#not a single class or course about feminism nor women

[g0thsoojin]

i hate that feminism has become some sort of stupid little book club for EVERYONE and everything. feminism is for women by women and about women's rights and the fight to be free of the patriarchy. modern day feminism is such ridiculous bullshit im not gonna be surprised if we all of a sudden have some sort of fucked up variant of the handmaid's tale society all of a sudden. i looked up the one and only woman's college here, and every single course is about everything BUT feminism or women. it is just a fucking joke. women are so dumb for not realizing that as we let ourselves be erased we will be less than subhuman, we will be literally nothing and we will have no safety whatsoever. but it seems like 99% of women are fine with that so what can i do about it? all i can do is sit here and rant about how fucking stupid they are to mask my fear because this is not good at all. not at all. and they dont even wanna acknowledge that. we are fucked.

[maslows-pyramid-scheme]

Any discussion of sixteenth-century witch persecutions must mention the growing power of the state … The ducal and royal governments of Europe were becoming more efficient, centralised, and powerful, in other words, more capable of controlling many aspects of more people's lives … They demanded not only taxes and military levies but also a new ideological conformity: nationalism as we know it first reached rural western Europe in the seventeenth century … The state was willing to take on the responsibility and expense of [prosecuting 'sexual wrong-doing' from the local church and neighbourhood] because these moral judgments helped to define what it stood for and allowed for the control of the most intimate aspects of the lives of its citizens [which fell heaviest on the lower class]. As for the status of women in European legal history, one notable fact about them is their absence. Until the sixteenth century, women made up a very small number of the defendants, accusers, or witnesses in legal cases, and the personnel who ran the courts, whether secular or ecclesiastical, were, of course, male. When women were arrested it was primarily on sexual chares. Married women, in fact, as dependents of their husbands, were not held accountable for many types of crimes. Few females appeared as witnesses, because a woman's testimony was not legally acceptable. Furthermore, women rarely took the initiative in bringing charges, because whatever problem their lives contained were settled mostly outside the courts, by extra-legal methods ... The courts, meanwhile, busied themselves with the affairs of men, matters such as quarrels between heads of families over property and issues touching male honour. Even when women did take part in what were seen as major crimes - receiving stolen goods, poisonings, and so on - they were often acting as their husband's agents, carrying out a supporting role in the schemes and vendettas of the family. The court regarded women as minors; married women, it was assumed, would be kept in line by their husbands, and single women, a more problematic group, were left to the community to control. I conclude that until the sixteenth century the European legal system lumped women, children, serfs, and slaves into the category of dependent property and therefore largely ignored them, except when they got too far out of line. Then around 1560 European secular courts began to hear accusations of witchcraft and sexual crimes, and women began to appear in court in large numbers, an entirely new phenomenon. Larner was correct to point out that women were criminalised, as witches and infanticides, for the first time in this period. These were heinous crimes, newly perceived as so threatening to society that they could no longer be left to the control of the women's world. But in the process of bringing these offenses under their jurisdiction, sixteenth-century courts were forced to admit their perpetrators to a new legal standing. No longer seen as too dependent to be prosecuted, women were now held accountable in court for their actions. Because witches were believed to freely choose their craft, they were held responsible for the harm they reputedly caused. Even though they acted through the power of the devil, they alone (and certainly not their husbands) must be punished. The surprising number of husbands who joined others in accusing their wives of witchcraft makes it clear that on a charge so dangerous many men would not be responsible for their wives nor dare to be identified with the. That European women first emerged into full legal adulthood as witches, that they were first accorded independent legal status in order to be prosecuted for witchcraft, indicates both their vulnerability and the level of [misogyny/'anti-feminism'] in modern European society.

Anne Llewellyn Barstow, A New History of the European Witch Hunts

[inkblotsandeggshells]

My take on feminine enbodyment and female empowerment

This concept of modern feminism and pushing men out of the picture affects me differently than the average woman, because I was raised without a dad. When my mom adopted me and my other siblings, she never got married and instead asked her best female friend to step in and help raise all four of us. I was very loved, but I felt that absence of a father all my life. It affected nearly every part of my childhood and teenage years, and it continues to affect my adult life. I wanted to get a boyfriend and eventually get married, but the only constant guy in my life was my older brother. Therefore, I had very few examples of what respectful, good, masculine men looked like.

When I was a sophomore in college, my roommate at the time showed me a YouTube channel called Blimey Cow, and they had made a video called “Ten Ways to get the Right Guy to like You.” I hadn’t thought about this video or this channel in a few years, because they primarily make Christian content.  I’m not a Christian anymore, nor do I agree with all the beliefs of Christianity. However, I decided to go back to this video two days ago, because I remembered how these creators directly challenged how our culture defines female empowerment. Specifically they used this video to present that challenge, with an emphasis on noting the difference between female liberation and female objectification. Some of the suggestions they made to help girls find the right guys included showing interest in their hobbies, supporting their local chivalry, letting the guys in their lives know they appreciate them, putting less emphasis on how much skin they show and more emphasis on who they are as a person.  As a 20 year old college kid, these young content creators made a bigger impact on my views on men, women and the hyper-sexual movement than I would have thought. As a result, their video gave me the nudge to dive deeper into this topic through writing.

When you first learn of the term “female empowerment”, it sounds attractive enough: women being seen as a force to be reckoned with, authoritative, strong leaders who are goddesses in nearly every way. Rather than being stuck at home to take care of the kids, women are encouraged to pursue their career dreams, step into more masculine leadership roles and “be the boss”, for lack of a better term. It all sounds appealing until you start to dig deeper into what’s behind the phrase “female empowerment.” One big part of how I discovered this occurred last summer.

In July of 2020, I chose to invest a serious amount of money to an online holistic sex course. It was called Well-F*cked Woman, created by a woman named Kim Anami. Through using the tools learned through this six week course, Kim claims to have helped thousands of people all over the world, especially women, to connect with the untapped power of their sexual energy. She believes that a big reason why people are as stressed, unhealthy and unhappy as they are is because they’re not having the right kind of sex. Moreover, they’re not having the right kind of sex often enough. Whether you’re in a couple or single makes no difference. If you want to gain body confidence, get orgasms or even heal ancestral trauma, Kim claims this course would teach you how to obtain all those things by utilizing your sexual energy.

When I read the information on it, I became very intrigued. After several days of listening to her podcasts and reading her blogs, I became more convinced that this course could be a big help for my personal well-being.  At the time, my goal was to use the course to heal some of the imbalanced sacral energy I still had. Hopefully, it could even heal some ancestral wounds I carried in my DNA. If I achieved that, finding a romantic partner would be more of a bonus than a direct goal. So when I received the stimulus check from the government, I used that money to pay for the course and one of Kim’s jade yoni eggs.

For each of the six weeks, we would get a video with a written syllabus to discuss different topics, most of which revolved around sex. One week we would focus on self-love practices, one week we would talk about the relationship between sex and money, another week we learned about food, etc. In that first week, I began the exercises easily enough. However, I also started to feel very conflicted about the information we received in this course. For example, in the syllabus about self-love, one of the first statements Kim made about women is that “most have rape fantasies.” Admittedly, I didn’t really understand what that meant or what it was, until a friend told me. Once I did understand it, it bothered me deeply, to say the least. As someone who claimed that her work helped heal women’s sexual trauma, to hear Kim make such a statement right off the bat made me feel uneasy.

In a separate journal, I had written down my progress of the course and some of the conclusions I had made about what it taught and about the woman who taught it. In one entry, I had observed that it seemed to take a lot of money to become a “well-f*cked woman”, by Kim’s standards. If needed, it could possibly add up to hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. For instance, if you wanted to use a jade egg as a sexual healing tool, that cost $300. The six week course itself cost almost $1000. Kim also recommended using therapy injections to change your neural pathways, if you were a victim of sexual trauma.  Just getting one injection is expensive enough, but if you “need” more than one injection or appointment, that will add up fast. Sadly, such treatments are not easily accessible to everyone who wants sexual healing. It certainly wasn’t for me.

Additionally, a recurring message that came up in the course was that it’s important for couples to have sex more than once a week. In this case, it wasn’t talking about the faster paced sex described as being numb and fleeting. On the contrary, Kim wanted us to aim for the slower, orgasmic, breath focused sex where you’re working to maintain and build up a flow of sexual energy. While in some ways, this course educated people on sex differently than our modern culture, some aspects seem pretty similar to me. For example, one night stands are still seen as acceptable situations to practice generating this energy. We were encouraged to practice sex acts two to three times a week, to the point of becoming sex addicts. Also, even though Kim frowned upon pornography, we were still taught to utilize BDSM as a way to create polarity in our relationships. This was to make sure that “spark of passion” was maintained for the long term. Lastly, Kim would sometimes demonstrate problematic double standards when it came to showing examples of how to respect your partner. In one of her stories about “helping” her partner become confident with himself, she talked about making a point to touch his private parts in public, whether he was okay with it or not. If not, she claimed “it was his problem.” In my opinion, if they’re genders had been switched, she would have been called out for her disrespectful behavior immediately among the group.

In this class, Kim discouraged us from using substances like alcohol and drugs during the practice, because of how they damage the body. On the other hand, she promoted addictions to sex as something positive, as something to attain for as a human being. Whether you are in a couple doing the act or you’re a single adult who’s just masturbating, you were encouraged to have some kind of sex several times a week. According to Kim, it needed to get to the point where you felt you couldn’t go about your day without generating this energy. “What an addiction does is that it causes you to stop thinking,” says Michael Knowles, who was a guest on the Candace Owens Show discussing modern feminism.  “It enslaves you. It makes you prone to certain behavior, and when you’re not thinking, that’s when the people who want to grab power can come in and force it on you.” Too much of anything can be detrimental for your well-being, on all levels.  During a time where protection of boundaries for my spiritual life had become very important, this way of thinking pushed me to discover what kind of boundaries I had and to stick to them. In this case, it lead me to the conclusion that if being like Kim meant being addicted to sex, disrespecting the men I care about, and using methods of sexual control for the sake of “polarity”, then I would rather not be like her at all.

With all that being said, I believe the big question is this: how exactly does the WAP culture of free sex and female empowerment differ from the holistic sex culture I learned about in the summer of 2020? How does our pop culture differ from the Well-F*cked Woman course, in how we’re being educated about sex? In my opinion, one culture pushes the more superficial, fleeting benefits of sex in our faces, while the other pushes for using sex and sexual energy as a way to harness untapped power. This power can, supposedly, be used to energize us, heal our bodies, and manifest things into our lives. Regardless, both cultures seem to be more concerned with using sex to gain power than using it as a means to express true love.  Both cultures seem to encourage women to “embrace their femininity” by leaving their underwear off more often. Both cultures seem to promote double standards on how partners should respect each other and their boundaries. Both cultures still push us to become addicted to sex in order to have a fulfilled, happier life, because according to them, every aspect of our lives will disintegrate without it.

As a result of the lockdown, last year turned out to be most isolating time for us, and it was intense enough to put many people into a deep state of depression. At a time when everyone is stuck online and forced to keep further apart, this is when people in the online sex business—holistic or otherwise—will benefit the most from that loneliness. They can use it to make those profits and fill their own pockets. This becomes more obvious when you observe their marketing tactics, including the ones I noticed for Kim Anami’s website: unless you give me your money and do what I tell you to do, you will never be “well-f*cked.” Everything in your life will deteriorate unless you become “well-f*cked.” You will be a brainwashed zombie forever, easily manipulated, unless you become “well-f*cked.”As my friend Lee Yun would say, “These tactics are designed to create an empty void in people that can’t be filled.” In the cases of some individuals, even if they were to try, it would cost them more time, money and energy than they were lead to believe.

For those of you who wonder if I still keep up with the practices I learned from this course, I haven’t. At least, I haven’t kept up to the degree that would be necessary. My jade egg is sitting on my altar collecting dust, even as I write this. Because of the amount of money I spent to buy the egg, this is not something I’m proud to admit. A jade egg is a sacred, special tool that deserves to be put to use for the highest good, and eventually, I will find a teacher that can help me do so. I just don’t want to have to conform to this holistic “WAP” standard to get there.

Surprisingly, by reflecting on my past through watching Blimey Cow’s videos, I realized there are still some values about sex, intimacy and femininity that I learned as a teenage Christian that matter to me now as an adult witch. In my opinion, sex is something very sacred that should not be taken so lightly, because of how it connects you to your partner in an intense, physical and spiritual way. For me, I take it seriously enough to still choose to wait until I get a husband and to choose not to masturbate. Additionally, when I do have sex with my lifelong partner, it will be as much about him as it will be about me. This means respecting and honoring him as a man as well as I know how. In my opinion, if you encourage people to use something like sex to attain higher spiritual goals, but neglect to show basic respect to your partner’s boundaries about his body, then in the words of Jordan Taylor from Blimey Cow, “you’re doing it wrong.”

