season of the bitch

Not like this is the first time I’ve posted about this.

But see, this is the thing. Natalia wrote in response to Twisty’s comment that women should repudiate femininity if they can, because they will never have equality unless they are de-otherized.

Because butch women are apparently never raped or treated with sexist scorn. Because I’ve never had my ass grabbed when I was wearing pants or not wearing makeup. I mean, should we all transition in order to get rid of Class Woman? Well, wait, clearly that’s not allowed either.

I have breasts. I have curvy hips and an ass that next to no one is going to confuse for male. Should I lose a bunch of weight in order to make my body as boyish as possible, in order to repudiate femininity and more easily what, pass as a man?

I know I’ll be accused of oversimplifying, so I’ll pull out my own Advanced Blamer card here and quote Susan Bordo, talking about anorexia.

“On the other hand, even as young women today continue to be taught traditionally ‘feminine’ virtues, to the degree that the professional arena is open to them they must also learn to embody the ‘masculine’ language and values of that arena–self-control, determination, cool, emotional discipline, mastery, and so on. Female bodies now speak symbolically of this necessity in their slender spare shape…Our bodies, too, as we trudge to the gym every day and fiercely resist both our hungers and our desire to sooth ourselves, are becoming more and more practiced at the ‘male’ virtues of control and self-mastery. The anorectic pursues these virtues with single-minded, unswerving dedication…
Explored as a possibility for the self, the “androgynous” ideal ultimately exposes its internal contradiction and becomes a war that tears the subject in two–a war explicitly thematized, by many anorectics, as a battle between the male and female sides of the self…
Protesting the stifling of the female voice through one’s own voicelessness–that is, employing the language of femininity to protest the conditions of the female world–will always involve ambiguities of this sort…
As her body begins to lose its traditional feminine curves, its breasts and hips and rounded stomach, begins to feel and look more like a spare, lanky male body, she begins to feel untouchable, out of reach of hurt, “invulnerable, clean and hard as the bones etched into my silhouette,” as one student described it in her journal…
Through her anorexia, by contrast, she has unexpectedly discovered an entry into the privileged male world, a way to become what is valued in our culture, a way to become safe, to rise above it all–for her, they are the same thing…
To reshape one’s body into a male body is not to put on male power and privilege. To feel autonomous and free while harnessing body and soul to an obsessive body-practice is to serve, not transform, a social order that limits female possibilities. And, of course, for the female to become male is only for her to locate herself on the other side of a disfiguring opposition…
For if femininity is, as Susan Brownmiller has said, at its core a ‘tradition of imposed limitations,’ then an unwillingness to limit oneself, even in the pursuit of femininity, breaks the rules.

The fact is that since “masculine” has been constructed as the neutral form for so long in ‘patriarchal’ society, for women to “repudiate femininity” doesn’t give them a neutral option. It mostly leads to the embrace of masculine bodily and clothing signifiers–thus, you catch women comparing how long it’s been since they’ve shaved, when body hair has been socially constructed for so long as a signifier of manhood. Women congratulate themselves for not dressing in a feminine manner, when the opposite is to adopt clothing gendered masculine.

So to “repudiate femininity” is not at all to do away with a gender binary. It is instead to adopt the other half of it–the masculine half.

I know there will be people who read this and say “That’s not what Twisty meant!” And of course a certain picture of femininity is valued in our culture above others. I have written and linked above about the changing creation of masculinity and femininity across (Western) culture, and how maintaining masculinity requires as much discipline as femininity.

But I am merely illustrating the fact that policing women’s bodies is NOT a feminist act. Policing women’s femininity is not helping women. It is still playing into the same double bind that Bordo is talking about when she writes of anorexia. Being able to dress and look how we want and still be respected as intelligent individuals capable of all the things men are capable of–THAT would be liberation.

