Lindy West, “Hey, Men, I’m Funnier Than You”
I fucking adore everything about this and join her in condemning Lindy in calling out all the god damn idiocy surrounding the “women are naturally unfunny” bullshit.
(Source: jezebel.com)
And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.”
My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality – my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.
Blargh, twitter
So a couple hours ago my angry feminist twitter account was suspended.
I have no idea why, but I’ve reviewed twitter’s rules and regulations and can come up with absolutely nothing. I’ve not used a bot to follow anyone, I’ve not posted pornography, or threatened anyone, or anything else.
All I did was engage in the feminist discourse happening on twitter and my account has been suspended, my following and follower counts reset to 0, and had my blood boiled.
Twitter, what the fuck? People can post sexist, racist, hateful shit all over your service and keep their accounts, and I’ve been thrown into the black hole? Seriously?
(Source: thefrisky.com)
I have a counter-theory. I don’t believe that men build civilization to impress lazy women who keep saying no to sex, because we don’t understand what it’s really like to want it. I believe men built most things because women were shut out of political power, job opportunities, and education for most of history, and instead forced into servitude towards men in the home. I believe my theory has a lot of evidence for it, in the form of all of history. Plus, this theory doesn’t do much to explain all the gay men who have been creators throughout history, of which there have been many. You know, it’s not like Michelangelo was rumored to be doing the Sistine Chapel to catch a lady’s eye. His theory doesn’t really explain how it is that women, once given the opportunity to be creators, take it.
Melissa McEwan says everything better than I ever could:
It’s such a Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs away from Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Arc or Dragonslayer , in which Princess Leia and Marion Ravenwood and Valerian were second fiddle and totally isolated, virtually never seeing or interacting with other women—thus suggesting to me that girls who were smart and tough self-segregated away from other women: Only silly girls hang out together in their giggling little gaggles; smart girls hang out with boys.
Wait, let me back up.
Hi, my name is Cara and I’m a 21 year old woman. Every 28 days, give or take, I have a period. And it fucking sucks. Today, was one of those where I take from the 28 day cycle. I wasn’t due for another period for at least a week, but considering that my period is pretty…
I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office.
[…] And female writers will often also voluntarily write books populated by both men and women. (If they don’t, they will have to be ever-mindful of the possibility of being understood as writers of “women’s fiction” — meaning fiction for women only.) Male writers will have the latitude to do whatever they want: many will write books about both men and women, but they can excise women entirely from their fictional universes, if they want to, without ever marginalizing their books. And all of this results, of course, in a re-enforcement of the initial problem: the production of another realm where taking women seriously — as consciousnesses, narrators, characters — is optional.
WASHINGTON—After decades spent battling gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace, the feminist movement underwent a high-level shake-up last month, when 53-year-old management consultant Peter “Buck” McGowan took over as new chief of the worldwide initiative for women’s rights.
McGowan, who now oversees the group’s day-to-day operations, said he “couldn’t be happier” to bring his ambition, experience, and no-nonsense attitude to his new role as the nation’s top feminist.
“All the feminist movement needed to do was bring on someone who had the balls to do something about this glass ceiling business,” said McGowan, who quickly closed the 23.5 percent gender wage gap by “making a few calls to the big boys upstairs.” “In the world of gender identity and empowered female sexuality, it’s all about who you know.”
(Source: The Onion)
Ashley Judd (yes, that one) kicking ass and taking names in an amazing feminist essay to the media about patriarchy, beauty, and criticism.
The beauty of this is Ashley took the media being a giant collective asshat to her and used it not only to defend herself, her health, and her (gorgeous) appearance, but to make a fucking FEMINIST CALL TO ARMS to stop judging, speculating, and hating ourselves and each other.
This is what feminism is supposed to be. Bravo, Ashley.
(Source: thedailybeast.com)
Day in, day out, they practice their canoeing, read up on it, talk about it, host TV shows about it, put their careers on hold for it, judge others by their skill in it, cry over it, write books about it, dedicate millions of Flarbs to it (flarbs being their global currency, keep up) and generally centre their entire consciousnesses around it. Bloody canoeing. They just can’t get enough of it. They love it.
Except, actually they don’t. They’re knackered by the constant oar-upkeep, the need to understand the latest in current-flow, the daily need to inspect their… like… wood bits. As a planet, every other industry suffers because value is placed on this utterly arbitrary talent. When the aliens are asked if they’d rather have a plumber who was good at canoeing or not, there’s no doubt in their minds. Canoe expert, of course. In a mate, canoeing prowess is not only expected, but necessary. Want to choose an airline service? “Do the adverts have CANOES IN???”, they’d yell desperately. And when we, baffled humans that we are, drop into this world of madness, quietly say “but, being good at canoeing doesn’t really matter, right? At all? Except for people who… like… canoe for a living? And there can’t be very many of them, surely?” we’d be met only with the aggressive stare of a nation who knows outsiders could never understand.
stand up
So earlier on Twitter today I fired off some angry missives about the current birth control debate. And I feel like I’d be doing myself an injustice to not delve into this issue further and with fewer capitalized letters.
Let’s get on the level about a couple things first.
- First - Having sex — consensual sex — is a basic human right.
- Second - Women do not exist as incubators for men.
For some reason, these very basic tennants of human existence seem to be up for debate. Frankly, I’m amazed more people aren’t just pulling-their-hair-out-crazy over this “debate,” but instead are trying to reason with the unreasonable.
YOU. DON’T. HAVE. TO.
So can we stop saying “birth control can be used for things other than preventing babies”? “I need them to regulate my cycle.” “I need them for my ovarian cysts.”
Fuck that.
If you need them because NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO IMPREGNATE YOU, because YOU ARE A PERSON AND NOT AN ORGAN, and because YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO ENJOY SEX WITHOUT CREATING LIFE, stand up for yourself! These are great reasons, just as good as any other. And go back to seriously question the sanity of anyone who tells you differently, rather than trying to argue on their backasswards terms.
You are not a slut. You should not be ashamed. You should be proud and protesting the fact that anyone is even SUGGESTING you should have to get pregnant, ever.
Because again. Fuck. That.
A person identifying as a woman and/or having a uterus shall retain all of the full, basic, and fundamental rights of a US citizen as guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Congress and the States shall make no law that infringes upon a person’s life, including but not limited to access to life-saving or life-improving healthcare, and/or medicines and procedures deemed necessary or beneficial by a medical professional and/or by the person having the uterus, procurement of which shall not by denied in and of itself by the presence of a uterus. Congress and the States shall make no law that infringes upon a person’s liberty, including but not limited to autonomy over hir own body and the ability to make decisions regarding hir own healthcare. Congress and the States shall make no law that interferes with a person’s pursuit of happiness, including but not limited to access to a full spectrum of reproductive options, freedom from forcible reproduction, and the ability to make decisions regarding family planning and family resources.