 Michael Knowles interview with Candace Owens on the Candace Owens Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejWIEMs8ecg

Blimey Cow’s YouTube video, “Ten Ways to Get the Right Guy to Like You”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqF_PtugyBk

[notagoodideatodothat]

Why Veronica Mars broke my heart.

Ok let’s start this. Everything I’m going to write is my opinion, how I felt and my views on season 4. And it’s the first time I’m writing anything that I want to make “public”, but I’m honestly doing it for myself more than anything.

To start with logic, let’s talk about the story of season 4. Some part of the mystery was not too bad, but to be honest it was quite messy. I think it was a bit much for an 8-episodes season and I don’t really think the thing about the Mexican cartel was necessary, and let’s be real, I felt it was a bit racist, but I won’t say more about it because I’m not Mexican/Latina nor American and I don’t feel it’s my place to say anything about it. The bombing of Neptune during spring break could have been brilliant, and the idea of it being link with the debate in town was a great reminder that Neptune was a place with no middle class, which is also the root of the show. But the going back and forth about who the suspects are and the motivation behind all that just confused the hell out of me. I think this is the first issue in the writing of the new season.

The second issue I see in the writing is how Veronica was portrayed. It’s like they forgot who she was, everything she went through and survived. I felt that her relation with Keith is still strong but a bit off; it felt like Veronica was still a teenager. Let’s not mention how she is ignoring and judging Wallace for having a family and a house and showing it as something boring; and the big mess with Weevil. But let’s take a quick second to thank Tina for not getting into this mess. Her friends were so important to her, and that’s also why we loved her. Also her rejecting and making fun of Logan for going to therapy and encouraging her to do the same, like isn’t she suppose to have a degree in Psychology? I couldn’t read the books completely because season 4 came before I could finish them, and I’m not really in the mood for anymore VM right now, but in the movie she was so different than how she was in the new season. The other issue I have, like many fans, is with the alcohol and drug use. Everybody can do whatever they want of course, and even more if everything is legal, but this is so out of character. She was raped because of alcohol and drug. Her mom was an alcoholic and she saw it destroy her family. And this is just in season one. The only time we saw Veronica drinking was in the movie and it was one drink and a beer. If you just really think for a minute you can see the issue. I’ve love this character for a good portion of my life, and I couldn’t recognize her. And I know they wanted to make things more adult, but you can do that without completely destroying everything who’ve built before. Also she has been a PI for so long now, in what world, would she not check her car?  There is just no logic to that and you can’t tell me otherwise. Her relationship with Logan had issues too. Like I said the thing about therapy is problematic. But the whole angry sex scene was so wrong. He’s actively trying to get better, to heal his anger, and the only thing she wants is old Logan, when in the previous seasons, particularly in the third, she was so judgmental of everything he was and did. This is just messy writing, and a lack of consistency. And every problems or fights they had just disappeared and they just didn’t really talk about it. If you want to make Veronica more adult, let’s start with her acting like an adult in a stable relationship, which she was suppose to be at the beginning of the new season. It’s not like we decided that it was who she was, you put her in that place.                             Also telling us that Veronica is more interesting when traumatised, telling that no matter what you do you won’t ever be able to access happiness, that a married woman is not as sexy or interesting; I can go on and on and on. We are in 2019, your show used to be something people brought up when talking about woman on TV, about feminism, and you absolutely destroy that. You just showed us that you know nothing about feminism and what women go through. And the fact that you protagonist is a woman doesn’t change anything about that. A woman doesn’t have to be a survivor of sexual assault to be strong; a woman doesn’t have to be single to be independent; a woman doesn’t have to have multiple sexual partners to be sexy.

But you know what, as a fan of the show for 15years, I was bothered by all that maybe I could have accept it as just flaws, without it completely ruining the new season for me, and hoping they’ll improve her character in a potential season 5. And honestly I thought I was going to rewatched it over and over so I was not really focused on the problems, but on the fact that I was watching new episodes of Veronica Mars, which is something I didn’t think was possible.                     But they had to kill Logan with no respect, the best character of the whole show, no matter what people say. He went from a proper jackass, a bully, and a victim of abuse, to an adult in the process of healing, with a career no one expected. And also, he was not just part of the relationship with Veronica; he was also a character that we loved on his own. Of course he was an awful person at the beginning of the show, but first he wasn’t the only one (let’s not forget Duncan please thank you and Leo who sold the tapes of Lily and Aaron, which apparently everyone in the writers room forgot) and I’m never going to ignore that, but you can’t deny the changes he made, and his real motivation to get better and this is not something you can say about Veronica in season 4. You know what I need as a victim of traumatic event?  To Heal. I’m getting there, it is hard work and this how Veronica should be in season 4, but who was in that place? Logan. But you decided that it was not enough.

I don’t know what happen behind the scene, and I’m not going to speculate about that, but Jason did such a good job portraying Logan, from the start to the end. And his death was unfair, to Jason first, and to the fans. And what was even more unfair, is the lack of closure and grief that was giving to us. We just saw a character that we loved for 15 years blow up after a wedding that we weren’t sure we were going to have and nothing. Of course, I think you can kill major character in show, if the motivations are good, and the death is going to improve the story and/or a character but you have to do it properly. Because otherwise you’re not doing it for the good reasons. I can give you examples of shows that killed major character and did it properly : How to get away with Murder killed one of the main character and we had a whole season dedicated to that death and Laurel’s grief ; Peaky Blinder, and it was quite violent yet still acceptable, proof that you can have a violent end and still do it respectably ; Desperate Housewives killed one of the most important character in one of the last episodes of the show, a fan favourite but we had some time of grief, with a funeral and how every other character had to deal with this death ; Downton Abbey killed not one but two major character in one season ; Grey’s Anatomy is known for killing major character but every time we had closure and grief for us and from the characters ; and to go on the SF side, Game of Thrones did it better than Veronica Mars, which wants to make me laugh. And Glee, for which the death was real, was able to respect their fans, actors, crew and everyone who was devastated by the passing of Cory Monteith.

I completely support that the creators and the writers are free to do what they want with what they created.  I honestly believe that if Logan had to die for the show to keep going; I don’t agree but it was Rob freedom to do so. But there were a million better ways to do it without being disrespectful to the actor, the character and the fans. Because yes, a show without an audience, and without fans is nothing. That is why brilliant TV shows get cancelled and mediocre show can go on for ten years. A vocal fandom and audience is what’s keeping a show alive.  And when you look at the facts, the Veronica Mars fandom is what made everything possible. Without us, Veronica Mars would have disappeared in the world of cancelled show with good potential but that didn’t have a lot of success. I couldn’t give to the Kickstarter campaign, because I didn’t have a bank account at that time but I bought the complete collection of Veronica Mars when I was a broke student, and I can tell you 45€ is a lot of money, I bought my Team Logan t-shirt, I bought the books, I put my money in it because I wanted to show I was supporting Veronica Mars, and I wanted more. As soon as I heard on Kristen’s Instagram that it was coming back, I was absolutely ecstatic. I followed every account on every platform I was on. I commented on Instagram to express how happy and grateful I was and this is something I never do. I couldn’t stop talking about it to my friends, even though they don’t really watch it. The week before the surprise release I was non-stop on Veronica Mars. I haven’t been excited about anything for a long, long time. And it was destroyed in 10 minutes.

And as you know we can fight to have our show back, but we can also do everything we can to make sure that Hulu and Rob, and everyone involve know how we feel. And ignoring us on social media won’t stop us from expressing our thoughts and feelings. And for the first time you can see fans fighting to end the show we’ve been supporting for so long. After season 4, I can assure you that I’d rather give the movie and the books back so my favourite show would not be ruined for me. And if Rob thinks that the mystery is why we were all watching, he is so wrong. Being a PI is part of Veronica’s character, not everything about her. Her relations and the other characters are what we loved about the show. The mystery part of it was nice sometime, and could be well written, especially in season 1, but this was not the heart of the show, no matter what Rob is saying. He says he wants to make a show 100% about mystery and a detective. My mom loves police shows; she watches everything, Murder she Wrote, every fucking CSI, Criminal Mind, Cold Case, really shitty French Show,...and I can assure you she still watches for the characters. Because no matter the story you’re telling, the characters are the heart of it.

The first feeling I had after spending a whole night watching the new season was real sadness. I think I cry for over an hour. I was truly heartbroken. I’m not in a really good place emotionally at the moment and I was so looking forward to this, I cannot even begin to explain what it did to me. The next week I almost didn’t sleep, and I was a real mess. I had some family that was visiting and all I could think about was a fucking TV show. But when the interviews and videos started to come out, I was absolutely pissed. It felt like a betrayal. Telling us this is what we need, saying Logan was a sacrificial lamb, saying Veronica is in that place now, that they’ll be no grieving. We are adult now; we are not children throwing a stupid tantrum. And presenting us as angry fan girl, who are just pissed because our ship is over is so fucking sexist. And even if we are pissed about that, which I also am, what is the problem? We can love a relation and the character, and still be a “good fan”. Also can we talk about how you used Logan and LoVe in the promo, the trailer, all the social media, to make sure the fans who love LoVe where going to watch. This is manipulating your audience, and from the bottom of my heart, fuck you.

I use to associate Veronica Mars with something positive, a safe space, where my problems were not real, now it’s a lot of pain, regret, rage. The only good thing about all that is the community, you know the fans that you don’t care about anymore. People from all over the world; supporting each other, checking on each other, loving each other. You honestly had one of the best Fan Base behind you Rob, and you just gave us the biggest fuck off of all time. You say you made a bet, and that you hope the fan won’t hate you for it. I can tell you, even if you have a season 5, you still lost.      

Because you lost us; and our support.

It’s been a month, and I’m only able to finish writing that now, and it still feels really fresh. I’m still devastated, and angry, and betrayed and so many emotion that I never thought I would associate with Veronica Mars; yet here we are.

And to Rob, and Hulu, of anyone that worked on this, please no more, no season 5, no more social media post. You didn’t give us grieving, so please now leave us alone.

I’m sure it was not really well written, and that I forgot a shit ton of stuff but this is what I think and feel, and if anyone read this, I hope this will maybe give comfort, like reading everyone else’s opinions helped me a bit. Like I said to a dear writer that I love, like always we will get through this together.

@hulu @officialveronicamarsonhulu

[buttercupsfrocks]

Another week, another fatphobic shitstorm, Tumblr, this time in the form of an exercise in projected self-loathing courtesy of Torygraph journalist Tanya Gold. You can find it here if you’re curious, or you can just look at the pictures of my bargain Zara ranty pants plissé culottes; either way I’m afraid I’m going to vent.

For those hitherto unfamiliar with Ms Gold, she’s a self-identified fat woman who has previously written about the pervasiveness of fat discrimination and prejudice; the tyranny of fashion and its fixation with excessively thin models; her serial dieting career; and her struggles with bulimia and alcoholism. Consequently I was a mite puzzled to learn she was appalled at Nike’s recent decision to include a plus-sized mannequin in their London flagship store. This they have done in the spirit of “celebrating the diversity and inclusivity of sport” – and presumably to promote that, unlike exclusionary trend led brands such as Sweaty Betty and Lulu Lemon, Nike supplies workout gear to accommodate those of us at the larger end of the bell curve. Much in the manner of the ground breakingly diverse This Girl Can campaign launched four years ago by Sport England, the message is clear enough: encourage as many women as possible to exercise, thereby improving the health of as many women as possible; everybody wins, GIRL POWAH!

It’s not the first time I’ve used the phrase cognitive dissonance on this blog and it certainly won’t be the last. Unfortunately we live in an era where health has become so synonymous with thinness that even a supposedly whipsmart broadsheet journalist can’t discern they are two different things that aren’t mutually exclusive. “The new Nike mannequin is not size 12, which is healthy,” Gold observes, “or even 16 – a hefty weight, yes, but not one to kill a woman. She is immense, gargantuan, vast. She heaves with fat.” Well of course she does. As I’ve noted before those who hate fat people, including fat people who hate themselves, have a tendency to luxuriate in baroque prose when describing adipose tissue. Personally speaking, my fat does a lot of things but heave isn’t generally one of them unless there’s stewed rhubarb involved. But let’s just back-track a second, shall we? Ms Gold herself is a size 16, or was when she shared this heart rending tale of how she was unable to find a single thousand quid frock to accommodate her UK average-sized arse in Prada. But hey, at least she’s not hefty enough to be dying any time soon. That’s something only fatter fat women do, women who heave, not borderline, amateur chubs like her. Man, if there was ever a women for whom Body Positivity – aka Fat Acceptance Lite® – was invented, it’s Tanya fucking Gold. She even employs the eternal whinge of the aspiration-deprived inbetweenie, “where is the body shape between the tiny and the immense, which is where true health lives? Where is the ordinary, medium, contented woman? Where, oh where, is the middle ground?” In other words, “What about Meeeeeeee?!”

