#feminspire

[jaexstitch]

Really happy with this one, it’s not the called for colors but I really like how it came out! This definitely got started after Hamilton came out on Disney+, I had forgotten how obsessed I am with it lol. Pattern by feminspired.

[pink-history]

On This Day in Pink History… 7th February 2006, Stupid Girls was released

In 2006, Stupid Girls was released as the lead single from Pink’s fourth studio album, I’m Not Dead. The song was written by Pink, Billy Mann, Niklas Olovson and Robin Mortensen Lynch and produced by Billy Mann and MachoPsycho.

The single entered the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart at number twenty-four, the week’s highest debut and the highest debut of Pink’s career (later topped by her 2008 single, So What). It climbed to number thirteen, becoming Pink’s eighth top twenty single in the United States and her highest peaking single since “Just Like a Pill” (2002). Its peak on the Top 40 Mainstream airplay chart, however, did not match that of most of her previous singles. “Stupid Girls” remained on the Hot 100 for sixteen weeks, and it reached the top twenty on the Pop 100 and appeared on the Adult Top 40. It received airplay in nightclubs, peaking inside the top twenty on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. “Stupid Girls” was certified Gold by RIAA in February 2008.

The single was a bigger chart hit elsewhere—it reached number two on the Canadian Singles Chart, and on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart, it entered at number four and is certified gold for sales of over 35,000. It was ranked number thirty-ninth on ARIA’s top 100 singles of 2006 list. It also peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Pink’s highest charting single in the UK since “Feel Good Time” (2003). It reached the top ten in most countries in Europe.

“Stupid Girls” was nominated in the category of Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 2007 Grammy Awards.

The single was praised by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling on her official website. She wrote, “‘Stupid Girls’, is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness.” About.com praised the song and highlighted it: “she has rarely been as pointed in her socio-political views as in the hit “Stupid Girls” (…) “Stupid Girls” is musically a dance/hip hop gem.” Allmusic praised her delivery when she’s taunting and teasing this song and it was titled as one of the standouts on album. Entertainment Weekly noted that this song has some verve. The Guardian was less positive noting that her vocals are superficial as the starlets she attacks. LA Times wrote that this song fuses many genres greatly and called it “hilarious feminist romp.” Jon Pareles was favorable: “the pop-reggae of Stupid Girls snidely dismisses the bimbos she sees everywhere, though she apparently has studied their habits closely.” PopMatters was positive: “On “Stupid Girlz”, she rails against the idea that women have to choose between being smart and being sexy, as if the two are mutually exclusive. Pink makes the case that women can be all that and more—”Girls with ambition,” she sings, “That’s what I want to see”. She sounds bewildered and exasperated when she says, in the frequently quoted lines:

What happened to the dream of a girl president? She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent They travel in packs of two or three With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teenie weenie tees

What could have easily been a rant turns into an adept social critique. The way she sings it, the problem isn’t 50 Cent’s video, it’s the idea that dancing in the video is the extent of a woman’s aspirations. The bit about the “itsy bitsy doggies” suggests a disdain for elitism and excess that makes you wonder if Gwen Stefani’s “Rich Girl” made Pink see red. It’s got the same playfully articulate vibe as George Clinton’s “Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends”. By the way, for those keeping score, the United States is on its forty-third consecutive male president. Female presidents? Zilch. Female rump shakers in music videos? Countless. Don’t look now, but it seems like Pink’s got a point.” Sal Cinqeman was favorable, too: “As always, Pink’s ragged vocals are better than she’s often given credit for and there’s still a rebel sensibility, at least lyrically, on the catchy lead single “Stupid Girls” (“Where, oh where, have all the smart people gone?” she begs, lambasting “porno paparazzi girls”—which would have made for a more fun title—the way she took aim at Britney two albums ago).” Rolling Stone praised the collaboration with Lilth Fair and added that she takes on ‘stupid girls’ with these lyrics “What happened to the dream of a girl president?/She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent.” Feminist website Feminspire were considerably more critical, naming the song in 2014 as one of “the top ten most sexist songs that aren’t rap or hip hop from the last 20 years”. Author Noor Al-Sibai remarked that: “Pink shits on these women who are too stupid to break out of the chains of patriarchy by harshly judging their promiscuity and blaming them for ‘giving in’ to sexist tropes. Because obviously, women are to blame for their sexist objectification.”

