Hypothetical Dystopia

I decided that I loved feminists and embraced feminism. Not only does feminism give woman a voice, but it also clears the way for men to free themselves from the stranglehold of traditional masculinity. When we hurt the women in our lives, we hurt ourselves, and we hurt our community, too.

— http://bit.ly/WvZ2pQ (via fuckyeahfeminists)

Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.

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Gwen Sharp in Policing Mascuility in Slim Jim’s “Spice Loss” Ads (via biraciallyinsensitive)

Boom.

(via mehreenkasana)

(Source: queerblackandproud)

There’s a poisonous double standard in our society which says that it’s reverse-sexist and wrong for women to feel threatened by creepy-awkward male behaviour because our fear implies that we hold the negative, stereotypical view that All Men Are Predators, but that if we’re raped or sexually assaulted by any man with whom we’ve had prior social interaction – and particularly if he’s expressed some sexual or romantic interest in us during that time – it’s reasonable for observers to ask what precautions we took to prevent the assault from happening, or to suggest that we maybe led the guy on by not stating our feelings plainly. The result is a situation where women are punished if we reject, avoid or identify creepy men, and then told it’s our fault if we’re assaulted by someone we plainly ought to have rejected, avoided, identified.

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The Creepiness Question « shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows (via sacet)

Gender equality doesn’t sell as much stuff as making people feel horrible about their bodies and their life choices does.

— (via popcornllamas)

The notion of “goodness” for girls was jettisoned partly for a valid reason: In the past, it had been taken to a stifling extreme. Professor Rosemary Agonito, who grew up in the 1950s and whose Italian immigrant parents had not wanted a girl, is well qualified to explain the problem:

“The ‘Nice Girl’ Syndrome: Being a ‘Nice Girl’ means putting ourselves last. It means pleasing others at all costs, accommodating their needs and wants - even when their agendas harm us. By striving always to be liked and accepted (which psychologists have long known to motivate women), we suppress our own desires and feelings, our own belief systems and values, to accommodate those of others. As ‘Nice Girls’ we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, so we don’t talk back and we don’t fight back, even when under siege. We go along; we take it….Long-suffering and uncomplaining, the ‘Nice Girl’ is ever dutiful. But being dutiful is defined as playing by somebody else’s rules, rules that we had no say in creating.

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Shalit, Wendy. Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect & Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good. Random House; New York. 2007. (pg. 177)

‘Bitch’ is predictable in only one respect: its unwavering support for the aggressive girl. An article about Pamela Anderson hopes for a time when she “gets another dread disease or her implants explode.” Those concerned about mean girls are merely using, “a safe cover for hostilities and fears about teenager girls and their power.” In another article, the film ‘Alive’ (based on a true story of passengers stranded after a plane crash) earns the author’s disapproval because a female character, Lilliana, refuses to succumb to cannibalism in order to survive. Her “inherently gentility” is criticized. Annie Garrett, in the fictional ‘Vertical Limit (2000), is criticized for refusing to steal vital supplies from a stranded companion who is suffering from altitude sickness. While this author acknowledges that Annie is the group’s “moral center,” her resistance to “the temptation to give in to savage instincts, even at the peril of her own survival” is looked at askance: “By straitjacking female characters into the position of civilized society’s spokespeople, these movies deny women both moral complexity and credit for having a dark side - a side that deserves to be examined for its real-life and metaphorical implications for gender roles.

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Shalit, Wendy. Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect & Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good. Random House; New York. 2007. (pg. 241)

[TW: anti-Islamic violence] “The only fucking liberation that a hijabi needs is the freedom of knowing she won’t be bludgeoned to death or her place of worship during the Holy Month won’t be charred and terrorized by hate groups. Believe me, between a piece of cloth on my head and having to fear for my life for simply existing the way my faith requests of me, the latter is a much harsher reality. It is my choice to wear a hijab and I have valid reasons for doing so. I’m not a docile, infantilized creature who can’t decide what’s best for me. The hijab gives me a sense of security. It’s the same concept when women wear glasses to avoid eye contact or headphones when they don’t want to be talked to, but since its connected to a religion overrun by brown people, of course it has stigma attached to it. What is it about these westerners, particularly the feminists, who are supposed to be working for the freedom and bodily autonomy of all women, not just the ones that look, live and believe what they do, that they can’t seem to grapple with these facts? As much as we scream and cry and try to rationalize with them, they refuse to hear us and I genuinely don’t understand why. How is coercing a woman out of her hijab any less oppressive than coercing her into one?

— My friend Khadijah on Skype (via eastafrodite)

(Source: maarnayeri)

The task of all of these movements seems to me to be about distinguishing among the norms and conventions that permit people to breath, to desire, to love, and to live, and those norms and conventions that restrict or eviscerate the conditions of life itself. Sometimes norms function both ways at once, and sometimes they function one way for a given group, and another way for another group. What is most important is to stop legislating for all lives what is livable only for some, and similarly, to refrain from proscribing for all lives what is unlivable for some. The differences in position and desire set the universalizability as an ethical reflex. The critique of gender norms must be situated within the context of lives as they are lived and must be guided by the question of what maximizes the possibilities for a livable life, what minimizes the possibility of unbearable life or, indeed, social or literal death.

— Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (via disabledbyculture)

To me, this narrative has been yet another way to heteronormalize gendered and sexual experiences, behaviors, and identities (i.e., to take an experience and normalize it into a “straight” heteronormative model). Just like the fight for gay marriage has been given creditability by stating arguments such as, “we’re just like you, we deserve rights just like you”. Or the fight for sex worker’s rights has been made legitimate only by putting it into a health and human rights based approach. But, honestly, I have to say: this really ticks me off.

— Cassandra Warren, My Body Is Not Wrong: Discourse on “Trapped in the Wrong Body” (via inourwordsblog)

This is how it happens: A few women who really care about something are willing to put up with just about anything in order to compete. To some, the presence here of the first women athletes from the Islamic nations of Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Qatar was “tokenism.” But if it created even one more opportunity for a woman, then there was nothing token about it.
…
This is how it happens: In the 1984 Los Angeles Games, only 24 percent of the athletes were women. In the 1992 Barcelona Games, they were only 25 percent of the competitors. By the 1996 Games it increased to 36 percent, and by the 2008 Beijing Games, that figure exploded to 42 percent, and in London it was 44 percent, with every country sending at least one woman.

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“Women’s Olympic Success: A Flood That Began as a Trickle” / Washington Post

I was quite amazed by the story of the first American women’s basketball team in ‘76: They had a team budget of $500; trained in a gym with no air conditioning; “begged meals from the Rotary Club”; no accommodations were made for them at the Montreal Games, so they had to stay in an empty dorm under construction at the University of Rochester; eventually the 12 players and coaching staff moved into a two bedroom condo in Montreal that someone had found for them — some slept on cots in the kitchen; “We had one pair of shoes: our own sneakers. Not like today where heaven forbid your game shoes should touch asphalt.” And they ended up making it all the way to the gold medal match. 

(via hconover)