Of all the options out there, all the drag I could wear, I choose several options. My closet is a costume chest full of personae for me to play with. Today I have to meet my students for the semester for the first time–the rest of the semester they will see me in the lab and so in jeans and clothes that I won’t be too sad if I get photo chemicals on. So today I put on a skirt and a nice shirt and I play teacher. Later I’m going out for drinks with a friend, so I will play pretty. Right now I’m writing, so I am lounging in my PJ’s. All these things are options for me. Options. Some are feminine, some are not. And I require people to treat me with respect and listen to me no matter how I am dressed. Which, to me, seems to be a better way of teaching them that feminine /= stupid or unworthy, rather than having to disavow anything sparkly or femme because it might make them take me less seriously or “other” me.

After all, isn’t repudiating femininity what patriarchal culture was all about?

Bordo, Susan. “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity.” From Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, taken here from Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Conboy, Katie, Nadia Medina and Sarah Stanbury, eds. Columbia University Press, 1997

Because it also occurred to me that as well as being Western-centric, the idea that gender presentation always privileges the male and punishes the female kind of ignores large portions of even Western history.

Or even what’s going on in culture right now, as male fashion magazines spread and male “grooming products” flourish with the rise of the “metrosexual.”

Consider this:

Yes, it’s from the movie.  But it’s also a fairly accurate representation of how men and women of the upper classes dressed at the time. And it’s a photograph of actual people dressed in those outfits.

Yes, Marie Antoinette’s dress is huge and unwieldy. But her husband Louis wears a powdered wig and makeup of his own, a high-collared shirt and (though you can’t see them here) knee-breeches, tights, and high-heeled shoes.

There’s a discussion of privilege that we aren’t even going to have here because simply having the time to worry about whether or not to shave one’s legs implies privilege.

What I want to talk about is the fact that male gender presentation has not been static through the ages. That quite often it too has consisted of very specific clothing, shaving, hairstyling, and behavior requirements. Yes, most of the time the women’s were more restrictive, and I don’t think we’ll ever see women embracing bound feet the way some have re-embraced the corset (full disclosure: I own two steel-boned corsets that can take two inches off my waist, but I’ve never done real corset training like Dita or others).

Sparkle, in other words, wasn’t only for women.

I hope I won’t find any feminists who will argue with me that male gender presentation is if anything more heavily policed these days than female. While a woman can wear pants, no makeup, cut her hair short, and while she may be called butch or told that she’d be prettier if…, she probably will not face the same sanctions that a man who wears makeup and dresses will (unless he’s Eddie Izzard). The sanctions for a man who prettifies, who embellishes his appearance, are generally going to be much greater than those for a woman who de-prettifies, most especially in terms of his personal safety in certain quarters.

(And I’m not even talking about trans people here, because we all know transition is policed. And that there’s the assumption that if one transitions, one automatically adopts all the gender signifiers, is straight, and otherwise does everything possible to enact some repressive gender role.)

One exception to present-day gender restrictions on makeup, high heels, and the like is, of course, the rock star:

Ok, so that’s Bowie in the 70s. So pretty. Bowie caused quite a stir by wearing the things that he wore and acting the way that he did. He certainly wasn’t ‘pleasing’ the patriarchy. Gender-bending has always been a part of the “fuck-you” tradition of the rock star, after all, but it also served to attract the opposite sex. Putting on makeup and dresses didn’t make Bowie less attractive to women, it made him more so.

And of course, the other assumption that all of these things are evil and can have no pleasure for the people who use them makes women even less powerful. We are (slightly more than) half the human race, after all. Is it to be believed that over most of human history, women have been so beaten down that they’ve had no input into any of the choices made for them? That every decision, every choice, every second of their lives was pure misery?

We assume that ‘patriarchy’ (I prefer Kyriarchy, these days) is a vast system of subconscious controls, but if it is this way, rather than something rigidly outwardly enforced like a school dress code, how can you really tell what was a result of it and what was in spite of it?

Anything that is outwardly enforced, coerced, becomes no choice at all, of course. If you face social sanctions for not dressing like the gender you appear to be, for not having children (or for having them), for not having a gender-appropriate job, for being with someone of the ‘wrong’ gender, then it’s not a free choice. If you do those things despite social sanctions the action is seen as subversive, even when you’re just living your life.