While Gold’s got a point in that it can be highly detrimental to a woman’s self esteem to rarely see her body type represented by the media she consumes, Meeeeeeee! is nonetheless catered to by every single non-couture clothing chain in the country. And while having to be forced to buy from lesser emporia might disappoint, (House of Fraser; the horror), imagine being excluded by the entire fucking high street. Then ask yourself, if that were your reality, how you might be expected to know that a mainstream manufacturer caters to your needs if they don’t advertise it? Call me dim if you must but a display featuring a showroom dummy five sizes smaller than I am would not alert me to this fact. Of the offending mannequin she describes as “in every measure obese”, Gold laments, “She cannot run. She is, more likely, pre-diabetic and on her way to a hip replacement”. Hello? She’s made of sodding fibreglass and weighs approximately 25lbs. Unlike the multitude of actual fat human beings who do indeed run, practice team sports, swim, teach yoga, shot-put and weightlift, as well as attend dance and exercise classes, Nike’s blank canvas can’t do bugger all except encourage other fat women to follow suit which somehow, according to Gold’s bizarre convoluted logic, is a one way ticket to a tragic early death. I know; it’s like falling down a rabbit hole of WTFF. No wonder it’s kicked off such a backlash.

I’ve been sparring with concern trolls like Gold for yonks and they invariably trot out the same old lies, either out of fear, spite or sheer pig ignorance. Gold is no exception; the Fat Acceptance Movement, she opines, “says any weight is healthy if it’s yours”. Yeah, no. In actuality the Fat Acceptance Movement is a fifty year old political initiative born of grass roots feminism, that seeks to highlight and challenge weight based prejudice and discrimination – be that in the classroom, the workplace, the doctor’s office, the fashion industry, mainstream media, (an advertising campaign that portrays the public as abject morons and further stigmatises fat people would seem to fit the bill), local or national government, or anywhere else it has the power to negatively impact the lives of those subject to it. Many detractors confuse Fat Acceptance with Health At Every Size which is an internationally recognised, medically supported programme dedicated to the pursuit of healthful habits without a focus on weight loss. It is, for instance, a useful tool for those in recovery for eating disorders. While many Fat Acceptance advocates practice HAES, just as many don’t; likewise there are those involved in HAES who are neither fat nor politicised about fat. 

Gold’s assertion that the War On Obesity® (aka fat people) has been beaten into submission by political correctness is risible, as evidenced by her own poisonous prose, which – pardon my plagiarism – fairly heaves with internalised negative stereotypes: the Fat Acceptance advocate as deluded and self-deceiving; the fat athlete as a myth. We are self piteous, unreliable narrators of our own lived experience; sugar-guzzling runaway trains on a surefire collision with death; we’re narcissistic, (yet self-hating), sick by default, entirely unacquainted with the diseases correlated with obesity, (all incidentally correlated with age and heredity too); in denial about our physical appearance; feckless, and – because no anti-fat screed would be complete without it – lacking in Personal Responsibility. But she would “never want a woman to hate herself for what she finds in the mirror”, perish the thought.

The War on Obesity, despite being ramped up a hundredfold since I was a was first indoctrinated into – and lastingly damaged by – diet culture as an eleven year old child, has not resulted in a healthier populace. Western society is collectively mired up to the lugholes in mass neurosis around issues of food and weight; eating disorders are on the rise across the gender spectrum, in some instances developing in kindergarten, so Gold can fucking bite me with her cod “what about the children?!” shtick. Mental health is a key component of overall wellbeing, and shame is not conducive to mental health. Meanwhile society is getting fatter – along with the wallets of bariatric surgeons and all the other opportunist outfits in "partnership” with the National Obesity Forum, (Canderel, LighterLife, SlimFast, Roche, Glaxo Smith Kline, et al; all organisations whose revenue is dependent on as many people as possible fearing, hating, and being fat).

It’s time to try something else, like recognising that body diversity, along with death and disease, are simple facts of life; that healthful practices are beneficial to all regardless of the size of the body practicing them; and that weight is not an indicator of health or moral character. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to get to grips with the reams of documentary evidence confirming there is no reliable way to make a body naturally inclined to fatness lastingly thin, and move the fuck forward already. 

I’ll shut up now.

[aridara]

So, apparently, @terfslurring​ didn’t like it when I called out her “Trans people reject the biological reality of sex and want to impose gender roles on everyone!” bullshit, and decided to write me some responses. By reblogging a completely different thread that wasn’t about trans people (it was about abortion), but whatever.

So I decided to answer them here.

First post: two quotes from Andrea Dworkin. Which have nothing to do with the argument at hand. Next.

Second post: A pamphlet about “How to spot MRA ideology”. Which basically tries to claim that Men’s Rights Activists and trans activist are somehow the same thing. Which is patently ridiculous.

For example, the first page claims that MRAs:

... Are anti-feminist. (True.)

...Focus on issues that, according to MRAs themselves, discriminate against men. (True in the sense that MRAs do claim that those issues discriminate against men; whether those issues actually discriminate against men or not is another issue entirely.)

...Often use the term “TERF” against feminists. (False. MRAs don’t care about whether feminists are against trans people or not.)

The second page claims that MRAs often label themselves “Trans Rights Activists”, or “TRA”. Which is completely and utterly false: the most cursory exploration of any MRA website (for example r/mensrights, A Voice For Men, Heartiste...) will show that MRAs are openly against trans people, frequently vilify them and declare them to be mentally ill, openly advocate in favor of forcibly institutionalizing trans people to “fix” them, etc.

There’s more lies in that pamphlet, like the lie that trans advocates deny the existence of sexism or the lie that TERFs do not claim that “trans women are violent predators, pedophiles and rapists”. But really, just the fact that the pamphlet tried to conflate a pro-trans group with a very anti-trans one is enough to dismiss it as total bullshit.

Third post... Oh, boy, I’ll need quotes for this.

Gender Critical Feminism

is a term used by those in the feminist community who consider gender a harmful social construct that is confused with -but distinct from -biological sex.

The World Health Organization defines gender as “the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women”.WHO: gender equity, human rights

Except that trans people are talking about gender identity, not gender roles.

Gender identity (which is what most people and especially trans people and advocates refer to when they say “gender”) is, by definition, self-determined. You decide the label of your own gender identity, and how to express yourself; nobody else can do it for you.

Gender role (which is what pretty much only trans-exclusionary feminists refer to when they say “gender”) is the idea that people should act in a certain way depending on what genitalia they have. By definition, you’re trying to tell other people what to do.

Trans advocates advocate in favor of letting everyone express their own gender identity however they want. TERFs falsely claim that trans advocates are in favor of imposing gender roles on everyone, whether they want it or not - which is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what trans advocates are doing.

Gender critical feminists believe the definition of “man” and the definition of “woman” should be based solely on biology, rather than on “masculine” or “feminine” personality traits or an innate sense of gender identity.

They recognize those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries designed to produce large egg cells, female genitalia, and a relatively high level of estrogen and progesterone as biologically female. They define “woman” as an adult human female.

They recognize those with XY-chromosomes, testes designed to produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, and a relatively high level of testosterone as biologically male. They define “man” as an adult human male.

Intersex people, who represent less than 0.02% of the entire population are those whose chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, and genitals do not conform to the biological binary of female or male bodies. Gender critical feminists recognize intersex people as a distinct group of people with an empirically diagnosable medical condition.

Alright. So, as I’ve repeatedly stated, pretty much all transphobes do three things.

1. They claim that there’s only two separate human sexes (plus eventually a small amount of exceptions, tiny enough to be ignored). According to Terfslurring, “gender critical feminists” fit the bill.

2. They claim that sex must be determined by looking at specific sex-determining characteristics. Again: according to Terfslurring, “gender critical feminists” fit the bill - they look at chromosomes (XX versus XY), gonads (ovaries versus testicles), genitalia (I suppose vagina versus penis), and hormone levels (high estrogen + progesterone versus high testosterone).

3. They believe that making everyone determine everyone’s sex in the “correct” way (see the above) is VERY important. This is blatantly obvious - whenever goes against the “there’s only two separate sexes” claim (for example, by saying that sex is a spectrum), gender-critical feminists actively oppose that someone and claim that they’re wrong. Likewise, whenever someone goes against the “chromosomes/gonads/genitalia/hormones determine a person’s sex” claim (for example, by respecting a person’s chosen identity, regardless of their genitalia), gender-critical feminists actively oppose that someone and claim that they’re wrong.

So, here’s something fun that I want to point out: transphobes love to claim that their beliefs are absolutely correct and precise, and that whoever refuses to determine people’s sex in the “correct” way must necessarily be in the wrong.

This also applies to the transphobes themselves. They don’t get to viciously attack anyone who goes against the “there’s only two separate sexes” claim when THEY THEMSELVES go against that same claim.

For example, let’s take everyone on the planet and divide them like gender-critical feminists want me to.

Everyone who has XX chromosomes, ovaries, a vagina, an uterus, and high levels of estrogen and progesterone will go in the “FEMALE” box.

Everyone who has XY chromosomes, testicles, a penis, and high levels of testosterone will go in the “MALE” box.

Everyone else will go in the “EXCEPTIONS” box.

Here’s the problem: the exceptions are way, way, WAY more than 0,02% of the human population. So, I can’t ignore them.

But if I can’t ignore them, then I must accept that there aren’t just two separate human sexes.

And if I accept that there aren’t just two separate human sexes, gender-critical feminists will declare that I’m wrong.

Conclusion: according to gender-critical feminist theory, gender-critical feminist theory is wrong. So, I’ll throw it out.

Moving on.

“Cisgender”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines cisgender as “denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex; not transgender.

”Gender critical feminists object to the idea that their “self-identity” “conforms” with the feminine gender role they were assigned at birth. They reject their assigned gender traits and roles as a form of oppression, and do not “self-identify” with them at all.

This is more of that thing where trans advocates talk about gender identity, and gender-critical feminists talk about gender roles.

On the plus side, it means that gender-critical feminists have absolutely no argument against gender identity.

According to trans-inclusive feminists, being cisgendered means that biological women and girls have “cisgender privilege” which is defined as the “set of unearned advantages that individuals who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth accrue solely due to having a cisgender identity”.

Gender critical feminists do not believe that both being biologically female and knowing you are biologically female makes you a member of a privileged class. Nor do they believe males who identify as female are more oppressed than actual females.

What follows is a long list of statistics about issues that women face due to sexism. I’ll spare you, because I don’t actually object to those statistics.

What I do object to, is Terfslurring’s claim that transphobia - which is oppression from cis people (men or women) against trans people (men, women or otherwise) - doesn’t exist because sexism - which is oppression from men (cis or otherwise) against women (cis or otherwise) doesn’t exist. Which makes as much sense as claiming that racism doesn’t exist because sexism exists.

Likewise, Terfslurring is trying to imply that cis women can’t be transphobic towards trans women, because cis women are victims of sexism from men. Which makes as much sense as “white women can’t be racist towards black men, because cis women are victims of sexism from men”.

Then there’s a bunch of lies that aim to absolve TERFs from their transphobia. I’ll just give you the highlights.

Despite claims that “transwomen are women” gender critical feminists note that laws based on gender identity allow any predatory male to claim a female identity and gain access to vulnerable women in shelters, locker rooms, restrooms, and prisons. 

Except that those laws have NOT helped predatory males to gain access to vulnerable women. For example, the “If we let trans women in women’s bathroom, predatory men will assault women in bathrooms!” panic? A complete fabrication made from homophobic groups.

Lesbian feminist Janice Raymond is frequently accused of having “blood on her hands” for single-handedly denying government funding and insurance coverage for transgender surgery/hormone treatment.

According to The Terfs.com “It was only after the NCHCT [National Center for Health Care Technology] published Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that the US government reversed course in 1981 and took up Raymond’s views and rhetoric.”48

But the US state and federal government had never funded sex change procedures, so the accusation makes no sense.

This is false. Before 1981, the USA did fund trans care. The USA changed their stance after the OHTA Report was issued.

Still, trans activists claim a single sentence by Janice Raymond included in the 15 page NCHCT report (“transsexual surgery is controversial in our society”) caused the US state and federal government, under the Reagan administration, to reject government funding for sex change procedures. 

