#for not having this same line of reasoning regarding gender and a specific feminism

[sendmyresignation]

ok so knee deep in girls to the front which is incredibly interesting to hold up against dance of days. but the number one thing that keeps itching at my brain is like. I feel like so much of the discussion around riot grrl does a disservice to the fact this community was full of literal teenagers, both from the standpoint of why they were taking the specific actions they were, with what little political power young women are able to wield, but also explains why riot grrl... isn't perfect like god forbid the radical thought i had at seventeen doesn't just start a very public and easily hated youth moment but is also scrutinized and held up forever as The Thing You Believe Now. so much of my personal issue re: riot grrl is with the Canon and the retrospective understanding of the scene and much much less to do with the actual things fermenting in young people's minds/motivating them into taking actionable steps to mitigate unrelenting patriarchy because it's admirable to see young people take those steps.

[alpaca-clouds]

High Fantasy Conundrums: The Silliness of Gender Roles

Let me talk about another misconception that creeps up in so many High Fantasy worlds, because the writers do not question certain parts of their worldview. And that is the sexism that so often is inherent to a lot of High Fantasy worldbuilding - or was inherent to them. As some of the TTRPG settings were a lot worse in this regard once and have since course corrected a lot.

Whenever there is a piece of fantasy media - be it a game, or a movie, or in some cases a book - in which a woman is the main characters, people will start the same discussion. "Oh, but this is a medieval fantasy world! That is like totally unrealistic! That is not historically accurate!" And that no doubt is also the reason why so many writers in the genre keep the idea of sexism in their fantasy worlds alive. Well, that and because they are fucking misogynists themselves. But they still have this idea of it being "realistic".

But... That's bullshit, right? We know that it is bullshit, right?

The big issue in this is that there several underlying assumptions, that are wrong. Those are:

Sexism, Misogyny and the Patriarchy are natural and will always develop.

Sexism, Misogyny and the Patriarchy are automatically stronger in societies that are not technologically developed that far along.

Sexism, Misogyny and the Patriarchy were this big, big thing in the middle ages.

Of course, assumption number 1 is one that is so hard to argue against, because the people holding this idea usually are just not open to argument. You can show them historically societies that were not patriachal and they will argue that, "no, actually, they totally are patriarchal". And then they will grasp at straw, but will not actually go into any... detail.

The truth is, that we do know both how patriarchy (and through it sexism and misogyny) came to be. Sure, we cannot go back in time and proof it to be true - but the current scientific assumption is quite sensible and logically conclusive. For the simple fact that we know that patriarchy is not "natural" (meaning something that humans biologically tend to), as there are matriarchal societies that exist.

Hence, we do have this conclusive theory: Humans started to settle down. They developed systems of ownership. Ownership lead to the need of hereditary systems. In some areas ownership revolved around the male line. For the lack of paternity tests due to it being ancient times, it had to be ensured that women only ever slept with one men. Hence women needed to be controlled. Hence the patriarchy came to be. And as some of those patriarchal societies - specifically in Europe and Asia - were quite successful, a lot of people today think that is the "only way" to construct a society.

The second assumption leads from this. As the people think that "all cultures start out patriarchal" they will assume that hence also the development goes from "super patriarchal" in ancient times, to "I guess there comes feminism" in modern times. Hence the technological advancement of a world is directly tied to the harshness of sexism in it.

But this again does not work out. Because, again, we do have cultures of all sorts that were not patriarchal in the end. We had matriarchal cultures - both of the "hunter/gatherer" type and the agricultural kind.

Not to mention that we do know that most hunter/gatherer cultures are a lot more equal and rarely strongly patriarchal, as patriarchal cultures - if anything - tend to develop around agriculture and the ownership of land.

But then there is also the assumption about the middle ages. I have said it before. It is not as if there are "THE" middle ages. The middle ages lasted for a millennia, and they usually discribe this timeframe throughout Europe, which was actually quite a diverse place back then. Though there is the issue. Because a lot of texts talking about the middle ages will only talk about France, Germany and England. (And mind you: England, not the UK or GB. Scotland, Wales and Ireland were not the same...) And too many even historical papers will tend to extrapolate stuff we know about those areas to the rest of Europe.

But there is another issue, too. And that issue is the lack of literacy during the time period itself. A lot of primary sources that exist to this day come from people who were of either noble descent or from a rich background. Because they actually had the time and need to learn how to write. Now, contrary to popular believe quite a few people were able to write a little (like write down how much they might have harvested and write down their name), but yes, letters, diaries and other sorts of texts were written mostly by people higher up the hierachies. And... here is the thing: For the most part we know that those nobles were in fact a lot stronger tied to other forms of hierarcheis - like the patriarchy.

But peasants? They could not afford to make those big distinctions between men and women. Because they needed hands on the fields and in the stables. Sure, there were certain jobs that in some areas were stronger gendered - but... that only worked when you could afford it. And not everyone could.

In fact, we are not even fully sure how strongly certain other aspects of society was enforced within rural societies.

But... Even all of that is almost immaterial when it comes to High Fantasy worldbuilding. Because here is the thing: High Fantasy is Fantasy!

For once: The patriarchy of the middle ages (however strong it was even enforced) existed in the context of both coming out of the ancient culteres (especially Rome), and the Church. And as we established: The church does not exist in most Fantasy settings. Nothing that exists within Lord of the Rings, the Forgotten Realms, the world of Dragon Age (though DA really does not show much in terms of sexism), or The Witcher is actually comparable to the Church we had in the middle ages.

And sure, Witcher actually makes up for that in terms of its own worldbuilding that explains where the power structures come from - but the other words do not do much in this terms.

Yeah, again. DA is not that heavy on patriarchal stuff for most of their cultures - and those that have it are worldbuild around it. And Forgotten Realms/DnD have retconned a lot of the stuff away, which is quite fair.

But we also can all name quite a few worlds - even in modern books and stuff - that actually do a lot with those patriarchal norms without either worldbuilding around them, or explaining them in any way. And let's face it: I think most of us have had at least one horrible DM in DnD, who would insinst on making the world as misogynist as possible.

But, like... It does not make a lot of sense, right? Because a lot of patriarchy is also... nonsensical in a world of magic. Why would you still keep up those ideas, if you have magic? Magic would change so much. It would change what people could do and how much they could control. Sure, you can still make up reasons why certain things work and others do not. But... I mean. Yeah. Why doesn't magic birth control work in your world? Why haven't magic women figured that one out?

And that is... Like... It is why I am so done with High Fantasy worlds trying to immitate wrong assumptions people have about the real world.

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Three Asks

It’s been a while since we answered some asks so today and maybe tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, we’ll collect some and answer them since we’ve gotten while a few in the last two or three weeks.

In today’s post I picked out the three most recent asks we’ve received, two of which are ones I’d usually just delete because answering is pointless but one of them showcased a popular pattern so we decided to reply just this once. So this time around the questions are about Namjoon and Seokjin, next time we’ll do ones about Tae and Jimin (and vmin), and so on.

Ask 1 - Did Namjoon have to bring up the criticism he received in 2015/16 in the Juju Chang interview?

Ask 2 and 3 - questions from either diet solos (someone who isn’t quite a solo stan just yet but exhibits the same thought patterns as solos do) or full on solo stans.

From anon: So you must have seen their interview alongside the President right on a news show? Most of it was fine and I liked how involved they were especially JK, but a point Namjoon made is what I'm kinda dicey about. He addressed that they were called out for WoH lyrics but the thing is I'm not sure if it needed to be brought up. Especially in American media and the way they contextualize things..

Obviously he meant that they grew from it but not sure if that was the way to put it I guess?

I will admit, there aren’t many times when asks that get sent to us annoy me, but this one in conjunction with the absolute nonsense that took place about this on twt just made my blood boil. Let’s look at the question and answer so we have full context when it comes to the interview and then, after that, we’ll look at the greater context of why Namjoon saying what he did is significant and a big deal.

Juju Chang: You guys are an all male band and, let’s face it, Korea, historically, has been a very male dominated culture and yet here at the UN one of the core values in Sustainable Development is educating women and having gender equality. You have a lot of female fans. What would you say to them about gender equality and working towards that?

Namjoon: Personally, I received a lot fo criticism regarding misogyny in 2015 and 2016, which led me to get my lyrics reviewed by a women’s studies professor. That experience, in turn, was an opportunity for me to self-reflect and question whether I’d been insensitive toward gender equality. I want to do the best I can to take interest in the topic, learn and make improvements. That’s my perspective now. 

Namjoon used a personal story as framework to showcase that even someone like him, a man in a position of power/influence from a country which, as the interviewer explained, is very male dominated can learn, grow and, in the long run, contribute to change. It takes tremendous bravery to do something like this, to not only admit that you made such a mistake, but also to take it and grow from it, take the time to reflect and strive to better yourself to never repeat it again. And also talk about doing so not only during an international broadcast but also while your own president sits right there next to you.

Perhaps there are a relatively big number of countries in the west where equality is much closer to being a reality, where it is a core value to respect woman, one that you are raised with, but here the context was specifically BTS and their background, their country and their culture. From K-ARMY we know that things have taken a turn for the worse in Korea when it comes to women’s rights and the behavior of men toward them, how feminism is treated essentially as a dirty word and you will get hunted down for using it or for behaving in a feminist manner. Namjoon himself was placed on some list made by misogynists labeling him as a dirty, dirty feminist. The same men who even went after the military to get them to stop using a hand gesture which could, if you really want to, be used to make fun of a man for a small d*ck. In polls men in their 20s and 30s have voted being against feminism and I don’t mean just like 10 or 20% of voters, but rather 50-70%, even some presidential candidates have apparently been revealed as anti-feminists.

Circling back to Namjoon, having this context, do you now get why it was a big thing for him to say this, why it makes him a role model and why it was important to do so? Besides this isn’t just about the WoH lyrics which, to be frank, were never an actual issue but instead were made into one (the line I know that usually get’s brought up most is “The girls are equations, and us guys are solutions” which, if you think about it, actually means that boys and girls are equal since 2+5=7, the equation and the solution are the same, and also the song is satire about hormonal boys and their behavior which people have decided to ignore for the sake of sitting on their high horses instead). Namjoon wasn’t even the only member credited for the lyrics yet he took the blame upon himself, used this to better himself even though we know 2015 was an extremely dark time for him. But he is the leader, he took responsibility and he grew from it. He stands as example of how change is possible even in a country that is male dominated and misogynistic.

From anon: Reading your post about My universe I can’t but be heavy hearted. 

It’s such a beautiful song but Jin not having almost any lines ruined the experience for me. He deserves so much more than being a mere backup vocal. Same goes to Jimin but I’m not as effected as Jin, since we’ve all seen a pattern there. 

We know the boys decide collectively decide LD and how it fits their personalities and voices but I can’t but feel icky about Dynamite, not today, BS&T and now MY. 

I truly hope this doesn’t continue and BH decides to respect Jin more as an artist. He’s one of the biggest reasons the group is where it is now.

Though I can’t say with 100% certainty that this comes from someone that has consumed too much solo stan “content”, it does very much feel like it and the only reason why I’m even answering this is that I’d like to highlight something, a pattern we've seen a million times over for years now in regard to line distribution but that is even more glaring and flawed in this case, after we’ve seen how My Universe was recorded:

“We know the boys collectively decide” and yet “and BH decides to respect Jin more”, with this you’re basically saying that you know all the members, including Seokjin, are involved BUT since giving him and the others slack for it would make you look bad, you instead throw blame at BH, which in this case had no say in the line distribution. That choice was Christ Martin’s to make. If you already complain about line distribution, at least have the guts to direct your hate at the people you just said yourself make the choice--the members. Solos already belittle Seokjin’s efforts as it is, and constantly demand an acting debut of him which basically, to me, just comes across as them wanting him to act because they don’t value his singing and music, so would it be really that farfetched for them to also hate on him for, what, not speaking up and demanding more to satisfy you?

Seokjin was so happy and excited while recording My Universe, while meeting Chris Martin, someone he’s admired and been a fan of for so long. He gave his best while recording and sounded absolutely marvelously, and yet instead of celebrating him, his voice, and what we do hear of him, you just focus on the negatives.

BH isn’t perfect by any means, don’t even try to come into our asks calling me a company stan or whatever because I’m far from it, but in this case they had nothing to do with it. Coldplay and Chris Martin did. We saw all the members record the chorus, and we heard it, we saw and heard Seokjin sing absolutely beautifully and get praise for it, and we saw how happy this collab has made him. Why can’t you just let this be a happy time, why must you immediately search for things to be negative about?

Would I have liked so hear more of his voice on My Universe? Obviously, I even said as much in my post about the song. I love Seokjin and his voice a lot, he is my bias wrecker for a reason. But the song has already happened, been recorded, mastered, and released. What will a negativity parade change? What? Absolutely nothing except for make him feel bad because you can’t just say “Seokjin did amazingly, I love his voice”, no, you have to go around yelling “OMG he is being cut from the song because BH hates him”. What does that do for him? Like really, tell me, because I don’t get it.

And if my opinion isn’t valid enough for you, it is, after all, just an opinion, take Seokjin’s opinion about the collab instead:

Or asks such as this one:

From anon: I honestly can’t wait for Seokjin to go solo one day. Go where he’s appreciated for his talents and musicality, not cuz he’s just a “hyung” or “comic relief” or “WWH”.

Where, tell me, has he ever expressed an interest in going solo? No, I’m serious, where, because all I know is that he is happy with his members, with what he does, that he enjoys making music and getting more involved than he used to. Just the other day during the interview with Juju Chang he spoke about how he misses the old times where he could go for soju and food with Yoongi to spend some time together.

And just a few years before that Yoongi said that Seokjin has been good from the beginning, and there are tons of other examples of the members praising Seokjin in terms of his voice and musicality. When he was going through burnout last year, Bang PD encouraged him to channel his thoughts and feelings into music, recommended him a producer he thought work well with him, and Seokjin said it really did help him. And we got Abyss as result from it all, a gorgeous and raw song. 

Yes, he gets praise for being a good hyung, because guess what, he is a good hyung. Maybe for you that’s not good enough, but he’s proud of it, has always taken the fact that he’s the eldest seriously even when goofing around with his members. How is that a bad thing?

Seokjin loves his members and they love him. Seokjin loves ARMY and we love him back tenfold. Just because solos hate the members and aren’t satisfied with Seokjin, how is that my issue or even his? If you’re a genuine fan of his, support his hard work, support all his contributions to BTS’ music, their performances, their dancing, and everything else. Because he is part of BTS regardless if you like it or not, and as far as we are aware, he doesn’t plan on changing that any time soon, or at all. 

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

so i am back on the grima train and i was reading through your posts (absolutely quality, for which i can only thank you !! 💓) and you mentioned in one about his use of magic that you have a Lot of Feelings about grima in relation to gender and plz i need to hear them!! (if you want to share? 👀)

LOTR: Grima & Gender 

Oh man, so Grima and gender. My favourite topic. Other than Grima and magic - but they’re linked! So, that’s a bonus for us.

I want to thank you so much for asking this question. I have wanted to rant about this for Forever.

This became incredibly long, but the long and short of it is that Grima undermines social expectations of masculinity in Rohan through his disdain for martial achievements, his occupying a more private/passive role within the king’s household rather than the expected “masculine” public/active, his use of spells and potions being an “unmanly” and “cowardly” approach to problem solving, and his reliance on language and soft-power approaches to politics.

All of this works to position Grima within a more feminine role and character - at least within the context of Rohan’s hypermasculine performativity of manliness.

[It does allow us to read Grima as trans with greater ease in terms of fitting into the canon than the usual favourites, other than Eowyn. So, you know, do with that what you will. Eowyn and Grima both want to be queen. Let them be in charge! I’m going to get my ass bit for this.]

-

Grima’s gender performance needs to be quickly situated within the broader context of masculinity in Middle-Earth. Gondor’s ideal of masculinity is the gentler masculinity that everyone focuses on when they talk about men in middle earth being good models of what masculinity can look like. It’s a nurturing masculinity, it’s gentle, it’s healing-focused. Aragorn and others try and take the first off-ramp from violence or conflict whenever they can. There is no enjoyment in warfare or soldiering. It’s done because it’s necessary. Dick-swinging is limited to non-existent etc.

Rohan is different.

Faramir touches on this when he speaks to Frodo of how Boromir was more like the men of Rohan and how he thought that wasn’t a good thing as it meant he was seeking glory for glory’s sake, relishing war and soldiering as an occupation rather than an unfortunate necessity.

Of course, Faramir was also making (some very dubious) racial commentary, but race and gender are often bound up together (e.g. hyper-masculinization of black men and the feminization of East Asian men in the North America).

As R.W. Connell says, “masculinities are congurations of practice that are constructed, unfold, and change through time” — and, additionally, masculinity must be defined in opposition to femininity but, also, other masculinities.

For Rohan, there is a strong, militarized hyper-masculinity that threads through their culture. One of the reasons Theoden was seen as a failing king was his physical decline and inability to continue being a physically strong king. His aging emasculated him, more so when compared to Theodred and Eomer. (Something Theoden believed of himself and Grima capitalized on.)

For this, I’m going to speak of masculinity of the upper classes, since that’s what we see for Rohan. Masculinity, and how it’s to be performed, is contingent on social variables such as, but not limited to: age, appearance and size, bodily facility, care, economic class, ethnicity, fatherhood, relations to biological reproduction, leisure, martial and kinship status, occupation, sexuality etc. and as we never see lower class Rohirrim men it’s impossible to say what the “acceptable” and “expected” forms for a farmer or cooper would be.