Wikipedia

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THE MUSIC VIDEO

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On This Day in Pink History… 7th February 2006, Stupid Girls was released On This Day in Pink History... 7th February 2006, Stupid Girls was released In 2006, Stupid Girls was released as the lead single from Pink's fourth studio album, I'm Not Dead. 

[kidsviral-blog]

Don't Like Halloween? Here Are 7 Reasons Why Other People Hate It, Too.

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/dont-like-halloween-here-are-7-reasons-why-other-people-hate-it-too/

Don't Like Halloween? Here Are 7 Reasons Why Other People Hate It, Too.

Every year, we have a little holiday on October 31 called Halloween. It’s a day where people dress up in costumes and collect candy for no reason. It gives mirth and merriment to many people across the world. There’s no denying its popularity.

I’m here to voice my dissenting opinion. I’m not a fan of Halloween. I never was and I probably never will be. Let me lay my case out for you with 7 arguments:

1.) There’s pressure to find the right costume.

paperravenediting

Halloween always sneaks up on me. I think it sneaks up on a lot of people. The pressure to find a costume usually consumes people for the week leading up to Halloween. Once you finally decide that you’re going to go to the Halloween store to get a costume, guess what? The only costumes left are 4 sizes too small or are some kind of sexy nurse outfit. Lame.

2.) Kids are rude these days.

theguardian

Yeah, you read that right. Kids are snotty little brats now who don’t politely say “Trick or Treat” anymore like we used to. I’ve had kids come up to my house with no costume on, open their bag, and expect candy from me. Get out of here, kid! If you want to candy, you have to play by the rules. Rule #1 is DRESS UP. That’s the only rule. I’m even a little liberal on the saying “Trick or Treat” if the kid looks excited enough for candy. But these mopey kids with no costumes coming up to my house expecting me to hand them out candy that I spent my HARD EARNED MONEY ON?! Nah, dude.

3.) Cavities.

Those are my teeth. They were decimated by years of trick or treat candy and eating excess candy that wasn’t given away. You see that silver tooth on the left? The one behind it that looks unscathed is also fake. I have so many cavities that I basically bought my dentist his house. I think the years and years of Halloween candy abuse caught up with my mouth, and there is no going back.

4.) It’s usually pretty cold.

theskimonster

It’s cold during Halloween in most places. If you have the most awesome costume you can imagine, you usually have to bundle up over it, thus rendering your costume useless. Or you could bundle up under it, also rendering your costume useless. As Jerry Seinfeld stated on the subject, “I don’t recall Superman wearing a coat.”

5.) People get too into it.

feminspire

I remember when I was a kid, I’d go up to certain houses and the owner of a house would jump out at trick or treaters in a scary costume. That was no fun at all for me as a little kid. I can’t imagine it being fun as an adult running around screaming at little kids, trying to get them to poop in their costumes. Chill out, everybody. It’s cool to decorate and get into it, but it’s a little overkill when you end up chasing a 6-year-old down the street with a fake chainsaw.

6.) If you don’t wear a costume, you get ridiculed.

publichealthwatch

You don’t quite know the vitriol that comes with not wearing a Halloween costume until you do it. “What are you doing? Don’t you know what day it is?” People will legitimately get angry with you and ask you to leave their party. It doesn’t matter if you explain that you couldn’t find a costume anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you tell them that you’d rather wear no costume than a half-assed one. They hate you and your friendship will be ruined for at least a little while. You’re the outsider on Halloween because you aren’t dressed like a bumblebee. Yet EVERY OTHER DAY THAT YOU WANT TO DRESS LIKE A BUMBLEBEE, YOU’RE A CRAZY PERSON! Real mature, guys.

7.) You get stuck with crappy candy.

If you get a big old batch of Halloween candy, you usually also end up getting a bunch of horrible candy. You eat the good candy and then your mom would yell at you and ask you, “Why aren’t you eating the Whoppers?” I’ll tell you why, mom. Whoppers suck. They are by far the worst candy in existence. And I would always get stuck with 16 pounds of them. I think I’d rather eat the candy that you thought people put razors in (remember that?) than Whoppers.

