#man that just reminds me of the misogyny in all of his bullying INCLUDING from wwx. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

donnerpartyofone · 5 years ago

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while i’m apparently still in confession mode for some dark reason:

after i told that awful story yesterday about the degrading one night stand that an older male friend spent a year bullying me into, i started thinking about all the cliches that are sold to us about the sexuality of precocious young women: what it means for us to navigate the devious emotional traps set out by the jealous and covetous world around us. what i mean is, there’s this whole gothic narrative that never stops circulating, involving beautiful, talented, intelligent, sensitive young women who are advanced enough to start exploring their own desires independently, but not experienced enough to identify the (typically) older male predators who hunt them. these men take advantage of their uninformed curiosity, leveraging their prey’s desire to grow up faster in order to control, possess, and abuse them. while this narrative is inherently criminal, society never seems willing to fully denounce it, preferring to preserve its erotic potency for a wide and slavering audience. the iconography of this narrative is mostly derived from Lolita–

[which btw our cultural failure to see that book as anything other than a “love story” is really disturbing and speaks volumes about our willingness to project our grossest ideas wherever we want, even when other interpretations (like “black comedy”) are abundantly available]

–a mature but fragile adolescent with that /special something/ innocently hypnotizes a genteel older man whose sophistication belies his uncontrollable animal desire for her, which is less His Problem than it is a natural response to her beauty and charm; a forbidden love affair ensues. when i was young, i swallowed this concept hook line and sinker, hoping it would happen to me some day! i hated dumb little boys my own age, and i felt that if some Humbert Humbert type were to flatter me with his highly curated attention, then i would know that i had truly arrived.

“sadly”, i made it through high school and college without ever knowing that validating thrill. i wasted the latter half of my 20s on an abusive relationship with a guy two years younger than me, who often argued that he should be allowed to wreck my life however he wanted because he was “less mature” than i was and deserved more leeway. as i turned 30, i met the extraordinary person i would marry. i felt a profound sense of relief, entering my 30s; i had finished with so many of my old delusions, and the pulverizing pressure to have The Time of Your Life throughout one’s 20s had finally lifted. i looked back on my youth, thinking of it as a period of dreary, pointless misery in which “nothing really happened”, good or bad. but recently, when i started to think about it with greater focus, i realized that some shit really DID happened to me. i had just completely ignored it, because i thought of it as the fruits of my own bad taste.

throughout junior high, i had a bizarre rapport with a guy in his early 20s–”nothing happened”, as they say, but this guy was sort of a freak and a loner, and i’m probably lucky that there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for something TO happen. then my supposed best friend, jealous of even this non-event in my sad little existence, forced a relationship with a 30 year old man out of nowhere, and competitively abused my ears with a lot of gnarly details about their horrible sex life. then in high school, my first two boyfriends were both pretentious manipulative dickheads in their 20s who really had no business bothering someone who wasn’t old enough to vote. some of my friends suffered from the same problem, though we all just felt like we were becoming independent young women or something. then there’s some other stuff with an older classmate who was abundantly aware of how emotionally unstable i was, and took appalling advantage of that for a long time, and i probably won’t ever be brave enough to talk about it. then in college i briefly “dated” a guy around 50 with whom luckily nothing bad happened before i got rid of him, but like, it really wasn’t cool, looking back–he made me feel incredibly obligated, and as he only informed me mid-stream, he was married with children. then i spent the rest of college getting dragged through the mud by a guy in his 30s who used his professional clout and well-honed manipulative abilities to “take my virginity” (a phrase and concept i hate, but which applies here), which he was very excited about; it would have been best if he had just abandoned me after that, as so many assholes do, because he then cultivated a long tawdry and extremely damaging soap opera between us, the only point of which was to make trouble for his actual girlfriend, who was ALSO much younger than him. and the end of college and slightly after, i developed another intense connection with a man a few decades older, who would never quite initiate a relationship, but who was insidiously manipulative and made me feel terrible when i eventually got a real (age-appropriate) boyfriend, as if i owed him something; i later found out he did the same thing to another girl that i know, who is substantially younger. the terrible one night stand, previously discussed, was just a gross little footnote to this disgusting history…

…but the thing is, i never, at any time, felt like i had taken part in the overheated archetypal drama that society has built up around may-december romances. i didn’t even see myself as a victim of the bad behavior of adults, of people who should and did know better; i just felt separate from the whole thing, even though i had fantasized about it so much as a kid. the thing is, at the same time that the Lolita narrative is inappropriately romanticized, it does provide an opportunity to see the girl as a potential victim, a Little Red Riding Hood who enters a perilous erotic negotiation with a Big Bad Wolf. because i didn’t see myself as the heroine of my own iteration of this overly familiar story, i didn’t recognize the degree to which i’d been exploited by people who knew to use my youth and inexperience against me. i just blamed myself. and the reason for all this is really sad: i simply didn’t feel attractive. in my mind, the vulnerable nymphet was always delicate, doe-like, elegant; clothes hung on her alluring frame in a way that created a dizzying paradox between her youth and her emerging maturity; she could dance, play music, or write touching poetry; she was preternaturally irresistible even to “good men”. she had to be liv tyler in STEALING BEAUTY (*barf*) or some shit; only somebody that compelling could star as the doomed princess in society’s well-loved fairy tale about statutory rape. personally, i perceived myself as ugly, awkward, socially burdensome, and most importantly, the kind of girl who should count herself extremely lucky to be the center of anybody’s attention, even temporarily. because i didn’t see myself as a damsel in distress who deserved protection and sympathy, i failed to spot my own victimization. i thought of my history of increasingly negative and abusive encounters with older men as a matter of bad luck, bad judgment on my own part, and ultimately, “the best i could do” if i wanted any kind of affection. so i guess the irony is that if i had identified myself as a desirable dolores hayes type, then yes, i would have been in serious danger of fetishizing my own mistreatment–but on the other hand, i would have had a more realistic framework for understanding the sinister thing that was happening to me. unfortunately, the other side of the misogyny coin–not the side that turns you into a sex object, but the side that excludes you from feeling sexually worthy at all–prevented me from noticing that that awful Little Red Riding Hood cliche had already happened to me several times over.