False. The NCHCT asked Raymond to write a report about the ethical and social aspects of trans care.

The USA state didn’t “reject government funding for sex change procedures” because of the NCHCT report, unlike what Terfslurring is claiming; it did because of the OHTA (Office of Health Technology Assessment) report. The OHTA report made three claims - one of which was that ”transsexual surgery is controversial in our society”. Two sources were used to back up that claim:

Raymond’s NCHCT report, which was about the ethical and social aspects of trans care (NOT about the economical or experimental aspects). The entire report - not a “single sentence”.

A review of Raymond’s 1979 book, “The Transsexual Empire, The Making of the She-Male”.

Along with allegedly denying the existence of transgender people, gender critical feminists are accused of being responsible for the high murder rate of transgender people even though transgender people are overwhelmingly murdered by men...

Except that gender-critical feminists promote the same “trans women are violent rapists” mentality that those men use to justify their attacking - and killing - trans women.

...and have high rates of involvement in the extremely dangerous sex trade.

44% of black transgender people and 33% of latino transgender people have experience in the sex trade. People involved in the sex trade are 18 times more likely to be murdered than others of their same race and class.

Funny that 1) you haven’t confronted statistics between cis and trans people;

And 2) you actively refute any testimony from transgender people. Including those black/latino trans people in the sex trade - especially when they try to tell you that, having experienced both sexism, racism and transphobia, they can tell the difference between the three.

But no. You just immediately assume that they don’t know what they’re talking about, and that all transphobia is just misguided homophobia/sexism/whorephobia/anything-that-isn’t-transohobia. Old tactic.

Despite this, trans activists rarely blame male sex buyers (or males in general)...

This is blatantly false. Just look at how often they talk about male transphobic groups.

Also, “male sex buyers”? ...Why do I suspect that you’re also against sex work (not “sex trade”, I’ve said sex work)?

There’s more, but frankly, I had enough.

[truthbeetoldmedia]

10 Best Moments from Season 1 of “Anne with an E”

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Canadian children’s series, Anne of Green Gables, has been adapted many times in the more than a century since it was first published. When recreating a story that has been part of the childhoods of Canadians and other children around the world for generations, there are certain elements that must remain the same and others that can be invented or updated to keep the story fresh and captivating.

Anne with an E (or just Anne, in Canada) is the CBC’s most recent adaptation of the classic, in partnership with Netflix U.S. It stays true to the essentials of the original work with pristine casting, beautiful cinematography, plotlines and dialogue that are lifted right from the novel. But it also took the chance to modernize the story in a way that makes it relatable and necessary in today’s world, by including a “Progressive Mothers Sewing Circle” and multiple conversations and conflicts around feminism, choice, and education.

Here are 10 of the best moments from Season 1 of Anne with an E:

Anne’s journey to Green Gables - 1x01 “Your Will Shall Decide Your Destiny”

Anne Shirley’s (Amybeth McNulty) romantic descriptions of Prince Edward Island throughout the series made it an ideal place in the hearts and minds of many young readers, and the sweeping shots and attention given to Anne’s enrapturement as she travels with Matthew Cuthbert (R.H. Thomson) from Bright River to Green Gables capture this sense of wonder beautifully.

This journey also introduces us to Anne, through the eyes of Matthew: she’s talkative, full of big words and bigger ideas, and in possession of an imagination of the likes Matthew — nor anyone in Avonlea — has ever seen before.

All of this is perhaps best captured as Anne and Matthew ride down the Avenue, a lane shaded by drooping cherry trees blooming with white blossoms, which Anne promptly renames “The White Way of Delight.”

Of course, Anne’s overwhelming happiness at finding a home in the most beautiful place in the world is overshadowed by the viewer’s knowledge that Matthew and his sister Marilla (Geraldine James) had expected a boy instead, something Anne has not yet realized and is sure to ruin her dreams of feeling wanted and loved.

“She’s my daughter!” - 1x02 “I Am No Bird, and No Net Ensnares Me”

If this moment didn’t melt your heart, you’re made of stone.

After Marilla sends Anne away for theft — which they soon learn was a wrongful accusation — Matthew chases her to Bright River, then to Charlottetown, then across the strait to Nova Scotia; he sustains an injury to the head upon almost spotting her in Charlottetown and he fruitlessly looks for her at the orphanage, before finally finding her at a train station where she’s collecting money by selling stories for a ticket to Halifax.

Anne is unforgiving when she first sees Matthew again, understandably hurt and unwilling to give him a second chance. A well-meaning stranger gets between them, worried that Matthew means her harm, but Matthew quickly dissipates the situation with a single sentence: “She’s my daughter.”

They’re words that Anne has been longing to hear and believe her entire life and she forgives Matthew immediately, wrapping her arms around him in a hug, and together they return to Avonlea.

Marilla talks to Anne - 1x02 “I Am No Bird, and No Net Ensnares Me”

Marilla is not one to wear even a sliver of her heart on her sleeve, and talking openly to Anne — who is so different from Marilla that she doesn’t even know where to begin — doesn’t come easily to her. Anne has no idea how her brief absence affected Marilla and instead assumes that Marilla doesn’t want or even like her, and it’s only because of Matthew that she concedes to keeping the child around.

Marilla does her best to smooth over her rocky beginning with Anne, in a speech made even more sweet by how obviously difficult Marilla finds it. “Anne, will you forgive me? I am very sorry, Anne. [...] You’re a truthful girl, Anne, even now, and that is an admirable quality. This was my fault. And all that you went through because of it. It’s a wonder you came back to Green Gables at all.”

An adult admitting their wrongs and asking a child for forgiveness is refreshing to see, especially given the time period. Proving that she does have a heart, and a heavy sense of remorse, does much to repair Marilla’s relationship with Anne, and although Anne will never feel the same sense of kinship with her as she does with Matthew, they grow to love each other deeply.

The PMSC (Progressive Mothers Sewing Circle) - 1x03 “But What is So Headstrong as Youth?”

Now that she’s adopted Anne, Marilla is invited to join the PMSC by several other mothers of young girls, a society that discusses and believes in progressive matters, such as girls’ education and equality between women and men.

It’s a clever opportunity for the show to discuss modern ideas in a 19th century setting, and Marilla, an older woman with a conservative bent, is a good viewpoint to see it from. At Marilla’s first meeting, the women discuss books and feminism and being a modern women in a modern world. Marilla is quite out of her depth, but is more than willing to listen and learn and even change her own ways of thinking.

Later, Marilla has a lively debate with her neighbour and friend Rachel Lynde (Corrine Koslo) about the PMSC, of which Rachel is no big proponent of, asking if the women “took turns shouting atop a soapbox” (a common misconception of feminism, even today).

“There was a lot of civilized talk about women’s education and social reforms,” Marilla replies.

Even Matthew chimes in on the discussion when he comes in to tea: “I reckon every new idea was modern once, until it wasn’t.”

Gilbert’s introduction - 1x03 “But What is So Headstrong as Youth?”

In almost any iteration of the Anne of Green Gables series, Gilbert Blythe (Lucas Jade Zumann) is nearly as essential to the story as Anne herself is. For generations, his character has been the object of countless fictional crushes and Anne’s relationship with him is a main driving force of the plot; such a character deserves a hero’s introduction.

And a hero’s introduction he receives. Anne’s on her way to school when she’s confronted by Billy Andrews, who threatens her for unintentionally spreading rumours about his sister. That’s when Gilbert appears, who immediately diffuses the situation by greeting Billy as a friend and suggesting they get to school, while Anne looks on in (surprisingly) wordless shock.

Anne runs from Gilbert and they’re not properly introduced until they reach the school, where she finally finds her tongue, tells him her name, and realizes that he’s the famous Gilbert Blythe as he’s immediately swarmed by his admiring classmates.

Gilbert has always seen Anne differently than everyone else, and feels a pull to her from the start. Where everyone else — including Anne — believes her to be homely and judges her harshly for coming from an orphan’s asylum, Gilbert says, “Why do I care where she’s from? A cute girl is a cute girl.”

(Later, when the class laughs at Anne for her dramatic reading of a poem, Gilbert only sees it as admirable: “She’s good. Invested.”)

Anne and Marilla discuss Anne’s future - 1x04 “An Inward Treasure Born”

After several weeks off, Anne is ready to go to school again. But she’s still concerned about what the minister told her earlier in the episode, about her not needing to go to school and becoming a wife instead. Ever since she heard that, Anne has been contemplating what it is she would like to be when she grows up.

Marilla is progressive enough and loves Anne enough to view the minister’s thinking as old-fashioned, and tells Anne that she should decide for herself what she would like to be and set her mind to it.

Gentle moments like this one between Marilla and Anne are rare, which makes them all the more touching when they come along. Marilla is new to parenthood, and while she certainly struggles with some aspects of it (and Anne is no easy child to raise, either), this is something that comes surprisingly natural to her. She always seems to know just what to say to ease Anne’s mind, and her unwavering faith in Anne’s intelligence and goodness is raw and honest, when she chooses to express it.

“You’ve got a good and nimble mind, Anne. I don’t see why you should limit it. In my day, we didn’t get to choose. I think you should make your own decision.” This statement means a lot, especially coming from Marilla, who wasn’t given the opportunity to choose her own path due to her family situation.

Anne saves Minnie May’s life - 1x06 “Remorse is the Poison of Life”

Anne’s experiences as an orphan prior to coming to Green Gables have her poorly adjusted for many things, but have taught her many things no child should be expected to know — including how to deal with croup.

When her dearest friend Diana’s little sister, Minnie May, falls ill on a night when both her parents and half the town are in Charlottetown to see the premier, Diana (Dalila Bela) goes to Anne for help. Anne immediately sends Matthew into town to fetch the doctor, while she accompanies Diana back to the house.

What follows is an extremely tense scene in which Anne does everything in her power to save Minnie May’s life — including employing remedies from old wives’ tales — while Diana and her Aunt Josephine (Deborah Grover) look on in shock.

The moment Minnie May coughs and breathes again after several minutes of choking silently on phlegm is an exceedingly powerful one. Anne’s role in saving the little girl’s life — when the doctor arrives, he confirms that Minnie May would have died otherwise — causes Diana’s mother to forgive her after the unfortunate currant wine incident of a month before and allow the two to be friends again, and raises her esteem greatly in the eyes of Aunt Josephine.

Anne and Gilbert talk about grief - 1x06 “Remorse is the Poison of Life”

For several months after the incident in which Gilbert called Anne “Carrots” and she responded by smashing her slate over his head, Anne holds to her promise not to have anything to do with him unless absolutely necessary. It’s not until Gilbert’s father dies and Anne feels that this is something she can relate to him about — after all, now they’re both orphans — that she makes any effort to actually talk to him.

Unfortunately, Anne isn’t a natural when it comes to sympathizing and not only does she not pick up on the fact that the last thing Gilbert wants is to talk to someone, but she manages to say exactly the wrong thing.

“Being an orphan has its challenges but you already have so many advantages, you’ll be much better off than I was. And...I didn’t know my parents. They died when I was a baby, so I couldn’t fend for myself the way that you can. And I don’t remember my parents at all, but you’ll always be able to remember your father. You know, when you think about it, you’re really very lucky.”

Later, Anne realizes that Gilbert has lost someone in a way she never has since she never knew her parents and thus never mourned them; however, when she arrives at Gilbert’s house to tell him this, he has already gone.

“I choose myself. That way I’ll never be disappointed.” - 1x06 “Remorse is the Poison of Life”

While out on a walk to “take advantage of the winter air,” Aunt Josephine comes upon Anne in her clubhouse, yelling aggrievedly to no one about Gilbert Blythe.

“What you heard just now had nothing to do with romance,” Anne assures the old woman, which leads into a discussion about Anne’s future and how all the other girls at school dream only of becoming a wife, and Anne herself has so many other ambitions.

Aunt Josephine is perhaps uniquely situated to give Anne advice, having never gotten married herself but spent her life living with the woman she loved (a relationship Anne hasn’t yet realized extended far past the realms of friendship).

“I have the following thoughts to offer,” Aunt Josephine says. “First, you can get married any time in your life, if you choose to do so. And two: if you choose a career, you can buy a white dress yourself, have it made to order, and wear it whenever you want.”

Aunt Josephine’s words do much to improve Anne’s mood, and she promptly exclaims, “I’m going to be my own woman.”

Gilbert and Anne meet in Charlottetown - 1x07 “Wherever You Are is My Home”

While in Charlottetown pawning goods in the hopes of saving Green Gables, Anne runs into Gilbert, who’s there to work on the docks. Anne is inexplicably happy to see him again, and the two go for coffee together.