Upper class men of Rohan are expected to be militarily capable - ready to ride and fight when called by their king or marshal. They are to be men of action over word, and when language is in play, it’s to be forthright and plain. No riddling. Marriage/Husband-ing is an expected part of manhood. Being strong minded, and capable of taking charge and making decisions is important. Fatherhood is also clearly prized, especially fatherhood that results in son(s).

(Theoden only having one child could be read as another “failure” in living up to Rohirrim ideals when compared to the older kings of his family who were far more prolific.)

The appearance of an “ideal” man is tall, fair, and handsome. Physically strong and capable in all ways (martially, sexually, fertile etc.).

Men should be able to demonstrate that they are capable of being in charge, taking control, defending and protecting families and homes. This slots in with more generalized expectations around bravery, honour and glory.

[Eomer: And that, in summation, is how you are to Be A Man.

Grima: Well that sounds utterly exhausting.]

-

So, with all of that in mind, let’s talk Grima.

First, let’s address the name and character construction as this is the least bound up in how he acts and its tension with Rohirrim ideals of Being a Man. It’s also interesting in that it can give a glimpse into Tolkien and the possible thoughts he had when constructing Grima.

Grima’s Name & Beowulf Stuff

Grima’s name is from old Icelandic Grimr, which is a name Odin takes during the Grimnismal saga.

Here are some lines from Odin in the saga:

I have called myself Grim,

I have called myself Wanderer,

Warrior and Helmet-Wearer,

[...]

Evildoer, Spellcaster,

Masked and Shadowed-Face,

Fool and Wise Man,

[...]

Rope-Rider and Hanged-God.

I have never been known

by just one name

since I first walked among men.

Not only is Grima’s name from Odin, more importantly, it’s the feminine version of that name. No man in the eddas or sagas goes by Grima. Only women. And most often they were seidr-workers or healers/magic practitioners of some kind.

"Other healers include Gríma from Fóstbræðra saga and Laxdæla saga and Heiðr from Biarmiland in Harald’s saga Hárfagra." 

- “Hostile Magic in the Icelandic Sagas,” Hilda Ellis-Davidson

And

"There was a man called Kotkel, who had only recently arrived in Iceland. His wife was called Grima. Their sons were Hallbjorn Sleekstone-Eye and Stigandi. These people had come from the Hebrides. They were all extremely skilled in witchcraft and were great sorcerers." 

- Laxdæla saga

This is most likely something Tolkien was aware of — I would be flabbergasted if he wasn’t. However, did he fully appreciate the implications in terms of gender and subversion of masculinity? Impossible to say, of course, but he certainly knew he was giving his male character a name that has only been used by women in historical texts.

It would be akin to naming your male character Henrietta instead of Henry. It’s a deliberate, explicit decision. And while I don’t think Tolkien expected most readers to track down the origin of Grima’s name, the --a ending, to most anglophone readers, signifies a feminine name, more often than not. At least, it rarely, if ever, signifies masculine.

So the name alone brings in, at a subconscious level to readers, feminine qualities.

Alongside this, Grima is loosely based on Unferth from Beowulf. The entrance of Gandalf et al into Meduseld directly mirrors Beowulf’s into Hrothgar’s hall (complete with Grima lounging at Theoden’s feet the same as Unferth at Hrothgar’s). Indeed, it was clearly Tolkien’s intention to make a call back to Beowulf with that scene. (He was being all “look how clever I am. Also these are Anglo-Saxons on horses. As a general fyi”).

Unferth is a fascinating character in his own right ,and there is much scholarly debate around his role within Hrothgar’s hall, as well as the text more broadly. While there isn’t enough time/space to get into Unferth, I will quickly note that he is another character who subverts his society’s ideas of manhood and masculinity — particularly with regards to expectations of heroism and bravery. Yet, at the same time, Unferth is noted for being very intelligent, cunning, good at riddling, and overall quick witted (also, a kin-slayer. Dude murdered his brothers for Reasons).

Unferth’s contrary behaviour that flies in the face of Anglo-Saxon norms and ideals of masculine bravery is clearly reflected in Grima. Particularly in Grima’s fear of battle and lack of interest in taking up his sword when called by his king.

This leaves us with a character who was given a woman’s name and who is loosely based on another character who is known for his inability to follow through on his society’s expectations for masculine behaviour. 

Grima, from the first moment we meet him, clearly reads more feminine than masculine - this is amplified when he’s contrasted with the likes of Theoden and Eomer. And, not only is his aligned with traditional femininity more than other male characters, he is specifically aligned with the more negative tropes of femininity (i.e. lack of bravery, unreliable, dubious morals etc.).

-

That is a brief overview of the bones of Grima’s construction: name and inspiration. Now for actions and characterization within the text. This will be subdivided into comments on his use of magic and how that interfaces with Rohirrim masculinity then we’ll get into power and language.

Grima’s key point of power is his ability to weave words in so powerful a way he could convince Theoden of his own infirmity and weakness thereby securing control over the king. Alongside this, we know that he was using certain “potions and poison” to further weaken Theoden. Most likely to amp up the king’s physical weakness so it coincided with Grima’s mental magic games.

Magic for Anglo-Saxon and early medieval Scandinavians was heavily rooted in the power of the spoken word. Runes were probably used but the historical support of this is vague. Which is to say, we know they were used, we’re just not certain how and to what extent.

We do know that rune staves were a thing. They were most often used to send your landwights after opponents or wreck havoc on enemies from afar. To make one, a magic-worker would carve the prescribed runes onto a large stave and position it in the ground facing the direction of their enemy. On top of the stave was added the head of a horse. (Lots of horse sacrifice happened for early medieval Scandinavians, alongside some human sacrifice.)

But, the brunt of magic for Anglo-Saxons and early medieval Scandinavians was spoken word. Which makes sense as their society was, like Rohan’s, predominantly illiterate or, at least, para-literate (though, there has been some recent archeological evidence that is starting to call that into question, for what that’s worth).

In particular, Grima’s spellwork aligns most closely with seidr, a fact I’ve gone about ad nausea. And, again, something we can assume Tolkien was aware of, which means he was also aware of the gendered implications of a man practicing the craft.

The mainstay of seidrcraft is, but not limited to, the following:

making illusions,

causing madness and/or forgetfulness,

brewing of potions and poisons,

prophesying,

channeling the dead,

channeling gods,

removal of elf-shot, and

recovering lost portions of someone’s soul.

The first three bullets are things Grima does to Theoden. That kind of magic — the kind that fucks with your mind and your sense of self, the kind that is subtle and quiet and lurks beneath the surface so you don’t know it’s happening, that’s cunning — that kind of magic is what women do.

It was considered unmanly/effeminate for a man to partake in it as it undermined the hypermasculine militarized culture of the time. Winning a battle or a fight through spells and poison was cowardly.

Therefore, in Rohan where we have this hypermasculine culture that so prizes military glory and grandeur and martial might, Grima pursuing his goals through spellcraft and potions/poisons is Grima pursuing distinctly unmasculine, effeminate modes of action.

Indeed, within Rohan it could call into question the entirety of his masculinity. It would make him ragr (adj. unmanly) because his actions are the epitome of ergi (noun. unmanliness).

"In the Viking Age, homosexual men were treated with extreme disdain and a complex kind of moral horror, especially those who allowed themselves to be penetrated. Such a man was ragr, not only homosexual by inclination and action, but also inhabiting a state of being that extended to ethical and social qualities. This complex of concepts has been extensively studied, and in the words of its leading scholar, "the unmanly man is everything that a man should not be with regard to morals and character. He is effeminate and he is a coward, and consequently devoid of honour". [...] What we would call sexual orientation was, in the viking age, completely bound up with much wider and deeper codes of behaviour and dignity, extending way beyond physical and emotional preference." -Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

Though Price references specifically homosexuality in this passage, a man could be considered ragr for more than just that — and one of the other ways was through practicing seidr.

We see this with Odin, who learns how to do seidrcraft from Freyja, and is then mocked by Loki for how emasculating the practice is for Odin to undertake (as if Loki has any room to talk). Odin’s made himself effeminate, he’s made himself unmanly, he’s allowed himself to learn spells that could enable him to take a cowards way out of a situation, to be dishonourable etc.

Which is a neat tie-back to Grima’s name being one of Odin’s names, particularly when he is in disguise and using seidrcraft and wily ways to escape various unfortunate situations that he ends up in during the Grimnismal saga.

(As Odin says: I have been called Evildoer, Spellcaster, Masked and Shadowed-Face, Fool and Wise Man.)

It also mirrors him to Gandalf - another character who bears an Odinnic name. Gandalf very much represents the masculine, “acceptable” aspects of Odin. Grima embodies the darker, more dubious, and more effeminate, aspects of the god. As I’ve said in other posts, they are two sides of the Odin coin.

Though both are temperamental as fuck.

-

Alongside the spellcraft and potions, Grima’s performance of power does not align with Rohirrim traditions and ideals. He relies on his wits and his skill with language to navigate the world. Succinctly captured in the epithet bestowed upon him: Wormtongue. This is the modernization of Wyrmtunga, or, Dragon’s Tongue.

Wyrm can translate to worm, sure, and we see Saruman doing this on purpose when he refers to Grima as a worm, a creature that crawls in the dirt. But Wyrm, of course, is actually a form of dragon. And in Middle Earth, wyrm is used interchangeably with dragon (Smaug is called both wyrm and dragon), rather than denoting a specific species/categorization of dragon as it does in our world.

Grima’s approach to power is that of a gentle touch. He speaks softly, but doesn’t carry a large stick. He’s not Eomer or Theodred, who are much more traditionally martial, aggressive and forthright in their responses to a situation. Grima is clearly all about influencing those around him either through persuasion/use of words, or through spellcraft. He manipulates, he uses linguistic trickery.

-

Additionally, how he undertakes his role as advisor to the king places him more within the private world of Meduseld and the king’s household than the active, public world of marshals and thanes. And, of course, the private world of households was traditionally considered the woman’s domain while men were expected to occupy the public spaces of the world.

Of course, being involved in court politics is a public role as opposed to existing within a wholly private space (such as Eowyn. Who, in the books, takes a mostly private role until she is required to rule in her uncle’s stead while he and Eomer are off at war, and even then it is clearly considered a temporary situation and part of her duty as a woman). But the manner in which Grima occupies that public position is a more “feminine” one.

We can assume that if Eomer or Erkenbrand or Elfhelm occupied the role as advisor to Theoden, they would have a very different approach to the position. A much more aggressive, active and probably military-focused approach. Less carrot, more stick.

A quick note on his appearance in the film, aside from being entirely in black with black hair in a land full of blonds because he needed to be visually distinct as the Bad Guy. He is dressed in longer tunics and robes compared to Eomer and other Rohirrim men (aside from Theoden, but as soon as he is “healed” of his possession(?) he returns to the Proper Masculine shorter tunics than the Weak and Effeminate longer robes and tunics of before). Grima’s hair is longer than Eomer’s and Theoden’s, he wears only a dagger and not a sword, the furs and quilting of his clothes indicate wealth and status, of course, but also decadence and effeminacy.

-

All in all, Grima’s performance and actions undermine and subvert Rohirrim expectations of masculinity. If not outright transgressing gender norms. He uses spellcraft to achieve his ends which is cowardly and effeminate. When it’s not that, he relies on language and manipulation to ensure his position and rarely, if ever, willingly takes on an active, martial role that would be expected of a man who is in the king’s household and serves as an advisor and a quasi-second-in-command.

Here is a man, occupying a man’s role, but doing it like a woman. Subversive! Scandalous! Underappreciated by fandom!

Grima lives in a liminal, marginalized space that is at once gendered and ungendered but is absolutely Othered.

-

As for my note on Grima and being trans - absolutely a trans woman. Grima suffers from that thing of “I want to be you and sleep with you” re: Eowyn. That’s my hot take. (Similar to me and Alan Grant from Jurassic Park - I want to be him and sleep with him.)

But no, in all seriousness, a strong argument can absolutely be made for Grima being not-cis, however that might look for Grima. Grima and Eowyn are the two, within the trilogies, that have the strongest arguments to be made for not being cis.

(Grima is a bit of a foil for Eowyn, I think, while also being a foil for Gandalf.)

[nosunsetsjustsilence]

The Manics and Gender Identity, Part 1

There is a lot to unpack in Nicky and Richey’s early lyrics pertaining to gender, particularly in terms of identifying with women. Richey approaches the subject — as he is wont to do — with regard to the exploitation and degradation of the female image, while Nicky’s attitude is more inquisitive and casual. Both use lyrics to express their own personal “What if?”

Make no mistake: I’m not claiming that either Nicky or Richey is/was non-cis or trans or anything other than curious. But it’s clear from their personal lyric struggles and hard-won lifestyle choices that this was a different time they were living in. In the 1990s, gender identity was not a topic with any kind of mainstream recognition, at least beyond those who wanted a “sex change” or girls who were considered “one of the boys”. I think it’s fascinating, at least from my perspective, to go back and examine the themes of gender dysphoria, identity, and frustration in lyrics written before any of it was part of popular conversation, and in a way that emphasized the then absolute cultural disconnect between desire and society.

Also, it’s important to note that both Nicky and Richey have presented gender in ways that don’t have anything to do with lyrics. Nicky is comfortable in traditionally female clothing and wears dresses on and off stage; both band members wore makeup and feathers on a regular basis. I’ve tried to write about gender in terms of lyrics only, but at times I do take examples from visual media.

Finally, keep in mind that yours truly is non-binary, and the discussion will hopefully not reek of a cis person watching queer men from behind bars in a zoo.

Special thanks to @sinisterrouge for vetting this before I posted <3

Little Baby Nothing

Although Richey seemed to find comfort in claiming that his lyrics were about the larger world — in the case of Little Baby Nothing, feminism and the way women are perceived in media — a closer look usually reveals a personal stake. When I discussed the meaning of this song previously, I emphasized that the “Little baby nothing” in question is clearly Richey himself, writing in the first person and deconstructing his own image to align with a kind of mindless female groupie used for sex.

My mind is dead, everybody loves me Wants a slice of me Hopelessly passive and compatible Need to belong, oh the roads are scary Hold me in your arms I wanna be your only possession

Richey often refers to himself as a “slut” and a “prostitute” and uses self-referential porn star imagery in his lyrics (So Dead: “You need a fix I’m your prostitute”, Yes: “there’s no lust in this coma even for a fifty”), aligning the industries of pornography and music performance in very vivid ways most often pertaining to exploitation. Appropriately, singing pivotal stanzas on this track is none other than Traci Lords, arguably most famous (especially in the early 90s) for an underage porn scandal.  

What’s more, in the lyrics booklet for Generation Terrorists, there is a quotation or excerpt included for each song. The following corresponds to Little Baby Nothing:

“The male chromosome is an incomplete female chromosome. In other words the male is a walking abortion; aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.” -Valerie Solanos.

Ninety percent of what the Manics said and did in their early years was intended to be shocking and/or ironic. Of course they were trying to incite anger and riots, the questioning of institutions, and a teardown of normalcy. But the fact that Richey later used part of this radical statement as the title to one of his songs (“Of Walking Abortion”, natch) proves that he took it somewhat seriously, even if only in the most simple sense — that part of him resented his own maleness.

Life Becoming a Landslide

This is another song I’ve previously discussed, mostly in the arena of Nicky and Richey individualizing their distinctive voices into lines that can clearly be attributed to one or the other. In a song about nature vs nurture and the plastic confines of greater humanity cracking down on who or what someone is really supposed to be, we have:

Life becoming a landslide Ice freezing nature dead Life becoming a landslide I don’t wanna be a man

As far as writing style goes, Nicky was always fairly straightforward. Richey loves to convolute his message with proper nouns and alternating verb cases and a lack of a subject just to throw  people off, but here’s Nicky, my boy, just saying, “Dude. Being a man sucks. I don’t like this.”

He could mean that being human in general sucks. But, since his attitude towards women leads me to believe he would not abbreviate humanity in this way, and given his and Richey’s track record with gender and Nicky’s well-documented gender presentation, I think it’s clear the lyric means that he doesn’t want to be male. Because he feels it doesn’t suit him, for whatever reason. And that nature failed by making him a man instead of a woman.

Yes

��Yes’ is an incredible song. Its major-chord melody juxtaposed against Richey’s raw portrait of degradation is truly a thing to behold. The theme? Being used, prostitution both literal and metaphorical (“For sale? dumb cunt’s same dumb questions”), exploitation in the name of capitalism (“In these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything”), and reaching the lowest possible point of existence (“Purgatory’s circle, drowning here, someone will always say yes”). But the chorus — the chorus boasts one of the rawest images of sexual violence the band has ever used:

He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want

Wow. Okay. Where to begin? The implication here is that gender, along with everything else, is mutable if you have enough money and power to abuse people. However, it appears the change would be made not to entertain others, but to appeal to a specific person, sexually (“fuck him”). The “you” in question is clearly attracted to women, so the narrator offering to mutilate himself to please them can be seen as a last-ditch act of desperation. (“It feels like this massive defeat,” said a friend. “You can make him a woman to pleasure someone, but what’s left to change after that?”)