tl;dr - when misogyny convinces you that you have nothing to steal, then it’s hard to tell when misogynists are trying to rob you.

it’s funny to start recognizing this only now that i’m approaching 40. i see a lot of young women on tumblr heroically fighting to strike a balance between enjoying their kinks and avoiding the corrupt elements in their communities–all the while trying to stay aware of how their personal history and mental health plays into this drama. some of them are way farther along in that philosophical journey than i was at their age, and i really admire the work they’re doing. i’m writing this more for the ones who don’t even know that they’re already a part of this struggle, because they haven’t learned to see themselves as desirable enough to be included in it. that is to say, i wrote this for myself; but i have a sneaking suspicion that someone else out there needs to hear it, too.

This post brought to you in part by the very beginning of CABIN IN THE WOODS, which, while not a deep film in any way, features a salient moment in which College Girl #1 tries to tell College Girl #2 that the professor who took advantage of her is a scumbag, and College Girl #2 defends him, humbly and maturely replying: “I knew what I was getting into.” The blood freezes in my veins when I think of how many times I said something like this about someone who did not deserve my defense. If you got dicked over, literally and/or figuratively, by someone older, sober-er, and/or more experienced than you, then this is your gentle reminder that you really cannot be accused of knowing what you’re getting into.

#gpoy

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scarleteenconfidential · 7 years ago

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Scarleteen Confidential: Helping Youth Handle Rejection

It's a painful reality that shootings and other acts of mass violence are horrifically common in the U.S, spreading grief to individuals, families, and communities. Each time the news breaks about a new incident, we find ourselves in the midst of a cycle of “why does this happen and how can we stop it” news stories, op eds, and social media debates. It’s exhausting, heart-wrenching, and frustrating all at once. And even though we’re seeing measures, many of them youth-led, to change the laws around gun access and school safety, the average adult may feel a bit helpless in the face of recurring violence.

One factor in these violent incidents that is only recently being widely acknowledged is the role misogyny and entitlement play in driving the young men who commit these acts. A recurring pattern is that they are turned down by a specific young woman, or believe that women are somehow denying them the love and sex they’re owed, and decide to exact violent revenge for these slights. While there are other elements, such as gun access, that play a role in these incidents, we cannot ignore the ways entitlement and rage act as motivators.

In the aftermath of the Santa Fe High shooting, this Twitter thread about young men learning to accept a “no” drew attention to the ways in which adults can change the messages young people are getting about gender, dating, and rejection. These tweets highlight the fact that young people don’t arrive at their conclusions about appropriate romantic behavior in a vacuum; they’re influenced by a myriad of messages, including input from the adults in their lives. Sometimes that input includes ideas that end up exacerbating issues around rejection and dating.

One of the ways we can work towards a world in which acts like this no longer happen, a world in which people, and women in particular, aren’t afraid their “no” will make them a target of violence, is to make a concerted effort to help the young people in our lives learn to deal with rejection in healthy ways. With that in mind, we’ve put together recommendations to assist adults in doing exactly that.

Ditching Gender Notions

A few days ago, I was doing an outreach session with a group of young men. One of our discussion questions was about rejection and how to handle it, which branched out to talking about how to be respectful of someone when asking for a date and the way that certain gender norms get in the way of explicit communication about desire. The young men talked about wanting to be sure they weren’t coming off as pushy or creepy, and wanting to be aware of the boundaries of the young women they were interested in.

Why do I bring this up?

Because one of the most insidious sources feeding the bad advice adults give young people is that there are certain toxic behaviors that are “just how boys are” or “just how girls are.” And that, to successfully get a date, one has to either put up with or push past those behaviors. The best example of this is the idea that women never say what they mean, so when they say, “no, I don’t want to date you” what they really mean is, “keep trying.” The reverse of this is that many young women grow up being told that all boys are pushy and that they should just learn to deal with it. What this results in is a dynamic where boys feel like they should keep asking a girl out after she says no, and girls feel like there’s little they can do to make those asks stop, and everyone ends up feeling cruddy.

The conversation I had with the young men at outreach demonstrates how reductive and inaccurate those beliefs about gender are, and how open young people are to figuring out how to respect boundaries and learning ways to accept rejection gracefully. The vast majority of young people want to be conscious of boundaries and avoid being jerks. Changing the discussions we have with them about consent and rejection doesn’t require pushing against some immutable gender characteristics; it requires some open, honest, and occasionally awkward conversations.