Anne finally gets the chance to apologize to Gilbert for what she said after his father’s death, even if it’s an apology he doesn’t need to hear. The two strike up a truce and at last seem to form the beginnings of a friendship — with Anne even admitting that she’s missed him (although, supposedly, only in school).

Neither of them seem quite prepared to leave the other without knowing when they’ll see each other again (even Jerry notices the long looks that pass between them) and when they do eventually meet again, it’s easy to assume that a fundamental aspect of their relationship will have changed.

Season 2 of Anne With An E premieres September 23 on CBC in Canada, and is already available on Netflix in the U.S.

[maybeyoumissthisf-kingpost]

Feminism and gender equality: Why does it suck?

First of all, this article is for Feminists, and is not contraindicated for women who are drawn into the Feminism movement without understanding the political tricks of the wire-pullers behind. I respect every woman. They are half of this world. I bet you'll agree with me on one thing: Women have always been honored for their direct and indirect contributions to human civilization. Because of that, I feel I have a responsibility to protect them from the malicious conspiracy of the Feminism movement.

In Vietnam, the liars call Feminism Feminism. But what RIGHTS? Where is the RIGHT? Which word in “Feminism” has RIGHT in it?

I call Feminism the Supreme Feminism

The press, as well as the simps with their pussy on their heads, praised this toxic choleraism, making the sisters think that this was a movement to fight for equal rights for women. I say,

My body is like a drop of rain. Seeds go to the castle, seeds go to the field to plow

Even if the raindrops don't have the same starting point, how can there be equality in this world? Can anyone try to name an equal country for me? There is no right. The leftists always do not draw two words EQUALITY to attract losers in society. Gender equality, income equality, racial equality, class equality? An all-too-familiar scenario for shepherding stupid sheep.

Want to know toxic feminism? Ask the Feminists!

Going back to the Mao or Bolshevik era in the mid-twentieth century, also with the scenario of class struggle for equal rights, a series of bourgeoisie were denounced, executed and executed [1][2]. Today, gender equality has the same color. There will be a day when the men - the object of attack by the struggle group - will fade away like the bourgeois in the revolutionary era. Of course, similar massacres are hard to come by in the modern world, but it will be done more delicately, instilling slowly and killing you like a Poison Mushroom. Remember, there is NEVER a struggle for equality that stops at the balance of interests, but it is always directed towards the exclusion and elimination of that object from society. If you think I'm taking it too seriously, you can check with the hashtag #KillAllMen on social media to see if it's terror enough. Too obvious for the toxicity of the modern feminist movement!

Looking back at Feminist's harsh words to men, plus the cheers of the left-wing media, do you see the danger? They inject young girls with the image of men as scum – lustful, slutty, wretched, etc. ALL MEN ARE WRONG is the mindset you can easily see in young girls these days. .

I know many female friends who have suffered a lot of hurt, even humiliation when going through toxic relationships with some assholes. I'm not defending those fuckboys. But women, the gender that is dominated by negative emotions [3][4][5] , after the breakup of a love affair is often easily lured into movements that boycott men with extreme arguments such as :

1. Women suffer many disadvantages when getting married and having children. Men do not have pain in childbirth, so they never appreciate this sacrifice of women.

2. All men are rapists [6] .

3. Women in the past could not study, could not participate in elections, so they always lost compared to men; Moreover, women are bound by many strict dogmas, marriage must be completely dependent on their husbands.

However, NO ONE told them:

1. The man carries the national responsibility on his shoulders. He could die, be stabbed by swords, shot by bullets, burned alive, dismembered, etc. on the battlefield to protect women and their children at home.

2. Even if two people have a completely voluntary relationship, if the girl accuses the boy of raping, he will still have to go to prison to schedule a schedule [7] . On the other hand, if a man alleges that he was raped by a woman, guess what percentage of him will win the case?

3. A man is by default the one who provides and protects his family for the rest of his life, and at the same time is the one who bears all the responsibilities – that is an inescapable destiny. He will be despised by people and despised by society if he cannot afford to take care of his wife and children. More than 150 years ago, if the wife committed a crime, it was the husband who would be punished or imprisoned under Coverture laws. Also in the old society, women can't vote, and men... can't vote anyway?! In feudal times, was the potato gourd? Kings follow the tradition of passing from father to son, but there is no election. Only in Western society do women have the right to vote, but under Coverture law, the husband will be the representative of the will of both.

No school, school, or newspaper tells today's boys and girls about these things. And young people are easily attracted by the new radical movements, resulting in society spawning the following groups:

The conspiracy behind the cover of gender equality: Breaking the gender line

The interests of men and women are inherently balanced, only when Feminism movements arose, that balance gradually tilted to one side. Worth mentioning, this bias is NOT beneficial to women, but only to benefit the policies and voting of the left. By taking advantage of the image of the LGBT community, Feminists argue that there is no difference between men and women, thereby breaking down gender boundaries. What is the result? It's the FEMALE, I'm not mistaken, the WOMEN are the recipients.

When it goes beyond the limits of the laws of nature, breaking the gender line has dire consequences for women.

Typically, Fallon Fox, a male MMA fighter (transgender) allowed to compete in the women's category, caused female boxer Tamikka Brents to break her skull and brain injury in just the first round. Another example is Mary Gregory, a transgender man who broke the record of four female weightlifters in a single day [8] .

So, does this movement really bring equality to women, or does it only increase social injustice? Of course, the madness of these guys won't stop, just think that one day when the genders are no longer distinguished, men will be able to enter the women's toilets!? Oh what a disaster!

Men and women are inherently different

Back in the beginning of the world, Eve was born from the body of Adam. She was not born from the bones of Adam's head so that she would rule over Adam; nor was she born from the bones of Adam's feet to be trampled upon by Adam; that she borne from Adam's rib that the two might be equal, under Adam's arm that she might be sheltered, near Adam's heart that she might be loved.

Both men and women are born different, taking on different roles in life. There are areas for men to control, and there are areas for women to control. Although there are many studies that have shown differences in brain thinking in both sexes, Feminists still try to deny this difference. Again, this distinction is a FACT (truth). Therefore, to deny this difference is to bend the truth.

Correct. Bend the truth is what Feminist is doing.1. Feminist: “Women must be treated like men”

There's a saying that goes, "Women can do anything a man can." However, history has always shown the opposite. Women rarely choose to confront, take responsibility for key decisions. This is easy to see that even in family relationships, the wife always gives her husband the right to decide when there is an important issue. To emphasize, this behavior is NOT BAD at all. Because it is the NATIONAL, the divinity of a woman.

I am not saying that men or women are better, but since ancient times, men have been identified as the ones who take the lead. He must be RESPONSIBLE and stand to solve his own and the woman's problems.

Therefore, women need to be treated like EVERYONE, not LIKE MAN. Again, I respect every woman. But if you want to win the respect of society, you must learn to be responsible… like a man.

2. Feminist: “Women must have the same salary as men”

In fact, it is not men who are paid more, but women who always choose lower paying jobs [9] . However, how to choose a job, it is completely the freedom of each person. Feminists want to force girls to work against their wishes, it can be said that it is an unethical behavior.

3. Feminist: “Women should be allowed to do men's jobs”

Everyone is given equal opportunities, but each gender has qualities that make us superior to the other half in some areas. For men, it's physical health, hard work is naturally suitable for men. For women, it is the ability to care, so women dominate the nursing field. Such division of labor is to ensure the highest economic efficiency for society. So, women don't need to do the work of men, they just need to do the work that they feel LIKE and DO GOOD.

4. Feminist: “Women must be treated by law in the same way as men”

The law is now “favoring” women, that is the reality, due to pressures from far-left movements. Specifically, we have women's rights, children's rights, but not men's rights. Even in the US, when it comes to legal protection, men even lose to dogs and cats. That is the imbalance caused by the Feminist and the leftists.

There is a funny story like this: “Oranges look both beautiful and delicious, so they are often used as juice; and the bitter melon is both bitter and rough, so no one has ever forced it to drink. Then one day the bitter melons rebelled to overthrow Orangeism. Proponents of bitter gourd believe that oranges can make juice, so can bitter melons. As a result, after years of struggle, the government passed the Plant Equality law, according to which anyone who drinks orange juice but does not drink bitter gourd juice will be jailed.”

Sounds absurd right? In short, men and women are inherently different. Both sexes are born to DO BETTER what the other cannot be in charge of. Orange has its own application, so does bitter melon. We cannot use others to measure ourselves. Doing so only shows that you are lowering your self-worth.

If you're not equal, don't be equal

It is ironic that Feminists are always anti-men, but covet their values. Value is something that takes effort to build, but cannot be asked to be recognized or given by others. To me, the value of a person lies in their usefulness. So be useful to family, friends and society; study and work kindly; serve and love the community. Don't compare yourself to others. Also, don't put others down, because it doesn't raise your self-worth. Because only what you do shows who you are in this world.

All credit goes to trantuansang.com.

[notesfromthefielddesk]

Episode 5 - Judith Butler

Episode link; https://open.spotify.com/episode/6yCPTlFz7uk7nhojByDwRI?si=5fc75b929803458e

John J: I bet you can guess where I am. I concluded that it was probably best for me to come back to London, tail between my legs so I can apologise. I’m up on the fourth floor of the social sciences building. When I came on the open day I saw all these old buildings in the centre of town. But of course the social science building is about twenty minutes walk away in what you might charitably call a “brutalist” building. Other people...might call it ugly. A reflection I am sure of anthropologies perceived value. Look we aren’t the law department you know lots of students and money and career paths and a separate library. But whatever I mean the quality of the education we get in this building is in my view better. I mean laws fine... if you’re into that kind of thing. 

Sorry, I got off track there. My sister studied law. Good for her I guess. Anyway, you’ve seen a hallway like this one before, every few steps there's a pushpin board with some notices for psychology experiments run by undergrads and events which happened two years ago. I’m opposite a display case with books written by people from the department. There is a draft from the window behind me which is one of those single pane deals with that adhesive plastic which I assume is to stop the glass shattering? But it’s peeling away at the corners. It was a nightmare getting up here, the lift on one side of the building only goes up to the third floor, so once I got there, I had to drag the desk to the lift on the other side of the building to get up here. Then Susans office is back on the other side. So I’m sweaty and umm quite nervous about facing Susan. Who I am pretty sure hates me. I should say there is someone else waiting here, What did you say your name was;

Julie K: I didn’t, it’s Julie.

JJ: Hi, umm thanks for being quiet while i did the intro…(awkward) So what’s your research about? 

JK: I’m not sure really, still at the planning phase but something about gender I think… maybe about cocoa farmers.. 

JJ: Like de Beauvoir? (Doesn’t leave room for an answer) But she’s not really an anthropologist? 

JK: So? 

JJ: So… she was a philosopher, an ethicist to be exact, that’s not really anthropology. Is it?

JK: I never even said I was using de Beauvoir. 

JJ: (Not listening) Although…(goes into a spiel about de Beauvoir which I need to research) de Beauvoir did argue that the views of individuals are socially and culturally produced. She said “one is not born a woman but becomes one.” She said women are taught through social interactions three facts; 1. That women need to fulfill the needs of men. 2. Their women’s self worth was built on external validation a.k.a being pretty and 3. They have less influence because they have less legal rights. De Beauvouir said that dolls given to young girls are an example of the way girls are taught to think. She said young girls identify with the doll and through it learn to see themselves as pretty objects without their own agency, which is just a fancy way of saying choice. None of this is innate to being a woman, they aren’t born objects but made into them by society which aims to suppress them. Which is kind of like Geertz and his webs of significance. Except Geertz said you spun your own webs where as De Beauvoir seems to think society spins the webs around women trapping them in certain norms. Women, De Beauvoir said, needed to see these constructs to escape them. Like how, if a fly is in a bottle, it needs to first see the bottle to get out. 

(Smug pause)

JK: Why did you just explain De Beauvoir to me?

(awkward Johnson noises)

JK: And yeah De Beauvoir is a start but like the waves of feminism built up on each other, so did the people who studied gender: so where De Beauvoir pointed out the distinction between sex and gender, Butler makes the line between them a bit fuzzy. Or.. she actually questions it. Sex, according to Butler, is not just the biological one, and gender the socially constructed one. Sex is socially constucted as well. Which people find a tricky idea right? Like, men have penises, women have vaginas, there are biological facts. But what Butler is pointing out is not about biology but about categories, and that we’re not born with sex just as we’re not born with gender. Man and woman are two really broad categories with a lot of variation within them.  Women with beards, men with boobs etc. All these biological features, are features that we have grouped into categories of sexes. Remember Caster Semenya? She was the South African runner who was so fast people complained that she must be a man. She was forced to undergo sexual verification procedures which determined her to be a woman. However, it was later decided that her testosterone was too high to compete as a woman. If the binary between men and women is as clear as we’re socialised to believe then surely that would have been determined the first time around. The truth is, what we call “woman” is a collection of traits which we as a society have agreed make someone a woman. It’s like that shower realisation that maybe what we’re all agreeing is red is being experienced differently by every person! And guess what the way we’re judging whether someone is a woman is not biological, or otherwise you wouldn’t say “hello miss” till you’d seen a DNA test. It’s based on a whole bunch of other assumptions about how a woman acts and looks, which are socially constructed! 