Richey wrote most of the song; “Rita”, obviously, is the name used for an alternative female identity. But who would Rita be? Richey seems to be wondering. Would she still be me? And would the change even be worth the affections of whomever he’s speaking to? If the means are so drastic (and difficult to picture without experiencing secondhand pain), that answer would usually be “no”. But the song is called “Yes”. I would say yes to anything at this point, Richey is saying, even the most extreme sexual violence imaginable, if that’s what you wanted.

4st 7lb

This is an extreme example of Richey using world issues to examine his own nature. Although anorexic himself, Richey writes “4st 7lb” from the point of view of an obsessive young girl admiring thin models. There could be multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is that when a person fails to fit the “classic” case of an eating disorder, they are often ignored. So, Richey says, you need me to be a teenage girl? I can do that. 

(Note that in 1994, when this song was written, any eating disorder demographic outside the “white girl who loves fashion too much” model did not exist by medical standards and was usually subject to ridicule.)

Karen says I’ve reached my target weight Kate and Emma and Kristin know it’s fake Problem is diet’s not a big enough word I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view

Embodying the anorexic female stereotype allows Richey to criticize both the world and himself; by creating a parody of a young girl with an eating disorder, he creates commentary on how ridiculous and counter-intuitive her thought process actually is. The song is brutal and often focuses on nudity and sexual imagery, as it has been suggested in studies that eating disorders occur in those who are trying to annihilate their own puberty. Though Richey was well into his 20s when he wrote this, he often expressed a loathing of aging and the entire concept of adulthood.

Stomach collapsed at five Lift up my skirt my sex is gone Naked and lovely and 5 stone 2 May I bud and never flower My vision’s getting blurred But I can see my ribs and I feel fine My hands are trembling stalks And I can feel my breasts are sinking

Ultimately, “4st 7lb” hits hard as both an experiment in identity and a vicious satire of the rich white girl eating disorder cliché. Although the lyrics do not express a desire to become female, they do indicate that Richey feels everything might be easier and fit more neatly into a box if he were a girl.

[Coming in Part 2: The Girl Who Wanted to be God, Tsunami, Born a Girl, and Pretention/Repulsion.]

[terfslying]

Extremist Traits & TERFs

 The traits are taken from (here), which is a list of extremist traits by Laird Wilcox. Most examples are from interactions with people on this blog, because I’ve got to limit myself to something.

Character Assassination

“Extremists often attack the character of an opponent rather than deal with the facts or issues raised. They will question motives, qualifications, past associations, alleged values, personality, looks, mental health, and so on as a diversion from the issues under consideration”

TERF Examples: Character attacks on Susie Green, of Mermaids UK, to attempt to imply that her motive for Mermaids UK is to force her own child to transition. & Claiming Mermaids UK was a significant part of forcing a young UK child to be trans, when in fact he was being abused by his mother and Mermaids UK only ever were contacted by phone by the mother, and were not otherwise involved in any way.

Name-Calling and Labelling

“Extremists are quick to resort to epithets (racist, subversive, pervert, hate monger, nut, crackpot, […] and so on) to label and condemn opponents in order to divert attention from their arguments and to discourage others from hearing them out. These epithets don’t have to be proved to be effective; the mere fact they have been said is often enough”

TERF Examples: "pedophile apologist”, “infertile, fat white loser”, “rapist” (all directed at me!)

Irresponsible Sweeping Generalisations

“Extremists tend to make sweeping claims or judgements on little or no evidence, and they have a tendency to confuse similarity with sameness […] they assume that because two (or more) things, events, or persons are alike in some respects, they must be alike in most respects.”

TERF Examples: “trans women are just men”; use of crimes by cis men to attempt to demonstrate trans criminality

Inadequate Proof For Assertions

“Extremists tend to be very fuzzy about what constitutes proofs, and they also tend to get caught up in logical fallacies […] they tend to project wished-for conclusions and to exaggerate the significance of information that confirms their beliefs while derogating or ignoring information that contradicts them.”

TERF Examples: “This research is reliable because I agree with it, and I don’t care that the authors have deliberately published politically motivated anti-gay propaganda studies before”

Advocacy of Double Standards

“Extremists generally tend to judge themselves or their interest groups in terms of their intentions, which they tend to view very generously, and others by their acts, which they tend to view very critically. They would like you accept their assertions on faith, but they demand proof of yours. They tend to engage in special pleading on behalf of themselves or their interests, usually because of some alleged special status, past circumstances, or present disadvantage.”

TERF Example: Refusal to criticise WoLF + Julia Beck’s association with the Heritage Foundation due to presumed good intentions

Tendency to View Their Opponents and Critics As Essentially Evil

“To the extremist, opponents hold opposing positions because they are bad people […] not merely because they simply disagree, see the matter differently, have competing interests, or are perhaps even mistaken.”

TERF Example: I deserve to “rot in hell” because I don’t agree with TERFs

Manichaean Worldview

“Extremists have a tendency to see the world in terms of absolutes of good and evil, for them or against them, with no middle ground or intermediate positions. All issues are ultimately moral issues of right and wrong, with the ‘right’ position coinciding with their interests.”

TERF Example: Willingness to use and spread sources from the alt-right with no regard for the source, since if it coincides with their interest, it’s ‘right’

Advocacy Of Censorship or Repression of Their Opponents or Critics

“They may include a very active campaign to keep opponents from media access [… or] actually lobby for legislation against speaking, writing, teaching, or instructive ‘subversive’ or forbidden information or opinions.”

TERF Example: Pressure to isolate young trans teens from media access

Tend to Identify Themselves In Terms Of Who Their Enemies Are

“[E]xtremists may become emotionally bound to their opponents, who are often competing extremists themselves. Because they tend to view their enemies as evil and powerful, they tend, perhaps subconsciously, to emulate them, adopting to same tactics to a certain degree.”

TERF Example: "TRA’s”, “libfems”, “transcult”; emulating anti-feminist tactics by joining groups like Hands Across The Aisle to directly partner with anti-abortion, anti-feminist conservatives and divide-and-conquer

Tendency towards argument by intimidation

“Extremists tend to frame their arguments in such a way as to intimidate others into accepting their premises and conclusions. […] They use a lot of moralising, pontificating, and tend to be very judgemental. This shrill, harsh rhetorical style allows them to keep their opponents and critics on the defensive, cuts off troublesome lines of argument, and allows them to define the perimeters of debate.”

TERF Example: Using the words “trans women” and “literal pedophiles and rapists” interchangeably in arguments

Use of Slogans, Buzzwords, and Thought-Stopping Cliches

“For many extremists, shortcuts in thinking and in reasoning matters out seem to be necessary in order to avoid or evade awareness of troublesome facts and compelling counter-arguments. Extremists generally behave in ways that reinforce their prejudices and alter their own consciousness in a manner that bolsters their false confidence and sense of self-righteousness.”

TERF Examples: “Peak trans”, “autogynephiles”, the bathroom & prison rapist tropes, to discredit trans women; “handmaids” and “libfems” to discredit cis women who disagree with them

Assumption of Moral or Other Superiority over Others

“Most obvious would be claims of general racial or ethnic superiority […] Less obvious are claims of ennoblement because of alleged victimhood,”

TERF Examples: Expanding real victimisation of women to include historically inaccurate concepts, such as ‘witch hunts were methods of controlling women’s knowledge’ to increase superiority; complete disownment of any moral responsibility for violence perpetrated or encouraged by TERFs

Doomsday Thinking

“Extremists often predict dire or catastrophic consequences from a situation or from failure to follow a specific course, and they tend to exhibit a kind of ‘crisis-mindedness’. It can be a Communist takeover, a Nazi revival, nuclear war, earthquakes (… etc. …) Whatever it is, it’s just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to the special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access.”

TERF Example: Fair Play For Women’s unrealistic theory that if Gender Recognition Certificates were easier to get, women’s prisons would be flooded with trans sex offenders instantly.

Belief that it’s okay to do bad things in service of a good cause

“Extremists may deliberately lie, distort, misquote, slander, defame, or libel their opponents or critics, engage in censorship or repression, or undertake violence in “special cases”.”

TERF Example: Wetmeadow ‘distorting’ my post on the cotton ceiling to imply that I was saying same-sex attraction is a mental illness, to discredit me.

Emphasis on Emotional Response (and less on logical analysis and reasoning)

“Extremist have an unspoken reverence for propaganda, which they may call ‘education’ or ‘consciousness-raising’. Symbolism plays an exaggerated role in their thinking and they tend to think imprecisely and metamorphically.”

TERF Example: ‘consciousness-raising’ has a long history in extreme radfem spaces; in recent online spaces it’s more often called ‘peak trans’.

Hypersensitivity and Vigilance

“Extremists perceive hostile innuendo in even casual comments; imagine rejection and antagonism concealed in honest disagreement and dissent; […] Although few extremists are clinically paranoid, many of them adopt a paranoid style with its attendant hostility and distrust.”

TERF Example: Exposinglesphob’s entire blog

Problems Tolerating Ambiguity and Uncertainty

“[T]he ideologies and belief systems to which extremists tend to attach themselves often represent grasping for certainty in an uncertain world, or an attempt to achieve absolute security in an environment that is naturally unpredictable […] Extremists exhibit a kind of risk-aversiveness that compels them to engage in controlling and manipulative behaviour, both on a personal level and in a political context.”

TERF Example: “What do you mean, someone’s gender or sex might be ambiguous?? Woman is a biological term for adult human females, it’s simple”

Inclination towards “GroupThink”

“‘Groupthink’ involves a tendency to conform to group norms and to preserve solidarity and concurrence at the expense of distorting members’ observations of facts, conflicting evidence, and disquieting observations [… Extremists may] only talk with one another, read material that reflects their own views, and can be almost phobic about the ‘propaganda’ of the ‘other side’. The result is a deterioration in reality-testing, rationality, and moral judgement.”

TERF Example: Any source I give is bad, even if they’re genuinely trying to say that wikipedia is ‘good research’.

Tendency to Personalise Hostility

“Extremists often wish for the personal bad fortune of their ‘enemies’ and celebrate when it occurs.”

TERF Example: The fact that pretty much every person who isn’t a TERF and who discourses has been told to kill themselves.

Extremists often feel that the system is no good unless they win

“If public opinion turns against them, it was because of ‘brainwashing’. If their followers become disillusioned, it’s because of ‘sabotage’.”

TERF Example: Ex-terfs like myself either are just too dumb to understand radical feminism, or we never even existed in the first place.

[mmmmalo]

the king/father creates/births things while the queen serves only to impregnate (him with the idea for what he will create, like a muse, if you will)? idk i hate women being reduced to their reproductive function but this also seems misogynistic somehow. also does this make roxy's ability to create objects from nothing another "she's trans" joke?

I think the discomfort you’re apprehending is discussed somewhat when Crockertier!Jane tells Jake he will only exist to sire her children? Sexual objectification is probably a more familiar experience for women, but the unease in being subsumed by some sexual function isn’t necessarily gender exclusive… (the existence of domination play attests to that probably)

This subject is probably out of my depth, but I’m going to meander a bit and hopefully say a couple useful things.

First, some clarification: “birth” is the principle of separation and “pregnancy” is the principle of union. Thus birth-as-we-know-it is rendered equivalent to ejaculation, Breathing out, pooping – all of which involve separation from that which was once part of you. Likewise the image of a gestating fetus is equivalent to taut testicles, lungs full of air, a constipated colon – states in which the union is maintained. On this level, it’s apparent that any given body can participate in both halves of the dichotomy.

But as elaborated back in the Roxy-and-Dirk post, Sburb’s queens and kings are aligned with birth and pregnancy, respectively. As per Caliborn’s enchantment, this is treated a hat-switch, a reversal of expectations on who ejaculates and who gestates. “Birth” (which Caliborn likes) is coded as masculine, so that assigning this function to the queen is met as a reversal. While “pregnancy” (for which Caliborn fetishes his disgust) is coded as feminine, so that assigning this function to the king is met as a reversal.

The problem I’m facing is evaluating whether the birth/pregnancy dichotomy (aka separation/union, aka Breath/Blood) contains an intrinsic (ie inescapable?) gendered hierarchy, or if the gendered hierarchy is imported by characters (or us) onto what is actually a gender-neutral distinction. Though there could also be a broader point that binary systems are easily co-opted as mapping to the gender binary…? So that even if a distinction “ought to be” neutral, the matter remains that it has been /rendered/ gendered?

To avoid speaking too much in terms of generalities, I’m going to reorient this discussion around John Egbert via an ask concerning the ARG:

you gotta talk about it man come on

I read the ARG as a conspiracy theory that falls in line with the kids’ paranoid fantasies. In the same way that the very real trolls function as manifestations from the psyches of those around them, the world of Homestuck is, in general, shaped by the psychological profiles of its inhabitants.

I gather this partly from the nods to an irl conspiracy (eg declaring Obama to be a cross-dimensional immigrant), but mainly because the overwhelming paranoia that defines the narrative, the conviction that the world has degenerated and that every known authority is but a feeble puppet of a nebulous overlord. Comedians Laurel and Hardy are slowly corrupted and eventually infused with Evil, resulting in the birth of the Insane Clown Posse, which is to say ICP’s low-class status translates into degenerate art within the confines of the conspiracy. Albert Einstein is renounced as a fake, whose “insights” are mere scraps cast off from a feast of truth available to some unseen master. It’s all insurmountably stupid, but there is a unifying thread:

The idea is that the world is “fallen”, in two of the senses explored via John Egbert’s fear of heights (or rather, his fear of descent). 

1. John is literally afraid of heights, having fallen from the slime pogo. But John’s entry item is an apple because he experiences a pervasive sense that there is a perfect world of ideals from which he has been thrown down – a sort of intersection between the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden and the heavenly Platonic Forms. This manifests partly in an obsession with authenticity, a subject that pervades Act 1 (x)(x). The Obama birth-certificate conspiracy attempts to frame Obama as “inauthentic”, and framing Einstein as a feeble peddler of inherited slivers of truth relies on the idea that there is a Godly figure with access to ALL the truth, a master presiding over the Pleroma. John is susceptible to this kind of thinking; after all, the paranoid idea of Betty Crocker as an Illuminati-tier omnipotent antagonist began as one of John’s funny delusions.

2. The biblical Fall is at times phrased as the corruption of humanity, and that sense carries into Homestuck. The other Heir, Equius, is revolted and titillated by that which he regards as base. His fetishization being lower class and other modes of degradation receives a visual complement in images of a falling ideal: the death-by-fall of man-horse Arthour, and Equius’s own descent through the caves of LOCAS (the circumstances of a lusus’s death and the features of a planet both bear relation to a player’s fantasies). John complicates the picture a little bit: he specifically has a fascination with “bad movies” (low status art), but also he regards the other side of the silver screen as a Pleroma of sorts, which simultaneously elevates the art.

But my goal is to demonstrate that all of this intersects with the original topic: the division of high/low is also projected onto masculine/feminine.

John wishes to undo his traumatic fall from the slime pogo, an event that has come to represent John’s fantasy of his own birth. As hinted at the start, the birth he imagines for himself is ejaculatory: Ghostbusters is “manbro bukkake theatre”, and John fancies himself a ghost busted directly from the loins of his heavenly Father. John seeks to re-merge with his image of God, a goal implicit in John’s attempts to reunite with Dad in a more familiar sense.

But implicit in John’s quest to give up the ghost and ascend to the Father is a rejection of the implicitly feminized earth and flesh, to which the self/soul is umbilically bound. This gendering is often shown via robots: 

Jake jokingly says that Dirk is “more machine than man” – this is a jab at Dirk’s terse demeanor, but placing machines in opposition to manhood potentially feminizes the machines, compromising Dirk’s desiring to be a paragon of dudeliness. The simultaneous masculinization of reason and dehuminizing jabs like Jake’s confuse and frustrate Dirk for a variety of reasons

The ghost of Aradia enters robotic husk to be reborn, imitating the insertion of the spirit into the body. She then finds that Equius has inserted something into her body against her will, and violently removes it and destroys it. “It” was a chip that controlled her feelings, but the intimate violation has tones of assault, and Aradia’s heart is effectively aborted.

There’s more examples, but this is just an aside to push the notion that the Fall (from high to low) entails the entry of spirit into body, which via the analogous entry of sperm into womb would seem to gender hierarchy itself. Masculine/feminine is entrenched as high/low by the metaphysics.

(Here’s a nice post that notes a gendering of the hemocaste system in Zebruh’s Friendsim route)

This leads me into thinking that John’s desire to merge with the image of the Father is connected to his love of pranking people, insofar as it becomes a assertion of domination/power (which is presumed to be the masculine position). The prankster’s gambit, at its purest, is a measure of Who’s On Top.

At the end of the Chaos Dunk scene (in which John symbolically enacts Rose’s rape fantasies), John pranks Rose by dumping a bucket full of gushers on her head. Buckets are receptacles, and thus occupy the balls/womb half of the divide. Evacuating the bucket all over Rose is a repetition of earlier symbolic assault, and the moment is embellished with a prankster’s gambit to emphasize the notion that there is an element of domination to the encounter.

The bucket prank is echoed in a  later conversation between John and Rose, beginning at page 2922. John asks repeatedly whether Rose “knows everything” now, says the beta kids “were in this adventure together” but with Rose’s occult knowledge, she is now “getting away from us”. John is not anxious that Rose is separating in a neutral way – his anxiety stems from the idea that she is rising above them. “Knowing everything” is a property of mastery, and John is confused by Rose being above him. At the end of 2922, John attempts to mock Rose’s words, but she tells him he’s being mean and he apologizes.