There are many other reasons why Halloween is awful, but I don’t have time to name them all. So, just take this as a starter guide on why Halloween needs to just leave me alone. If you enjoy it, more power to you. Just let me be a miser, okay? Haters always gotta hate.

Read more: http://viralnova.com/halloween-sucks/

[theprettynerdie]

so apparently i friended ben schoen ages ago on facebook back when i was heavily involved in the harry potter fandom (like 2009ish after leakycon happened) 

TODAY he accepted my six year old request. why? because i was a writer for feminspire. the site he took control of and basically destroyed. “by women for women” turned into “ben schoen increases his male feminist credentials and harasses women.”

NOW he adds me on facebook and says “would you be interested in entertaining a conversation? if you just give me a shot i promise i'll make it worth your time.”

????? are ya fuckin kidding me bro

[nicholascarr-blog]

Hi, everybody, I am Ben Schoen, and I am known as a contributor to MuggleNet; am one of the creators of the MuggleCast podcast; and am the founder of Feminspire, "Where Woman Make Media". That is, if you'll fuck me. Feminism is important to me, especially when it concerns how it serves my interests to get laid. You see, recently I sent BuzzFeed writer Grace Spelman several posts that she did not respond to, ones which I had sent trying to get into contact with her. I told her she was beautiful and that I would like to hang out, and she told me she has a boyfriend. Right. I have heard that one before. So what if I lied to her about my interest in her career before writing her off as a hack? So what if I was attracted to her because of a profile pic and then called her out for having ten thousand followers because of that profile pic? I am not as bad as Dr. Dre. I could have helped her career. I wanted her to be a part of my Feminspire team of young concubines. Look at my picture and tell me you would not fuck me. I will not apologise for harassing a woman and then angrily, publicly shaming her for not wanting to fuck me. I am punching up at the Sheeple of BuzzFeed. Please share my story with your friends.

[nooralsibai]

Why Being An Intern Doesn’t Have To Suck

Posted on Feminspire February 27, 2013

Imagine my surprise when showing up for my first day as an unpaid editorial intern at my local paper I learned that I was supposed to actually write and research for the paper. I experienced a perverse sort of disappointment, one that came from a miniature paradigm shift as I realized that I was expected to actually work and be treated like (almost) any other employee rather than some lowly college peon. I was up for the work, but was taken aback by it.

I’m of the strange habit of glamorizing the banal aspects of daily life when those aspects pertain to a lifestyle that I strive for. I love driving through rush hour traffic after getting off of work from my office job because it makes me feel like an adult. I always have a secret surge of pleasure when I’m really hungover from a night of partying because it makes me feel like a wild party girl. The hell week of finals has always been fun for me because I love to feel like a member of my stressed and over-caffeinated college community.

One of the boring and shitty lifestyles that I’ve glamorized is that of the unpaid intern. As a journalism student, I long ago resigned myself to the reality of working for a newspaper for nothing but school credit or resume fodder, and in a strange twist that is probably the result of a lifetime of capitalist conditioning, the concept of running copies and picking up coffee for the editorial staff always seemed appealing to me.

So imagine my surprise when showing up for my first day as an unpaid editorial intern at my local paper I learned that I was supposed to actually write and research for the paper. I experienced a perverse sort of disappointment, one that came from a miniature paradigm shift as I realized that I was expected to actually work and be treated like (almost) any other employee rather than some lowly college peon. I was up for the work, but was taken aback by it.

Since then, I’ve worked at two other internships in PR and marketing. I’ve learned a lot about the way internships often are versus the way they are perceived:

1. The type and size of company/organization you work for makes a huge difference.

One of my closest friends was an intern in the U.S. House of Representatives. He did a lot of running copies and fetching coffee –the “typical” intern duties we all think of when working on internships. I, on the other hand, have worked only for smaller organizations: my local paper, a non-profit business alliance, and a startup IT consultant company. For all of those, I was doing actual fieldwork. I was writing editorials, organizing parties, and troubleshooting websites. What I took from my experience and the experiences of many friends was that the smaller the company, the realer the work.

