the puppy main character is orphaned; in The Lion King Simba has a mom but is close to his Dad and then has to grow up far away with no parents after his dad dies). In place of mothers we have fairies, fairy Godmothers, evil stepmothers and evil witches.
I think it's a lot of bullshit. I would way rather my kids grow up on Narnia and Oz and Harry Potter, imperfect though they are. I don't understand why this massive, dominating childrens' movie company is operating on these models. I know they're making some strides, but I don't think they're fast enough or impressive when compared to where they SHOULD BE at.
I look at Toy Story and it's like...they're about a little boy's toys, and we have the classic sci-fi hero and the cowboy, and then there are all these other archetypal male characters (soldiers, the dumpy good old boy Potato, the loyal dog, the fast car, etc). For chicks we get, what? BARBIE AND BO-PEEP and MRS Potato Head? Really? That's actually gross.
All this crap has gotten me thinking, and partially inspired this big ranty tumblr post in my queue that will be popping up soon about how male actors and comedians are allowed to appear middle aged on screen, or get a belly or have body hair, but not females, to an extent that is really fueling lay womens' self esteem problems and desire for plastic surgery.
It also made me sit there last night, watching the previews before Pirates of the Carribean, thinking. Damn. EVERY SINGLE PREVIEW was a bunch of men. There was the periodic hot chick literally hanging off of some guy's arm. And that was it.
The thing is that is not a reflection of real life. If it were I would get it. But I know female fire fighters and cops. I know female mothers get into extreme situations with kids, with birth. There are lots and lots of female doctors and lawyers and party goers and drug users and teachers and tattoo artists and writers and schemers and What. The. Fuck.
So yeah, it's occured to me that I've never really been a movie person because I don't really relate to movies because I happen to be a woman and movies are about men. This is kind of a huge personal revelation that I'm still processing.
Pirates of the Carribean, btw, had some satisfyingly fierce mermaids that got good screen time and Penelope Cruz's character was a fairly legitimate pirate, definitely a step up from Kiera Knightly - though it still didn't pass the Bechdel Test or anything crazy like that.
2. I'm becoming more and more aware of mens' intolerance and/or ignorance of women's bodies/bodily functions.
The most glaring and horrific example of what I mean that springs to mind is the way male OBs came in with chlorophorm and forceps and took childbirth away from midwives and turned it into a medicalized event with all sorts of hellish new traumatic side effects and risks. But I can't even get started on that or else this will rapidly become a ten chapter entry.
There is the way that media (and especially porn) have made pubic hair totally taboo and gross when from the dawn of time to 20 years ago it was totally normal and unquestioned for most people. Now it's actually a joke, a guaranteed EWW to mention or unveil in media unless you're on some site that's fetishized pubes.
That's for women only, of course. Men can have pubic hair unless they're gay or metrosexual or something O_o
I'm lucky enough to have never had to deal with having sex with a man who thought lactating breasts were disgusting, anti-sexual, off limits, etc, but...I've heard enough about women WEANING THEIR BABIES SO THEIR MEN CAN HAVE THEIR BREASTS BACK and not nursing their babies so their men won't think they're gross to be truly just flabbergasted. There's no way to say "THAT IS WHAT BREASTS ARE FOR" loud or long enough. I mean...men are attracted to big, full breasts because subconsciously, a. they signal fertility and an ability to feed their children, b. they are reminscent of the breasts they once fed from. I just...oh good grief there are not words enough for my horror with this. Breast implants make boobs look ENGORGED WITH MILK. That is the look women are achieving with them - milk engorgement. The only time titties ever look like that is if they're engorged or been made to look engorged permanently through implants.
Likewise this way that women have of sugar coating and pussyfooting around re: periods is not ok. Guys acting like it's humiliating to buy pads or pick pads out for their wife at the store is not ok. I can't drive through Miami without seeing 2-3 BILBOARDS for ROBOTIC PROSTATE SURGERY, and half a dozen trucks with literal balls hanging off the back of them. And yet I see "Tmi" cuts and facebook disclaimer apologies when a chick is gonna mention PMS or cramps??? If women have to know condoms come sized and understand the purpose of a reservoir tip and accept difference between circumcized and not circumcized men, I think men can handle hearing about choices between pads vs tampons vs diva cup vs cloth pad. Guys whip it out and pee outside and scratch wherever the hell they are and women are supposed to be all sneaky and undercover for the sake of their tender sensibilities?