Rose herself expresses some anxieties about her position, saying elements of her wizard shtick have made her feel “ridiculous” or “embarrassed”. Her choice of words invokes the manifestation of Eridan, who mocks Rose’s “ludicrous poppycock” – she has an ongoing worry that her phallus (masculinized symbol of power) is fake.

This is why the scene culminates in an play scenario, in which John promises to sweep in like a noble knight and banish Rose’s encroaching grimdarkness, and Rose in turn pretends to swoon. The joke is an ironic acquiescence to the (gendered) hierarchy that is implicitly being challenged by Rose’s rise to power (or rather, that the kids perceive to have challenged). Past this, the conversation goes on to the subject of the Tumor, in a way that I have difficult tying into some sort of conclusion for the gendered aspects of the conversation.

This probably bears some relation to Rose’s insistence that John is the group’s leader…? But again, I’m at a loss. Let’s wrap this up.

On your last point: Roxy creating items from nothing actually throws a small wrench into things: in another essay on Gnosticism I was reading (Schuyler Brown’s “Begotten, Not Created”), “emanation” suggested that the creation was originally part of something (God, the One, etc), and emanation was thus framed as being in opposition to creation-from-nothing.

This brings me back to the problem of not knowing which portions of Homestuck’s metaphysics are particular to a given character’s psyche, which portions are universal, and which portions are loaded with both personal and universal meaning, or personal meaning that are /rendered/ universal. The motif of Roxy throwing a dead cat out of bucket seems to carry multiple meanings at once… in the sense we’ve noted, it would relate to the terror of stillbirth and miscarriage that follows Mom and Condy around. But reading “birth” as ejaculation, the cat could also be read as a disappointed acknowledgement that she cannot create life on her own…?

[wedontcareaboutyourbinary]

Do you have any advice for discussing feminism while being nb? As someone who is sometimes misgendered as female I've met a lot of sexism (or misdirected sexism? I'm a bit confused about what word to use) and I feel like it's important to voice that. But at the same time I don't want that to define how others see me, as someone who's met sexism so that must mean I'm basically a woman. And I don't want to talk over women.

This is honestly a bit of a minefield to navigate for NB people in general, and quite frankly, I’d brace for some kind of complaint more or less regardless of how you choose to handle it. On this blog alone we’ve had everything from ‘how dare you suggest that AGAB and the assumption of gender that goes along with it might not be the reason for this person’s issue’ to the trainwreck of weirdness about misogyny we got sent a while back that eventually culminated in this rant from me.

Personally, I think that sexism is sexism even when directed at NB people, and the qualifier of ‘misdirected’ makes assumptions about the interactions at hand that aren’t necessarily accurate. (It might be useful in certain situations, and I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say that it’s an unnecessary word, but it seems to me to get used as much to minimise the experiences and aggression under discussion as to highlight the general poor aim of bigotry.) Sexism and exorsexism do go pretty hand in hand, since they’re both methods of controlling people disprivileged by gender.

I find that there’s a certain value in being specific about how I am being misgendered as a woman when discussing interactions in which I’ve been treated in a misogynistic fashion. It can help to draw attention to the fact that sexism is built on a stack of assumptions, rather than any kind of, yanno, logic. And it somewhat helps to address the issue of having the experience of sexism define my gender to someone else, at least for me, but I do have a rather eccentric relationship to the whole misgendering business, so do take the time to think about your own limits and difficulties and what might serve to address those specifically.

I’d also be inclined to say that as long as you’re speaking from personal experience, it’s not really appropriate to say that you’re talking over anyone. As much as we love our identitarian lines around experiences, those lines just aren’t the be all and end all of marginalised experiences. Basic etiquette regarding the respecting of other’s experiences and opinions applies, and an awareness of what exactly got you targeted by a certain expression of bigotry doesn’t hurt, but if an issue affects you, there should be room somewhere for you to talk about that.

(If you’re TME, discussions of transmisogyny should probably be engaged with more carefully, because as a group us TME folks aren’t... necessarily great at engaging with that topic respectfully, but I don’t know how that relates to your circumstances.)

And there’s definitely something to be said for the sheer level of overlap between misogyny and exorsexism, by virtue of the fact that the systems they serve to reinforce are so closely related. That’s a factor that often gets overlooked or handled poorly.

The blunt fact of the matter is that a binary analysis is far easier to conduct, after all, and bringing NB experiences into the conversation complicates it, which isn’t necessarily fun. But it is necessary for a broader understanding of how these societal issues affect a variety of people in society.

The only other thing that immediately comes to mind is to be wary of blanket statements about how certain acts will impact certain groups. Such blanket statements tend to be reductive at best, as we’ve spent a great deal of time discussing on this blog in the past.

- Cade

[braindamageforbeginners]

Jurassic Park

I just saw Jurassic Park again. I don't mean whichever version of Jurassic World is out with Chris Pratt this week, I mean the original one, which is so old that I believe it used actual footage of dinosaurs because it was filmed in the late Triassic. The one that was released in, Gods help me, 1993, and is now being rereleased in certain places. If it's your burg, I'd recommend checking it out; I went for $12 and thought it was worth it. This was a sort of experiment on my part; I've seen the film about 400 times, and reread the book more than a few times (most recently in 2010); I went based on the recommendation/idea in the von Hoffman Bros. Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness (yes, that's a thing), that said, of Apocalypse Now, "If you get the chance, see on the big screen, with theater-quality sound, it's a real slap in the brain-pan." Now, I've gotten my brainpan slapped more than anyone should in recent years (almost literally), so I thought I'd do it wth an old familiar favorite (but remastered), and, even though I liked it, there are a few things that you notice when you're trapped in an adult's body. First off, from a cellular biology perspective (and I've known about this one for years, so it's not a revelation), they jump from "reassembling ancient DNA" to "dinosaurs are back." We know from Dolly that it'd require an ooctye (egg) to kick off the cloning process. Crichton glossed over this in the book, too, but as an adult with a background in the field (sort of), it's incredibly - almost invitingly - lazy that this would go from book to screen (actually, it's not so surprising when you know that Michael Crichton is also the credited screen writer, and he's historically good at overlooking and committing to film his errors), when, to paraphrase "Thank You for Smoking," it's an immediate and easy fix, "Thank God we invented the [whatever] device." Ellie and Alan's relationship is amazingly dysfunctional. It's one thing not to want children, and it's one thing to have incompatible long-term goals. It's another thing entirely to verbally crap on your girlfriends' aspirations at every single point. It's unsettling and a little creepy; Alan Grant will go on, at length about the evils of children even when there are no children in sight and the conversation/dialog only casually touches upon it, but I don't think you make it past the fifth date with that attitude. To be fair, the filmmakers' manage to create the world's most unbearably annoying child characters ever (and, 20 years later, it is beyond weird to know that Tim, cast as Eugene Slede, will on day say, with utmost conviction, "I hope the Japanese don't surrender. I hope we get to kill every single one of them."). Alan also gets minus Chekov points for having a giant, shiny bottle opener on his belt in every single scene (go ahead and watch the movie again) without ever using it, even though he brings his weird velociraptor claw with him to dinosaur island, and keeps it with him after learning dinosaurs are back. Speaking of enormous shiny things that are visually distracting, let's talk Jeff Goldblum (the character is Ian Grant, but I'm sure it's all Jeff). I know that we've been conditioned by years of exposure to the Internet to hold the Great Shirtless One above fault (and the entire theater erupted into applause at the start of that scene), but he is beyond creepy toward Ellie throughout the film; touchy, quick-moving, and behaving in a way I wouldn't endorse for anyone not contemplating a nomination for Supreme Court. Depite every single adult male in this film being kind of rapey or astonishingly indifferent about Ellie (that would be Alan). the film technically passes the Bechdel test. Stick with me on this one. The Bechdel Test was originally put forth by Alison Bechdel as a test of feminism in a film (or a test of not-outright sexism, as the case might be). The test - and it's fairly simple - is that a film feature two or more female characters, discussing something other than a man, in at least one scene. Back to the feature at hand, you'll remember that all the dinosaurs in the film, according to Wu, are female. Even though they later learn that the dinosaurs, thanks to frog DNA, can swap genders (actually, that's more common in chordates than you'd think). There are three adult velociraptors in the film; let's assume for the argument that two of the three identify as female. Now, go back and watch that kitchen scene where the two raptors hunt the kids in the kitchen and are clearly communicating with each other. Admittedly, one of those two kids is Tim, but he's so annoying throughout  the film that I'd really rather not categorize him as "human," much less traditionally male. Speaking of the dinosaurs hunting the kids, every single character exerts themselves far more than necessary to achieve their ends. The paleontologists get on a helicopter with a man they literally met twenty minutes before (as the Too Long, Didn't Watch guys point out, this never, ever ends well in reality) because he offers to pay them; the lawyer (Gennaro) wears a tie and button-up shirt with shorts (as someone who has lived in the tropics, it's a very, very basic intelligence test to see how you dress when you actually have time to pack and plan ahead, and, even then, putting on pants to leave the apartment will have you cursing those vile missionaries who converted everyone to linen shackles); and Newman (technically Nedry, but, again, the degree to which every actor commits to their well-known characters throughout this film is impressive) works way too hard to steal way too little. First of all, there's a reason over 99,9% of initially-promising biomedical discoveries lead to a final drug or therapy; it's enormously costly to develop and safety-test a product at each point. Even the coolest, old-timey drug companies rarely discovered drugs for themselves, they patented or investigated promising prior research. Going from "Maybe that mosquito trapped in amber has DNA in it" to "brachiosaurus" would be cost-prohibitive. Especially when you consider that this was 1993; Bill Gates would've been able to buy and sell the island ten times over just a few years later. Michael Crichton predicted that this would restrict biotech companies to entertainment-related investments (he got that hilariously wrong, as I can testify to on a personal and professional level). He also predicted that exploitative employer/employee relationships would intensify (he got that one right) in the book, by making Nedry a programmer who had underbid his peers to get Hammond's contract, which was unfairly added to and amended until the character was almost driven out of business. The book also makes it clear that, despit Hammond's claims, the park cuts every financial corner it can, including hiring only the lowest-bidding contractors or least-qualified people (in the film, the vet doesn't even look at the triceratops' mouth until Ellie does, which is something even horse owners know is important). So, they wind up with Newman. Who, instead of simply embezzling the money (I refuse to believe my Step-Mom's nonsensical claim that Newman would be able to get access to the high-tech, uber-secret Embryo Storage Lair, but not have access to the payroll programming or pension fund data), creates the world's most convoluted scheme to steal Hammond's embryos and sell them to a competitor. This film also predicted the rise of vegans. I base that on Lex's line regarding the dinosaurs eating the goat ("I happen to be a vegetarian.")(as someone from the future watching that and hearing the line, "I'm a vegan;" it's kind of chilling). I also realized something weird and kind of dispiriting wih this viewing. I'm not really sure I'd want to travel and go out of my way to go to dinosaur island, because dinosaurs aren't quite as interesting at age 95 as they were when I was young. Don't get me wrong, I still love dinosaurs far more than the average man-child, but I've learned a few things since then. So, I've kept abreast of intelligence-measuring tools developed by modern science (I know, that's a shocker). We all know of the body mass: brain mass ratio; but we've since developed the encephalization quotient (EQ) which, I believe (and I might be wrong) is a comparison of the body mass: brain ratio for a specific animal with the expected ratio of a critter with similar mass. And, when we use that as the predictor, animal rankings look more like what we'd expect, intuitively - Humans, dolphins, chimpanzees, gorillas, and parrots are the top-five scorers. Using that tool, the smartest of dinosaurs were about as intelligent as the dumbest modern birds. I love chickens, but even the most ardent fowl-owner would admit that chickens are not exactly weighted down by brains. That might not seem like an epiphany, but I now own a goldendoodle who is possibly more clever than me (on my bad days). He's a great dog, but that ability to outthink and outorganize me makes him far more troublesome than all the dogs we owned before (and we had 10 huskies at one point). Same thing with dinosaurs, every creature you see has 70 million years' of evolution on them. The critters around today are better-suited to this planet and more interesting (speaking from a biology background)  than the vast majority of dinosaurs. If given the choice between a lifetime pass at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and one or two trips to dinosaur island, I know that we're not going to have elephants for much longer, which makes one clearly more appealing. Which, come to it, may have been the entire point of "Jurassic Park."

[omnigon]

I mean... not really... the problem here is that I’m terrified of people on this fucking website. I really haven’t HAD my conception of gender challenged because I USED to believe in it, but then I realised it actually doesn’t make sense. I also believe that everything in the human body has a physical cause. I also dislike believing in things that don’t add up just because people insist that they do. Unless some day it’s discovered that it actually, genuinely is a thing instead of some esoteric self-conception like otherkin I can’t bring myself to give in to it. It’s not about nonbinary people and their lives, it’s about how this website punishes people who disagree with the zeitgeist. How there are people who, when I SAY to them that I don’t believe it, will end being absolutely horrible to me. And I will never have any way of knowing until it’s too late.

So, unfortunately you’re wrong. You don’t know my history. I used to ID as nonbinary years ago, until I realised I’m very much just a man in the wrong body. It was after this point that I really really wondered whether or not any of my previous ID was based in fact, or in tumblr pushing an anti-male agenda that made me subconsiously avoid my actual gender for fear of criticism (”If I’m a man then all those anti-man posts end up being about me, and I’m too weak-hearted for that.”) and I feel like this is something that never gets talked about, The massive inconsistensies in nonbinary labels also makes me question the legitimacy of any of it. It’s very easy to choose to identify as something. It really is. I honestly refuse to believe that anyone is born nonbinary the way people are born trans, UNLESS, (and this is the only thing that would ever make me believe) it turns out that atypical gender dysphoria is a thing like ordinary gender dysphoria. But from what I’ve read (and I’m not an ~expert~ or anything) that doesn’t seem to be the case. So... in my opinion... it’s a choice. In my opinion MOST people who ID as nonbinary are just ordinary trans people who haven’t realised it yet. If atypical gender dysphoria is a thing, I doubt as many people would suffer from it like normal dysphoria, unless it turns out to be more common. I don’t know. This is entirely speculation, because we actually don’t know enough to make the call. But on here, obviously, EVERYONE knows it’s totally real and if you disagree then you are, without a doubt, a filthy transphobe who should die. It really reminds me of religion in this case, something I vehemently oppose.

Also my mental health really doesn’t matter right now. I would feel this shitty even if I were overeating. It took me like 5 hours of sleep to realise why any of this is even happening, and that I’ve done this exact fucking thing before. Every time I get even a LITTLE close to someone on here, and I mean even a little, a thing goes off in my brain that makes me think of why they would hate me. With the last person I was ‘friends’ with on here it’s because I renounced feminism (for egalitarianism), and that person is super into social justice, and that was during a period of my life when social justice things on here felt like an obligation instead of anything I was genuine about. But I knew that if I were against feminism they’d hate me and think I was a piece of shit! So I had to cut them off. Then this, someone who was kinda close mutuals with me, I couldn’t get over the fact that we disagree on this thing, and me being terrified me, I had to cut him off too.

This is going to happen to the next person who tries to get even remotely close to me. I’ll accept it for a while, then my brain will do a little flip in my head and tell me to hate myself for having one or two differences, because that person would surely already hate me if they knew. Same shit different day. The only winning move is not to play, clearly. The problem is, I never remember that I do this. Then, when I’m trying to interact with someone, suddenly I feel shame and guilt instead of fun, and the only way to stop it is to push the person away, ‘cause I know that’s what they would want if they knew about it. Rinse and repeat, forgetting every time, because my brain’s ability to remember shit chronologically is so unbelievably shot, until today I actually FORGOT that I used to HAVE a close-ish friend on here. It doesn’t help that I have a very fucked up past where I was in a bizarre, outlandish situation as a child and I did bad things because I was in such a bad environment. I don’t believe in free will anymore (I’m a determinist and I believe that everything has already happened in the sense that the conditions for it are set up right now, and time is mostly a perceptual illusion, and that all human thoughts and ideas come from the subconsious processes of the human brain, the innerworkings of which we may never fully quantify) but I still blame myself for what I chose to do out of anger. It’s the sort of thing that will definitely make me push someone away at some point.

I’m just going to give up. I can’t actually like people because I’m not good enough for anyone. I’m a constant disappointment to myself. I’m a failure. I genuinely shouldn’t even be USING this site because the ‘social’ aspect of social media really flies over my head, to the point where my primary usage of this site is actually to archive posts I like, not share them. I’ve known this for a while, but the dumb monkey part of my brain is still ooh-ooh-ah-ahing for other people’s attention, even though not only is it fake and hollow, I really, really don’t deserve even that, clearly. I can’t make friends. Either I’m too stupid for someone, or when I DO get a little close, I sabotage it by pushing them away before they can even get to know me. I don’t even know why I do it, except I’m terrified of being hated. That’s the bottom line, that’s the REAL reason I’m twisted up about all this. I feel like I have many hateworthy aspects and this website seems to punish those who refuse to conform. There’s clearly no point in me trying to find friendship. I need to realise that at this point it’s just not going to happen. I have a desire but no drive, I never, ever talk to new people (Or even people I’ve talked to before) because they terrify me (I mean, what if they’re a genius or a great artist or an asshole or something) so I just sit here and pretend that people I’ve never talked to actually give a shit about me. It’s pathetic. I need to just stop, and realise that NO ONE actually gives a shit about me, there’s no reason to, and since I’m going to ruin it ANYWAY I may as well spare myself the ache and not even bother trying.