Feminism shouldn’t be another system of enforcing social sanctions on its members for their actions, should it? What’s liberatory about that?

I go away for a few days, and look what you kids get into.

Ren has a response to some drama that, well, I should know better than to get into, really. I’ve got actual work to do.

But it’s so close to the subject we’ve been dealing with recently, that, well, I have to go there.

She links to a cartoon that the “Real Feminist” types seem to find really funny. (Belle posted it here.) See, a blonde woman who’s a stripper! She’s so deluded, she thinks she’s exploiting herself! Look at all those men drooling and giving her creepy looks!
Then look at the skin tone and hair color of all the men. Look at the exaggerated facial features.

The cartoon’s been defended by saying that the men are in the dark and that’s why they’re all darker-skinned. Sure, and that famous Obama ad where the skin tone was darkened was just an accident.

If you wanted to show a “range of ethnicities” you’d have made the skin tones different colors.

If you wanted to make the men look extra creepy without really thinking about the racial indicators (which honestly is what I think the cartoon was getting at) you’d make them darker than the woman.

The blonde, white woman is the victim as always. Check out the news when there’s a missing girl story. (oooh, thesis reference) She’s almost always blonde, very pretty, and absolutely always white. This goes at least two ways–the white woman is the victim we care about, because she’s pretty and we like to look at her. This cartoon gives visual pleasure in that way, too–the girl in the cartoon is quite pretty. But there’s also the fact that blonde, pretty, young girl signifies sex and sexuality, and quite often in the missing white girl narrative there’s the hint that the girl transgressed sexual boundaries and thus deserved what she got.

Remember Natalee Holloway, who went to Aruba and hung out with local men and then disappeared? See any similarities?

This, of course, is the narrative that this cartoon is going for. Even a single-panel comic tells a narrative story that goes in a sequence, and here we clearly see the girl and read her thoughts first, and then we read the men’s thoughts.

The narrative clearly asks us to believe that the girl is wrong and the men are right (So feminist!), that the girl is obviously deluded and the men are in power.

But beyond that, it taps into a deep-seated cultural myth of the pretty white woman as under attack by the dark-skinned male Other. The ‘feminists’ who are gleefully distributing this picture are on the one side of the narrative–they think the girl is getting what she deserves by being stupid enough to perform for men. Others may have the more altruistic of the two motives–the desire to help the girl and to feel bad for her.

Like the missing white girl stories on the news, though, this cartoon ignores the view of the girl. Though she gets to speak in a way that a missing girl can’t, her point of view is clearly ridiculed here. She’s deluded, right?

Ok, enough theory and such. What do I really think of this cartoon? Well, it’s hardly original. The artist is certainly talented, but she ain’t saying anything any deeper and more thought-provoking than, say, that New Yorker cover. I don’t think she did it intentionally, but I think she absolutely tapped into deep-seated race biases and fears and to pretend otherwise because you like the message of the cartoon is, well, blind.

And let’s call this what it is, shall we? Another example of the same kind of appearance-bashing that I’ve been blathering on about for over a week now. Blonde pretty woman HAS to be stupid and deluded, right? Especially if she’s a stripper.

(Just in case y’all come here and read this: Most stripper’s minds are not full of how empowered they are, just like most waitresses or CEO’s or freelance writers’. Mostly they’re thinking about getting through the shift, getting the work done, and maybe having a little fun while they’re at it, if they’re lucky. Why don’t you spend some time writing about how abused waitresses are for a change, you know, if you’re so concerned with women who get exploited?)

The tendency is often to see men as inherently privileged by patriarchy, as every position they are in as automatically better, and every position women are in as automatically worse.

What if we looked at beauty and exhibitionist sexual tendencies as something that men are denied by patriarchal culture, and women are allowed? After all, we know men are denied many things by patriarchal culture, so what if taking pleasure in our own beauty (and we are all beautiful) and taking pleasure in being looked-at is not a submissive position at all, but a freedom, like the freedom to cry and to express emotions, that women claimed for themselves and men have not?