I don't think so.
I get really angry about this kind of stuff.
and 3. Rape.
I haven't thought about this one as much so it will be shorter. The things that put it on my list of things making me reconsider feminism are:
-really stopping to think about how I would never go walking alone at night but will go walking at night with my husband...along with how I am jumpy in parking garages by myself while he never even thought of that, and so on and so forth. I've thought about this stuff over the past couple of years but recently he was talking about me wearing (gulp, this is sort of embarassing in a rush way to even mention this way) my collar to school and I was like, dude, are you serious? I have to stand outside the college around a bunch of thugged out dudes in a shady part of town waiting for him to come pick me up on days when he has the van. I don't need to invite trouble by having a freaking sign on me that says "I'm a big submissive pervert who likes to be dominated". He hadn't even thought of that kind of vulnerability factoring in, apologized and then we went back to brainstorming appropriate places (which mainly seem to be limited to "in our house when the kids are in bed" and when out to dinner just the two of us)
But yeah as enlightened as our society is, as far as we've come, the bottom line is still that as a member of "the weaker sex" it would be foolish for me make myself a target for rape.
-which brings up all this media hoopla that's been going down about women "Asking for it" by the way they dress or where they go... when are we gonna get to a point as a society where all the blame is on the rapist? Where it belongs?
I mean there is survival, ok, there is reality that just like there will always be pedophiles and always be kidnappers there will always be rapists and yeah I'm gonna teach my daughters not to walk through back alleys in miniskirts and tube tops but IF THEY EVER DO it will not be THEIR OWN FAULT if they get raped...
When a family member asked me if my ten year old sister had been LEADING OUR STEPFATHER ON, I was fucking PISSED at them - pre-sexual kids cannot lead an adult on, and even if they did, it's obviously then on the adult to, uh, act like an ADULT. And resist and not pounce and abuse.
We should be having that same reaction towards rapists. When we see a battered wife we don't say, "he was wrong, but she really did slack on keeping the house clean and lip off to him". Likewise there should be no "rape is terrible but what did she expect?" I mean probably she expected to be liked and admired because society tells all women you have to be sexy to be liked and admired. Until they get raped. Then they say you were asking for it by being OVERTLY or "too" sexy.
What I'm saying is that while it is smart to protect yourself and to be aware of your surroundings, nobody should have to view themself as some kind of bait. Like if I am in a bad neighborhood or I've got some cleavage hanging out I'm just chumming the waters because we all knows guys can't control themselves and compulsively rape when they see skin hanging out. I mean WTF?
We have a long way to go, in our mindsets and expectations, and I'm only just realizing how deeply embedded some of this stuff has been in my own mind.
*Just editing this in 2013 to say hell yes I identify strongly as a feminist now and for the past year or more.
That...is changing, in some significant ways.
1. I've never really liked movies all that much. I mean, there have always been a few movies I really love, but in general I'm not a movie-enthusiast who automatically jumps to them as a default idea for "something to do". In general I would say 80-90% of the movies I've watched in the last decade, I've watched because Grant wanted to watch them and I could stand the idea and so we watched them together (keeping in mind that Grant has still seen at least 3 times as many movies than I have in the last decade...he often watches alone or goes with Shaun). I've always thought that kind of totally passive way to be trapped for two hours was a waste of time when time is precious but I think it's actually way bigger than that, for me.
Exhibit A: A couple of years ago I heard of the Bechdel Test for movies for the first time. Basically it goes "does the movie have two female characters in it who talk TO EACH OTHER, about something other than a man?" That may sound sort of arbitrary but if you start thinking about it ALMOST NO FREAKING MOVIES PASS IT. The more you realize this, the more grossed out you (or I) become, realizing that women in movies exist to be either hot eye candy irrelevant to the plot, or some helpless no personality beautiful creature to be rescued. There's also frequently a female character who is long-lost, or unattainable, but basically a wisp of a male character's imagination either way. When you do actually get a real female character with depth or development, she almost always stands alone in an otherwise entirely male cast. BY CONTRAST, try to think of ANY movie that does not have at least two men talking about something other than a woman. It's basically impossible. This is nuts and to me it was a really radical eye opener about some embedded shit we try to pretend is long past but is really still in full swing. I'm not sure if this is about egocentric male film makers or real market research that shows "too many women" in films that aren't in tight latex make men think "chick flick" and run the other way, but IRL situations generally involve men AND WOMEN. I'm not, like, creating a chick-flick downer of a situation everywhere I go by existing, you know?