I have no idea if this is how other people experience this shit website, I really don’t. I just know that I feel like I’ve been stuck on this site for so long I don’t have any alternatives (and IRL is out of the question). I also have no idea what I’m “supposed” to be doing here or whether I’m using the fucking website correctly. I just... I don’t know. I’m going to give up. Reblog cat videos. Speak my mind even though I know some day an anon will tell me to KMS and I’ll have to actually consider it because everyone else is worth so much more than me, if one of them wants me dead, there HAS to be a good, well-thought-out reason for it. Because everyone is smarter than I am (and I mean fucking everyone I am dumb as dirt). I want to not give a shit and just do me, but whenever I see a post I disagree with, I imagine myself reblogging with my dissenting opinion, and then being made fun of by OP, losing my followers and ending up getting harassed by people who know literally nothing else about me. It’s not like this is outlandish, anyway, we all know how tumblr is. I just feel like once I’m Hated I no longer get to be a person, so even my suffering doesn’t matter. I mean something like this has happened before, but thankfully it was small. I told someone that what they said about people with my specific internal experiences on this one specific thing was actually really untrue, because I experience the thing they said was impossible and just a fad. They told me that not only was the sad, crying message I sent them the funniest thing they’d seen all week, but that I was actually misinterpreting my internal experiences. Now? I never, ever, ever talk about my system and when I DO it’s super short and covert. Because I’m afraid of being called fake. So I guess I’m a hypochrite in this regard. Just proves how shitty I am. Doesn’t change the fact that this website is fucking awful about disagreements. I mean, after that exchange I got an ask about something I said in the PM, which meant that I got screenshotted and made fun of. I guess I kind of deserved it for being openly upset while disagreeing with someone. Obviously on the Internet the whole “U mad?” thing has been going on for years. So as a highly emotional fucking person I don’t GET to be a part of disagreements, because the way I do it is wrong.

Because of all this shit, the shit I went through on this site and IRL, I have learned that I don’t matter, my thoughts and feelings don’t matter, and my wellbeing doesn’t matter. Thankfully, I’m a nihilist who believes that nothing has any inherent meaning or value, everything just Is, so me being human actually means nothing more than the sum of my parts+ my consciousness, making me worth about as much as any average mammal on planet Earth. I don’t think any one really matters though. I mean sure to each other we do, but that’s only because as a social species we have a natural altrustic drive. This is why we THINK we matter when in reality we are animate dust, held together by tape and glue, kept conscious by an organ that has literally gotten us here through sheer trial-and-error. I always hate saying this stuff because I know it makes me sound cold, but I’ve seen the darkest parts of people. I’ve seen humans treated like literal garbage. If humans had inherent value this would be impossible. Just like if God were real this would be impossible. It’s stupid how caught up I am in how other people feel about me when I know objectively, when I’m in the ground, none of it will matter. That, cosmically, none of anything matters. Actually, when I was a young teenager I was so, so distraught by my cosmic insignificance. I can’t help but be a nihlist. I mean, now I’ve come to terms with it and rejected the ideas of God or an afterlife specifically because they place undue importance on humans.

So I’m going to keep sitting here feeling like shit because at this point I have no fucking clue what I could do to feel better that doesn’t require effort I can’t expend right now. I’m not going to fucking eat because I really feel like I don’t fucking need it OR deserve it. Besides, I don’t do this very often, and I was a huge asshole by cutting him off like that. I have no idea how he feels about it but I know that this is the end. And I hate it. It hurts. It hurts but I can never, ever make myself not do it, because the alternative is stewing in anxiety and feeling increasingly nervous about lying by omission by not telling people how I really feel about things. I’m going to be fine, I already covered my forearms in bruises (and stupid dainty crushable little wrists to a lesser degree) so it’s not like witholding food is going to make things even worse somehow. In fact, sometimes when I’m hungry I can’t cry at all, so really I think it’s a good thing to punish myself.

Besides, I’m a really, really shitty person and I don’t deserve to live.

[asiaberkeley]

Vietnamese and Chinese Feminist Journalists of the 1930s: Writings Reflect Disparate Approaches To The “Woman’s Problem”

*I wrote this paper at UC Berkeley but I never received any feedback from my professors after turning it in at the end of the semester.*

By Natalie Ornell

Introduction

Scholars of Southeast Asia are weary of efforts to convey Vietnamese history through a Chinese lens.  With too much attention paid to these countries’ longstanding relations, comparison efforts risk overlooking Vietnam’s development as a nation moved by a set of unique domestic circumstances (Zinoman Lecture, Spring 2013).  Existing scholarship does not portray China as a leader and teacher of Vietnam in every arena, however.  As historian Shawn McHale points out in his 1995 study of Vietnamese feminist writings, “Students of Vietnamese history are familiar with the cliché that Vietnamese women enjoyed more power than their Chinese counterparts” (Taylor and Whitmore 173).  Though its origins are uncertain, this cliché has been brought up by scholars including Oliver Wolters in History, Culture, and Region and also historian Nhung Tuyet Tran (Interview McHale).  According to McHale’s article, however, research on colonial feminism in Vietnam remains scarce: “Scholars have analyzed few texts written on or by women in the colonial period and produced few historical studies of Vietnamese women” (Taylor and Whitmore 173). He recently added that even after more than fifteen years after the publication of his 1995 article on women’s writing during the Vietnamese colonial period, the dearth of scholarship persists (E-mail Interview, McHale).

Given that only few scholars have analyzed the writings of Vietnamese colonial women before and even after 1995, it appears relevant to give context to the “cliché” than Vietnamese women have historically enjoyed more power than Chinese women (Taylor and Whitmore 173).   This paper attempts to deconstruct this “cliché” by comparing the writings of Vietnamese feminists and Chinese feminists during the colonial period in Vietnam in the context of the time period.   By doing so, this brief study will challenge the notion that Vietnamese women were more “powerful” than their Chinese counterparts.  

This paper posits that Vietnamese women did not necessarily experience more “power” than Chinese women during the Colonial period in Vietnam.  Rather, the women at the forefront of the colonial Vietnamese feminist movement eventually adopted a more hands-on Marxist approach to solving Vietnam’s domestic problems, and in particular, the economic disparities plaguing what they saw as the masses of powerless women in the countryside.  On the other hand,  their Chinese counterparts took a more intellectual and hands-off approach as they fixated on internationalism and theories of feminism during a time of tense political warfare that also likely stifled their means of dissent.  Therefore, it is difficult to fully endorse the notion that Vietnamese women possessed greater power during the colonial period because feminists in China and Vietnam faced unique dynamics on the home front that impacted modes of expressing feminist ideas.

Thus, as a result of specific circumstances in Vietnam, women, especially in the 1930s,  were able to take an active role in remedying the gender inequalities they saw on the home front.  They displayed a greater inclination than Chinese women to improve women’s rights by using the press as a means of political and economic mobilization, while Chinese feminists, facing a separate set of historical circumstances during the time, were set back from taking action, evident in writings that emphasized feminist theory rather than practice.   Following a tradition of forced comparison between China and Vietnam, on the most surface level, Vietnamese women may have exerted more “power” than Chinese women.  However, claiming that Vietnamese women were simply more powerful than Chinese women appeals only to the generalist of Vietnamese feminist history.   Such a statement pays little tribute to the historically dissimilar situations feminists, and particularly feminist writers, faced in each country during Vietnam’s colonial period.  Examining these feminist agendas individually sheds light on the efforts women in both countries made given the historical circumstances they faced.  Comparing them side by side reveals how women in each country were moved and empowered by disparate factors as they and their fellow citizens would begin to embark on reforms that sowed the seeds for Communist revolutions.

Part One: Vietnamese Feminism in the 1930s: Phu Nu Tan Van

More important, Vietnam was developing a “print culture” autonomous from the colonial state, and many of the newly appropriated Sino-Vietnamese words proved to be useful in public discourse.  Writers filled the Phu nu tan van with articles in clear prose that discussed equal rights and the role of women in society.  Ten years earlier, readers (and listeners) would have found its essays obscure --Shawn McHale in Essays into Vietnamese Pasts, p. 176.

Research on the premier Vietnamese feminist colonial women’s newspaper, the Phu Nu Tan Van, is key to understanding the efforts of feminist writers during colonial Vietnam.  Unfortunately,  information about its readership is contested and somewhat muddied by a lack of reliable survey data from the time period.  However, scholar David Marr’s Vietnamese Tradition on Trial characterizes the Phu Nu Tan Van as  “highly successful,”  “read avidly by both sexes,” “a testing ground for new ideas” and that most importantly, no “female operated journal had risen to take its place in the intervening decade” (Marr 220, 231).  He asserts that the women’s newspaper reached not just a small elite but rather the “tens of thousands of functionally literate young women and men emerging from between three and six years of schooling,” with “8,500” copies a week until it shut down in 1934 after a gradual decrease in publication due to domestic circumstances (Marr 220).  Thus, for a newspaper geared at women’s issues during the colonial period, the emergence of the Phu Nu Tan Van was not only historically significant but also, perhaps, ahead of its time given its impressive readership among both sexes and its relatively long-lasting publication history in spite of a repressive French colonial rule that contributed to its shut down.

Marr’s theories regarding the readership of the Phu Nu Tan Van are not universally agreed upon, however.  McHale notes, for example, that while is difficult to account for how many readers really read the Phu Nu Tan Van in the countryside, that Marr may have overlooked readership of the paper outside of elite urban circles.  At the same, however, McHale casts doubt on historian Ngo Vinh Long’s claim in the opposite direction, that there was a circulation of 10,000 copies and that peasant women became so involved that they even contested the bourgeois nature of the Phu Nu Tan Van in print (Interview McHale, Ngo).   To balance Marr’s viewpoint that the paper was limited to city readers and Ngo’s viewpoint that countryside women became completely engrossed in the paper, McHale points to the importance of reading between the lines of Vietnamese literacy rates in the South, where the Phu Nu Tan Van was centered (Interview McHale).  Reassessing the importance of these literacy rates to better understand the readership should still be accompanied by a degree of skepticism, however, given that the French were “poor at such surveys” (Interview McHale).  

A more grounded hypothesis regarding the readership of the Phu Nu Tan Van in terms of its rural-urban outreach is McHale’s proposition that in the end, the Phu Nu Tan Van  “reached a literate educated class, men and women, in the south” and that its influence reached rural areas in a variety of ways, evident in the fact that “one can find repeated letters, etc(sic) from women outside of Saigon” and also that “newspapers can reach many people through reading,” especially in Vietnam, where newspapers were often read aloud to others” (E-mail Interview McHale).  In his 1995 article on the feminist press he also described the importance of quoc ngu and how it made women’s writing accessible to those who had received less education through alternative means;  McHale noted, for example, that while few Vietnamese were fluent readers of quoc ngu, many were exposed to it through “recording land transactions,” by “hearing documents and newspapers read out loud,” and through its “growing use by the Cao Dao and Buddhists” (Taylor and Whitmore 146).  Thus, despite Marr’s ideas that the Phu Nu Tan Van was restricted to women in the city, McHale offers convincing reasons that suggest the paper’s potentially larger outreach.  McHale goes so far as to say that we must “take with a grain of salt those authors who imply that since so few Vietnamese were literate, quoc ngu could not have significantly affected Vietnamese society until the literacy campaigns carried out in the late 1930s and 1946” (Taylor and Whitmore 146).  Thus,  despite uncertainties regarding the exact readership of the Phu Nu Van Tan, there are historical indicators that suggest that the paper, though it may have attracted a largely urban and educated urban readership, was not necessarily bound to the city as a result of the documented literacy of its educated readers.

As for the paper’s content, while the Phu Nu Tan Van addressed many fashionable issues, over the course of the Phu Nu Tan Van’s publication history, there occurred a significant shift in the attitudes of its feminist writers that led to an enhanced level of grassroots activism.  Their ideas increasingly began to reflect Marxist and anti-colonial influences which shaped the nature of their feminist activities. Towards the end of the Phu Nu Tan Van’s publication history, the woman who managed the paper, Mme Nguyen Duc Nhuan, apparently “permitted the young radicals to seize the initiative” for reasons not completely “clear” (Marr 224). Marr suggests that “she was simply willing to go along with the intellectual mood of the day and see what the French censors would do” (Marr 224).  Furthermore, according to Marr, starting in the latter half of 1932 the paper began to be taken over by a number of younger, more radical women “who were thus able to assert themselves in print,”  representing a strong shift in Phu Nu Tan Van editorial guidelines (Marr 224).  Marr ascribed this shift to a new emphasis on “penetrating journalist encounters with individuals of all classes, forthright sociological discussions of prostitution, religious escapism and faith healing, attacks on fascism, and critiques of bourgeoise feminism” (Marr 224).  He added that “faith in formal education vanished, and occupational independence came to be seen as the prerogative of only a tiny minority of women... the mass of poor Vietnamese women became the primary ideological concern of Phu Nu Tan Van” (Marr 226).

Despite this radical shift, however, Marr remained skeptical about the women’s encounters with women from poorer class backgrounds in the countryside.  He even noted that education became such a dividing force between elite women and rural women that those women with an education became despised;  readers were “warning about the tendency of females with any schooling or financial means to separate themselves from their sisters to become not a worthy vanguard but individualist, self-seeking parasites on the backs of others” (Marr 226).  This tendency was given the “pejorative label” of “feminism” “(phu nu chi nghia)”, “a specifically bourgeois phenomenon to be resisted steadfastly” (Marr 226).  Based on the reader’s perceptions he cites, he adds skeptically that, “Even in its last year of publication, however, Phu Nu Tan Van was hardly a vehicle for lower-class women to express themselves directly, much less an organ of socialist struggle.  It remained essentially one means for the Vietnamese inteligentsia to better understand themselves and perhaps alter behavior” (Marr 226).

Despite Marr’s emphasis on readers who regarded the Phu Nu Tan Van journalists as self-seeking individualists and even “parasites on the backs of others,” other historical sources show that women involved in the later years of the Phu Nu Tan Van hardly resembled “self-seeking parasites”; rather, they used their education and writing not just to “better understand themselves” but to address class divides as they participated in fundraisers to help poorer women cope with not only natural disasters but also the burdens of childcare: “In the summer of 1932 another concerted campaign was launched for Nghe-Tinh provinces, in which Women’s Herald and Women’s News both played leading roles...This fair, organized mainly by Women’s News, aimed to raise money for the subsistence crisis in Nghe-Tinh and to help Women’s News establish a day-care center for poor children...Through the pages of Women’s Herald and Women’s News, it is clear that upper and middle class Vietnamese women enthusiastically participated and even led the way in disaster relief (Marr 226, Ngyuen Marshall 87). In this way, Vietnamese feminists involved in news publications like the Phu Nu Tan Van and the Women’s Herald, all publications for women, used their writing efforts to address local problems directly by raising money and caring for children.   Such efforts appear as a far cry from notions that these women were a group of “parasitic self-seekers” only interested in self-growth (Marr 226).  While some of the paper’s published articles reflected a concern with becoming Western in that they focused on Western childrearing methods and even “Montessori Education,” it is clear that the women journalists took an active role in remedying the national problems Vietnamese women faced at the time by using their writing as a springboard for action (Ngyuen Marshall 90).  Thus, Marr’s claims that the Phu Nu Tan Van was hardly a vehicle for lower-class women to express themselves directly would be balanced by historical evidence that shows these women writer’s efforts to aid women in the country directly through grassroots activism (Marr 226).

Reporters from Phu Nu Tan Van did not only participate in relief efforts and charity to aid rural women who lacked their educational backgrounds.  Historian Ngo Vinh Long asserts that Phu Nu Tan Van reporters also went directly to the countryside to write articles on the plight of country women and that “contact with women of other classes changed the perspective of reporters on Phu Nu Tan Van from the magazine’s first days...” (Ngo 19).  Such an account that portrays these women’s efforts to meet with women in the country from day one appear inconsistent with records that point the newspaper’s radicalization in only its last few years, however, and that portray the Phu Nu Tan Van as concerned with other more fashionable topics in its earlier years.  However, Ngo’s account does provide some evidence to support the claim that “by the end of the magazine’s career it was publishing interviews in which peasant women directly criticized and corrected the bourgeoise orientation of the magazine” (Ngo 19, 20).  To support this claim Ngo cites an August 1934 published interview by the Phu Nu Tan Van’s “most famous reporter,” Miss Nguyen thi Kiem.  In this interview, Ngo explains that peasant women “stressed that the real problem they faced was extreme poverty, not sexual inequality or polygamy” (Ngo 17).  He adds that they were especially interested in teaching professions to petit-bourgeoise women; they thought this would lead to economic liberation (Ngo 17).  