2. Not all internships are unpaid.

Moreover, you don’t have to be post-undergrad or a graduate student to get the paid ones. I responded to a job posting for a marketing assistant internship on my university’s job board, and within two days was sitting in front of my current boss who offered to pay me $12/hr. Not a bad gig for a college senior. [Full disclosure: I was fired from that job two weeks after publishing this because I honestly wasn’t cut out for marketing at the time. All the same, it was a cool opportunity and a learning experience.]

3. Interns are an integral part of the work community.

Interns do the crappy work at any office, even if that work isn’t just getting sandwiches and taking out the bosses’ laundry. At newspapers, interns are often the people who are doing research and making preliminary calls for news stories. PR interns are similar to nurses — they do a lot of the necessary work, like setting up databases of contacts, which makes the job of the executives easier. Without the work that interns (and other entry-level employees) do, most organizations would fall apart in fits of “I’m overqualified to make copies!”

4. Interns are the eyes and ears of organizations.

When I interned on a couple of political campaigns my senior year of high school, I learned way more than I expected to about local and national political campaigns. The information that I handled was extremely sensitive and because unpaid interns rarely sign formal contracts, that information could have be used any way I wanted. You see and hear all kinds of crazy things, often about very powerful people, when you’re an intern — just like secretaries, we know a lot of personal stuff about everyone who works with us. Which leads me to my final point:

5. It’s in an organization’s best interests to treat their interns well.

We’ve all heard about domineering editors and other bosses a la The Devil Wears Prada, who berate and torture their interns because they can. I don’t doubt that at major newspapers and corporations that happens — there is such a high demand for unpaid work there that I’m sure they get away with all kinds of crap. However, when it comes to actually working at an internship when your parents aren’t millionaires and you don’t go to an Ivy League school, the pool is a lot smaller and the way that interns are treated gets around. Just like the way women talk about bosses who sexually harass them, interns talk about bosses who treat them like shit. It’s the social nature of the occupation and serves as a kind of checks and balance system.

Perhaps the only stereotypical internship reality that I’ve encountered is that we are viewed as members of the bottom tier of the business — and honestly, that’s what we are. But to be a twenty-something undergrad or grad student and doing work in one’s actual field is always worthwhile, even if it’s under the title of “intern.”

[circumstantial2]

When the author is a woman or person of color, who is either speaking out about lived experiences that we don’t share, or shining some light on the ways in which they are not aligned with the whiteness that is not only comfortable and familiar to us, but also affords us protection, we are quick to work up an incredible amount of naked hostility.

There’s this pervasive, unspoken, attitude that women of color owe us media that we can relate to, media that coddles us, with a gaze that’s kind to our lived experiences instead of their own. And if it doesn’t, it’s somehow acceptable to speak out, loudly; to discredit or tear into them, like we’re hoping for some show of submission or apology because something about what they’ve said has struck a nerve on a level we don’t want to consider.

We take it upon ourselves to rake them over the coals over tone, credibility, and identity, especially if they aren’t speaking in a way or voicing an opinion that we deem appropriate. And we don’t just do it by posting a comment and calling it a day.

Instead, a lot of the time we work together, maybe without realizing it. We support other women in tearing down the author, as well, so it turns into a joint effort. Sit with that for a sec. White women getting together in the comment section of an article to tear down another woman, not because she wrote something actively harmful, but because we don’t like where she’s coming from. We don’t like what she’s saying or the way she’s saying it. We don’t like that she’s not working to please the part of her readership that’s white.

[sleepymouses]

If a man can't hear you unless you speak in a way that is agreeable to him, do NOT give him the power to change the tone of the conversation. We can set the terms.

[feministtwins]

The glorification of busy is why I’ve never really felt like I deserve a rest.

[nooralsibai]

That Peter Pan Collar Blouse Won’t Change Who You Are

Posted on Feminspire December 16, 2013

I can’t be the only one who does this.

It usually starts with an ad on the side of my news feed, or maybe just boredom, or procrastination. I find myself on ASOS, Modcloth, Nasty Gal, or any of the myriad other online apparel sites I frequent. Disregarding (or outright ignoring) the fact that I barely have enough in my bank account to make rent, I start going through the lists–always dresses first, then skirts or leggings, then pants. I’m just looking for that one perfect A-line skirt, I tell myself. Just one Peter Pan collared blouse. But I never find it. 

