Quick post just to clarify something.
Why is my blog called Shut Up, Bitch?
Simple. I got told "Shut up, bitch!" just one too many times. In fact, in response to a comment left on another blog, before I had even transfered to blogspot and left my (fandom-oriented) blog on livejournal behind, someone left a comment that was just a link. This link went to a particular rap song on youtube which, at one point, was the #1 hit for "shut up bitch" (I won't link to it; if you really want, it's easy to find).
And so I figured it was as good a blog name as any.
I know that some people have a real problem with reclaiming slurs, and a problem with "bitch" specifically. That's fine. I would never force someone to claim a label they weren't comfortable with, or call someone something that offends them. But me? I like "bitch". I want to me more of a bitch. Hell, I'm conciously working hard (thanks to books like Nice Girls Finish Fat and The Nice Girl Syndrome, both of which are awesome) to stop being such a nice girl and start being a bitch. (And, personally, I think a lot of women would be much healthier--not to mention happier and more effective--if they picked up one or both of those books. As much as I appriciated the help I got from Codependent No More, it's nice to read a self-help book for codependents that isn't filled with fluffy "just trust your higher power" nonsense.)
So. That's why the name. If it's not your cup o' tea, great. It works for me, though.
And with the more recent harassment I've recieved* from people who just want me to shut up...I don't think I'm going to be changing the name any time soon.
*Funny thing...almost all the harassment I've recieved has come from comments I've left on other blogs. In fact, the only really awful comments I've had here, the ones I've had to delete, came as a result of a certain youtube video made to mock me...for a comment I left on another blog! So I'm not sure anyone really cares what I say here! Regardless. I'm not shutting up, here or anywhere else.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Is the Republican Party Pro-Life? A look at the new GOP party platform
I have tried to back up every statement of fact that I make. For the most part, I have linked to respected unbiased organizations and news sites and resisted posting to blogs and advocacy groups, and when I couldn't find an original source, I tried to state that. That doesn't mean I always did; sometimes an advocacy group has a much better presentation of facts in a format that is easy to read and understand. You can judge for yourself the legitimacy of the information, but remember: you are always entitled to your own opinion, but you are never entitled to your own facts.
Republicans are usually considered the "Pro-Life" party. They certainly are anti-choice, though of course there are a few pro-choice Republicans and more than a few anti-choice Democrats (remember Bart Stupak?) But as a national party, the GOP takes a strong stand against abortion, and accomplished many legislative victories across the country, while for the most part, Democrats aren't nearly as committed. Oh, they say they're for reproductive freedom, and there are Democrats in both state and federal legislatures that fight for choice, but they don't have near the amount of victories (just an impressive string of failures) or passion as their Republican opponents.
But are Republicans really Pro-Life? I decided to take a look at the newly approved party platform. You can read the entire platform here. I will be quoting the relevant bits.
Republicans are usually considered the "Pro-Life" party. They certainly are anti-choice, though of course there are a few pro-choice Republicans and more than a few anti-choice Democrats (remember Bart Stupak?) But as a national party, the GOP takes a strong stand against abortion, and accomplished many legislative victories across the country, while for the most part, Democrats aren't nearly as committed. Oh, they say they're for reproductive freedom, and there are Democrats in both state and federal legislatures that fight for choice, but they don't have near the amount of victories (just an impressive string of failures) or passion as their Republican opponents.
But are Republicans really Pro-Life? I decided to take a look at the newly approved party platform. You can read the entire platform here. I will be quoting the relevant bits.
Fuckability
On Zinnia Jones Vlog, Heather had something to say about radical feminism and transphobia.
I think it's a great post for so many reasons, and I'll probably be back to discuss it more later. There was one thing, though, that jumped out and bit me. Probably because I'm too self-absorbed, it was the only part that was at all connected to me. I feel kind of guilty about this, because as wonderfully important Heather's video was, I'm not really going to be talking about radical feminism or transphobia right now. Later, definitely; there are so many good things in this video, and I do think it's a good for both the transphobic radfems and the feminists who hate radfems because they think they're all transphobic to watch.
Right now, however, I'm just going to limit this to what I have personal experience with: fuckability.