As someone who never sees action movies and has thus sort of ignored them completely, it is genuinely shocking and just...nuts, to me, that the way they in particular are is still flying in 2011! I mean, wtf?
Exhibits B&C: Both Disney movie crap. B, is for princesses needing to be rescued. Ananda and I talked about this the other day because she's picked up on me subtly steering Elise away from princesses at every turn and we were talking about it (Ananda never really liked princesses). We talked about how a Disney Princess is a creature that exists exclusively in fancy dress with flawless appearance and unrealistic body type, but also they exist to be RESCUED. They aren't Sarah from Labrynth, trying to get her brother back, or Hermione from Harry Potter, really out there fighting Voldemort, too (those are girls Annie can get behind) - they sit in a tower or castle or dungeon or dark forest until some guy comes along and saves them, with a very few exceptions. They also have very few personality traits - Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are ALWAYS pleasant and cheerful and kind, unless they're afraid. Then they go wide eyed and shriek O_o Jasmine at least has some spunk, although that's as far as it goes. Belle (the only one Annie ever liked) actually has a personality and independent interests, which is sort of fabulous. Anyway Annie really got this.
Annie and I also had a big talk about C, which is the complete and total and BIZARRE absence of mothers from Disney films. Whether tragic (Cinderella, Bambi, Pocahontas, Dumbo, Lilo and Stitch, Finding Nemo), unexplained (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast), the default (Pinnocchio, who only had a male maker and a male mentor/conscience) or "complicated" (there is a mother in Peter Pan but the lost boys are motherless; in Lady and the Tramp the peripheral human woman becomes a mother but the puppy main character is orphaned; in The Lion King Simba has a mom but is close to his Dad and then has to grow up far away with no parents after his dad dies). In place of mothers we have fairies, fairy Godmothers, evil stepmothers and evil witches.
I think it's a lot of bullshit. I would way rather my kids grow up on Narnia and Oz and Harry Potter, imperfect though they are. I don't understand why this massive, dominating childrens' movie company is operating on these models. I know they're making some strides, but I don't think they're fast enough or impressive when compared to where they SHOULD BE at.
I look at Toy Story and it's like...they're about a little boy's toys, and we have the classic sci-fi hero and the cowboy, and then there are all these other archetypal male characters (soldiers, the dumpy good old boy Potato, the loyal dog, the fast car, etc). For chicks we get, what? BARBIE AND BO-PEEP and MRS Potato Head? Really? That's actually gross.
All this crap has gotten me thinking, and partially inspired this big ranty tumblr post in my queue that will be popping up soon about how male actors and comedians are allowed to appear middle aged on screen, or get a belly or have body hair, but not females, to an extent that is really fueling lay womens' self esteem problems and desire for plastic surgery.
It also made me sit there last night, watching the previews before Pirates of the Carribean, thinking. Damn. EVERY SINGLE PREVIEW was a bunch of men. There was the periodic hot chick literally hanging off of some guy's arm. And that was it.
The thing is that is not a reflection of real life. If it were I would get it. But I know female fire fighters and cops. I know female mothers get into extreme situations with kids, with birth. There are lots and lots of female doctors and lawyers and party goers and drug users and teachers and tattoo artists and writers and schemers and What. The. Fuck.
So yeah, it's occured to me that I've never really been a movie person because I don't really relate to movies because I happen to be a woman and movies are about men. This is kind of a huge personal revelation that I'm still processing.
Pirates of the Carribean, btw, had some satisfyingly fierce mermaids that got good screen time and Penelope Cruz's character was a fairly legitimate pirate, definitely a step up from Kiera Knightly - though it still didn't pass the Bechdel Test or anything crazy like that.
2. I'm becoming more and more aware of mens' intolerance and/or ignorance of women's bodies/bodily functions.
The most glaring and horrific example of what I mean that springs to mind is the way male OBs came in with chlorophorm and forceps and took childbirth away from midwives and turned it into a medicalized event with all sorts of hellish new traumatic side effects and risks. But I can't even get started on that or else this will rapidly become a ten chapter entry.
There is the way that media (and especially porn) have made pubic hair totally taboo and gross when from the dawn of time to 20 years ago it was totally normal and unquestioned for most people. Now it's actually a joke, a guaranteed EWW to mention or unveil in media unless you're on some site that's fetishized pubes.