Soon, I find myself on Etsy, which, for people like me, is the equivalent of binge-hate-watching seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I go through shop after shop of overpriced thrift store finds, wondering why they found that amazing pair of plaid pants in my size, how they have the audacity to charge $65 for a sweater they obviously got out of the Goodwill bins. I usually end this frenzy by resigning myself to hiding my laptop in the living room, because it’s 2 AM and I don’t have the money for it anyway. I rarely end up buying anything during these sprees.

What’s troublesome to me about these instances is not that I am most often too broke to buy anything online–it’s not even that I’m engaging in unabashed, raw consumerism from the sanctuary of my bedroom. It’s that during these frenzies–and I call them that on purpose–I am not myself, or rather, that I’m the lowest version of myself. When I get this way, I’m doing so because I feel that I am lacking something in my life, in my personality. I look through dress after dress, scarf after scarf, imagining myself as a stylish young professional, a fashionista who is prepared to conquer any deadline or tackle any important interview while being perfectly put-together. The problem isn’t that I’m not those things–it’s that I feel that I need these clothes to be that way.

Throughout my development as a woman, as a feminist and as a “fashionista”, I’ve retained a strong sense of personal style that has become an integral piece to, if not inseparable from, my identity. Whether it was the two-toned asymmetrical haircut at 16, the flowing dresses as a college freshman, or the leggings-as-pants that are a staple of my current wardrobe (haters can go to bed), I’ve always used clothes as a crucial means of self-expression. Now, a semester away from graduation and facing the realization that I will soon have to dress in (gasp!) business-casual attire, I’ve learned that I’ve used what I wear to define who I am, too.

It’s not really a far cry from the “dress for the part” mantra of fashion blogs–we all have clothes we wear to the bar, on dates, to work, to school, etc. I have specific outfits for wearing to house shows (ripped up “Rude Dog” tee, shorts, tights if it’s cold, Doc Martens) that differ greatly from what I wear to class when I’m trying to get an A on a test (floral minidress, leggings, grey blazer, loafers). But in light of my (hopeful) forthcoming transition into my career, I’ve faced a half-dilemma, half-impasse that has less to do with “what am I going to wear?!” and far more to do with “who am I going to be?!”.

Modcloth specifically appeals to this sense of self-definition through clothing–dresses with names like “Garden Screening”, “Riviera Romance” and “Your Very Best” (how’s that for a lifestyle choice?), complete with descriptions detailing the kind of girl the buyer will be in that dress (hilariously riffed upon in this article at The Hairpin). These punny titles aren’t just selling clothes–they’re selling a feeling, that je-ne-sais-quois every fashionista aims to embody when she dons that high-waist skirt that cuts off her circulation a little because, damnit, we suffer for fashion or whatever. What’s a little diminished lung capacity compared to that feeling when a stranger compliments your outfit? It’s not about being alluring–it’s about being that girl, the one who turns heads not necessarily because of what she’s wearing, but because of who she is. My breed of clotheshorse never lets her clothes wear her, but it doesn’t hurt to have a few killer outfits in her closet.

My approaching work attire dilemma has given me far more to consider than whether or not vintage A-line silhouettes are office-appropriate–it’s gotten me thinking about how I’ll manage to be myself while working within an presumably drab dress code and, more importantly, what it is about what I wear that makes me so concerned with how I present my identity to the world. I’m not saying I’m going to have a boring wardrobe when I find a real job, but in taking out my nose ring and donning actual pants, I’m going to learn a lot more about who I really am without the comfortable trappings of the clothes I sometimes hide behind.

[pink-history]

On This Day in Pink History… 7th February 2006, Stupid Girls was released

In 2006, Stupid Girls was released as the lead single from Pink’s fourth studio album, I’m Not Dead. The song was written by Pink, Billy Mann, Niklas Olovson and Robin Mortensen Lynch and produced by Billy Mann and MachoPsycho.

The single entered the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart at number twenty-four, the week’s highest debut and the highest debut of Pink’s career (later topped by her 2008 single, So What). It climbed to number thirteen, becoming Pink’s eighth top twenty single in the United States and her highest peaking single since “Just Like a Pill” (2002). Its peak on the Top 40 Mainstream airplay chart, however, did not match that of most of her previous singles. “Stupid Girls” remained on the Hot 100 for sixteen weeks, and it reached the top twenty on the Pop 100 and appeared on the Adult Top 40. It received airplay in nightclubs, peaking inside the top twenty on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. “Stupid Girls” was certified Gold by RIAA in February 2008.