Thoughts?

Ren and Caroline.

What we seem to be discussing a lot here is the famous double bind that women have been dealing with for centuries upon centuries. If you do, you’re a slut, and if you don’t, you’re a prude. See, I’ve tried very hard to avoid calling anyone a prude or anything else. I don’t feel that I’ve gotten the same consideration from others. Being called “deluded” and told that I “miss the point” and accused of planning to say next something about “hairy-legged” feminists aside, I have not made personal insults against anyone.

I did say that appearance-bashing and slut-shaming under the guise of accusations of upholding the patriarchy were the same old Mean Girls shit.

Let me rephrase that.

Patriarchal society has kept women terrified of straying too far into either end of the pool, of being too prudish or too slutty. Different time periods have had different levels of acceptable behavior, but in all of them there was excess–the whore–and lack–the weird old maid, the witch. Because if we’re constantly worried that we’ll cross the line in either direction, we can’t accomplish anything. We’re too worried about acceptance.

Blaming women for upholding the patriarchy by their choices in clothing, dance, and expression is still placing them in a state where they have to worry that their behavior is appropriate. The amount of thought that goes into self-policing (where’s my Foucault when I need him) can’t be put into other activities. And I can assure you that it takes me a lot less time to put on lipstick than it does to worry about whether or not I might be crossing someone’s boundary of “appropriate.”

So yes, Twisty didn’t say that it was “bad.” She said that it was “antifeminist” to be a burlesque dancer, or by inference, to do anything that upheld “rape culture.” But on the blog of a self-professed “radical feminist” one can assume that “antifeminist” = “bad.”

It got a little out of hand. So I’m reposting it here, as its own post. I really, really appreciate someone actually taking the time to engage and ask questions here. And though I’ve been snarky, seriously, if there’s something you’d like to know, I’m absolutely willing to discuss it.

here’s a link to my recent “My Feminism” post.

I actually have quite a few criticisms of raunch culture. Mostly they come from a sort of Marxist angle–that our sexuality is commodified and sold back to us in a very specific light, and that’s problematic, yes. I’ve written a bit about this, and actually was just saying yesterday that it might be time to dig out Das Kapital and write the big ol’ critique of porn and sex work as WORK rather than as social signification.

Like I said, I’ve been all over the map in terms of physical attractiveness, and I do absolutely think that there’s a beauty premium and that people get treated differently because of how they look. And that is a problem.

But I see the mind-body dichotomy as a problem, too.

The female was always associated with the body in that little binary there. And the body was BAD. So a lot of the feminism that I relate to is about reclaiming the body as good. As a source of joy and pleasure for the woman herself. (If you REALLY want to get geeky, I’d be happy to send you a copy of a paper I wrote for a film theory class that explains some of that.)

My biggest problem with Twisty is that she makes bold declarations that something is unfeminist or that it’s rape culture. If you read my post on feminism and heterosexuality, well, that’s something that bothers me greatly. In all my thoughts on female desire, I’ve never been quite able to break with the fact that I am a straight girl. I like men. I fantasize about men. I do actually enjoy heterosexual sex, even giving blowjobs and being shoved around some. It’s my desire, and as the quote I posted above says, my desires don’t revolve around what I’m repudiating.

So to me, to call things that genuinely turn me on ‘rape’ is insulting. It’s denying my agency, and while Twisty likes to tell us all that we don’t have any agency because of patriarchy, well, I’ve got to live this life and so until the Revolution comes and we overthrow the patriarchy/capitalism, I’ve got to find ways to make myself happy. So do we all.

Twisty said “The idea that women’s public sexuality can so precisely mirror traditional male fantasy while simultaneously existing in a kind of pro-woman, I-do-it-for-myself alternate universe is the cornerstone of funfeminist “thought.””

Unfortunately, my sexuality DOES mirror traditional male fantasy quite often. And it’s not because I haven’t examined enough or tried other options, or opted out altogether for a couple of years. So I DO have to find a way to reconcile those two facts.