The idea of education as a pathway for economic liberation appeared to evolve during the years the Phu Nu Tan Van published women’s writings, but Marr’s notions that all faith was lost in education are doubtful (Marr 226).   During the colonial period, regarding the statistics on the prevalence of educational attainment for women, Ngo claims that by the year the Phu Nu Tan Van closed, 1934, “several hundred women in each of Vietnam’s three regions had preparatory primary school degrees [Diplome].  A smaller number had superior primary school degrees [Brevet Elmentaire].  Only a few dozens had junior high school degrees {Brevet Supererieur] (Ngo 15).  He adds that of these women, “two thirds of these women were teachers and headmistresses in district and provincial schools” and the rest were “midwives, nurses, and secretaries in the various business firms” (Ngo 15).  He notes too that as for higher education, in 1930, there were “only 26 women out of a total of 193 medical students” and “three women out of 49 students in the teacher’s college” (Ngo 15).  However, that 26 students represented a group of 193 medical students, 13% of the class size, appears rather progressive considering the time and place.  Ngyuyen Marshall’s account attests to the importance of education in the context of the Phu Nu Tan Van,  “Using the language of Social Darwinism, Women’s News writers maintained that women must be educated so that they could participate in the public sphere and contribute to the strengthening of the nation.  Among non radicals, therefore, the quest for women’s rights was a part of the larger quest for national independence” (80 Nguyen-Marshall).  Thus, despite Marr’s depictions of a woman’s education as something that became considered parasitic and that led to the development of self-centered women, appears inconsistent with statistics and secondary sources that depict the women as drawn to teaching careers and who used education as a means to work towards Vietnam’s independence.

In sum, while the extent of the readership is disputed, the Phu Nu Tan Van writers began to see their education and their writing efforts as mechanism to solve real problems affecting women in the nation, especially close to time that the newspaper was forced to shut down.  They focused on problems of women’s economic inequality, and as journalists, took active steps to improve the situations facing poorer women in the countryside.   As McHale put it:  “The writers for Phu Nu Tan Van fought for women’s liberation, but not in its ‘bourgeois’ guise (Taylor and Whitmore 193).  Thus, Vietnam’s historical situation gave rise to a group of women who uniquely looked towards solving the economic problems facing women in the countryside.  At the same time,  however, feminism in China took on a more international and theoretical outlook that could be seen through a “bourgeois guise” (Taylor and Whitmore 193).  Vietnamese women called for political and economic change in an attempt to solve problems through practical methods, most notably in efforts of fundraisers for national disaster and childcare.

Part Two: Chinese Feminism in the 1930s

In Vietnamese Communism, 1920-1945, Huynh Kim Khanh argues that the radicalism of colonized Vietnam “more closely resembled that of other societies subjected to foreign dominations such as China and Indonesia (Huynh 32).  With regards to feminism, Hue-Tam Ho Tai in Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution similarly relates the Vietnamese women’s struggles to the struggles of other women facing a national revolution:  “The connection between feminism and revolution is not unique to the Vietnamese context.  Indeed, it can be found in so many other revolutionary settings as to appear organic.  Is the link between feminism and communism coincidental or is it made inevitable by some inherent revolutionary logic?  The tensions and contradictions between communism and feminism in the Soviet Union and in China have been the subject of a substantial body of scholarship” (Tai 89).  Thus, even the preeminent scholars of Vietnam have continued to frame Vietnamese feminism as an offshoot of Chinese or Soviet feminism in the context of a Communist revolution.   Here, Tai equates the relationship between feminism and revolution in China with the relationship of feminism and revolution in Vietnam without observing their distinct features.  Feminism in China and Vietnam are not “organic” due to the fact that both countries would undergo Communist revolutions.  Women in both countries expressed unique modes of feminism due to independent nationalist circumstances.  Tai misses the complexities in women’s movements by dismissing and grouping together feminist movements in multiple countries as if they were a natural outgrowth of a Communist revolution.   She misses the mark on the divergent modes of expression that women in China and Vietnam found before the revolution.  This section will argue that Vietnamese feminist radicalism during the colonial and pre-revolutionary period did not mirror Chinese feminist radicalism at the same time.  This paper finds that Chinese feminism of the 1930s concerned itself with topics removed from what has been discussed with regards to the Phu Nu Tan Van writers in part one of this essay.  These Chinese feminists of the colonial period have expressed their beliefs in ways that mildly resemble those Vietnamese feminists of the later publication years of the Phu Nu Tan Van.

Chinese feminists in the 1930s were overwhelmingly concerned with theories of feminism rather than with collective action to solve women’s problems of poverty.  While both Chinese and Vietnamese women may have seen women’s liberation as part of the national revolution to gain independence, the Chinese feminists saw this discourse in a much more abstract way: “Progressive Chinese feminism was progressive because it presumed species evolution, arguing that once artificial social barriers to female subjectivity had been lifted, overall human development would accelerate.  It was a kind of feminism because it held that national evolutionary progress required the emancipation of women into citizenship (Barlow 65).  In this way, Chinese feminism concerned itself with larger ideals and evolutionary theories that had little focus on the present struggles of women outside of feminist circles.  Furthermore, unlike the writers involved and in charge of  women’s newspapers in Vietnam, much of the feminist discourse during this period in China was led by men, not women: “theoretical feminism in colonial modern China engaged people, mostly but not exclusively male” (Barlow 66).

One of China’s comparable magazines at the time, the funu shibao, hardly resembled Vietnam’s Phu Nu Tan Van.  According to Tani Barlow, an expert on Chinese feminist movements, this magazine featured mainly international figures including “the Queen of Spain,” “an American woman balloonist,” “Turkish women,” and in doing so it apparently “presumed [...] Chinese women’s claim to womanhood” while never really addressing Chinese women (Barlow 69).  She argues that the magazine actually had to include “women of the world at large” and that the journal held American women in the highest esteem, all indicative that the Chinese woman’s struggle was obfuscated by a hodgepodge of writings on other women of the world (Barlow 69).  Thus, Chinese women depicted in the magazine adhered to constant standards of internationalism so that they became an “internationalized subject” (Barlow 71).  According to Barlow, “The predicate Chinese women in Chinese feminism seems to have begun life as an international subject, but not in the explicit discourse of sexuality.  The recasting of the subject of Chinese feminism as a sexual subject occurred in the 1920s in an archive that was generically theoretical” (Barlow 71).  Thus, while Chinese feminists were philosophizing over sexuality, eugenic imperatives, nuxing identity, choosing a sexual partner for natural selection,  and Darwinist style eugenics, the Vietnamese feminists were writing about the steep social inequalities affecting Vietnamese women at home, especially in the mid 1930s (Barlow 90).  In this sense, Chinese feminist discourse did not color Vietnamese women writer’s domestic interests.  Indeed, according to the editors of Phu Nu Tan Van, “the solution to the women’s problem lay not in copying Western customs, or valuing the new for the sake of newness.   Women’s liberation would come when people attacked the economic bases of women’s inequality” (McHale 191).

The Chinese feminists of the 1930s apparently stemmed from a group of feminist anarchists who also had dismissed opportunities of political mobilization.  These feminists saw revolution as the answer to the woman’s problem but adopted a passive approach when it came to actually fighting for women’s liberation.  In concluding that they would achieve little by liberating a few women, they chose to theorize about revolution rather than to engage in grassroots efforts.  These Chinese feminist leaders believed that “if the essence of sexual inequality lay in the economic dependence of women on men, then raising the economic position of women offered some hope; on the other, if the natures of feudalism and capitalism were hierarchical, economic betterment could only affect a few” (Zarrow 810).  One of the key leaders of this movement, He Zhen, similarly looked to the West with admiration for “monogamy, civil marriage, divorce” and “co-education” before determining that the solution lay in “anarcho-communism” meaning that to “have a few women join the working class would not challenge sexual inequality (Zarrow 809).  In this sense, Chinese feminists gave up on mobilizing at the grassroots level with the assumption that they would not be able to make a difference unless a full-scale revolution took place.   With this attitude, Chinese feminists like He Zhen who “grounded her call for revolution in a transcendent sense of justice and sexual equality” did not undertake the same actions as Vietnamese women writers who uplifted the situations of those women they encountered in the working class.  These women chose to think and write rather than to find methods of making small-scale improvements.

A book on Chinese feminism published in 2013, “The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory,” (Columbia) focuses on the life of feminist He-Yin Zhen, editor of a feminist-anarchist journal, who the authors claim played a central role in the development of Chinese feminism.  However, these authors only add to the idea that Chinese feminists were far more interested in theory than practice.  A recent review of this book notes, “He-Yin Zhen was concerned less with China’s fate as a nation and more with the relationship among patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, and gender subjugation as global and transhistorical problems” (http://warpweftandway.com/2013/03/12/new-book-on-chinese-feminism/). The Women’s Bell, another feminist publication in China that could be compared to the Phu Nu Tan Van was similarly concerned with theory and China’s past: Feminist Lin Zongsu (1878-1944) who wrote the preface for The Women’s Bell, “commend[ed] on it as an exemplary text on the historical oppression of women in China” (Liu, Karl, Ko 45). Another women who was a founding editor of the journal China’s New Woman’s World had a “strategic focus” to “often argue for the recovery of lost rights, rather than on the newness of the advocacy for women’s rights in the present” (Liu, Karl, Ko 45-46).  Thus, China’s feminists took an even more removed stance as they focused on theories, analyzed the past, and refrained from taking collective action to improve their present conditions.

In China, although the term and the concept derived from the Japanese, European, and U.S. models, the “new woman” was a “creature of the progressive, intellectual class’s political aspirations, and as a result, her utility for the feminist movement was limited” (Edwards 117).   Edwards argues that the Chinese woman’s efforts were easier spent on state building and these efforts lost their “potency” for solving problems inherent to the woman’s movement  (Edwards 117).  Further, Edwards argues that the idea of the “new woman” in China was mostly a “male invention” and that “discussions about her relate more to the concerns of this demographic than they do to any lived reality for the women of Republican China or the women’s movement of the time (Edwards 117).   Given that the women’s newspapers in Vietnam were run by women and that the vast majority of contributors were radical women, it appears that the feminist women writers in Vietnam had more freedom as a group of women separated from their male counterparts than the women in China whose notions of the new women stemmed from largely male intellectual thought.

However, what marked these women as feminists was rather “interest in social reform, education for women, nation building and politics”; in this regard they could be said to share a common vision with the writers of the Phu Nu Tan Van (Edwards 117).  Even as the term new woman was applied to them, however, “they did not invoke the label modern woman during their campaigns, nor did they attempt to mobilize women into feminist activity with reference to it”  (Edwards 118).  Thus, Chinese women accepted a label given to them by men but did little to build off of the idea of the new woman, or to gather other women into political activities that reflected their theoretical ideas on women’s liberation.  

However, it is important to understand the historical context behind the Chinese colonial women’s apparent lack of political action.  At the time when these women were writing in women’s magazines and newspapers,  domestic factors affecting China also influenced their abilities to express political beliefs.  For example, women in China at the time faced the “collapse of the GMD-CCP cooperation” which saw the onslaught of the White Terror movement in which “CCP sympathizers in politically active groups such as women’s organizations” were targeted (Edwards 118).  Given that feminists at the time had close ties to the Communist Party, it is likely that their feminist activities were muted due to the connections between these groups.  Edwards argues that this affected women directly in China stating that “the modern woman became a target for GMD rightists because she was perceived as a radical challenge to the fragile national order” and that this time period saw modern women “imprisoned, murdered, or tortured” because of their CCP support or because they were “simply nationalistic feminists (Edwards 118). According to Edwards, “over 1000 women leaders were killed in China in 1927 by KMT rightists” and that “many of them were not Communists but simply active participants in the women’s movement (Edwards 119).  Given that 1,000 women leaders were killed, it is likely that the women’s movement was expansive and reached beyond those women involved in the newspapers.  Thus, the danger of participating in feminist activities that would require travel and more exposure may have played a role in preventing the Chinese colonial feminists from engaging in similar activities as the Vietnamese feminist writers who traveled to the countryside.

As a result of the White Terror movement of 1927-1928, Chinese women feminists’ earlier political actions were “increasingly ignored as female modernity was equated with frivolous self-indulgence in the mid-1930s” (Edwards 120).  Thus, it easy to see that Chinese women faced a unique domestic situation that shaped and even stifled the expression of their feminism in the 1930s.  At the same time, that much of the discourse prior to the White Terror Movement was characterized by theorizing, internationalism, and reflections on China’s past may still indicate that Vietnamese women were more progressive and ready to act in the name of their cause. For “progressive Chinese feminism (and perhaps other traditions as well), the question was how to understand the truth of women and how to produce women (Barlow 78).  

Conclusion

While the Chinese feminists philosophized over theories, the Vietnamese feminists were writing of the steep social inequalities affecting Vietnamese women as “Marxist ideas had seeped into the discourse on women’s liberation” (McHale 191). Even as they were influenced by theory, however, their actions showed grassroots level work to improve the lives of women, even if on a small-scale.  Thus, they put their own hands into revolutionary work and did not only praise a revolutionary ideal with their pens.   As Marr writes of the journal Phu Nu Tan Van,  “From the beginning to end it was at once catalyst, conceptual testing ground, and disseminator of new ideas -- indeed, perhaps the best example of this type of journalism ever to emerge in Vietnam (Marr 226).  Marr distinguishes the Vietnamese journalists who were once characterized as “timid, note-bound matrons addressing politely bored friends” and then became “young women standing alone in front of mixed crowds and speaking impromptu (Marr 227).   He goes on to say that this period was even anachronistic as there were fewer thriving Vietnamese business women in 1945 “than there had been in 1930” (Marr 231).   The magazine’s success even saw the production of a drama which according to Marr, featured a Vietnamese heroine who “after guiding a newspaper through diverse obstacles and facing up to new political and social pressures, is finally forced to shut down by the authorities,” adding that the story’s similarity to the Phu Nu Tan Van’s experience was “obvious,” as was the fact that “no female operated journal had risen to take its place in the intervening decade” (Marr 231).   Even in light of domestic problems facing Chinese women during the 1930s, it appears that the Vietnamese feminists involved in the Phu Nu Tan Van, rose above theory and sought to make a difference in the lives of not women molded after Chinese women or European women, but Vietnamese women who fought hard to survive in the country.  As McHale notes Vietnamese women were not as taken with internationalist feminism as Chinese women, “...the debate over women’s issues had evolved from a puzzled interest in Western rights in the period of “Vietnamese French collaboration”  to a more critical appropriation of Western ideas in the 1930s” (McHale 190).

Works Cited

Barlow, Tani E. The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism. Durham [u.a.: Duke Univ., 2006. Print.

Edwards, L. "Policing the Modern Woman in Republican China." Modern China 26.2 (2000): 115-47. Print.

Huynh, Kim K. Vietnamese Communism: 1925-1945. Ithaca U.a.: Cornell Univ., 1982. Print.

Liu, Lydia He., Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko. The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New York: Columbia UP, 2013. Print.

Ngo, Long Vinh. Vietnamese Women in Society and Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Vietnam Resource Center, 1974. Print.

Marr, David G. Vietnamese Tradition on Trial: 1920-1945 / David G. Marr. Berkeley: University of California, 1981. Print.

Nguyen-Marshall, Van. In Search of Moral Authority: The Discourse on Poverty, Poor Relief, and Charity in French Colonial Vietnam. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Print.

Tai, Hue-Tam Ho. Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. Print.

Taylor, Keith Weller., and John K. Whitmore. Essays into Vietnamese Pasts. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1995. Print.

Zarrow, Peter "He Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in China," Journal of Asian Studies 47, no. 4 (November 1988 )

Zinoman, Peter. Nationalism in Vietnam and Indonesia. Dwinelle Hall, Berkeley, California. Spring, 2013. Lecture.

"Warp, Weft, and Way." Warp Weft and Way New Book on Chinese Feminism Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. May 2013. <http://warpweftandway.com/2013/03/12/new-book-on-chinese-feminism/>.

E-mail Interview with Professor Shawn McHale, 28-30 Apr. 2013

[elliedekk]

What does a Feminist Look Like?

In the past couple years, a new fashion item came to market. The slogan, “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” has accompanied, “The Future is Female” and, “My Uterus, My Choice” in adorning plain tee-shirts across the chest for the socially conscious shopper. I have seen these worn by men, women and non-binary persons alike. The intention of the designer and wearer is to announce their political stance to whoever they encounter. Yet, the shirt could have achieved this using other phrasing such as “This is Who a Feminist is” or even, most directly, “I am a Feminist”. The specific wording of the item can convey the diverse, and possibly unexpected, appearances of feminists.  The garment acknowledges that one homogenous face of feminism does not exist nor can someone determine whether someone is feminist based on their appearance. Yet, the seemingly simple proclamation leads to the question, what does a feminist look like?

Saying you are a feminist or something is feminist does not magically make it so. This being true, it is impossible to say whether those who wear the shirts are actually feminists. The word feminist conjures up different images specific to who hears or reads it. A search on Google images for the word feminist features participants in the Women’s Marches, Beyonce dressed as Rosie the Riveter, Hillary Clinton and, fittingly, a number of people wearing the aforementioned “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” tee-shirt. Many stereotypes of feminists exist; the pussy-hat wearing Feminazi, the hipster male feminist or the sexless career woman to name a few. None of these effectively encompasses the entirety of the feminist community. As feminists do not have one identifiable appearance, they also do not have one identifiable opinion on appearance and everything surrounding it. 

Since the 1960s, women staged public displays rejecting the conventional beauty standards. For example, the legendary Miss America Protest included a scene of women throwing their bras, which embodied normative beauty pressures, into a fire. This incident was so powerful that bra-burner became a part of the English lexicon as synonymous with an enthusiastic feminist.Since then, the attempt to change or shirk male-imposed beauty standards has become fundamental issue. Body positivity campaigns flourish on social media, and the culture surrounding what is considered acceptable is beginning to shift. There seems to exist a universal consensus that beauty standards are bad. Still, the beauty and women’s fashion industry are both worth more than ever before. If women are starting to care less about looking like sexist ideals, why are these industries thriving? 