The single was a bigger chart hit elsewhere—it reached number two on the Canadian Singles Chart, and on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart, it entered at number four and is certified gold for sales of over 35,000. It was ranked number thirty-ninth on ARIA’s top 100 singles of 2006 list. It also peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Pink’s highest charting single in the UK since “Feel Good Time” (2003). It reached the top ten in most countries in Europe.

“Stupid Girls” was nominated in the category of Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 2007 Grammy Awards.

The single was praised by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling on her official website. She wrote, “‘Stupid Girls’, is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness.” About.com praised the song and highlighted it: “she has rarely been as pointed in her socio-political views as in the hit “Stupid Girls” (…) “Stupid Girls” is musically a dance/hip hop gem.” Allmusic praised her delivery when she’s taunting and teasing this song and it was titled as one of the standouts on album. Entertainment Weekly noted that this song has some verve. The Guardian was less positive noting that her vocals are superficial as the starlets she attacks. LA Times wrote that this song fuses many genres greatly and called it “hilarious feminist romp.” Jon Pareles was favorable: “the pop-reggae of Stupid Girls snidely dismisses the bimbos she sees everywhere, though she apparently has studied their habits closely.” PopMatters was positive: “On “Stupid Girlz”, she rails against the idea that women have to choose between being smart and being sexy, as if the two are mutually exclusive. Pink makes the case that women can be all that and more—”Girls with ambition,” she sings, “That’s what I want to see”. She sounds bewildered and exasperated when she says, in the frequently quoted lines:

What happened to the dream of a girl president? She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent They travel in packs of two or three With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teenie weenie tees

What could have easily been a rant turns into an adept social critique. The way she sings it, the problem isn’t 50 Cent’s video, it’s the idea that dancing in the video is the extent of a woman’s aspirations. The bit about the “itsy bitsy doggies” suggests a disdain for elitism and excess that makes you wonder if Gwen Stefani’s “Rich Girl” made Pink see red. It’s got the same playfully articulate vibe as George Clinton’s “Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends”. By the way, for those keeping score, the United States is on its forty-third consecutive male president. Female presidents? Zilch. Female rump shakers in music videos? Countless. Don’t look now, but it seems like Pink’s got a point.” Sal Cinqeman was favorable, too: “As always, Pink’s ragged vocals are better than she’s often given credit for and there’s still a rebel sensibility, at least lyrically, on the catchy lead single “Stupid Girls” (“Where, oh where, have all the smart people gone?” she begs, lambasting “porno paparazzi girls”—which would have made for a more fun title—the way she took aim at Britney two albums ago).” Rolling Stone praised the collaboration with Lilth Fair and added that she takes on ‘stupid girls’ with these lyrics “What happened to the dream of a girl president?/She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent.” Feminist website Feminspire were considerably more critical, naming the song in 2014 as one of “the top ten most sexist songs that aren’t rap or hip hop from the last 20 years”. Author Noor Al-Sibai remarked that: “Pink shits on these women who are too stupid to break out of the chains of patriarchy by harshly judging their promiscuity and blaming them for ‘giving in’ to sexist tropes. Because obviously, women are to blame for their sexist objectification.”

Wikipedia

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THE MUSIC VIDEO

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On This Day in Pink History… 7th February 2006, Stupid Girls was released On This Day in Pink History... 7th February 2006, Stupid Girls was released In 2006, Stupid Girls was released as the lead single from Pink's fourth studio album, I'm Not Dead. 

[rosewednesday-blog]

Buying stuff to fill your wardrobe can get overwhelming. I have some tips to smooth out the process!