And as I mentioned in several of the posts above and over the past few months, I had an ex who rather than wanting me to participate in wild sex or wear ‘porny’ clothes, wanted me to wear conservative clothes, was freaked out by my actual sexual desire, and basically wanted me to conform to the same ideals that I see vaunted over at Twisty’s–don’t dress sexy, don’t express your sexual desires, don’t be active sexually (not to be confused with sexually active) etc. So if I’d done that, I’d be pleasing a man. And he liked to use my feminism as a way to get me to behave the way he thought–if you’re a feminist, he’d say, why do you need men to look at you?

And so yes, at this point I would say that my freedom now to wear what I damn well want is a feminist act. My freedom to fuck how I damn well want is a feminist act. And those things don’t oppress anyone, because I’m not trying to force anyone else’s desires into the same box as I live in.

It strikes me sometimes as a reversal of the Kantian categorical imperative (I’m sorry if I’m sounding like one of those overeducated middle-class wonks that were getting ragged on over there, but once again, that’s who I am and I can’t fight it). People get angry because of the way I or Ren or Caroline looks or acts or talks, because they confuse our advocacy for our right to do that with advocacy that the rest of the world behave that way. I am not trying to impose my lifestyle on anyone else, and all I ask is that they don’t do it to me.

As far as burlesque goes, well, I just transcribed an interview with Margaret Cho the other day, and she was talking about how bellydance and burlesque actually helped her get over her body issues because she would go to bellydance events and see older women, bigger women, young women, skinny women, all of them dancing and shaking it and having a great time and being beautiful. The same thing with a lot of the neo-burlesque movements–there are plenty of them that revolve around non-porny ideals of beauty, and women find a lot of acceptance there.

Yes, to some degree it’s still performing for the gaze. But I’ve argued before and will again (because I looooove feminist film theory) that the gaze is not necessarily masculine.

Again, thanks for actually engaging. If you have any other questions I’m totally up for answering them.

Hi there, new readers.

Since my humble lil’ blog stats have quadrupled in the last couple of days, thanks mostly to Twisty, I suppose I should introduce myself again. So, Hi! I’m Sarah.

If you actually care, there are lots of posts that explain where I’m coming from. If you don’t, you could refer to the title here, which a recent commenter called me.

“Naive,” because, well, as you probably heard, there’s a picture of my ass in a pair of boyshorts below. Hustler brand boyshorts. Never mind that it’s not a thong and you pretty much see no skin, I’m “naive” for posting it.

Well, here’s the thing. First off, I’m probably older than you think. Been around the block a few times. Been a freelance writer for quite a few years (written for BUST and SuicideGirls.com, two places you probably hate if you’re coming from Twisty’s, but I don’t particularly care), and I currently teach classes at a university. Yeah, I’m one of those overeducated types who think it’s “empowerfulizing” to show my ass to a group of strangers, right?

Wrong.

I didn’t put that picture up to empower myself. If I’m seeking validation on my ass, all I have to do is walk down the damn street–I’ll get catcalled plenty, and it’ll remind me that women get sexualized whether we like it or not.

I do, lately, take a certain pleasure in wearing items of clothing that my controlling ex-fiance might have called “slutty” if he hadn’t known I’d punch him in the mouth for using that term around me. While it’s not necessarily “empowering,” it sure is nice to know that no one except for some radical feminist bloggers whom I usually don’t read will be shaming me for my choice in clothing.

(I also find it funny that one commenter said “when guys approve, it’s a great guage[sic] of whether or not something is feminist at all.” By that token, me wearing a low-cut shirt and short shorts is indeed feminist, since my ex would heartily have disapproved. But what happens when teh mens agree with the radical feminists? Because you know, I’m pretty sure James Dobson would agree that strippers and sex workers are terrible people…so doesn’t that mean you’re pleasing the patriarchy too?

Twisty’s right that you can’t avoid the patriarchy. So I choose to not give it even more control over my life by trying to do everything the opposite of what men want.