To a certain extent, there exists the idea of “playing the game”. Here, women acknowledge the patriarchal desires and use them to their own benefit. A society is more likely to reward those who give society what it wants. If a woman succeeds due to profiteering off of conformation to gender norms, we do not see a successful woman but a traitor to feminism. For instance, Kylie Jenner was declared the youngest female self-made billionaire. Removed from her identity and the baggage it carries, the title of the youngest female self-made billionaire would be accompanied by admiration and applause from any women-supporting women. A twenty-one year old woman earning a fortune based on her own entrepreneurship unreliant on any man seems like a feminist triumph in a world rigged against female success. However, Kylie Jenner is hardly a feminist icon. Her body and face have been altered by plastic surgery; she owns a makeup line and posts seductive images on instagram. Comedic comparisons of her younger self and appearance after makeup and surgery are often accompanied by captions such as “This is Why I Have Trust Issues”, subversively perpetuating the perception of how deceitful women are. Simultaneously, Kylie Jenner seems to fit the unachievable male fantasy of a woman to the best of anyone’s abilities. This can even be evidenced by her ranking as the thirteenth top searched celebrity on PornHub in 2018. Kylie Jenner can either be seen as submitting to misogynistic beauty standards or taking advantage of them.  

It is not strange or even judgemental to qualify success based on the means which are used to obtain it. Achievements that stem from immoral actions are regarded as undeserved or not worth celebrating. In “Feminism and the Politics of Appearance,”Amy Winter criticizes her perception of second wave feminism’s acceptance of any autonomous choice a woman makes about her body as feminist. She describes cosmetic surgery, dieting, weight loss surgery, and "body modification" as woman-hating behaviors. She draws a contrast between liberalism as a solely political philosophy and feminism as a system of values. She rejects the idea that feminism can encompass choices which conform to patriarchal mandates since “we can't be honest in our feminism if we pretend that making choices to harm our bodies and conforming to the dictates of a system that hates us is liberating and empowering” (Winter, 3). One of Winter’s grandest claims is that “As long as one's actions don't infringe on others' right to freedom, moral judgment about those actions is disallowed” (Winter 4) and that these accusations of intolerance and judgmentalness impede our ability to have meaningful discussions about the world we want to live in, and how to move toward those goals. Prominent here is the understanding that as women, we are both an individual and a member of the collective. It is irrefutable that is not reasonable or useful to call everything women do feminist simply because they are women or are doing it in the name of feminism. Often self-proclaimed feminists behave in very unfeminist ways. Feminism can mean very different things to different people. Feminism does not have a uniform platform, let alone a uniform face.

Winter’s argues that the society within which women must make choices about themselves and their bodies limits their ability to freely act because “systemic oppression is the framework within which we make individual choices...liberal political philosophy...does not recognize the impact of social power or powerlessness on individual choice” (Winter, 2).The class of men are privileged in that they have historically had power to influence the choices available to women . Called into question here is whether women ever have the capability to make completely autonomous choices or if every decision is manufactured by the patriarchal constructs of our society. Winter’s essay makes me recall when my ninth grade theology teacher lectured my class of all girls how our immodest dressing was not because our own desire to wear certain clothes but merely a product of manipulation by popular media and the fashion industry. I felt angered by her comments perhaps partially because I was a fourteen year old who wanted to wear short skirts and tank tops but more because of what they implied. I understood that popular styles and business had great influence over trends and the items I put on my body, but the implication was that I, like any young woman who wore clothing she deemed scandalous, was an unthinking, brainwashed sheep whose preferences were molded entirely by the images put before me. Furthermore, within this is the narrative that any choice a woman makes about her appearance is solely with consideration for the opinions of others, particularly men. 

This condemnation of women’s attempts to regain control over their bodies without regard to the perception of men does not grant them the level of agency which they deserve. Some of her points begin to sound like the same rhetoric which men use to control women. Forcing women to anything they do not want to with their bodies is certainly a male practice which certain so-called feminist thinkers have co-opted to forbid certain personal bodily choices. Additionally, Winter attributes any insecurity to misogyny and any attempt to change that insecurity physically as contributing to that misogyny. Misogynistic attitudes do have responsibility for the rigid beauty and body standards which are enforced upon women from a young age. These unachievable ideals engrain a sense of insufficiency on those who fail to live up to them and can even distort one’s self-perception as they strain to conform to a rigid idea. 

Ideally, all women would be able to accept themselves exactly how they look organically, and feminism would be the cure to any internalized feelings of insecurity due to beauty standards. Indeed, FemScore of the Feminist Perspectives Scale has shown that feminist beliefs decrease the internalization of body-related messages. The acknowledgement of the sources of beauty standards and the active understanding that these are not the truth serves to reduce their impact on self-perception. However, three women said they felt negative effects of feminism on their experiences with beauty. One woman spoke about how she “bought into the old style feminist antipathy towards clothing and makeup, but then decided that it was limiting [her] self-expression” (Taub, 16). Women have numerous reasons for altering their appearance. If none of these are actively offensive or hurtful to others, is it truly anyone else’s place to pass moral judgement on them? 

To the extent that the personal is political, everyone must be conscious about how they present themselves to the world. In this way, things like clothes, makeup and even plastic surgery are a form of self-expression. Those who refute this have contorted feminism to grant themselves some platform of moral superiority from which to pass judgement on other women. To dictate the choices someone makes about their own appearance infringes on their freedom to express themselves truly or feel the most confident. Deeming certain beauty choices as feminist or anti-woman creates a toxic and exclusive culture within a community which already struggles enough with inclusivity. Divisiveness about something so unique to each person is never useful. 

Works Cited

Winter, Amy. “Feminism and the Politics of Appearance.” GenderWatch, Off Our Backs, Nov. 2004,search-proquest-com.ccl.idm.oclc.org/genderwatch/docview/197131764/B32ADB2FD40843DF.

Feltman, Chandra E., and Dawn M. Szymanski. "Instagram use and Self-Objectification: The Roles of Internalization, Comparison, Appearance Commentary, and Feminism." Sex Roles 78.5-6 (2018): 311-24. ProQuest. Web. 4 Dec. 2019

Taub, Jennifer. “What Should I Wear? A Qualitative Look at the Impact of Feminism and Women’s Communities on Bisexual Women’s Appearance.” Journal of Bisexuality, vol. 3, no. 1, 2003, pp. 9–22. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=fyh&AN=MFS-10960934&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

[this-is-not-a]

Follow-up to learning about emotional labor

I first saw Gemma Hartley’s emotional labor article on Facebook. After putting together my thoughts, I saw the same article on Hackernews, which I generally regard as having thoughtful comments sections. Here are some of the top comments:

“If I were to point out random emotional labor duties I carry out—reminding him of his family’s birthdays, carrying in my head the entire school handbook and dietary guidelines for lunches, updating the calendar to include everyone’s schedules, asking his mother to babysit the kids when we go out, keeping track of what food and household items we are running low on, tidying everyone’s strewn about belongings, the unending hell that is laundry—…”

That all sounds like household management with some relationship management thrown in. What does it have to do with labouring over emotions? It sounds like this person needs a partner who shares more household responsibilities and has an organization and cleanliness habit that is more in line with their own.

and: 

This sounds like a very dysfunctional marriage. I have been observing what I consider are good marriages that have stood the test of time. Marriages where they have been married 30, 40, 50 years and are still crazy about each other. Here are some things that I have found.

<The comment lists 5 fairly general values. Communication, loyalty etc. I think you get the idea>

These thing should be done by both husband and wife. The author, goes against everyone of them. She expects the husband to read her mind. The whole article feels like some primal cry for appreciation and notice.

If these, the second and third highest voted comments, paint a picture of the Hackernews demographic as too-critical-and-know-it-all-y (a picture which was somehow not already painted by the fact that the platform’s name is hacker-news) you can rejoice in the most upvoted comment:

This is a topic where the more I learned about it the more I opened my eyes to it and saw it happening on my own life.

I'm very easy going and there isn't much I get too worked up about. My wife, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner. I could see her getting stressed out making decisions for a vacation. I realized that by not caring, I wasn't helping and offloading the burden to her. Now I truly didn't care if we went to restaurant A or restaurant B, so she always had to make the decision. Since realizing this I've relieved her more from all the decision making, even if I really don't care about the outcome. Why should I do this? Well, because she's my wife and while I may not care which restaurant we go to, I care about her.

TL;DR It's real and I decided to do take up more of this emotional labor in life.

(If like me you felt a visceral repulsion from the first two comments but not the third, consider the possibility that it might not be the know-it-all-y-ness that you take issue with, but the fact that the know-it-all happens to disagree.)

Am I just listing these comments because I wanted to wave it in your face how original and creative my personal take on the article was? Partly, yes. And partly, I think this serves as a neat example to talk about some other stuff.

The first comment points out that the concept of emotional labor as Hartley uses it doesn’t seem well defined. When a category becomes so broad that it fails to rule anything out it stops being useful. I don’t disagree that Hartley doesn’t give a concrete definition of what she means by the term, but she does seem to be vaguely gesturing at a cluster of related ideas. I think this comment makes the mistake of pointing out an accurate criticism and then using it as an excuse to disregard the rest of the argument being made. The comment goes on to reclassify the issue as a non-gendered issue by framing it as “this person needs a partner who shares more household responsibilities” even though the whole point of the article was that there is something happening related to the fact that Hartley is a woman and her husband is a man. This is a thought pattern that you can recognize by thinking to yourself, “I don’t think I understand X, and I think it’s because the original author didn’t do a great job of explaining it." At this point you can investigate X yourself, or you can notice that X is crucial to this argument that you disagree with and pretend that it explains your disagreement. If your goal is to not change your mind, and you’re actually just looking for ways to prove that you don’t have to change your mind then this will be your preferred choice. But if your goal is to actually be right, it might be useful to fill in your understanding of X while you’re here so you can follow the rest of the argument. (We call this being charitable.)

The second comment does this a little too, when it states “these things should be done by both husband and wife.” Again, I don’t disagree, but the entire point of the article was that there’s something related to the differences in socialization of men and women, so I don’t think the right way to respond is “society expects things of BOTH men and women.” There’s an extent to which that statement is true, and the exact length of that extent is the complement of the extent to which Hartley’s thesis is true. You shouldn’t respond to the claim “part of this wooden horse is being painted green, and I think we should stop painting it green because green paint contains lead” by saying “you’re missing the fact that part of the wooden horse is blue.” You’ll just confuse people who otherwise probably could have benefited from learning that green paint contains lead.

Another mistake the second comment makes is that it gets personal. This is different than offering criticism. I often notice myself interpreting criticism as a personal attack, especially when its criticism of work that feels like an extension of myself, or maybe a purer expression of myself. But I think in this case when the comment says “this sounds like a very dysfunctional marriage... her first loyalty seems to be to feminism, and not to her family,” we can default to the easy outraged response: you don’t know this person. You don’t know her husband. You don’t know her marriage. And if you think you know enough about her from one emotionally charged article to decide that her marriage is dysfunctional and she isn’t loyal to her family then I have a bridge to teach you how to build.

The third comment, and the most upvoted, is hard to be angry at because it’s worded in such a positive manner. My only response to this one is that it doesn’t mention what I consider to be the issue with Hartley’s article, and write about in my response, but you can’t fault a comment for not being an essay. Mostly I included it so you don’t start thinking that Hackernews is a bunch of know-it-alls-who-disagree-with-me.

A last response, which didn’t come from a comment section but came from real life: maybe the reason the article is not a rigorous and impeccable proof from first principles is because it was never meant to be an argument – maybe the article is just a rant, a way to vent frustration?

And I believe this response makes the worst mistake.

First let me try and put my finger on specific aspects of the article that make me deem it unlikely to be just a rant and not an argument. For one thing, it smoothly transitions from her personal anecdote to quotes from sociologists and professors of communication; experts painting in broad strokes about the state of society and the dynamic between men and women at a macroscopic level. The article ends with a sort of call to action, in hopes that our future generations might learn to rid themselves of such needless weight. The article’s caption is “stop calling women nags.” And (need I bring this up again?) the banner photo for the article is a yellow rubber glove giving you the finger. All of this together means you’re going to have a hard time thinking that this article is “a woman sharing her feelings” and not “an activist crafting an argument drawing on personal experience.”

(I’ll concede that the banner photo does fit with either possibility; it would probably be very cathartic to deliver an emotional rant in person and then end it with a showy and ceremonial Giving of the Finger.)

But more generally I am wary of this kind of response because it retreats in a very strategic way. Saying “the article wasn’t meant to be an argument, it’s just an author sharing how she feels” is a fully general excuse that you can use to defend basically anything, and it’s something you only do if you think of criticism as the enemy rather than a shared way of arriving at the truth. It’s a motte-and-bailey trick in which your opponent takes a strong stance and then wordlessly retreats to an uncontroversial stance once you make your argument against the first stance, only to return to the first stance once you’ve left. Climate change deniers will use this to defend themselves from accusations of being unscientific: “I’m not denying science! Science is about skepticism. All I’m saying is that we don’t have a settled and agreed-upon projection of how long it will be until these threats become immediate.” You think to yourself, “that seems pretty reasonable,” and then they interpret your general agreement with their weak position as another person they’ve convinced of their strong opinion. Saying that an article is just supposed to be self-expression, and who could ever be against self expression, is a trick you can use to hide from any opponent. And I know this because I have a tendency to do it too.

Back in the days when I was young and foolish (up until several months ago, at which point I changed my mind about all my incorrect beliefs) I had a saying that I had learned from Dan Harmon: we don’t punish each other for having feelings. You don’t control how you feel, you control how you act. I can’t help but feel angry sometimes, and I can’t control that, but I can decide not to punch my mirror. So it goes with relationships, when a person feels a certain way, don’t punish them for feeling that way. Encourage sharing of those emotions. When you do A it makes me feel B. When you feel B it makes me feel C. In my first relationship we treated these conversations as part of the burden of being close to someone and wanting to be life partners. I feel unloved. When you feel unloved it makes me feel like I’m being a bad partner.

I wanted to bring this mantra back to my relationships with family members. It never seemed to me like we avoided sharing our feelings growing up but I was definitely not as good at it as my friends, which made me suspect that I just could not see our deficiency from where I stood, being deficient myself. So on family vacations I tried to follow my new rules: if it feels like something unspoken has just happened and caused an issue, talk about the unspoken thing. If I have a talent for putting abstract ideas into words, then maybe I can use it to fix this family deficiency, I found myself thinking, as I sat in the car with my parents and my brother on the way to Mount St. Helens, saying to my mom “you can deny that something just happened... but I don’t have great emotional awareness and even I can tell that something just happened.” Putting words into empty space between disjoint understandings seemed to help solve problems. This was more evidence that sharing emotions was an unbounded good thing to do.

Then several months ago, at the end of an emotional conversation I had repeated several times over with my brother, we finished in a place we always finished. When he does A it makes me feel B. He didn’t intend to make me feel B. In this case the subject was Super Smash Brothers Melee, and if that sounds like too childish a thing to get emotional about then just take my word for it that our relationship has a strong mythology built around the game. For many years it was simultaneously the thing that divided us and united us. It was our secret from our parents. It was the only way to get him to spend time with me, and it was the thing that his cool friends all liked. While I played the piano he played Smash, and while the world was happy to accept my talents and praise my practice, fewer people offered positive words about playing Smash. There were bibles and gods. There was crying. I told Mark when he phrases his feedback in a certain way it makes me feel condescended to and it makes me question whether he cares about me and it makes me not have fun. He didn’t intend to make me feel any of that. It’s a game, there’s no point if it’s not fun. So how does this end? Does he need to apologize for making me feel a certain way? Do I need to apologize for feeling a certain way? That would violate the principle that we don’t punish each other for having feelings. But I caught myself in the middle of the automatic thought process, “why did I share those feelings in the first place when I knew it was just going to end here?” “Because sharing feelings fixes problems.” I caught myself and realized that there was a second, more shameful reason I had shared my feelings. Part of me wanted him to feel guilty for making me feel bad. Wanted to cry and show off the pain I was going through so that he would change into something that wouldn’t cause me this pain. (A classic younger sibling tactic.) I had almost glossed over it because of how easy it was to use my practiced justification and deny responsibility. And then I remembered that we don’t control what we feel but we do control how we act. What I felt in that moment was fear that Mark didn’t care about me, and a need to be assured that he does care. So I made a decision to share the feeling. And if you had accused me of purposely trying to shame him in that moment I would have denied it, but because this was me, myself, realizing my mistake and not somebody else pointing it out I was able to accept the truth – part of my decision to share my feelings was because I knew it would lead to getting the validation that I wanted.

In that moment I realized all at once that the sharing of feelings might be an innocent and noble goal, but it can also have an ulterior motive. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t share things that might make others ashamed though. I think the benefit of having a policy of sharing is that it leads to communication. It just means that when we ask ourselves why we felt compelled to share certain emotions with predictable consequences, we should be honest and admit when a little bit of the choice was driven by that secret agenda.

In this same way I do think that Hartley’s piece was meant to have emotional aspects too. I said earlier that I see it as a piece with a thesis and not just personal expression, so maybe I need to backtrack and admit that it’s actually a little of both. I still think it would be dishonest and ill-conceived to dismiss the criticism by saying “it’s not meant to be a rigorous argument,” but when someone has that response I don’t see it as malicious motte-and-bailey-ing. What I see is that although the argument isn’t perfect, the emotional arc of the piece is still really compelling and relatable to this person. This has value, and its not entirely separate from the value we get from carefully considering our viewpoints. As Otium points out,

Splashing around in the Emotion Sandbox often means saying things you don’t really mean, and when people take you literally, you’re deceiving them. Truthful people are also reluctant to jump into the Emotion Sandbox with you, because they want to maintain their own intellectual integrity.