Respecting Boundaries

You can help the young people in your life learn how to respect boundaries by leading by example. That includes asking for permission to touch people and honoring their answers, not trying to argue your way around rules, and handling rejection as gracefully as possible. It helps to be extra-respectful of young people’s boundaries when you interact with them. In doing so, you’re offering them a model to follow for what a respectful reaction to a boundary looks like. You’re also reinforcing the idea that respecting a boundary is the default. That means they’ll know that pushing or arguing the boundary is not what they’re “supposed” to do, and that if someone is doing it to them it’s a sign that person may not be safe to be around. This approach also helps them understand that it’s okay to set boundaries, and that doing so doesn’t make them unreasonable or mean.

A time where respecting boundaries can be tricky for young people is when they find themselves crushing on someone. Crushes can make people act like lovesick puppies, complete with the disregard for boundaries usually found in small, highly-excitable dogs. It may be tempting, as an adult, to encourage some of those puppyish behaviors. Maybe you fondly remember your first few crushes, the bubbly, happy feeling of finding out your crush liked you back and the young love that came after that. And heck, it can be quite an “aww” moment to watch the young people in your lives find happiness and romance. So, you encourage the young person to do what they can to make their feelings known and win their crushee’s affection.

In your excitement, don’t lose sight of the fact that the line between “sweet crush” behavior and “oh my god please leave me alone” behavior is a thin one. If the young person in your life has been turned down by their crush, you can offer a sympathetic ear (or a hug) if they want one. But please don’t advise them to keep trying until their crush relents and agrees to date them. We don’t live in a romantic comedy universe; we live in a universe where people are likely to get increasingly freaked out if someone they turned down for a date or dumped keeps showing up at their lunch table with flowers or declarations of love.

While we’re on the subject of declarations of affection, if we want to create a world where rejection doesn’t result in deadly consequences, we need to stuff the idea of “just give them a chance” into the trash. That saying seems innocuous, maybe even kind, at first glance, but it reinforces deeply unhelpful notions about boundaries.

Firstly, it tells people who assert their boundaries and turn someone down that they’re being mean, unreasonable, and should ignore their own boundaries in order to let someone have romantic or sexual access to them.

It also sets up an expectation in the asker, especially if they are a young man, that they are owed a chance to date whoever catches their eye. That little seed of entitlement can easily grow into resentment and anger. If a guy grows up thinking women should just give him a chance and encounters the reality of women with boundaries and preferences that don’t include him, he could feel he’s being cheated of something he has a right to. And if he feels cheated, there’s unfortunately a chance that he’ll take his anger out on that woman and other bystanders.

Instead of the “just give them a chance” approach, you could encourage young people to use the “ask once” policy in their social circles. Put simply, the policy means that you get to ask a person out once and if they say “no” that’s the end of it unless they voluntarily come back later with an “actually…” at which point the clock resets and you can ask again. This approach is great because it has clear rules and expectations. It removes some of the stress from the interaction since everyone is taking the words exchanged at face value. No one has to worry about their boundaries being disrespected or someone saying something they don’t really mean.

Because some reports of the recent shootings have cast the perpetrators as “bullied,” it may also help to remind the young people in your life (and maybe some adults) that turning down someone for a date or otherwise not returning their romantic interest is not the same as bullying. Bullying is actively singling out people to mock or torment, not telling someone “no” when what they want to hear is “yes.”

It’s also important to remember that young people, especially young women, often have their initial “no” ignored by the person pursuing them. If that happens often enough, or the person just will not leave them alone, they may start saying “no” in increasingly forceful ways. If their boundaries were ignored when they said something gentle like, “oh, I’m not interested, sorry” they might resort to the “knock it off and LEAVE ME ALONE” approach to defend them. To a person who hasn’t witnessed the previous conversations, that reaction could seem cruel or unnecessary. But if a young person has hit that level of force in defending their boundaries, chances are there were many smaller boundary pushes leading up to that moment.

Handling rejection

If a young person in your life is rejected by someone they’re interested in, there are two approaches that can be helpful.

The first is to acknowledge just how much rejection sucks and validate whatever they’re feeling. As with break-ups, they could be feeling sad, angry, disappointed, numb, or a host of other emotions. Ask them what they need right then, whether that’s space to listen to sad songs and cry or a sympathetic ear, and offer it if you can. Having a supportive person in their life can take some of the sting out of rejection.

Rejection also offers a chance to talk with the young person about how they can get through and bounce back when they don’t get what they want. Rejection doesn’t solely show up in the romantic parts of life; it crops up in work, in school, in friendships, and all sorts of other places. So, learning to handle rejection early on in life can help them be more resilient as they get older. It also helps them be the kind of person other people feel safe around. If they’re known as the person who was bummed but respectful when turned down for a date, or who was sad but supportive when their friend made the team and they didn’t, they’re going to find that people are more inclined to be around and trust them because they’ve shown they won’t take their disappointment out on everybody else.

When you’re talking to young people about romantic rejection, there are a few different points you can bring up to help them feel better:

Rejection is often about different preferences or needs, not about their inherent worth as a person. Being turned down by a crush doesn’t mean they don’t have lots to offer as an individual; it means the person they approached is looking for something different and that’s okay. There’s a lot of chance involved in finding a person you’re interested in dating who’s also interested in dating you, which means sooner or later everyone gets turned down by someone they like.