(Starting at 2:23) The sex classing of women and requisite caste system of the class (more commonly known as varying degrees of fuckability, or even more commonly as a scale from 1 to 10) has inhumanely relegated trans women with a certain remaining organ to the undesirables. They are expected to be content with either fetishization or pity fucking, along with cis women of the overweight and differently abled varieties. This particular problem has recently been the birth of a massive online “cotton ceiling” debate. We’ll get back to that.
Yes, we will definitely be getting back to the "cotton ceiling" debate, but it will have to be in another post. I have some very strong opinions, again, as a cis lesbian radfem (gah, labels), but I hope it doesn't surprise people that the majority of the time I come down firmly on the side of trans women in this debate. Actually, it was reading some back and forth between trans women and radfem activists on the whole cotton ceiling debate that first made me want to give up the label "radical feminist" in the first place. I do not want to be associated with those people...but I also don't want to give up on the feminist philosophy and theory of activism that most meshes with what I see, how I feel, and what I believe will actually transform the world. But that is a discussion for another time.
Today, in what will probably be a self-indulgent, perhaps self-pitying post (you've been warned), we're going to talk about fuckability.
I think it's a great post for so many reasons, and I'll probably be back to discuss it more later. There was one thing, though, that jumped out and bit me. Probably because I'm too self-absorbed, it was the only part that was at all connected to me. I feel kind of guilty about this, because as wonderfully important Heather's video was, I'm not really going to be talking about radical feminism or transphobia right now. Later, definitely; there are so many good things in this video, and I do think it's a good for both the transphobic radfems and the feminists who hate radfems because they think they're all transphobic to watch.
Right now, however, I'm just going to limit this to what I have personal experience with: fuckability.
(Starting at 2:23) The sex classing of women and requisite caste system of the class (more commonly known as varying degrees of fuckability, or even more commonly as a scale from 1 to 10) has inhumanely relegated trans women with a certain remaining organ to the undesirables. They are expected to be content with either fetishization or pity fucking, along with cis women of the overweight and differently abled varieties. This particular problem has recently been the birth of a massive online “cotton ceiling” debate. We’ll get back to that.
Yes, we will definitely be getting back to the "cotton ceiling" debate, but it will have to be in another post. I have some very strong opinions, again, as a cis lesbian radfem (gah, labels), but I hope it doesn't surprise people that the majority of the time I come down firmly on the side of trans women in this debate. Actually, it was reading some back and forth between trans women and radfem activists on the whole cotton ceiling debate that first made me want to give up the label "radical feminist" in the first place. I do not want to be associated with those people...but I also don't want to give up on the feminist philosophy and theory of activism that most meshes with what I see, how I feel, and what I believe will actually transform the world. But that is a discussion for another time.
Today, in what will probably be a self-indulgent, perhaps self-pitying post (you've been warned), we're going to talk about fuckability.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Thoughts on Prostitution and Pornography
Trigger Warning: Graphic description of child abuse and rape.
This is going to be bit rambly. I can't help that. I have a lot of thoughts, conflicting thoughts, and I'm going to try and get them out as best I can.
I have no personal experience with prostitution, or with what most people think of when they talk about pornography.I have been molested and raped: both times, pictures were taken. When I was nine, I was molested over the course of a year by a seventeen year old boy who was living in our house as he finished up High School. I was easy prey; I was homeschooled, extremely sheltered (I didn’t even know what sex was), a chubby, socially isolated outcast with few friends, and though my parents loved me, they both worked all the time On several occasions, he took pictures of me, partially undressed, in what I now realize were sexual poses. At the time, I didn't fully understand what was going on. I knew enough to be ashamed, I knew that I couldn't tell anyone. But J. told me I was beautiful and had me pose like the pictures on the magazine covers and movie posters, like a real woman.
Years later, when I was an adult, I was brutally raped just a couple blocks from my home, when I took a stupid shortcut through the park. The pictures were almost an afterthought; after he had bruised me, burned me, raped me, he pulled out a camera phone and snapped a couple pictures. The most I ever saw of him was through the glow of that phone, his bulbous nose and crooked teeth, not enough for a good description for the cops. Oh, the wondrous progression of technology.