[alwaysinyouratmosphere]

I’m tired of talking about feminism to men. I’m tired of explaining to men that the feminist movement will, in fact, benefit them as well as women. I’m tired of trying to hawk gender equality like I’m some kind of car salesman showing off a shiny new sedan, explaining all of its bells and whistles. I’m tired of smiling through a thousand thoughtless microaggressions, tired of providing countless pieces of evidence, tired of being questioned on every. single. damn. thing. I’m tired of proving that microaggressions exist, tired of proving that I’m unfairly questioned and asked for proof. For a movement that’s centered around the advancement and empowerment of women, why do I feel like I’m supposed to spend so damn much of my time carefully considering how what I say and do will be taken by men? I’m tired of men who insert themselves into feminist spaces with claims of hurt feelings. I’m tired of men who somehow manage to make every issue about them. I’m tired of men like the one who recently stopped by a friend’s Facebook thread in order to call feminism “cunty,” then lecture the women involved for being too “hostile” in their responses to him. I’m tired of men telling me that my understanding of feminism and rape culture are wrong, as if these aren’t things that I have studied intensely. I’m tired of men who claim to be feminist allies, then abuse that position to their own advantage. I’m so fucking exhausted by the fact that I know that I will have to, at some point in this piece, mention that I understand that not all men are like that. I will have to note that some men are good allies. And all of those things are true! And all of you good allies get cookies! But honestly, I’m tired of handing out cookies to people just because they’re decent fucking human beings.

Anne Thériault, I’m Not Your Feminist Mommy & I’m Tired of Holding Your Hand

[nooralsibai]

Je Suis Fatiguée: A Response to Islamophobia in the Wake of Charlie Hebdo

Image credit: Revelli-Beaumont/SIPA

Posted on Feminspire January 8, 2015

I’m sick and tired.

I’m actually coming down with an illness and I’m always tired. I’ve spent days trying not to feel anything about the Charlie Hebdo bombings, trying not to feel anything while the Islamophobic witch hunts begin and people have already begun bombing mosques. “Not my battle”, I kept quietly telling myself. “They’ll keep being racist no matter what I say.”

I hate the self-defeat that leads to self-censorship.

And now I’m on the brink of tears as years of psychic trauma wash over me, as I feel my fifth-grade self watching the non-stop news coverage of the 9/11 attacks at school, of not understanding and then understanding it all too soon.

After 9/11, I entered a poem into a contest and won. The poem, titled “A Song of Peace”, was my 10-year-old Unitarian Universalist-raised cry for everyone to stop fighting. I wonder now, bitterly, if I won to be a small-time Malala Yousafzi, to have my youthful optimism and pacifism be used to say “see, even their own people hate them”. My poem was turned into a song, still sung by children’s choirs occasionally in Canada. In entering the contest, I assume that I signed over my rights to the royalties. I don’t even get checks for 25 cents every few years, like a friend’s mom who once sang in a Rogers and Hammerstein film. I don’t even get pennies to be the Al-Sibai at the end of “A Song of Peace”.

In the 14-plus years since 9/11, my ideology has changed as I grew up and attended liberal arts school, as expected. I’m radicalized, I suppose, by coming of age on the Internet, by reading the experiences and opinions of others and forming my own. Still, I consider myself a pacifist–a harking back to my UU upbringing paired with my non-confrontational nature.

Today, my pacifism bears no weight on the preemptive grief that haunts Arabs and Muslims in the West every time we turn on the news and see another bombing, another clip of men in keffiyahs and thawbs wielding guns or microphones. It is a singular grief known only to those so readily demonized as us–the knowledge that after this, some of your people are going to be killed, and countless more will mourn. I don’t feel the urge to be violent, but to wail in the streets as so many of my Palestinian sisters have when their children and husbands and siblings and parents and relatives are killed in yet another merciless attack. I feel an unnamed dread for those young men who watch their families and their people killed and vilified, whether in their neighborhood or on their screens. Those men, as readily radicalized as me based on different circumstances, preparing to retaliate with threatened and actual violence. I understand them more than I usually admit to non-Muslims–their pent-up grief, their constant struggle to be recognized as human, their anger at the lack of justice that raised them. I can’t blame them for anything but their individual choices, so horrifying to my Western pacifism, caused by the same colonialism and war that gives me pause before engaging with Iraq and Afghanistan vets and Francophiles.

I don’t have words about this most recent Islamphobic fodder–or rather, I don’t have words I’d care to be published, words that don’t come from a place of hurt and grief and a lifetime of outrage. I abhor violence in all its forms, but today, I can only engage in the preemptive grief I grew up with. Maybe I need a new Song of Peace.