The person who rejected them is not the only person in the world. I don’t mean this in the “there are plenty of fish in the sea” way, although that’s certainly true. Rather, it can be helpful to help a young person notice all the people in their life who care about them and do want to spend time with them. That shifts the focus away from the pain of the rejection and onto the more positive feelings of support and affection. This can also be a good time to encourage them to do self-care. Sometimes, when a bunch of energy has been focused on a crush or a romantic relationship, people forget to nurture their relationship with themselves. The period of time that comes after rejection is a great opportunity to do that.

Don’t view it as a dead end. Rejection can feel like opening a door to what you thought was a room full of treasure only to smack face-first into a brick wall. A way to rebound from rejection is to think about the disappointment in new ways. What do you have the opportunity to do now that you know the outcome? Is there anything to learn from the experience?

Rejection is a part of life, and it’s also a sign that you’re living. If you never take the risk of sharing your feelings with someone or asking if they’d like to get to know you better, you never get to the chance to see what might come from those confessions. Rejection is proof that you’re trying, and that you’ve got the courage to keep doing so.

Even if you help the young people in your life learn that rejection is not the end of the world, there’s no guarantee that they won’t turn their anger or disappointment on others. But just because we can’t prevent every negative outcome doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try to change the conversations and expectations young people have boundaries and rejection. The more we help young people build a culture where everyone’s boundaries are respected, and no one feels they are owed access to another person, the better chance we have of creating a safer, more peaceful world for generations to come.

-Sam

This is part of our series for parents or guardians. To find out more about the series, click here. For our top five guiding principles for parents or guardians, click here; for a list of resources, click here. To see all posts in the series, click the Scarleteen Confidential tag at Scarleteen, or follow the series here on Tumblr at scarleteenconfidential.tumblr.com.

#scarleteen #Scarleteen Confidential #advice #parents #families #violence #school shootings #rejection #boundaries #crushes #dating

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americanpsycho1991 · 7 years ago

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Once again i’d like to remind any “anti-terf” people that all you have to do to be considered a “terf” is to say that women should have the right to choose their own sexual partners. The person whose url I blocked out is guilty of nothing more than being a lesbian and saying she doesn’t appreciate being harassed for not being sexually interested in males. She said to please stop calling all lesbians TERFs just for being lesbians. You can see what happened.

(the same person made both these posts). In the second post, “transphobic genital preference discourse” and saying they “agree with trans women on the matter” means they think lesbians should be obligated to fuck transwomen (males) on the basis of validating their gender identity. Women are not allowed sexual autonomy according to trans activism. this is rape culture and hate speech against lesbians.

Notice they don’t say they agree with trans people on the matter, they say trans women. This is because there is no horde of transmen sending bombardments of sexually violent threats towards gay men for not sleeping with them. Transmen don’t harass straight women for not dating them. This is because transmen are female, and socialized female, and thus are not raised within a society which imparts upon them a sense of narcissistic sexual entitlement to the bodies of those of the opposite sex. Transwomen are male, and were socialized male, and while plenty of transwomen are perfectly understanding that not everyone will be interested in them due to their sex (much like men), many of them are outraged that female homosexuality exists, and have decided that it’s a human rights offence. You’ll also note that transwomen don’t harass straight men about their sexual preferences. This is because males are socialized to believe that female bodies are their property, not male bodies, and of course because straight males aren’t as easy to bully and harass. Seriously, when was the last time you saw someone call a straight man a violent transphobe for not “including transwomen” in his “genital preferences”?

Speaking against this makes you a violent transphobe, apparently. Saying homosexuality exists on the basis of sex rather than gender makes you violent. Saying that gendered socialization exists (the foundation and most basic principle of even the most watered-down feminism) the makes you violent, because it makes transwomen feel “invalidated.” Anything that makes transwomen feel invalidated, regardless of how factually accurate or relevant to women’s rights it is -- saying that sexual dimorphism exists, saying that it’s a male privilege to never have to worry about abortion rights or menstruation stigma, saying that gender is an oppressive social construct rather than an innate identity, saying that sexuality is based on sex rather than an internal sense of gender, saying women have the right to basic sexual autonomy -- is now considered hate speech.

Where are trans men in all of this? I can’t speak for their opinions, but I can see how they are treated. Like all females in trans activism, they are thrown under the bus to benefit males. They cannot discuss their female socialization because it is violence to imply that transwomen were socialized male. They cannot discuss their sex-based issues like objectification, abortion, and menstruation because it is violence to imply that transwomen have any form of male privilege. Transmen are told that they are privileged, entitled males, and they are told to shut up. Ironically, feminists who make an effort to create female spaces and include transmen in them are called “trans-exclusionary.” This is because male trans people are the only people considered important in trans activism. If you exclude transwomen, you are considered hateful. Transmen pay the price for this male supremacy; like women, they are silenced and placed second to male issues.

Only according to male supremacist socialization is sexual rejection considered an act of bigotry or violence. You see it with MRAs, you see it with the “friendzone,” and curiously, you see it in trans activism.

Other things you see a lot of in trans activism is males telling females to shut up about our bodies. We cannot talk about abortion because it is “exclusionary.” So is menstruation. Discussing gendered socialization is of course out of the question. Talking about vulvas or vaginas is considered disgusting; I’ve seen trans activists describe female anatomy as a “nightmarish lump of flesh” and of course, famously, the “pussily cavity.” Speaking ill of male anatomy, or even so much as saying “it’s fine, but I’m not interested” can get you rape threats for a month.