I certainly don’t give it any more power over my life by letting disputes over what it wants lead me into tearing down other women for how they look or how they choose to perform their sexuality (more on how sexuality is inherently performative later, with added intellectual thoughts on blowjobs! I promise!). And I definitely don’t let it limit my pleasures.

To quote Lydia Lunch, “I do exactly what I wanna do.”

What I wanted to do with that picture, below, was to tell a group of people being judgmental exactly what I thought of their judgments. I’m not “naive” and I didn’t think it was going to make a bunch of people go “Oh! Now I see! Porn is great!” or anything like that. So, annoying? Yeah, that was kind of the point.

The point was also to illustrate that you never know what people are hiding under their clothes. I’m not a sex worker, never have been. I have been assorted other things, including bicycle mechanic and teacher at a nonprofit literacy program. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that when I came to feminism, it led me to stop judging other women, not to find a new way to do it.

In “Cunt,” Inga Muscio talks about her project to make her stop hating on other women: reading autobiographies, or at least biographies. I’ve done a good bit of that, too. It can be fascinating. I read Poppy Z. Brite’s biography of Courtney Love, and Traci Lords’ autobiography, plus Antonia Fraser’s excellent volumes on Marie Antoinette and the queens of Henry VIII, just to name a few faves.

It opens you up to understanding other women as women. To stopping before you pass judgment.

So, naive about showing my ass on my blog? I’ll let you in on a little secret: I did think twice about putting it up there. This blog is under my real name, and is hosted on the same site with my professional resume and portfolio (which are in desperate need of updates…). But you know, I decided I wasn’t going to let people’s decisions of what is ‘appropriate’ and ‘obscene’ or ‘derive[s] a lot of your identity from your conformance to patriarchal expectations.’

That last commenter continued, ‘And if you talk about it in public, you are necessarily inviting people to “judge” you.’

No, actually I’m not. I was inviting you to kiss my ass. But you can judge me all you want. I’ll let through any comments you want to throw at me on this post right here. Call me a slut, a whore, a patriarchy-pleaser, a naive young dimwit. Hell, bring out some racialized and ableist language if you want. It’s not going to hurt me any. Do you think it’s the first time I’ve heard it? And it won’t say anything about me. It’ll just say something about you, and where you derive your validation from: tearing other women down.

But I sure made y’all look, didn’t I?

Going to just throw something out there right now.

Men are not the enemy.

There is no monolithic entity out to ‘get us;’ Team Woman, I mean. There’s no conspiracy sitting up on top of a hill somewhere figuring out ways to get women like me to wear short shorts like I am today in order to make the rest of womanity feel bad. (Or give men an excuse to rape or even catcall.)

There’s a fucked-up system that was created and sustained for thousands of years by subconscious drives and fears (yeah, I’m getting Freudian, deal) and yes, it was and has been sustained by keeping women doing domestic work, having sex when and how men said, and generally having no rights. It has also been sustained on the backs of a worker class, and on the backs of people of color or other groups designated as not-worthy.

But it’s stratified society in ways that hurt men too. Even white men.

Part of the goal of feminism, other than the goal I quoted the other day to “open up definitions and identities,” is to liberate all of us from constrictions placed on us by gender. It is also to revalue those things generally gendered feminine, and to allow men to have those characteristics and take part in those activities too. Not because we need male approval to make our activities worthwhile, but because it will make the world better for ALL people.

I get caught up in the idea that men are the enemy too. I doubt the motives and sincerity of male friends all the time, simply because they’re male. And you know, that idea isn’t new. It’s one that was drilled into my head way before I knew the word “feminism.” It’s created by the same things that created patriarchy and kept women treated as subhumans. Divide and conquer. Divide us from each other, make women into lesser beings or monsters, and by doing so also make men into monsters.

The creation of monsters in our own minds is (you will well know if you’re a regular reader here) a fascination of mine. And it’s so easy to see it happen within feminism as well. Not only the pro-porn sellout to the patriarchy strawmonster that we see discussed below, but the Male Monster.