That's for women only, of course. Men can have pubic hair unless they're gay or metrosexual or something O_o
I'm lucky enough to have never had to deal with having sex with a man who thought lactating breasts were disgusting, anti-sexual, off limits, etc, but...I've heard enough about women WEANING THEIR BABIES SO THEIR MEN CAN HAVE THEIR BREASTS BACK and not nursing their babies so their men won't think they're gross to be truly just flabbergasted. There's no way to say "THAT IS WHAT BREASTS ARE FOR" loud or long enough. I mean...men are attracted to big, full breasts because subconsciously, a. they signal fertility and an ability to feed their children, b. they are reminscent of the breasts they once fed from. I just...oh good grief there are not words enough for my horror with this. Breast implants make boobs look ENGORGED WITH MILK. That is the look women are achieving with them - milk engorgement. The only time titties ever look like that is if they're engorged or been made to look engorged permanently through implants.
Likewise this way that women have of sugar coating and pussyfooting around re: periods is not ok. Guys acting like it's humiliating to buy pads or pick pads out for their wife at the store is not ok. I can't drive through Miami without seeing 2-3 BILBOARDS for ROBOTIC PROSTATE SURGERY, and half a dozen trucks with literal balls hanging off the back of them. And yet I see "Tmi" cuts and facebook disclaimer apologies when a chick is gonna mention PMS or cramps??? If women have to know condoms come sized and understand the purpose of a reservoir tip and accept difference between circumcized and not circumcized men, I think men can handle hearing about choices between pads vs tampons vs diva cup vs cloth pad. Guys whip it out and pee outside and scratch wherever the hell they are and women are supposed to be all sneaky and undercover for the sake of their tender sensibilities?
I don't think so.
I get really angry about this kind of stuff.
and 3. Rape.
I haven't thought about this one as much so it will be shorter. The things that put it on my list of things making me reconsider feminism are:
-really stopping to think about how I would never go walking alone at night but will go walking at night with my husband...along with how I am jumpy in parking garages by myself while he never even thought of that, and so on and so forth. I've thought about this stuff over the past couple of years but recently he was talking about me wearing (gulp, this is sort of embarassing in a rush way to even mention this way) my collar to school and I was like, dude, are you serious? I have to stand outside the college around a bunch of thugged out dudes in a shady part of town waiting for him to come pick me up on days when he has the van. I don't need to invite trouble by having a freaking sign on me that says "I'm a big submissive pervert who likes to be dominated". He hadn't even thought of that kind of vulnerability factoring in, apologized and then we went back to brainstorming appropriate places (which mainly seem to be limited to "in our house when the kids are in bed" and when out to dinner just the two of us)
But yeah as enlightened as our society is, as far as we've come, the bottom line is still that as a member of "the weaker sex" it would be foolish for me make myself a target for rape.
-which brings up all this media hoopla that's been going down about women "Asking for it" by the way they dress or where they go... when are we gonna get to a point as a society where all the blame is on the rapist? Where it belongs?
I mean there is survival, ok, there is reality that just like there will always be pedophiles and always be kidnappers there will always be rapists and yeah I'm gonna teach my daughters not to walk through back alleys in miniskirts and tube tops but IF THEY EVER DO it will not be THEIR OWN FAULT if they get raped...
When a family member asked me if my ten year old sister had been LEADING OUR STEPFATHER ON, I was fucking PISSED at them - pre-sexual kids cannot lead an adult on, and even if they did, it's obviously then on the adult to, uh, act like an ADULT. And resist and not pounce and abuse.
We should be having that same reaction towards rapists. When we see a battered wife we don't say, "he was wrong, but she really did slack on keeping the house clean and lip off to him". Likewise there should be no "rape is terrible but what did she expect?" I mean probably she expected to be liked and admired because society tells all women you have to be sexy to be liked and admired. Until they get raped. Then they say you were asking for it by being OVERTLY or "too" sexy.
What I'm saying is that while it is smart to protect yourself and to be aware of your surroundings, nobody should have to view themself as some kind of bait. Like if I am in a bad neighborhood or I've got some cleavage hanging out I'm just chumming the waters because we all knows guys can't control themselves and compulsively rape when they see skin hanging out. I mean WTF?
We have a long way to go, in our mindsets and expectations, and I'm only just realizing how deeply embedded some of this stuff has been in my own mind.
*Just editing this in 2013 to say hell yes I identify strongly as a feminist now and for the past year or more.
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