I’ve spoken against the rampant misogyny and silencing of women’s rights in trans activism before, but the person whose url I blocked out is guilty of nothing more than being a lesbian and wanting to be allowed to choose the sex of her own partners. If you think this makes her, or anyone else, a bigot or a transphobe, you are part of the problem.

You are a rape apologist. You are a homophobe. You are a misogynist. There is no getting around those facts. I don’t care how much pomo, faux-academic verbiage you try to dress it up in; saying females do not have the right to discuss the oppression we face because of our sex is misogyny. Telling gay people to “critically examine” their “exclusionary genital fetish” is literally conversion therapy, and it is disgustingly homophobic.

Both transmen and transwomen can have a place in the struggle for human rights, but to elevate transwomen at the expense of all females; to co-opt our spaces and silence us, to threaten us with rape and physical violence just for wanting the freedom to choose our sexual partners; is unacceptable. It is not trans rights, because it throws transmen under the bus along with all other females. It is not feminism, in fact it is the very opposite. It is pure male supremacy.

Anyone who speaks up against this is demonized; anyone who so much as points out “hey we’re calling an awful lot of lesbians TERFs just for being lesbians” is now a TERF. Anyone who thinks we need female-only spaces is a TERF (again, you can include transmen as much as you like, but as soon as you say “this space isn’t really relevant to transwomen” you’re “trans-exclusionary”). Anyone who thinks sex-based oppression is real is a TERF. Anyone who believes in basic biology is a TERF. Anyone who thinks women deserve sexual autonomy is a TERF. Any female who posts about her own body is a TERF (“don’t talk about your period or your vulva, it could be alienating to transwomen”). Any lesbian is a TERF. But people aren’t that stupid. Eventually people come to realize that many of the people called TERFs are trans themselves, or have done nothing other than be born homosexual, or are simply advocating for female rights.

This has to stop. The witch-hunting has to stop. You need to realize that “terf” is not just applied to transphobes, but to anyone who falls behind the ever-unreachable expectations of trans activism, or who simply dares to disagree. “Terfs” aren’t the ones out there murdering trans people; that’s men. “Terfs” aren’t the ones forcing vulnerable trans people into prostitution; that’s men. So why is so much of trans activism dedicated to “fighting” against the apparently lethal wave of evil terf attacks? (you should read that link but I”m putting a MAJOR warning for sexual violence)

Because women make easier targets than the entire system of patriarchy.

Because it’s easy to get misogynists on your side when the target is “women who speak up.”

Because it’s always easy to hate women. It’s always easy to hate lesbians.

Don’t be a fucking dumbass. If you mean transphobe, say transphobe. Stop using “terf” because all you’re doing is enabling the kind of vile misogynistic harassment in the link above. Those are the people you’re aligning yourself with, like it or not. Those are your new allies. Don’t question anything they say, or you’ll be the next target. Stopped idolizing a transwoman because it turned out they were a rapist? You’re a TERF now, you’re about to get a hundred messages asking you why you HATE TRANS WOMEN and telling you to choke to death in the most graphic, sexually violent way possible. Express distaste at examples like women being kicked out of a women’s shelter because they expressed discomfort with the sexually predatory behavior of a transwoman? You’ll get the same response. Reblog a meme from someone who’s committed one of these sins? You’re one of them now. If you don’t block them on every social media and publicly denounce them, you’re guilty too. Don’t ask any questions. Don’t talk about your issues. Don’t talk about your body. It’s progressive, trust me!

#long post

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a-broader-sensibility-blog · 8 years ago

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neoliberalism and radical feminism: you can’t have both

Dear liberal feminists,

I know there’s a lot of bad blood between radfems and you guys right now. I know you see as us being exclusive, cruel and metaphorically violent. You think we are judgmental of your sex lives and look down up anyone who practises traditional femininity. I obviously disagree with all of those arguments because I am a radical feminist, but that’s not the point here. The point is that liberal feminism, i.e. “fun feminism,” “choice feminism,” “sex positive feminism” etc. is a weird emulsion between two ideologies that fundamentally contradict each other and can never dissolve into one coherent, logically consistent belief system. Those ideologies are second wave/original/radical feminism (however you choose to call it) and neoliberalism. Let’s put it this way: neoliberalism is oil and radical feminism is water.