I have lived in fear for years that those photos of me are on the internet, graphic snapshots of my humiliation and pain. I have no reason to think that they aren't. Sometimes I can't help thinking about the men who have, over the years, masturbated to those images of a scared, humiliated little girl trying so hard to be pretty, to be loved, to be a woman. I wonder if that rapist was able to get my face in the shot, or if I exist only as a headless battered vagina, if he could even get the pictures to come out when they were taken on a pitch-black night. I try not to think about it, which is really all that I can do about it.
People would be quick to point out that what happened to me wasn't really pornography, it was rape, and they would be mostly right. I didn't chose what happened, and I certainly wasn't paid for it. But I have heard too many stories from girls and boys and women who were forced to take pictures, like I was, so that men could continue to rape them in their minds over and over and over again. I can't entirely dismiss the comparison. I also can’t dismiss the similarities between what I went through and common images in movies and magazines. Would I still have been raped and molested without the multi-billion dollar porn industry, much of it saturated with images of raped and abused women? Maybe. But the boy who molested me wasn't an adult, wasn't any older than my baby brother is now (who seems impossibly young to me). Would he have known what to do without porn? Would he have even thought to take pictures? Again, maybe. There's no way to know something like that. Thinking of a society without porn seems even more fantastical than thinking of a society without religion.
This is going to be bit rambly. I can't help that. I have a lot of thoughts, conflicting thoughts, and I'm going to try and get them out as best I can.
I have no personal experience with prostitution, or with what most people think of when they talk about pornography.I have been molested and raped: both times, pictures were taken. When I was nine, I was molested over the course of a year by a seventeen year old boy who was living in our house as he finished up High School. I was easy prey; I was homeschooled, extremely sheltered (I didn’t even know what sex was), a chubby, socially isolated outcast with few friends, and though my parents loved me, they both worked all the time On several occasions, he took pictures of me, partially undressed, in what I now realize were sexual poses. At the time, I didn't fully understand what was going on. I knew enough to be ashamed, I knew that I couldn't tell anyone. But J. told me I was beautiful and had me pose like the pictures on the magazine covers and movie posters, like a real woman.
Years later, when I was an adult, I was brutally raped just a couple blocks from my home, when I took a stupid shortcut through the park. The pictures were almost an afterthought; after he had bruised me, burned me, raped me, he pulled out a camera phone and snapped a couple pictures. The most I ever saw of him was through the glow of that phone, his bulbous nose and crooked teeth, not enough for a good description for the cops. Oh, the wondrous progression of technology.
I have lived in fear for years that those photos of me are on the internet, graphic snapshots of my humiliation and pain. I have no reason to think that they aren't. Sometimes I can't help thinking about the men who have, over the years, masturbated to those images of a scared, humiliated little girl trying so hard to be pretty, to be loved, to be a woman. I wonder if that rapist was able to get my face in the shot, or if I exist only as a headless battered vagina, if he could even get the pictures to come out when they were taken on a pitch-black night. I try not to think about it, which is really all that I can do about it.
People would be quick to point out that what happened to me wasn't really pornography, it was rape, and they would be mostly right. I didn't chose what happened, and I certainly wasn't paid for it. But I have heard too many stories from girls and boys and women who were forced to take pictures, like I was, so that men could continue to rape them in their minds over and over and over again. I can't entirely dismiss the comparison. I also can’t dismiss the similarities between what I went through and common images in movies and magazines. Would I still have been raped and molested without the multi-billion dollar porn industry, much of it saturated with images of raped and abused women? Maybe. But the boy who molested me wasn't an adult, wasn't any older than my baby brother is now (who seems impossibly young to me). Would he have known what to do without porn? Would he have even thought to take pictures? Again, maybe. There's no way to know something like that. Thinking of a society without porn seems even more fantastical than thinking of a society without religion.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
We've come a long way?
Repost of something I wrote years ago.
(Trigger Warning for Domestic Abuse)
Several years ago, I was watching a history channel special on JFK. The show asserted that the reason JFK had won the election was because of two things: women and TV. Women voted for JFK because they saw him on TV, and he was cute.
At the time, I was living with my grandmother, who was in her eighties, and I remember asking her, "Grandma, did you vote for President Kennedy because he was handsome?"
"No, I did not," my grandma snapped back, startling me with the vehemence of her response. "I voted for him because he said that he would raise the minimum wage, and I had five babies to feed.”