Butler said, influenced by Austin, that Gender and sex are a performance. We behave in certain ways which conform to certain categories but we don’t have a free choice in those behaviours because society has set the stage that forces us all to conform. It’s like that bit in fleabag when she says “Sometimes I worry, I wouldn’t be such a feminist if I had bigger tits.” Maybe she’s right you know like if you conform to society's ideas of femininity, like having big tits, then it’s harder to break out of the performance? So maybe you, explaining De Beauvouir to me, is you, performing your masculinity? The set dressing around you, you know your masters degree, the desk, the books, your tweed suit, Western societal expectations, inform you that you should not only be smart but demonstrate that fact by showing off that intelligence by explaining De Beauvouir. Whereas my set dressing tells me to be quiet and let you explain, despite me being the one who studies gender. Thinking about it this way, and realising the performance of it all, gives women more agency, you know, which means choice. In De Beauvoir women should not act in feminine ways because by not conforming you’re resisting patriarchy. But in Butler’s view if you’re a woman who likes make-up, more power to you, the problem is with the category that says make-up equals female. 

Then, bell hooks came along and recognized that a woman’s race, political history, social position, economic status among other factors influence the way her value is perceived. And that none of these factors can be left out.

She also rightfully pointed out how the feminist movement is dominated by white women fighting for white women’s, upper class, causes. She mentions how this actually kind of imitates the power structure of white patriarchy. So that’s not good.

(Pause this was all said very breathlessly) 

JK: So. I don’t really know how I’m going to approach this at first seemingly small subject of doing research about women who are cocoa farmers in a small town in Ghana, cause that’s what I think I want to do, but then I can’t just look at those women in that small town and their cocoa farms, you know? I feel like I have to think about the whole world and all the thoughts that go in that world before I can even begin to research something like that. Like, for example one part of it for me is that the domestic work these women do isn’t considered work. Which Crawford says is a function of capitalism, like before capitalism, all work which helped make sure everyone could survive, like cooking, was considered work but now work is only labour exchanged for money. She wrote that based on Marx and Engels. So do I need to read Marx now? Am I freaking out? I don’t even know anymore.

JK: I don’t know.. I think it’s important to look at feminism in an intersectional way you know..as if standing on a traffic intersection, with all kinds of different directions that influence a possible accident. The car could’ve come from just one direction, or maybe all of them! This term is coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, by the way. So you can not really study gender without studying capitalism, or race, or (post)colonial studies. Because they will intertwine and overlap and influence each other and you can’t look at one without the other. You know?!

JJ: uhh that’s a lot. Do you have, like an extract that sort of sums some of this up?

JK: Umm I mean I guess hold on (riffling paper) yeah this…

Starts to play the music 

JK: Did you just put on music to go under me reading?

JJ: uh yeah - do you mind? 

JK: Umm I mean, I guess not - 

Music plays (here we need an extract.)

Okay, so well.. In Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (1990) Butler said that “Although the unproblematic unity of “women” is often invoked to construct a solidarity of identity, a split is introduced in the feminist subject by the distinction between sex and gender. Originally intended to dispute the biology-is-destiny formulation the distinction between sex and gender served the argument that whatever biological intractability sex appears to have, gender is culturally constructed: hence, gender is neither causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex. (…) When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a freefloating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily a female one.” 

She then continues to show that sex is just as culturally and socially constructed as gender: “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender: indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. It would make no sense then, to define gender as the cultural interpretation of sex, if sex itself is a gendered category (..) As a result, gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which ‘sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and established as ‘prediscursive’, prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts. (p.7)

She goes on about the performance of sex and gender by writing that “(..) gender proves to be performative - that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed. (..) There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its results.’

And then bell hooks, with no capital letters by the way, or Gloria Jean Watkins, wrote in 1981, before Butler, that “It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.”

An important thing she then mentions is that “[Our] struggle for liberation has significance only if it takes place within a feminist movement that has as its fundamental goal the liberation of all people.”

This aligns with Crenshaw’s term ‘intersectionality’: “Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects.”(https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later#:~:text=Crenshaw%3A%20Intersectionality%20is%20a%20lens,where%20it%20interlocks%20and%20intersects.) “Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.”

JK: Hey, there are a few of us doing our research in Ghana. We leave in like a month so if you want to do your research there, other people will be around.

JJ: Oh, okay, yeah i’ll umm think about it. 

(door opens) 

S: (in a happy voice) Oh hello Julie, (with displeasure) John. You can come in now John, Julie I’ll be with you shortly. 

JJ: Okay, Umm julie would you help me to move the desk in there? 

S: Leave the fucking desk.

JJ: Can I bring my microphone? 

S: Sure just, quickly yeah?

JJ: Susan

S: Johnathan 

JJ: it’s actually not short for Johnathan

S: What? What else could it possibly be short for?

JJ: Johnty 

S: With a h? 

JJ: Yeah with a H 

S: Okay...I’m going to stick with John. 

JJ: First of all I just wanted to say I did some soul searching in Bali -

S: you and everyone doing a gap year.

JJ: And i’m really sorry, I want to take it seriously now and - 

S: Yeah, I listened to episode 4. Do you think that does it? One episode where you say oops biffed it a bit, i’m a bad academic and maybe a misogynist then you’re done? How has your behaviour changed? Did you reply to my emails? Mark any assignments? Run a tutorial? 

JJ: Well in my defence I had the epiphany after about two weeks so I missed a couple but after that I flew straight back here! 

S: Look here is what is going to happen. I’ve reassigned your students and classes. I want to fire you but the department has made it clear to me that we need your fathers money.

JJ: Grandfather,

S: Shut up. So if you’re serious about taking this seriously here is what is going to happen. I want you to go away, get all this podcast shit out of your system and come back and do your job properly. To make it worth the department's time I want you to make it about Tsing. The students don’t really get what she is trying to say and i guess your podcast will be a good change of pace. And! I want a research proposal, a real one, not just (mocking voice) “desk go in field.” then come back and do your job properly okay? If you don’t you’re fired. You have a month to be back here, two podcast episodes and a proposal. Now get out. 

JJ: Look I get it and I can see you’re angry. But I need you to know that if you look out the window behind you - 

S: No.

JJ: But the guy he’s in the building opposite. 

S: I don’t care 

JJ: He has binoculars! If you’ll look you’ll know I wasn’t completely lying! 

S: Even if there is a man with binoculars over there what does that prove? 

JJ: He’s waving! 

S: Get out. 

JJ: Okay. Bye. 

Credits 

JJ: Okay, umm weird I just found this note in my pocket. It says “stop mentioning me on your podcast. Firstly, i’m not a bad guy just because of that Papua New Guinea stuff. Secondly, I'm meant to be undercover. And third the more you mention me the more you build anticipation for the reveal. You’re creating an untenable situation for yourself. 

Yours,

K” 

What the fuck! 

[unimpressedperson]

Diary Entry: Wisdom

“Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.” (Clarissa Pinkola Estés on “Women Who Run With the Wolves”)

Nature is great, did you know that? I love many things about wildlife and have been obsessed with galaxy, clouds and animals for a lifetime - not even an hyperbole here.

Human beings are part of this intricate ecosystem and we’re not the most complicate living thing, however sometimes I can’t understand my own specie. How do people expect me to guess what they are feeling? I know, I know, empathy should come naturally and easily, but sometimes I cannot identify the feeling itself in order to transmit a comprehensive aura and wholesome words.

See, intelligence is instinctive, but wisdom is acquired. Some individuals are wise, some are intelligent. A few are both, even meager have neither. Empathy is a huge piece of wisdom. You cannot be considered wise without comprehending your whereabouts and your surroundings.

Some people are born natural with a load of sensitivity towards living creatures. Some aren’t as skilled without learning and practicing. Can you imagine not being capable of helping a significant other with their struggles? It’s absolutely terrifying.

Lately I’ve been haunted by this feeling of incapability on helping my loved ones, specifically a relative I’m close with.

Graduating high school and trying to find your path from there is tough, not everyone knows what they want to be or apply for in college. Although we are all aware of how longer lifespan is slowly getting, our visions of life phases is still narrow considering the possibilities.

We no longer die at 45 from old age. Some countries have a life expectation of 80+ years and scientists predict that younger generations will comfortably live to 100 years. Why should we make decisions that supposedly will define our adulthood and happiness by the age of 18? It’s way too early for such a milestone. Also there are so many more options of career, hobbies and abilities, setting for only one seems so pointless, yet we stress enough to end our obligatory educational time anxious and - quite often - depressed.

This relative has been struggling to find a career path and graduation.

Whilst speaking to friends and people on internet, I realized that there are a lot of students clueless about their dream careers. And it’s not a lack of ambition, most of them are centered people with intelligence on several areas, yet cannot find one that ticks all boxes. Some find it difficult to fantasy about a future, when all they can think of is gaining money, stability and a 9 to 5 paying job, a minimum wage and feasible promotions.

Century after century, developing new technologies and possibilities, we still worry about living an attainable lifestyle.

I found out what I enjoyed doing - writing - from a very young age. So studying, practicing and improving that skill always seemed felt centered and well guided, aiming on accomplishing. Of course, life took several curves and nothing worked like a charm, yet I’m slowly growing past my own dreams and trying to fulfill them.

Sometimes I doubt it and cry.

Whenever I feel lost and detaching from myself, the only sorcerer capable of helping is a book. Yes, a bundle of pages bind together and very well adorned by a red and velvety-like cover, decorated with golden letters reading “Women Who Run With the Wolves”, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

Growing up as an introverted and lonely child, I never mingled in with everyone else in school. We didn’t watch the same television shows, listened to the same songs, experienced the same kind of fun. I was raised by my mother and father, but spent countless afternoons fooling around my grandmother’s backyard. I was told how to behave like a lady, how to perform house tasks and cook for a husband. Earlier than expected I felt unsuitable at home as well.

Tried to change in order to conform somewhere and became miserable.

I had personas, but not a single clue about myself. Who the hell am I?

In 2017 I found a list mentioning 10 books about feminism and “Women Who Run With the Wolves” had a different glow, a mystical mist I enjoyed.

It opened my eyes to many aspects of living, deeply knowing yourself and being independent.

Although we’ve been living through many revolutions and drastic changes, society still maintains its narrow-minded behavior when it comes to freedom. Women freedom is feared by those who can’t cope with different personalities. They classify as “wild” whatever cannot be tamed, and sometimes pacifying is the same as numbing a mind.

A society moved by a hierarchy, a patriarchal hierarchy, undoubtedly won’t allow a full mass of people to follow their dreams, acquiring knowledge and thinking for themselves. It’s dangerous for a system permitting freedom of thought or speech. It’s simple putting under pressure generations of young folks surrounded by poorness and difficulties, lacking social and class consciousness, setting them to think of very distinctive life phases and convincing that they should stick to it.

Being wild, conscious of your own flaws, qualities and abilities, becoming smarter, independent, creative and thoroughly knowing yourself is dangerous, and we should embrace every aspect of it.

Sometimes living by your own beat is hard, but everyone resounds different once the pace is set.

Humans are unpredictable and unstable, like rain on summer season and wild like wolves, slowly finding our pack.

Once you know yourself from limit to limit, persona to self, your elementar nature and civilized behavior, feeling empathy for those who didn’t quite reach that level of realization, but also granting fellow old-souls, then you’re wise.

Giving time and cruising your journey peacefully is being wise.

Take it easy on yourself because both the dreams and phases required to accomplish them are set by your perception of time.

If you want to dream big, then dream it. Be it. Embrace it. If you want to dream small, then wish for it. Enjoy it. Go for it.

Dreams are not comparable nor the joyful feeling afterwards. Don't allow people to tell you that your wishes for yourself are insignificant, because even dreaming of waking up to the smell of flowers is beautiful and meaningful, because it belongs to you.

You're free to discover your own path, your own dreams. Free to be wise.

It’s wise to be free.

[thesinglesjukebox]

TAYLOR SWIFT - THE MAN

[5.67]

«What man?» “The man,” Marco explained, explaining nothing.

