(Source: tsunderebabe)
On Periods: Let’s put this shit to bed right now: Women don’t lose their minds when they have period-related irritability. It doesn’t lower their ability to reason; it lowers their patience and, hence, tolerance for bullshit. If an issue comes up a lot during “that time of the month,” that doesn’t mean she only cares about it once a month; it means she’s bothered by it all the time and lacks the capacity, once a month, to shove it down and bury it beneath six gulps of willful silence.
― Shakesville: Feminism 101 (via andotherdoublemeanings)
Intersectionality describes the ways in which discourses of race, ethnicity, social class, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability, status, nationality, citizenship, religion and other markers of cultural differences intersect to shape individual realities and lived experiences (Mason, 2010). Attending to your positionality involves being accountable for the markers that unfairly afford you privileges at the expense of others, while interrogating the ways in which they interact with the markers that oppress you.
One of these points of resistance is fashion, which is a feminist issue in contemporary Iran. Young women, in contrast to their mother’s generation—leftist radicals who abhorred bourgeois decadence—express their defiance toward the morality police by wearing makeup and streaking their hair in vibrant colors (the bit they can show from under their colorful scares). Before the eyes of clerics and poise authorities on the streets, they claim the public arenas with elegant capes in creative designs that meet the minimum requirement of the morality police but are nowhere near the drab black veils that are recommended by them.
― Janet Afary, Seeking a Feminist Politics for the Middle East After September 11th (via ayatollahofsass)
The next time you see someone with jewelry that says “trust no man,” don’t judge them for their “man hating” or “bougie” ways. Rather, commend them for their superb taste in music.
“Trust no man” is actually a reference to a reference to a 1926 song of the same name by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, a Georgian and African-American pioneer of blues music.
I want all you women to listen to me
Don’t trust your man no further than your eyes can see
I trusted my man with my best friend
But that was a bad bargain in the end
A feminist before there was really a term for it, Rainey was also notorious for getting into trouble with small-town authorities over her “women-only parties.” She was a brazen lady-lovin’ badass well-worthy of a 21st century signal boost.
(Source: sarahfonseca)
Oxford University students on why we need feminism
We’ll have Slut Walks and protest our rights to walk down the street wearing whatever we want without being harassed. Great! But when an influential performer who wears little on stage makes a comment on equality and the need for women to be financially independent, women who call themselves feminist call out “maybe if she wasn’t shaking her booty on MTV in next to nothing dressed like a porn star I might take this more seriously”. Really? Do you realize you are implicitly stating that I do not have to take you serious when you’re wearing a mini skirt? Is that what you want? And what’s with the putting down of porn stars? Are they now second class humans because you don’t agree with their life choices?
― I am a feminist
(via loveyourrebellion)
so here is the thing about ariel, is that she always dreams of being on land with feet, is explicitly canonically unhappy with her body & choices way before meeting prince eric. ariel wants to read and learn and dance and stand for herself. she has this extensive meticulous collection of all the shit she wants to learn, and king triton destroys it. so she is essentially, i think, moving from a male-dominated space in which her safe personal spaces are negated and her opinions and desires are dismissed to one in which she shares power and is (LITERALLY!!!!) given free reign. like, prince eric is essentially a narrative device allowing ariel to choose her own future & self. if she can make him fall in love with her, she can stay NOT ONLY with him BUT ALSO on land, where she has always wanted to belong, notably away from her father— who ok, is frightened for her safety, but who also terrorizes and belittles her.
and yeah, she exchanges her voice to make that transition, but those are the choices marginalized people are forced to make. this is how identity works in structural oppression— ok, you can have the body you want and live with the lover you choose, but you give up some of your rights. you give up some of your social respect. you give up your voice. (whoops i queered it.)(and ariel still is never without personal expression; on her day out with eric, they do straight up everything she wants and eric is totally cool with her being in charge. JSYK.)
and ariel’s voice is meant to be not only her communication but also her beauty— how many times under the sea did we hear TRITON’S SILVER-VOICED DAUGHTER, like she was corralled and praised explicitly (solely!) because of her singing ability, to the point where her reaction to giving up her voice was not “how will i communicate” but “why would he love me.” wow!!! children’s texts about the social valuation and manipulation of women’s bodies!!!! and the little mermaid is explicitly about the bargains ruthless precious ariel chooses to make in order to get what she has always wanted— feet and freedom. she doesn’t change her body for a man; she changes it for herself.