“Oh, okay,” I answered, but Grandma was just getting started. I’d obviously touched a nerve.
(Trigger Warning for Domestic Abuse)
Several years ago, I was watching a history channel special on JFK. The show asserted that the reason JFK had won the election was because of two things: women and TV. Women voted for JFK because they saw him on TV, and he was cute.
At the time, I was living with my grandmother, who was in her eighties, and I remember asking her, "Grandma, did you vote for President Kennedy because he was handsome?"
"No, I did not," my grandma snapped back, startling me with the vehemence of her response. "I voted for him because he said that he would raise the minimum wage, and I had five babies to feed.”
“Oh, okay,” I answered, but Grandma was just getting started. I’d obviously touched a nerve.
What Boys Can Learn From Girls (or: Be a Pussy).
A repost of something I wrote years ago.
(Trigger Warning for homophobia, child abuse, and sexual assault.)
My brother is a decent kid, and I love him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s homophobic.
To his credit, he doesn’t want to be a homophobe...he’s a good, progressive boy raised by a progressive mom, living in a progressive area (San Francisco), and he has a lesbian sister (me) that he loves. He’d never beat up or tease a gay kid--he’s stuck up for a gay kids, or kids that were perceived as gay/effeminate, at school and boy scouts, even--he’s totally supportive of civil rights for the queer community and voted against Prop 8. I’m not saying he should get a medal for this; treating gay people like, well, people, is the bare requirement for being a decent human being, in my book. But I say this to establish that he doesn’t hate gay people or wish us harm.
But he’s still homophobic.
I use homophobic in the literal sense, not the general usage of the term. He is afraid of gay people. Well, gay men. Like many 19-year-old, heterosexual boys, he’s a product of our porn culture, and really likes lesbians. At least the “hot” ones. (But that’s a different rant, for a different time.) Gay men freak him out. Though he’s known several out gay boys, he’s never had a gay friend, and doesn’t want one. He’d never dream of interfering in the lives of gay men, but he doesn’t want to be a part of their lives, either.
To his credit, he admits that this is a problem, specifically his problem and not something that gay people cause just by the fact of their existence. To his discredit, he doesn’t think that it’s possible to change the way he feels, and has no intention of making an effort to change. “It’s just the way it is,” he says. “Any guy would feel the same way.”
(Presumably, he means any heterosexual guy. It’s a little thing, but it really shows his deep bias against gay folk, even with his progressive politics. All guys are heterosexual. Gays are “other.”)
We had a long conversation the other day, during which I tried to get to the bottom of his homophobia. How can a kid who doesn’t really have a moral problem with homosexuality, who actively supports gay rights, who has been raised around gay people and has gay family, still harbor a deep fear against gay men? It came down to a couple of things.
First, he finds gay sex skeevy. Okay. I can understand that; I find a lot of sex gross, hetero and homo. Hell, the time I heard my parents having sex in the shower scarred me for life, but it doesn’t mean I’m afraid of my parents. After some thought, he agreed. Yeah, he thinks gay sex is nasty, but it doesn’t make him afraid. He just doesn’t think about it. Which is good, because frankly, I think that people who like to sit around all day long thinking about sex acts in general, and sex acts that gross them out in particular, are just perverts. (Here’s looking at you, Peter LaBarbera.) So that explanation doesn’t work.
The real answer, we discovered, is that he’s afraid that a gay man might find him attractive. He’s super uncomfortable with the thought of another boy checking him out. He has no idea what to do if a guy hits on him--what will he say? How should he act? And, of course, there’s an underlying fear of rape. Even though he acknowledges that it’s stupid (and arrogant), that he knows gay people aren’t roaming the streets looking to molest his ass, he’s still afraid.
The kicker of the conversation was when he looked at me and said, totally seriously, “You’re not a man. You can’t understand.”
(Trigger Warning for homophobia, child abuse, and sexual assault.)
My brother is a decent kid, and I love him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s homophobic.