Jonathan Bradley: For a feminist song by an artist whose music is rarely explicitly political, "The Man" focuses its attentions on one woman in particular. That is a good thing; Taylor Swift writes best from personal experience, and this is a more immediate and sharply felt song than the blandly participatory, elections-inspired "Only the Young." "I'm so sick of running as fast as I can," says Swift, but she doesn't sound weary; she sounds resentful. And she should be, too: the public and critical response to Swift has been explicitly gendered for her entire career. One of the sharpest songwriters of her generation, she has been abjured as frivolous and feminine; petty and jealous; a scold and a snake; too nice, too nasty, too promiscuous, too prudish. ("The negative traits ascribed to Taylor always sound like a greatest-hits list of every bad characteristic associated with womanhood," Molly Lambert wrote in 2014.) "The Man" is, as Swift tunes often are, broadly applicable. But it's also specific in its indignance. These are wounds felt personally. [8]

Vikram Joseph: Taylor's lyrics are normally best when she's writing about heartache, but they are so strong here -- incisive, funny and bitingly on point about the ways in which women in the public eye are castigated for things that men are celebrated for. "What I was wearing / if I was rude / could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves" is particularly good, and the bridge contains probably the only acceptable instance of a mad/bad rhyme in pop history. Musically, "The Man" is deceptively amiable, almost to a fault -- it's fun synth-pop but feels like 1989-lite, "Out Of The Woods" with too much of the fizz dissipated. [7]

Katie Gill: Swift's superpower is the ability to release all the worst songs off of her album as singles. (Calling it now, her next single will be "London Boy.") "The Man" is far too happy and peppy for a song about institutional sexism, with a chorus that heavily relies on the line "I'm so sick." The mixing choices are bizarre: those "yeah"s hiding in the background are so awkwardly placed that it makes me wish goat remixes were still in vogue. And for an artist who still struggles to get past that iconic moment of being compared to Beyoncé, it's a weird choice to make a song that will inevitably be compared to Beyoncé. [4]

Katherine St Asaph: For all the Discourse that smogs up everything Taylor Swift does, especially (but not only) when it involves politics or feminism, "The Man" is not really of that world. It's Taylor Swift finally getting around to releasing her own "If I Were a Boy" or "If I Was a Guy" or "Do It Like a Dude": a standard topic for pop songs, alongside "fame sucks" and "I rule." These songs are rarely great, tending lyrically to The Wing ad copy (lowlight here: "my good ideas and power moves") and musically to midtempo resignation: sure, if I were a man then I'd be the man, but I'm not and won't be, so why get angry or excited? (To Swift's credit, she works with the resignation; there's genuine wistfulness to the "running as fast as I can" line, if not wistfulness that's explored far.) These songs also subsume personality: The artist is no longer herself, just a woman among the class of women -- and actually not even that defined, just not a man. Taylor Swift, being Taylor Swift, doesn't make herself totally anonymous -- the multiple lines about getting to chase models, specifically in the way Leonardo DiCaprio does, seems like a deliberate reference to the tabloid world of the Squad, Kaylor, etc. But for every spot where her vocal inflections sound indelibly like herself, there's one where she sounds exactly like Katy Perry, one where she sounds exactly like Sia, one where she sounds exactly like early Britney, and many where she sounds like late Britney, who by then sounded like everybody else. (And since Swift and Joel Little are the only writers, for once it isn't a demo vocal's fault. Which means neither are the scanSION isSUES.) Will it shift the narrative? That's the main reason this exists. Will it be anyone's feminist awakening? Given that her stans recently exhumed and endorsed a slimy blog post by one of the most notorious pustular men of publishing because it let them harass a woman for reviewing her PR documentary -- another standard form of pop-star content -- the snooze button's been hit on that. Will it take up man-sized space on the radio? Clearly; it is a song by Taylor Swift. You're the man now, dawg. [5]

Brad Shoup: For someone who's gotten so adept at threading personal storytelling in and out of celebrity narrative, Swift suddenly, inexplicably, writes like someone who hasn't browsed a magazine in years. She must know that Leo's romantic excursions are a punchline at best, and that anyone else dropping a couplet like "What's it like to brag about raking in dollars/And getting bitches and models" would be in for a straight week of surgical editorialization. As usual, her verses are intricate machines of melodic development and rhythmic gymnastics. But the chorus makes me wish she'd pulled a reverse Porter and gone full pitch-down. I know she can afford it; she's the man. [3]

Kylo Nocom: Taylor's precise satire ends up a greater priority on "The Man" than the melodies, leaving a more impressive statement than a tune. Neither Blue Neighbourhood squeals nor choral presets are intriguing by 2020, making me wonder whether Joel Little realizes, almost seven years after Pure Heroine, that its influence is getting boring now. (Yeah!) [3]

Alfred Soto: Those staccato synth chords and Taylor Swift's stentorian delivery distracted on a rather effective album sequence last August. Radio play, however, has revealed the mild gender subversion explicit in the chorus, especially the way the electronic space fails to distinguish it from the competition. Exposure, alas, spolights "If I were a man/Then I'd be the man." [7]

Tobi Tella: For an album billed as her "most political yet", Lover mostly sidesteps real discourse. "The Man" is gloriously unsubtle, but I'm not sure how true Swift's conceit rings. There are some great confrontations of double standards here, mostly of her dating history; but would Taylor Swift, a woman who writes gooey emotional pop songs about love, be "the man" in any circumstance, regardless of gender? [6]

Michael Hong: Does anyone remember that interview around the release of Lover, where she explained why she wrote that dreadful second verse of "You Need to Calm Down?" It's hilarious: a statement by a woman whose allyship stretched as far as a throwaway "boys and boys and girls and girls," now expressing public indignation at the mere idea that one might perceive her as a homophobe. As a result, we had to suffer through "why are you mad, when you could be GLAAD," which somehow earned her GLAAD's Vanguard Award, further proof for cynics that Taylor Swift had become an expert at gaming the system. "The Man" is more of the same, Taylor Swift honing in one way she's a minority and filtering out all her other privilege. It's punctuated by a weak statement: "if I was a man, then I'd be the man," ignoring the fact that "the man" is more commonly used as a symbol of oppression. Nothing about the track challenges any piece of existing culture; even the call-out of Leonardo DiCaprio is more of a playful little ribbing, something Taylor might joke about to him during one of her extravagant yacht parties. "The Man" is a brilliant piece of marketing, a demonstration of Swift's ability to flip social issues into sounding personal and branding herself as a feminist. It helps her sell her own records while elevating her own standing. But as a song, it's another awkward and clunky moment that she seems to perceive as her own little mic drop. Hopefully next time she'll a) hire some women personnel in the studio and b) learn about the concept of intersectionality. [1]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I've criticized Taylor Swift before for her political silence, so I feel hypocritical now -- especially as a cisgender man, especially in the context of her recent Netflix documentary -- saying this sounds heavy-handed and awkward. Taylor explores the political less clumsily than Katy Perry circa 2017, but that's hardly a compliment. "The Man" is a message song, and it achieves its goals confidently, without mincing words. But Swift is a talented songwriter with many more interesting things to say, and has even talked about similar themes in more interesting ways (see "Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince"). Lover is full of intimate, gorgeous pop songs like "False God" or "Daylight," so to push this as a single is disappointing. #JUSTICEFORCRUELSUMMER [5]

Lauren Gilbert: "The Man" is a theme song for every woman who has had a man explain to her that if she just smiled a little more and tried a little harder, of course it'll all work out. It feels like walking out of a horrible job for the last time, looking at the sky and knowing -- absolutely, with a certainty you never have about yourself -- that you're better than that place, and you'll make more than they will, anyway. And I'm completely here for these MUNA-esque synths and Taylor's half-rapped "bitches and models." OK, so I docked a point for rhyming "man" and "man" in the chorus. But Taylor's still got it; this bitch still knows how to write a damn song. [9]

Ashley Bardhan: The production is deceptively honeyed -- gumdrop bass and candy button high hats. It does its job in distracting from how frustratedly deadpan Taylor sounds, probably proving her point that "it's all good if you're bad/and it's okay if you're mad," as long as you're a man. She uses the word "bitch" twice in the bridge, a testament of anger from the pop star who doesn't publicly curse very much at all. She spits it out, "I'd be a bitch, not a baller," as if singing the word will get rid of it. Of course, a famous white woman like Taylor Swift wields the kind of power that most women won't even allow themselves to dream about, but still, I feel sorry for her. [7]

Edward Okulicz: In a sea of competing takes, cut-through is achieved by blending the incisive thoughtfulness of Taylor Swift with the head-scratching vacuousness of.... Taylor Swift. I wonder which man wrote the hook that made it so catchy. If you'd once written an entire multi-platinum record by yourself and still people assumed you were ghostwritten, you'd throw your hands up too. [8]

Alex Clifton: "The Man" is a bit basic and one-note, but then again, I never expected a detailed intersectional rundown of systemic oppression in a four-minute pop song on an album titled Lover. The message of the song--"if I was a man, then I'd be the man"--is one of Swift's weaker chorus lines, because it's so redundant and clunky. Still, other lines like "when everyone believes you, what's that like?" hit like a dart. I've had my share of those experiences myself, some which I still struggle to talk about, and unfortunately I know way too many other women do. To hear someone as big as Swift sing about it in a song, knowing she's had her own experiences with sexual assault and harassment, is really powerful to me. "The Man" is not the best song on Lover, but it does make me feel more hopeful about the state of the world, if only because there are going to be teen girls listening to this and deciding that they're going to make a change in the world for themselves. There were no songs like this on mainstream radio for me when I was thirteen, and I wish there had been. So if this song makes young girls feel like they can and should fight for their rights, Swift has done her job. [6]

Isabel Cole: I mean, it could have been SO much worse. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[heylabodega]

Books Read, Age 26

Previously: 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18 (holy shit)

Enigma Variations–Aciman I talked to Robbie about this one a bunch bc he’s always looking for good novels about gay people by gay people and I thought this might be that but this is…not that. It had promise and the first section is really kind of lovely but it veers off and just…I don’t know, mileage will vary, but it didn’t feel True to me. idk idk either like he misunderstands love and sexuality or I do and it honestly could more than likely be me.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy–Adams One of those books I had just always kinda pretended I read. I mean not that people like frequently check to make sure I’ve read AHGttG but just like in my mind whenever it was mentioned I checked it off. You know the dealio you don’t need my thoughts on it (as opposed to most things, on which you definitely do).

All Grown Up–Attenberg My favorite of the Attenberg novels I’ve read. Of particular use and relevance to me, an aging single woman and unlikeable protagonist. I enjoyed this very much, it was sharp and warm and mean and tender.

Queen of the Night–Chee Hmm. Ok. I felt for most of this book that it like…thought it was a different, more important book than it actually was? It is overwritten–both in prose style and in that it could have been at least 100 pages shorter–and you know how sometimes you read a book with a female protagonist and you’re like ‘I can’t believe a man wrote this!’? Yeah this isn’t that. But the ending line is really good? idk. Someone else read it and tell me your thoughts.

Too Much and Not the Mood–Chew-Bose First of all, excellent title. These essays reminded me, and I mean in this in the lease self-important way possible, of my own writing. Just in that way where writing doesn’t have to be traditionally literarily linear. These essays are good and filled with the kind of sentences that make you know the writer loves words, you can feel her placing them carefully with the satisfying click of scrabble tiles, sliding them into the right order.

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd–Christie Typical Agatha novel and very good. I can’t tell you any more without spoiling it.

Murder in Retrospect–Christie This is one of my fave Christie’s. It was dark and smart and pithy.

Rule Britannia–Du Maurier I found this in a used bookstore in Portland, Maine, just after the Brexit vote. She wrote it in like the 70s and it’s speculative fiction based on if the UK left the EU and formed a union with the United States. It’s kind of really good but it also ends kind of abruptly, like maybe it could have been the first of a trilogy or something.

Plum Bun–Fauset This was my favorite book from my Harlem Renaissance class. I wrote my term paper on it. I love this book. I want to write it as a screenplay and someone to make it into a movie and I want Troian Bellesario to play the lead.

A Coney Island of the Mind–Ferlinghetti A book of (I think?) beat poetry that I found in a used bookstore in Saugherties at Thanksgiving. I love these poems, especially one called “The World is a Beautiful Place” which I read out loud to Robbie one night while we were walking between bars in the snow at like midnight.

Wishful Drinking–Fisher Carrie Fisher is one of those people whose very existence makes me feel braver and weirder and funnier. She’s a truly good soul and I don’t have anything else to say except that you should read this and also that you should Postcards From the Edge first it’s better.