Radical feminism posits that the personal—that is to say, individual relationships and personal choices and lifestyles—are political. That doesn’t mean every single person is an activist, it means every choice you make takes place not within a cultural vacuum, but within a system that consistently rewards certain behaviours, severely punishes others, and educates you as to which choices are acceptable via constant bombardment with advertising, religious doctrine, entertainment, “infotainment” news, corporate rules and regulations, the education system and other forms of media. Acceptable and unacceptable behaviours—such as wearing make up or not wearing make up, dieting or not dieting, performing sex acts you don’t enjoy or refusing to do so— are policed by everyone around you, including leftists/liberals/feminists, your family and friends, because all of you (100%) have internalized the ideology you were taught. (This applies to more than just misogyny, by the way, but that’s a topic for another discussion.) Nobody can escape this indoctrinating and policing, or opt out, and no one is immune to it. If you think advertisements don’t convince or affect you, you are actually more indoctrinated than those of us who are able to at least identify the ways that ideology has shaped our thought patterns. Neoliberalism is the direct opposite. According to neoliberal ideology, every person is an individual who privately makes rational and informed choices without any coercion or undue influence by another person. Any personal choice made without a gun to your head is completely independent of the society you live in, and the norms and customs of your culture have not influenced you, pressured you or policed your behaviour when you broke cultural norms. Neoliberals would have you believe that every woman who is beaten up by her male partner was individually unlucky and what a shame, but it was simply unfortunate coincidence that intimate partner violence happens disproprotionately to women and is enacted by men. Every man who beats his partner does so because he individually is an asshole, or maybe his parents raised him wrong, but his misogynistic behaviour was never rewarded by society, or swept under the rug by male figures of authority, and he was never shown how successful violent men (like Dominique Strauss-Khan) can repeatedly evade any kind of negative consequences for their abuse of women. Under neoliberalism, no group of people who suffer the same type of oppression for the same reasons (such as having the same reproductive system) can ever come together to fight collectively for their rights, because actually those people are all unique individuals who live unique lives, and their concerns are personal, and any attempt to categorize certain systems of oppression is dehumanizing because it denies your personal individuality. Neoliberalism would have you believe that the most important thing about is not your kindness or intelligence or artistic ability or sense of humour, it’s that you’re unlike anyone else in the world. You are alone, everyone is alone, and therefore, there is no such thing as society. Radical feminism does not ask that you hate yourself for having shaved your legs, or sucked a dick, or any made any other choice that is approved of and encouraged by the patriarchy. Radical feminism does ask that you acknowledge that the society you live in tries to coerce every woman into making these same choices, and that it takes tremendous strength to face up to the social sanctions applied when you refuse to be coerced. I am a woman who shaves her legs, and I do so not because I naturally enjoy having shaved legs but because when I went through puberty and my leg hair became more visible, I was policed by other children, literally children, who bullied me and criticized me until I did not have the strength to go another day without showing off my smooth, unnaturally hairless legs. To this day, I shave my legs because emotionally, I simply cannot cope with the ridicule and mockery I would face if I didn’t. I am a feminist and I shave my legs, but shaving my legs is not a feminist act. It is the evidence that I have crumbled, that they broke me. They broke my self-confidence and my will to groom myself as I choose. I don’t hate myself for shaving my legs, and neither should you, but you should hate the patriarchy for leaving you and me with a Hobson’s Choice. Yes, you made a choice to shave your legs, or wear make-up, or send your boyfriend nude pictures, or wear stiletto heels that hurt you and being ridiculed and smeared, deemed disgusting, unfuckable (meaning worthless, under patriarchy) and sometimes, being told you are actually a man. Liberal feminism is an attempt to marry the personal empowerment that does occur when radical feminism reforms societal attitudes towards women with the neoliberal attitude that triple underlines the word “personal.” There are a few areas where neoliberal attitudes and radical feminism intersect, but those are blown way out of proportion. Yes, neoliberalism says abortion is perfectly fine, but only because neoliberals say literally anything a person chooses to do should be allowed because someone chose to do it, and they paid for it. Radical feminism supports abortion rights for entirely separate reasons. And we are deeply suspicious of the word “choice,” because a decision made under coercion, made with the promise of social reward for one choice and social sanction for the other, is not any kind of free choice. In fact, as a pro-abortion feminist, I loathe the term “pro-choice,” for a number of reasons, but mainly because taking down the patriarchy means undermining the idea that everything women choose is value neutral and made without coercion. Remember the shaving your legs example? It’s not just about your appearance. It’s about the “free choice” to say “I’m totally okay with my boyfriend watching porn!” and “I choose to be the submissive one in this relationship” and “Breast implants are feminist, because I chose to buy them!” Yes, in a society 100% free of patriarchy, there might be some women who still want breast implants. There might be some women who have some masochistic desire to spread extremely hot wax on their vulva and rip the hair out. Maybe. But don’t go tell me you’re sure you would be one of those women, because you don’t know. You don’t live in the world with no patriarchy and no internalized misogyny and yes, your “choice” does affect me, and hurt me, just my as “choice” to shave my legs hurts every other girl who sees my hairless legs and is reminded one more time that she will be seen as abnormal if she doesn’t shave hers. I am not trying to make you feel guilty, liberal feminists. I am trying to help you understand why your ideology only serves to naturalize female submission by implying that females submit by free choice. I am trying to help you understand who the real enemy is, and it’s not libfems or radfems, it’s systems of oppression that are internalized and constantly policed, monitored and reinforced by threat of shaming, exclusion from social groups and the job market, and by physical violence. That’s what patriarchy does. It wasn’t your choice to be born into this society, but please, do your great-grandmothers the respect of acknowledging that their suffering was not of their own choice, and neither is yours.

#choice feminism #liberal feminism #fun feminism #sex positivity #radical feminism #radfem #libfem #gender critical #patriarchy #neoliberalism #misogny #internalized misogyny #sexism #sexist oppression

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ellenlucasonlinedatingblog · 7 years ago

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Scarleteen Confidential: Helping Youth Handle Rejection

This is part of our series for parents or guardians. To find out more about the series, click here. For our top five guiding principles for parents or guardians click here; for a list of resources, click here. To see all posts in the series, click the Scarleteen Confidential tag below, or follow the series on Tumblr at scarleteenconfidential.tumblr.com.