To his credit, he doesn’t want to be a homophobe...he’s a good, progressive boy raised by a progressive mom, living in a progressive area (San Francisco), and he has a lesbian sister (me) that he loves. He’d never beat up or tease a gay kid--he’s stuck up for a gay kids, or kids that were perceived as gay/effeminate, at school and boy scouts, even--he’s totally supportive of civil rights for the queer community and voted against Prop 8. I’m not saying he should get a medal for this; treating gay people like, well, people, is the bare requirement for being a decent human being, in my book. But I say this to establish that he doesn’t hate gay people or wish us harm.
But he’s still homophobic.
I use homophobic in the literal sense, not the general usage of the term. He is afraid of gay people. Well, gay men. Like many 19-year-old, heterosexual boys, he’s a product of our porn culture, and really likes lesbians. At least the “hot” ones. (But that’s a different rant, for a different time.) Gay men freak him out. Though he’s known several out gay boys, he’s never had a gay friend, and doesn’t want one. He’d never dream of interfering in the lives of gay men, but he doesn’t want to be a part of their lives, either.
To his credit, he admits that this is a problem, specifically his problem and not something that gay people cause just by the fact of their existence. To his discredit, he doesn’t think that it’s possible to change the way he feels, and has no intention of making an effort to change. “It’s just the way it is,” he says. “Any guy would feel the same way.”
(Presumably, he means any heterosexual guy. It’s a little thing, but it really shows his deep bias against gay folk, even with his progressive politics. All guys are heterosexual. Gays are “other.”)
We had a long conversation the other day, during which I tried to get to the bottom of his homophobia. How can a kid who doesn’t really have a moral problem with homosexuality, who actively supports gay rights, who has been raised around gay people and has gay family, still harbor a deep fear against gay men? It came down to a couple of things.
First, he finds gay sex skeevy. Okay. I can understand that; I find a lot of sex gross, hetero and homo. Hell, the time I heard my parents having sex in the shower scarred me for life, but it doesn’t mean I’m afraid of my parents. After some thought, he agreed. Yeah, he thinks gay sex is nasty, but it doesn’t make him afraid. He just doesn’t think about it. Which is good, because frankly, I think that people who like to sit around all day long thinking about sex acts in general, and sex acts that gross them out in particular, are just perverts. (Here’s looking at you, Peter LaBarbera.) So that explanation doesn’t work.
The real answer, we discovered, is that he’s afraid that a gay man might find him attractive. He’s super uncomfortable with the thought of another boy checking him out. He has no idea what to do if a guy hits on him--what will he say? How should he act? And, of course, there’s an underlying fear of rape. Even though he acknowledges that it’s stupid (and arrogant), that he knows gay people aren’t roaming the streets looking to molest his ass, he’s still afraid.
The kicker of the conversation was when he looked at me and said, totally seriously, “You’re not a man. You can’t understand.”
This Slut Votes
So a group called This Slut Votes has started to try and organize against the recent epidemic of anti-woman Republican legislation.
I fucking love it.
This might not be a surprise, considering the name of this blog, but I'm a big fan of reclaiming language. You wanna call me a bitch? Bring it. If your definition of "bitch" is "woman who disagrees with me and doesn't snivel about it" than, fine, you got it, I'm a bitch. After I heard my brother say, "I usually don't use this word, but Hillary Clinton is such a cunt," I was, like, if Ms. Clinton is a cunt, than I sure wanna be one, too!
Not everyone agrees. That's fine. I understand that some people who've been hurt by such language in the past don't like to hear those words thrown around, or feel that "reclaiming" does more harm than good. I've seen it argued that taking on "slut" is giving into the male-pleasure dominated porn culture, and that it can never truly be an empowering word.
But I don't think that's what's going on here.
I fucking love it.
This might not be a surprise, considering the name of this blog, but I'm a big fan of reclaiming language. You wanna call me a bitch? Bring it. If your definition of "bitch" is "woman who disagrees with me and doesn't snivel about it" than, fine, you got it, I'm a bitch. After I heard my brother say, "I usually don't use this word, but Hillary Clinton is such a cunt," I was, like, if Ms. Clinton is a cunt, than I sure wanna be one, too!
Not everyone agrees. That's fine. I understand that some people who've been hurt by such language in the past don't like to hear those words thrown around, or feel that "reclaiming" does more harm than good. I've seen it argued that taking on "slut" is giving into the male-pleasure dominated porn culture, and that it can never truly be an empowering word.
But I don't think that's what's going on here.
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