I’m a little bit deficient in emotional awareness. In college I made it my goal to address this and a lot of my choices started involving my own and other people’s feelings. But I don’t want to disavow my natural tendency to be thoughtful about expressing emotions. Hartley does a good job telling an emotional story, and a pretty good job giving a carefully considered argument. Maybe another version of me would have defended it from criticism that exact same way. Ideally I think we should take the experiential knowledge the story imparts while simultaneously asking what it says the truth is. Then I hope that my responses convey a little experiential knowledge too, and get us all even closer to the truth.

[leviathangourmet]

The American College of Pediatricians urges healthcare professionals, educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of male and female, respectively – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident. The exceedingly rare disorders of sex development (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs (also referred to as “intersex”) do not constitute a third sex.1

2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.2,3,4

3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5).5 The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.2,4,5

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.6

5. According to the DSM-5, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.5

6. Pre-pubertal children diagnosed with gender dysphoria may be given puberty blockers as young as eleven, and will require cross-sex hormones in later adolescence to continue impersonating the opposite sex. These children will never be able to conceive any genetically related children even via articifial reproductive technology. In addition, cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.7,8,9,10,11

7. Rates of suicide are nearly twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBTQ – affirming countries.12 What compassionate and reasonable person would condemn young children to this fate knowing that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health?

8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to “gender clinics” where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures they will “choose” a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.

Michelle A. Cretella, M.D. President of the American College of Pediatricians

Quentin Van Meter, M.D. Vice President of the American College of Pediatricians Pediatric Endocrinologist

Paul McHugh, M.D. University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital

CLARIFICATIONS in response to FAQs regarding points 3 & 5:

Regarding Point 3: “Where does the APA or DSM-5 indicate that Gender Dysphoria is a mental disorder?”

The APA (American Psychiatric Association) is the author of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition(DSM-5). The APA states that those distressed and impaired by their GD meet the definition of a disorder. The College is unaware of any medical literature that documents a gender dysphoric child seeking puberty blocking hormones who is not significantly distressed by the thought of passing through the normal and healthful process of puberty. From the DSM-5 fact sheet:

“The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition.” “This condition causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”

Regarding Point 5:  “Where does the DSM-5 list rates of resolution for Gender Dysphoria?”

On page 455 of the DSM-5 under “Gender Dysphoria without a disorder of sex development” it states: “Rates of persistence of gender dysphoria from childhood into adolescence or adulthood vary. In natal males, persistence has ranged from 2.2% to 30%. In natal females, persistence has ranged from 12% to 50%.”  Simple math allows one to calculate that for natal boys: resolution occurs in as many as 100% – 2.2% = 97.8% (approx. 98% of gender-confused boys)  Similarly, for natal girls: resolution occurs in as many as 100% – 12% = 88% gender-confused girls

The bottom line is this:  Our opponents advocate a new scientifically baseless standard of care for children with a psychological condition (GD) that would otherwise resolve after puberty for the vast majority of patients concerned.  Specifically, they advise:  affirmation of children’s thoughts which are contrary to physical reality; the chemical castration of these children prior to puberty with GnRH agonists (puberty blockers which cause infertility, stunted growth, low bone density, and an unknown impact upon their brain development), and, finally, the permanent sterilization of these children prior to age 18 via cross-sex hormones. There is an obvious self-fulfilling nature to encouraging young GD children to impersonate the opposite sex and then institute pubertal suppression. If a boy who questions whether or not he is a boy (who is meant to grow into a man) is treated as a girl, then has his natural pubertal progression to manhood suppressed, have we not set in motion an inevitable outcome? All of his same sex peers develop into young men, his opposite sex friends develop into young women, but he remains a pre-pubertal boy. He will be left psychosocially isolated and alone. He will be left with the psychological impression that something is wrong. He will be less able to identify with his same sex peers and being male, and thus be more likely to self identify as “non-male” or female. Moreover, neuroscience reveals that the pre-frontal cortex of the brain which is responsible for judgment and risk assessment is not mature until the mid-twenties. Never has it been more scientifically clear that children and adolescents are incapable of making informed decisions regarding permanent, irreversible and life-altering medical interventions. For this reason, the College maintains it is abusive to promote this ideology, first and foremost for the well-being of the gender dysphoric children themselves, and secondly, for all of their non-gender-discordant peers, many of whom will subsequently question their own gender identity, and face violations of their right to bodily privacy and safety.

[jenbrookmodel]

Cathy Keen

Artist statement on The Act project: click HERE

Cathy Keen, Lapdancer

With seventeen years’ experience under her rhinestone bikini belt, Cathy Keen’s interpretation of female power leaves us questioning what society has taught us. The thirty-six year old began erotic dancing in order to pay university fees. However nearly two decades on and with regular clients forming lasting bonds (so much, that she has met a few of their wives), she says that the choice to work in the sex industry is what defines feminism; she is not a victim of force.

Cathy tells us of the underground world, that despite dipping in and out of for many years, has never truly left her. As a property developer for three years, boasting a bachelor's degree to her name, brains and drive are not something Ms Keen lacks. Yet the flexible hours, generous wage and supportive family-like environment of the strip club can never be quite matched by the unsatisfying normality of the 9-5 corporate world.

She recalls the beginnings of her dancing days derived from casual hostessing; “We drink with customers and take commission from their bill so they don’t feel like they’re paying for our company.” Whilst it sounds all champagne on ice and wild parties to us, Cathy explains the psyche of the club’s clients, the relationship with her regulars and the role she has acquired as an unqualified therapist.

“In between these four walls...” *points to the black paint between the glistening coloured spotlights of the dark club* “...I connect with people in a way I cannot beyond that steel door. I can slide underneath the exterior shell we build up in the ‘real’ world. You’re automatically unarmed inside here”.

The plot thickens.

“My job specification isn’t just dancing and stripping. I’m a listener; an agony aunt. I am a constant companion to those who feel alone. I’m not going anywhere or too bored to listen. I’m an outside ear who can provide support and comfort. As a dancer, it’s not like escorting because we can’t fulfill those who come here with sexual frustrations. We just tease and we help those who want to be heard. I actually prefer international rules, which means there can be physical, but not sexual contact. That way I can sit on the client and get close - and as long as they’re respectful of boundaries, you can connect on a deeper level that way; something that truly lends something else to the experience. It’s not graphic, more sensual actually.”

As an advocate for ‘international rules’, we feel obliged to ask the question if Cathy feels attracted to her clients, or indeed if she has ever met a boyfriend at work.

“I don’t have to be attracted or feel chemistry to feel some sort of connection. In fact some are just like mannequins to me. But I do try to ‘like’ all of my customers to make it a positive experience for them. I think that’s really important. I’ve been on two dates with clients. One was terrible and the other was much later in my career and I was deeply connected to that person. Men often try to ask for more - I’m probably propositioned most nights. They’re actually quite creative and eloquent with pushing their luck! I understand though, they want to feel like they got something more, as though I’m providing more than my job requires. I’ve been offered large sums of money for sex in the past, but I’ve never felt the need to go that far. I’m sometimes paid £600 per hour just to talk, so I wouldn’t be tempted by much. Plus I have a good lifestyle where a few grand isn’t going to change my life dramatically. It’s important to know that the girls who do ‘extras’ are tempted by proximity because they want to, not because they have to. Those girls don’t tend to last long as a dancer.”

On the topic of money, what Cathy earns is of course the elephant in the room topic we want to delve into. In the company of such an honest and open character, we waste no time in asking her to expand on the subject.

“There are two types of girl in the stripclub - 'good time' girls and girls who want to earn as much money as possible for doing as little as they can. In my experience, strippers are more like the latter - divas! With regards to wages, on a really quiet night if nobody shows up, you can end up in debt to the club. This hasn’t happened to me in a long time, but it can. However, some girls will earn £20,000 in one night if they’re with a customer who is in love with them and willing to part with that kind of cash. I once made £7000 in one night from a regular who didn’t even buy a private dance. Instead I spent time in the VIP suite keeping him company, hoarding his attention all night.”

Since we’ve covered sex and money, our conversation progresses onto drugs. The industry is presumed rife with recreational drug use, supposedly to ‘zone out’ of the infliction of ‘horrors’ from the sex trade. Yet every woman we have encountered thus far, has not once described themselves in need of escapism.

“Drugs play a part in my recreational life. But if we’re only talking work, then no. Even on a separate level to professionalism, drugs shut me down emotionally so I can’t take them at work for that reason. When I’m on a night out, I don’t have to watch my P’s and Q’s or take money from people - I can relax on drugs, but not at at the stripclub. It pays to be focused in the work environment. I can’t imagine that’s exclusive to my job.”

Although there have been times when Cathy has felt like she has no other options, where her lack of professional skills have almost strangled her, she goes on to tell us how much freedom she has had in her life built from dancing; the liberations of independence and self-sufficiency.

“I’m a wife, a mother and trained property developer now, but I look back over the last decade and I remember all the places I’ve been, the cars I have driven and the people I have met. I know it all sounds very materialistic, but it’s more about life experiences to me. I cannot express how intense the comradery is here; the sisterhood amongst the dancers is like no other. We know each other and recognise fragile states and we work through them together. We’re family.”

As a wife and a mother, we had to ask Cathy about her own family. Having already touched upon the pro’s of flexible working hours, we are curious to know if her controversial occupation has ever been an issue to those closest to her. “I was already dancing when I met my partner, so it’s never been a problem because it’s always been a part of me. He knew who I was from the start. Strangely enough, when I had my son, it made me think I was only living for him. But dancing allows me to do something for me and recognise my femininity. I am proud to be independent, but does that make me a feminist?”

“I don’t like to label myself as a feminist because it socially represents the women who have fought to end my line of work - but taking my clothes off for money empowers me. I’m not a victim of anything or anyone. I feel empowered by everything I do. Men enjoy how I look, like I enjoy how other women look, but I’m not sexually attracted to them. Feminists tend to think dancing goes against the equality that women have fought for, but when I can choose to do a job that I enjoy and still earn a substantial wage from doing it - can taking my clothes off really be anti-feminist? There is a kind of ethereal quality to femininity that you are encouraged to promote in a strip club; a type that women aren't allowed to display in a normal workplace. I enjoy being able to project my gender openly without being judged for it and being supported by not only men, but also the women around me.”

“People find me sexually attractive for my body and sexuality is a great power, not a terrible weakness. I don’t necessarily want to be considered a feminist because I find the inequality between men and women very beautiful. Men have strengths as well as weaknesses, as do women, both in very different ways (with exceptions to the rule). If you try to fight a man in a man’s way, you won’t win...because he’s a man. In the same way a man can’t fight a woman in a woman’s way...because she’s a woman. To me, feminism isn’t about a small group of women deciding what they think is best for womankind as a whole, it’s about being able to make a choice - and stripping is something I want to do. Surely that’s the definition of pro-feminism.”

Standing before us in a red lace bodice, her naturally small breasts and admirable fitness physique already contradicts our misconceptions before she speaks. When she opens her mouth, Cathy is an educated graduate, a mother and a monogamous lover with wisdom beyond her youth-full years. With a captivating understanding of true femininity, culture, society and equality beyond many politician’s capability, clever Cathy is all woman. 

Writer: Jen Brook

Photographer: Julia Fullerton Batten

From the internationally published art series, The Act, 2016.

Catch Julia talking about her work and The Act, at The Photography Show, on Tuesday 21st March. 

** Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jenbrookmodelling Instagram @jen_brook_ & my website www.jenbrook.com **

[astranoengsol]

An Introduction

   Hi there and welcome to my blog for my women’s and gender studies English literature class! From this semester, we have watched and read several moving pieces from women of all different cultures and backgrounds. I loved reading and watching every single assignment (which hardly felt like an assignment at all!). What I noticed was that all of them were making a call for change to reach a goal of recognizing women and giving them the rights they deserve. This idea of making change was presented to us in a variety of ways. What I found to be most prevalent was the need for education and resiliency, as well as the topic of tradition.

   The first and foremost important step into making change is to learn about the issue at hand. Having vast knowledge of a topic, whether it be something seemingly insignificant like types of tea or something of grand complexity like astrophysics, leads us to an endless horizon of possibility. Simply put, having knowledge is having power. It also leads us to be more compassionate and understanding of one another. I like to think that intersectionality fits well into the topic of learning. As Kimberlé Crenshaw presented to us in her TED Talk on intersectionality, we find that intersectionality is all about learning about each others circumstances, strengths, weaknesses, and so on. If you were to Google the definition of intersectionality, your result would be as follows, “The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage”. Being cognizant of the fact that not every person, not every woman, has the exact same experience due to a plethora of different factors. An example of this is easily seen through the struggle that women share to obtain gender equality in the workplace. While all women can probably relate to this being an issue in their life, the experience can vary greatly for women who are the minority or women who have a learning disability OR even more so for women who are a minority AND have a learning disability. Becoming aware of and understanding these differences and their existence bring us together and bring us closer to finding solutions to our problems. I felt that Sisonke Msimang also emphasized in her TED Talk that having knowledge is crucial, especially when it comes to situations that evoke high levels of emotion. Having the solid facts/knowledge paired with raw emotion brings a situation to a holistic view. Moreover, learning should never stop; it is continuous. Those who think they have nothing else to learn are in fact the most ignorant of them all and it is ignorance that hurts us the most. This is where we see the importance of learning really shine through.

   Going hand in hand with change is resiliency. We will face challenges, adversities, road blocks; what have you; and in order to come back from these, we must be resilient. If women were to stop trying to reach their goals every time they were told what they wanted was not possible, who knows what our society would look like today. Thankfully, what is so unique about women is their power and ability to bounce back. This course has introduced us to so many new, strong women and shown us that there are strong women all around us and within us. Later in my blog, you will find a short poem by Nikita Gill that I came across while looking for media that encompassed resilient women. I love that I found this especially because in a way I feel like it indirectly addresses the stereotype that women are only meant to be care takers. Gill writes, “…She was water. Quenching the thirst of every dying creature. She gave and she gave until she turned form sea to desert”. One might look at this and think that women are just caregivers and nurturers for others, when in fact they are so much more than that. Just when they seem to have given out all they have to offer, they find the strength to do impossible. I also like that this poem mentions pain as it connects with my other quote by Eileen McDargh. When I was thinking about the influential women in my life and more specifically, resilient ones, my mind immediately went to Eileen McDargh. I met McDargh at a women’s event at my internship last summer. She had so many incredible things to say and so many pieces of advice to share when it came to being a resilient woman. Most notably, McDargh says, “Resiliency is NOT about pain. It’s about possibility”. When coming to the face of adversity, I think we tend to focus on the pain that we feel. Sometimes we get stuck and give up hope. But challenges come to us and it is more so about how we handle the challenge than it is about how far it brings us down. I love that McDargh brings this to our attention. When women shift their focus to what they can change and their possibilities, they become limitless.

   Finally, I would like to touch base on how tradition plays a role here. Tradition can date back several hundreds of years or only a few months. Regardless, it is important to understand that tradition can strongly influence the way one behaves, believes, and places value on things. More often than not, tradition is deeply rooted and for that reason, it is hard to break away from. I think oftentimes, tradition is what holds women back from making the change they really want to see. There can be a lot of hesitation when contemplating tradition because one can face backlash from society, rejection from loved ones, and so on. Kavita Ramdas presented us with a riveting TED Talk this semester. What stood out the most to me was when she said, “Feminism, unlike almost every other social movement, is not a struggle against a distinct oppressor - it’s not the ruling class or the occupiers or the colonizers - it’s against a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that we women, far too often, hold ourselves”. From this we see that gender inequality is sometimes more about the battle that women fight within themselves in choosing to adhere to tradition or not. Building off of this, something that is very strongly based on tradition is religion (one could also think of religion as a type of tradition). Religion was a prevalent theme throughout this semester’s readings and moreover, the power religion has over an individual. Like tradition, religion plays a large role in shaping the ideas, beliefs, and values of an individual. I found that religion played a significant part in Elif Shafak’s novel, Three Daughters of  Eve. In the novel though, it was more about the conflict and confusion religion brought about. Religion is by no means an easy concept to ponder. One part of the novel that was really profound to me was the main character, Peri, recognizing this fact as she writes, “God was a maze without a map, a circle without a centre; the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that never seemed to fit together”. You might be wondering how religion relates to my blog…to understand that, you must revisit the idea of  change. Change can be tangibly seen as achieved when it is put into legislation or law. It is not uncommon to hear a phrase along the lines of “separation of church and state”. This is simply not true (that conversation is a beast to tackle on a different day). So if religion and politics are interwoven, and religion/tradition is difficult to understand and break away from, we can see how change can be difficult to achieve. However, if women can recognize this (learning!) and find ways to over come this challenge (resiliency!) then they can start seeing results! On a side note, this is not to say that women should abandon tradition all together. Tradition at the same time can bring people together and create a sense of belonging and comfort. Finding the right balance of embracing tradition and rewriting it is key in the feminist movement.

   In short, I hope you will see how learning, resiliency, and tradition play critical roles in making advancements in gender equality. Women are incredible and should be celebrated! Again, I have highly enjoyed the content of this course this semester and I encourage my audience to go out and discover strong women in society and become advocates for change!