Ditching Gender Notions

Why do I bring this up?

Respecting Boundaries

Handling rejection

If a young person in your life is rejected by someone they’re interested in, there are two approaches that can be helpful.

When you’re talking to young people about romantic rejection, there are a few different points you can bring up to help them feel better:

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generallyspecificblog · 7 years ago

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I watched episodes 1 & 2 of the new season of Stranger Things on Netflix this weekend, its been a long time coming. I’ve been waiting patiently for this season since the last one ended. The show grew on me in a big way, i did not like it initially. Something about it is mysterious and innocent and this season looks to have more of a suspenseful and scary vibe. I’ve only watched two episodes thus far so this is an incomplete project but I felt I needed to write about it because i haven’t blogged a long one in a few days. What follows are my hot takes, conspiracy theories, and honorable mentions of “Stranger Things” Season 2.

Ah, the ’80’s, things were slower back then i’m sure, i wouldn’t know though because i was -10 in 1980. The fact that in one of the opening scenes the boys are scrambling for quarters to go play arcade games just tells me that those were the good days. Reminds me of the movie/documentary, “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters”, if you haven’t seen that i suggest that you stop reading this blog and go watch that documentary, you will not be let down, you will also have your masculinity tested by a man named Billy Mitchell. Also that is probably the only time i’ll suggest that you stop reading the blog so you know its worth it. Anyways, quarters are king and Mike robs Nancy of her piggy bank which i think is just great, but also i feel like Nancy is a bit too old for a piggy bank.

So the boys (Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin) rally at the local arcade room, Those for sure were only around for laundering money i imagine, and get to playing. At some point Will hears something and wanders off and somehow he is pulled into the upside-down place, his home pretty much the whole 1st season, and sees a dark sky with red lightning and a shadow demon thing with tornadoes for arms and then snaps out of it. First off i would like to say that i do not completely understand what the show writers are going for with the existence of the “Upside-down” place. I guess the easiest way to explain it is an alternate dimension that’s evil and terrible, but i just don’t know how it all works. I will admit that i think that if i were to somehow be instantly teleported to a place like that, i would for sure only be able to cry and close my eyes until i inevitably died because that place, and that monster thing seem completely terrifying. With all of that being said i think that calling it “The Upside-Down Place” is a rookie move and who ever came up with it needs to go to prison. It’s like calling it “Creepy Avenue” or “Elm Street”, how about a better name for the place that your main characters fear and where pure evil resides. As a matter of fact i will no longer refer to it as the “Upside-down” place and from here on out it will be called the “Thunderdome” or “Satans Basement” or “Oklahoma” ANYTHING but “Upside-down” place. So, Will snaps out of it somehow and his excuse to his friend for being outside is that he needed some air, I found that funny because this show is set in the 80’s and no chance kids were as messed up and snowflakey as they are now. “Needing some air” in the 80’s was just something you said when you wanted your 3rd cigarette from your 2nd pack of the day, i assume. Be more dramatic Will.

The cameos in these first two episodes were very interesting and i didn’t hate them, i’d actually be excited if they all stayed on as regulars. First we have Brett Gelman playing Murray Bauman, aparrently some kind of private investigator with suspicion of Russian assistance in the events that transpired last season. Gelman is killing it lately with the cameos and honestly is just a really funny guy, i will never forget him in The Other Guys as the Arnold Palmer obsessed wanna-be swinger who begs Will Ferrels character to bang his wife.

Next and my favorite so far is the incomparable Mikey Walsh, the lovable Samwise Gamgee, Rudy HIMSELF, Sean Astin playing Bob “The Brain” Newby. Sean Astin is top 10 in my favorite actors, all around good dude, and just as lovable as they get. His character in Stranger Things is Joyce Byers’ new love interest it seems, and he does a fantastic job. The dynamic between him and Joyce is weird but i am fully invested after 2 episodes. Sean Astin nerding out about video cameras and radio shack is grade-a television folks.

Other than that there is a new pair of sibling characters in the show, Billy and Maxine AKA MadMax, that i just don’t know about yet. Billy is an absolute psychopath that resembles a younger Zac Efron who is fond of younger Zac Efrons who drives like a bat outta hell. This Billy dude is like a cross between Kurt Cobain on a bender and Jack Nicholson from The Shining. Pure crazy, but an entertaining character. His sister, i’m assuming, Maxine (or Max as she so rudely corrected the zany teacher at the school) is a very boyish little girl who is apparently good at arcade games and skateboarding, possessing some of the same crazy traits as her aforementioned brother. Some subtle yet understandable misogyny is featured in a scene where the boys are spying on her and say something along the lines of “girls cant play video games”. There is a new psychiatrist guy that talks to Will too but he is very boring and on the bad guys side so i don’t particularly care for him. Out of the new characters i mentioned above i would rank them accordingly: 1. Bob 2. Murray 3. Billy 4. Maxine 956. Doctor Boring D.O.