and while we should mention about how the structural progression of beauty & the beast is deeply fucked up, belle gets the fuck out of the castle until the beast changes his behavior to her and, like ariel, negotiates for authority in a space where her desire for knowledge is celebrated and supported. you’ll remember she was otherized & mocked in the village whereas the beast a) gave her a library and b) did everything she ever said ever. (i also think it’s relevant to talk about classism in beauty & the beast, like belle is all GUYS I READ THIS BOOK and they’re like GIRL WE HAVE SHIT TO DO.) in the village she was relegated to the women’s spaces which consisted of STOP READING, GET MARRIED, REPRODUCE, like you have to be practical and useful and obedient to be a Good Woman
and her choice still entails marriage, but marriage which is not a domestication but rather an avenue to social and personal power. people forget that belle is just as wild and selfish and opinionated as the beast is; she is also an outcast. and yes, the plotline can support a romanticizing of abusive relationships, a social narrative of good women making bad men better, i am not arguing that it’s not thematically fucked up. the story, following the fairytale, focuses on the beast’s ~transformation~, but belle also changes; this is also a story about two people society has deemed monsters recognizing each other’s worth and beauty and learning to be tender to each other and to accept affection themselves. i don’t think it’s very helpful, in analyzing this story, to reduce it to good-woman-makes-bad-man-better without examining the woman as a character herself and what she gets out of it. belle is not your plot device. all of belle’s decisions in this movie are based on what she wants and values. she’s not here to redeem anybody.
jasmine is sort of an outlier in that her movie is not actually about her! this is disney’s first movie aBOUT a BOY?!?!? and so like yes, obviously, in the film ALADDIN, we focus on… aladdin… and the thematic and narrative climaxes are based on aladdin’s character and choices. but that does not inherently mean that jasmine is abused by the narrative. i also think it’s really relevant first to talk about the ways that she’s exotified— jasmine, disney’s first woc princess, has a gendered oppression more linked with her specific culture than any white princess’ gendered oppression of equal or greater value. that’s not okay. and jasmine’s personal sub-arc is primarily about the way that she is valued for her sexuality and the way that she argues for and regains control of herself as sexual being.
jasmine is one of the least passive princesses of the entire disney canon, y’all. the entire plot is set in motion when jasmine runs away because she doesn’t want to marry any of her current options, and she comes back when that goes to shit, but she’s still not willing to obey anyone. this super hotcake prince ali comes into town and she’s like you’ve got the moves, but have you got the touch???, and it turns out he does!, and she’s real into it so she’s like welp get ready to be the sultan and aladdin is like hey to the what, but jasmine’s made up her mind. jafar tries to hypnotize her into loving him and she uses his conception of her sexuality against him. she straight up femme fatales him. she is not some prize to be won.
it is jasmine alone who bestows political power: jasmine may not be able to inherit or rule alone, but she will rule, and she is determined to choose herself with whom. her personal sexual authority and political authority are inextricably linked, of which she and the movie are both cognizant. it’s fucked up, especially within the context of all the white princesses, that her body is so explicitly commodified. but that doesn’t negate her authority over her body and the way she weaponizes it. and there’s a lot of ~feminist criticism~ that’s like JASMINE TEACHES WOMEN THAT THEY’RE ONLY VALUABLE FOR THEIR SEXUALITY, but i think feminist criticism is also examining the ways women find power in their social spaces, the ways they express or attain their own desires by manipulating their contexts. jasmine also teaches women that they are in charge of their sexuality, that their bodies are theirs alone.
which is all to say, there is a lot of feminist criticism to be made of the disney princesses, but that’s not where feminist analysis has to end. these are still children’s movies about women’s choices, y’all. there are not a lot of those these days.
You know how I am always harping on how you can love problematic things, by recognizing their flaws while still loving the ever living fuck out of the good parts? That is this post.
Rude girls aren’t the antithesis of feminism. They aren’t even a different form of feminism. I am hesitant to label women of color’s efforts to survive and carve a place in the world anything as flawed as feminism because things really just tend to be larger than the labels we give them. A rude girl is just the girl you need her to be, point blank. Get into her narcissism, her cockiness, her sex-positive approaches. Honey, really get into the way she tears down obstacles–with a little flair and whole bunch of attitude. Even if you can’t hang with her, you can hang with the way she handles her shit–because it’s the way we sometimes want to: open and blunt, with the tell-tale knowledge that she is, and will always be, the shit.
―
Michelle, “An Ode to Rude Girl Anthems”
More from that last quote I reblogged because these first three sentences need to be included.
(via mylifeasafeminista)
Something for me to chew on. (via fumblingtowardshappiness)
Last semester, a slut-shaming op-ed in The George Anne ticked me off.
So I shoved this in the staff writer’s mailbox.
A man begging his wife’s forgiveness inside Divorce Court, 1948, Chicago.
she’s givin’ him a cold look
u go girl
(Source: calumet412)
What counts as activism? Why didn’t the kind of emotional self-care me and my girls were doing—talking to each other about all the fucked-up shit we were going through as brown girls—count? Why didn’t my best friend driving her elderly East African mother to the doctor and renegotiating her way through the layers of the racist, sexist, condescending bullshit medical system count as activism? Did staying alive count as activism? Did re-learning Tamil, one of my Sri Lankan family’s languages, count? Did cooking good Sri Lankan food and learning how to cook those recipes I didn’t have female family members around to teach me count? As a South Asian femme immigrant who was having a shitty week, did shopping at the MAC counter and finding the perfect shade of fuchsia lip gloss for my milk-tea skin count?
―
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “A Time to Hole Up And a Time to Kick Ass” in We Don’t Need Another Wave (via kru-pa)
forever reblog.
(via mylifeasafeminista)