Yes, all men are potentially capable of rape. Yes, this leads to women being scared and thus men having more control and power. Does this mean that all men actually are rapists, and actually enjoy benefiting from a system where women are kept scared of rape?

No.

So, I still hold to what I said earlier about men and feminism: Listen more than you speak. But I have to remind myself and everyone around me sometimes: men are not the enemy. Feminism should liberate us all.

I was first inspired to write this the other day at BUST, when an innocent blog post about a party that one of the staffers attended turned into a bunch of moralistic commenters accusing a woman of being bulimic and stupid because she was pretty and a model.

Then I got back to bloglandia and Cassandra Says had this post up about beauty and complimenting other women rather than hating on them for it. She said a lot of things I wanted to say, and said them well.

And then Ren posted this and Natalia posted this, both in response to more of the usual shit from the usual suspects: ‘funfeminists’ and ’sexyfeminists’ aren’t really feminists at all, and if you read the comment thread, well it just devolved into pretty much slut-shaming and victim-blaming. And even beyond victim-blaming, blaming women who are pretty and sexual for things that happen to OTHER women, presumably those pure, pure not-fun feminists.

And I’m pissed. Good and pissed. Most of the time I’ll let things simmer for a while and come around to them when I’m not mad, but this time it just keeps making me mad. See, Ren might be OK with saying she’s not a feminist if these women are feminists, but not me. I’m going to throw this one out there instead:

It’s not fucking feminist to rip on other women for how they look.

It just isn’t. Full stop. That includes being fat or thin, old or young, able-bodied or otherwise, black, brown, white, or any other shade. It includes conventionally pretty, too. It certainly includes ‘blond[e]‘ and ‘perky-titted’ and ‘pornified’ and ’skinny.’

See, me? I’m average size and weight right now. I wear dresses and skirts and occasionally high heels. I wrote a long post about “My Feminism” which ended with two pictures of me. I could add a lot more pictures, though. I’ve been thin and I’ve been fat. I’ve had hair short and long, blonde, red, brown and black. I have glasses, and I wear contacts most of the time. I have collarbones that stuck out even when I was at my heaviest, and I had a really rotten battle with acne that struck not in my teens, but in my mid-twenties.

Right now, though, I fit into a lot of people’s definition of a pretty girl, and I’m not going to be fucking bashed for it. I’m not going to be embarrassed about saying that, either. Fuck you if you want to shame me.

It’s just not OK to assume a woman has an eating disorder because she’s thin. It’s certainly not OK to use that as a weapon to wound women. Eating disorders fucking kill people. They’re not something you joke about, and they aren’t a goddamn insult

It’s not OK to tell me that when I step outside the house, I’m making a political statement so I better damn well be wearing clothing that you find properly feminist. How is that, please tell me, any different than my ex-fiance telling me that I looked like a slut in that top? Oh, see, he was doing it in the name of his religion, and you’re doing it in the name of radical feminism? He had a penis and you don’t?

It is ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY not OK to blame women who wear certain clothes and perform certain activities for rape and assault. I don’t give a shit who you are and how much Dworkin you’ve read, it’s not my miniskirt’s fault that men rape. It’s not my hair dye’s fault that men rape.

You don’t get to judge me. You don’t get to judge the women who do burlesque dancing, or hardcore porn. You don’t get to judge Ren, or Natalia, or Cassandra. You don’t fucking have any more right to do that than men do.

If you care so goddamn much about women and their liberation, how about you stop trying to tell them how fucked up they are and try and help them for a change?

And if women have no agency under patriarchy and can’t make their own decisions, how the fuck are you so enlightened?

You know, I have a (yes, male, so what?) who pointed out that certain types of feminism seem more like attempts to get payback than genuine attempts at liberation. Shit like this makes me think he’s right, because they seem more about picking on the pretty girls than actually about feminism. Seen Jawbreaker or Mean Girls? Yeah, that shit. Except with the justification that it’s somehow for the good of womankind?

Save it.

And kiss my Hustler-underwear-clad ass.