As for our returning characters a lot has changed in good ole Hawkins and its nearing the one year anniversary of the finale of last season some time around Halloween, obviously. The iconic Reagan Bush ’84 Campaign signs make an appearance in these episodes a couple of times in peoples yards and i love it, shout out Rowdy Gentleman. The boys are still up to their nerdy shenanigans riding around on bikes and talking on their giant walkie-talkies. An exciting part is that they dress up as Ghostbusters for Halloween and being the season is set in 1984 i give 1,000 kudos to the kids for being such trailblazing fans of the film, and 2,000 kudos to their parents for making the costumes from scratch. There is a pretty comical argument between Mike and Lucas on who gets to be Venkman, Bill Murrays character, with an awkward reference to the only black Ghostbuster, Winston Zeddemore played by Ernie Hudson, being lame because he was late to the team.

Mike is emotionally invested in 2 boxes of toys for some reason and misses the hell out of his superhuman girlfriend, 11, just being an emo little baby pretty much the whole time. Will and Mike make some weird pact while trick-or-treating where Mike says “If you’re weird, I’m Weird” kind of like Ryan Gossling does in the Notebook (If you’re a bird, I’m a bird). Lucas and Dustin fight over who is gonna date Maxine.

Our guy Will, who spent the majority of last season in the Thunderdome, has turned into a monster in the eyes of the kids at school. He gets bullied a bit, being called “Zombie Boy” and getting notes put in his locker saying the same thing, thank god Twitter or Facebook didn’t exist back then or this dude would of 13 Reasons Why’d his way through the rest of this season, probably. He takes it with stride though, animating his new nickname pretty artistically, wouldn’t be surprised if he creates a comic book about his Zombie alter ego and becomes a millionaire.

Steve and Nancy are still an item, probably my second favorite couple behind Johnathan and crippling loneliness. Nancy has become annoying because out of the clouds she starts actually caring that her friend Barb is dead, probably because she feels guilty, i mean you’d have to be an idiot to not blame Nancy for the demise of our homely heroine, Barb. There is a scene where Nancy and Steve go have dinner with Barbs parents and enjoy some KFC #fingerlickingood. Barbs parents are delusional at this point, in denial that Barb is dead. They are not in good health, mainly because of the fried chicken, and have plans to sell their home to fund a wild goose chase led by the wacky ex-journalist, P.I. Bauman. That should be successful. R.I.P Barb. Some how Steve has become more likable. Probably because of his hair which has some how become bigger, the higher the hair the closer to heaven, i see you Steve. Nancy and Steve go to a Halloween party together where she gets tipsy on some jungle juice, or as the raging toga bro, who is later seen yakking his brains out, calls it, “Pure Fuel”. Nancy, in typical white girl wasted fashion, says “bullshit” 9 million times after getting a cup of hunch punch spilled on her and brings up the past (Her and Steve basically murdering Barb, gone but never forgotten). Surprisingly Steve peaces out instead of taking advantage of Nancy like he did last season. Johnathan, in typical lonely guy fashion, swoops in like a sad pigeon and saves the day by taking her home and tucking her in. I feel it is necessary to say that i think Johnathan looks like an anorexic Bill Hader from SNL and i hope other people see that too.

My favorite character, 11, or Elle as Chief Hopper adorably calls her, has taken up residence in a cabin out in the sticks. Chief Hopper is my 2nd favorite character in the show and he has become some type of father figure to 11 letting her stay in his cabin and is keeping her safe from the Russians or whoever is trying to get her. 11 is still a super hero and controls stuff with her mind. She has grown her hair out lookin like a jerry curl gettin real high up there, watch out Steve. Hopper is still whippin around in that dope ass Trailblazer and totin that 6-shooter like a rootin tootin cowboy, they should call him Sheriff instead of Chief. The interaction between Sheriff Hopper and 11 is perfect and comical. 11 is still very robot-like and says “five one five” instead of 5:15 at one point alluding that she hasn’t become much more normal than the first season. There are a few flashbacks to season one including one where 11 is breaking through some gooey womb-like substance out of Thunderdome and it reminds me of Jim Carrey being born from a rhino in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. In another scene 11 kills and begins to cook a squirrel to eat and then beams it at some hunter dudes face in the woods because i guess that’s what Russian cyborgs do. Sheriff Hopper misses hanging out with Elle for Halloween and that broke my heart, do better man.

As usual the soundtrack for the show is the absolute best, the beginning credit song that sounds like Daft Punk time traveled back to the 80’s is up there with Game of Thrones intro song. So far the show is fantastic and there are a lot more witty references and noteworthy things to say but i have just realized that i have written 2,000+ words and most of this was just mindless stammering on and so with that i give my superlatives and predictions thus-far:

Most likely to die alone: Jonathan Byers

Worst Father of the Year: Sheriff Hopper

Most likely to Smash for sure: Hopper and Joyce

Most Improved: Barb

Best Hair: Steve

Probably Gonna Finish Last: Bob “The Brain” Newby

Most Athletic: The Bike Boys

Life of the Party: Yoga bro

Most Likely to Become President: Reagan Bush ’84

Biggest Twist: Barb is alive!

Token Black Guy: Lucas

Least Likely to do Anything, Ever: The dumb psychiatrist guy

Most likely to end up in jail or an insane asylum probably: Billy

Most Likely To Confuse The Millennium Falcon with the Starship Enterprise: My Fiance while watching the show with me.

Stranger Things: Season 2 Return of Barb, Maybe. I watched episodes 1 & 2 of the new season of Stranger Things on Netflix this weekend, its been a long time coming.

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