Difficult Women–Gay I prefer Roxane Gay’s fiction to her nonfiction and these are very good, very interesting stories full of sadness and love.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley) I have never had so many people approach me while reading a book in public as this one. It is, unsurprisingly, an extremely compelling and upsetting book. But I was very surprised by it. I’m not sure quite what I expected from it, but it wasn’t what it was. I think about this book at least twice a week. I think everyone should read it and I think they’ll all enjoy it.

How To Be  A Person In the World–Havrilesky I think maybe Ask Polly columns are better in smaller doses than a whole book, but nevertheless, for better or for worse, she shaped a great deal of my early-twenties self esteem and the essays translate to the page much better than a lot of internet writing I’ve read. 

Girl on the Train–Hawkins This felt…cheap somehow. Like I got really into it and then felt like I’d been cheated or fooled because it’s truly not very good.

Bright Lines–Islam This is a fascinating book. It’s the most Brooklyn summery, felt the most like my Brooklyn summers despite describing a Bengali Muslim family and smoking weed and other experiences that are not specifically mine. I’d recommend it. Highly.

Intimations–Kleeman Man, I’ve recommended this book of short stories to so many people. It’s weird and interesting and it does something I think is hard, which is write surreal stories where the stakes still feel real, if that makes sense. She came and spoke to our class and she told an interesting question to ask of short stories which was, “what are the satisfactions of this story?” and all of these are satisfying and visceral. There’s one long one in the middle that I skipped and you can too, I give you permission.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet–L'Engle Hey, um, you know what’s p upsetting to read? A plot where a crazy dictator is gonna drop a nuclear bomb and start the end of the world (this isn’t a spoiler it’s introduced like five pages in). 

A Wind in the Door–L'Engle This was not as good as A Wrinkle in Time–what is–but it was a bright easy read, her books are so–loving, I guess. Good if you need a little palate cleanser.

Passing–Larsen We read a LOT of books in my Harlem Renaissance course. This a very good, short novel about, well, guess. It’s like a painting somehow, like a 20th century painting.

Sister Outsider–Lorde  I have taken none women’s studies courses so this was a pretty important text I had never read. It is very Good and everyone should read it if they have not already.

Cruel Shoes–Martin I LOVE Steve Martin and still on a few of these I was like “I don’t know, Steve.” But many others (they’re very short stories) are funny or clever or great.

Bright Lights, Big City–McInerney ughhhhhhh a book that is entirely written in second person and is about how womens’ existences and deaths have like ~made a man feel~ but it’s a short quick read and–I am E X T R E M E L Y reluctant to admit–the end is a really good image that did lowkey make me cry but also fuck this book

The Hopeful–O'Neill This I didn’t like much, in a way that I thought it needed a stronger editor and I want Eleanor or Robbie or someone I trust to read it to tell me if I’m wrong.

The Bed Moved–Schiff Weird and good little stories. I don’t think about them often, but they were elegant and sharp as I read them.

Eligible–Sittenfield It’s nice that they’re publishing Modern AU Pride and Prejudice fanfic now in a bound book. This was enjoyable tho tbh not the best Modern AU Pride and Prejudice fanfic I, a cool and chill person, have read in my life.

Swing Time–Smith I think this is my fave of the Zadie Smith books I’ve read. I wasn’t sure by the end quite what the point of it was, but I guess also what’s the point of anything? idk this is a useless description of a book. It was immersive and interesting but I’ve also not told anyone “you *have* to read this you’ll love it.” We did go see her read from it and in person she is enchanting.

The New Woman–Sochen Nonfiction about what I think we’d call first-wave feminism? It was really fascinating about an era I knew nothing about but also had some, um, glaring omissions ahem any mention of race whatsoever.

Action. A Book About Sex–Spiegel Ok look yes fine I am an adult sexually active woman who still reads books about sex whatEVER. I missed sex-ed and I also like to hear, in a non-prurient (or sometimes prurient w/e) way what other people are up to, sex-wise. I mean there’s no real like advice about sex in the world, I think, except that everything consensual and fun is fine, but I think it’s important to occasionally remind yourself of that. This was a good book.

Missing, Presumed–Steiner A crime book that I neither loved nor hated and generally enjoyed reading. Big enh.

The Girls From Corona Del Mar–Thorpe Robbie gave this to me for my birthday last year. A beach read with an edge, page-turner-y but sharp. Seems like it’s going to be a light read, but there’s a bite to it, a reminder of the cruel randomness of fate and of our inability to really know other people or ourselves. I loved this.

Cane–Toomer So this is an important text from the Harlem Renaissance and it’s kinda…never classified? It’s a series of related but not continuous short stories, as well as poetry, and little like plays? idk it’s very evocative and beautiful and dense and bears up to intense overreading. One of my favorite books I read for my Harlem Ren class.

The Blacker the Berry–Thurman Ok so Wallace Thurman apparently worried his whole life that his writing style was too journalistic and he maybe wasn’t…wrong. This is NOT a bad book and it’s well written and novelistic exCEPT when sometimes it feels pedagogical or expository. It’s a short, well constructed novel about colorism and worth checking out.

Killer–Walters Lovely and weird poems. I went to go follow the author on Twitter and discovered I already was. I love these.

The Underground Railroad–Whitehead An extremely. upsetting. book. Here’s the thing and I understand the presumption of my criticism of a book that won the national book award, but: if you’re going to make your conceit that the Underground Railroad is a real railroad, I think that you should do more with it. THAT SAID the rest of this is truly wonderful, somehow at once a page turner and viscerally upsetting.

Kiss Me Like a Stranger–Wilder I love Gene Wilder. I’d read Gilda Radnor’s memoir a couple years ago so part of this was sort of an interesting other side of the story. Anyways he seems like a genuinely strange, slightly neurotic, flawed but mostly warm and kind person.

[miggy-figgy]

THE FIRST LADY

By: Miguel Figueroa

Forget everything you know. Jackie O who? Come again, I beg your pardon, but I don’t know who this Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is. Michelle Obama is so early 2009 and frankly, my dear I don’t give an Iberic Ham about Sonsoles Espinosa. Forget about the Pill Box Hats, the supermodels-cum-wife of the President, the Mugler ensembles worn by the new Mrs. O and First Wife’s who choose to live a life of secrecy. To us at Candy, our First Lady is Ms. Christine Jorgensen, the first female transsexual from the United States. Christine did it all…Original Socialite, Pop Singer, Cabaret Performer, Photographer and Filmmaker who became an instant sensation when she got the good ol’ U. S. of A. all shook up after her Botticellean transformation from a woman trapped in a man’s body into a lady with impeccable taste, a sharp tongue and a groundbreaking fresh as a lettuce attitude whom was able to turn notoriety into such a cult icon status that not even Chantal Biya can come close to her. Honey, she even played Dior to Judy!

            Christine Jorgensen’s came into the world on May 30th 1926 at the Community Hospital in Manhattan when George Jorgesen Jr., son of George Jorgensen and Florence Davis Hansen, brother of Dorothy Florence Jorgensen was conceived. Mrs. Jorgensen raised her tight knit children in the booming pre-Depression era of the 1920’s on Dudley Avenue in the Bronx. Even though George Jr. and Dorothy were inseparable and her paternal grandmother, whom George enjoyed picking violets for, played a key element of her upbringing, Christine does not blame her female surroundings with the fact that she was a woman trapped in a man’s body. At age four he made it clear that something was suspicious when he asked her mother, “Mom, why didn’t God makes us alike?”, about the physical differences between him and his sister his mother replied, “You see Brud [Christine’s nickname], it’s one of God’s surprises.” George Jr. just said, “Well, I don’t like the kind of surprise God made me!”

Growing up, Christine admits that in order to follow the normal pattern of development she needed help, not ridicule. Fortunately, her personal world embraced little Brud, his shyness and awkward stances towards boys of his age. His grandmother never pushed him to be a man and when a teacher discovered that George kept hidden on his school desk one of his grandmother’s needlepoint’s which he treasured, and called his mother to ridicule him in front of the class, he received nothing but love and support. His sister, as a college student, used him as a college subject experiment on the influence women have over Children, in this case boys, while growing up and their feminization. Although there were some pebbles on the way that were easily passed by, growing up as a child all the way to his teens non-fiction fairy tales always surrounded Christine’s life. Her paternal grandfather came from Odense, Denmark birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, meanwhile his maternal grandfather, John Kreogh Hansen was a painter who’s greatest assignment was assisting the French painter Paul César Helleu in the creation of Grand Central Station’s original ceiling. Also, according to Jorgensen’s autobiography, her Father, in his teens, was obsessed with the birth of radio communication and heard the “Titanic” distress signal on 1912 in his transistor radio, while she was witness of the Hindenburg passing a top of her house moments before meeting its fate. 

At the age of 16 George Jr. lands his first job as a librarian. A string of odd jobs as news editor for RKO Pathé News, a driver and even a supermarket clerk followed, moving along New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Minneapolis. After finishing High School, he enrolls in New York’s Institute of Photography, a passion that was bestowed upon him by his father, a photo aficionado, hoping that in the future he could lead the life of a glamorous photographer, immortalizing the likes of Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis. After finishing photography school and in between odd jobs, George Jr. in his search to belong somewhere and to make his parents proud joined the Armed Forces in 1945, at age 19, landing a clerical job in Fort Dix, New Jersey. Due to his thin, and delicate 98-pound (about 45 kilos) frame, after 14 months, he was discharged.

During his brief stay in Los Angeles, George begins to discuss his anatomical conundrums, confiding in two girl friends that something is different about him. He “comes out” admitting that he has the body of an underdeveloped male yet his emotions are female. His friends, dumbfounded by this news, support George but tell him to seek medical attention. Upon his return to the East Coast he enrolls in the Progressive School of Photography in New Haven, Connecticut to continue his photographic preparation and begins to research on Endocrinology by reading news that a Doctor in that city was experimenting with hormones turning chickens into roosters. George figures that he’s got nothing (and never had anything) to lose and pays him a visit. After telling Dr. Harold Grayson his “problem”, the visit halts to a complete screeching stop. Dr. Grayson sends George to visit Dr. Reznick, a psychiatrist who recommends an evasive treatment to drive inclinations. Let’s not forget that at this time in the late 40’s we still had a long, long way to go before today’s sexual panacea and lobotomies were as common as Botox nowadays.

These two encounters didn’t deter George’s search to find a solution to whom he really was. He continued looking for answers and on one of his numerous visits to the library stumbled upon Paul de Kruif’s book The Male Hormone that served as opened floodgates to his research. This groundbreaking book established that both males and females indeed have genetic traits from each other’s sex. The investigation continued and led him to medical journals from France and Germany that analyzed cases of hermaphrodism, pseudo-hermpahrodism and other “sexual abnormalities”. After he finished photography school his determination led him to continue his studies, not in Visual Arts, but in the field of Medicine. George Jorgensen Jr. was a man on a mission and thus, on 1949 he enrolled at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant’s School where he learned X-ray and laboratory technician courses letting him know how the body and its internal chemical contents worked. All the while, he continued reading and re-reading de Kruif’s book where he discovered that the author of the book talked about the female hormone estradiol, a prominent sex hormone present in females and in very small percentages amongst males, which was available in hormone supplement for women. George decided he needed to get his hand on this medicine so the next day he drove to a pharmacy, ordered the usual medication and 100 tablets of high-potency Ethinyl estradiol. Unbeknown to the situation and after George said he was a medical student who needed the medicine to run some tests, the pharmacist simply handed him exactly what George wanted. He went to his car, opened the bottle, ignored the warning label that stated NOT TO BE TAKEN WITHOUT THE ADVICE OF A DOCTOR and washed down a single pill with water. On the next day, he felt nothing, yet continued taking a single pill each night. On the eight day, he woke up feeling sensitivity and development around his breasts, also, his usual fatigue and languidness was gone. It may have taken God six days to create Eve, but it took George and additional 48 hours to start becoming Christine Jorgensen.

After realizing that the pills would do up to so much, Christine relied on a good friend he met in medical school by the name of Genevive Angelo whose husband was a doctor. Gen, as Christine calls her, was aware of George’s differences and put him in contact with her husband immediately who after a consultation discussed with him sexual transformations done by doctors overseas, which started in the 1930’s. What sets Christine’s case apart prior to hers is that homosexuality or hermaphrodism was involved. Christine was neither nor the other. During her life as a man, she had been propositioned twice for gay sex and the situations abominated her to the point in which in one occasion she vomited. Christine Jorgensen was a heterosexual woman born in a man’s body and she needed to go to Europe to work on herself. After exchanging correspondence with Dr. Grayson and confirming this information from him as well, the decision was clear. George Jorgensen saved up a couple hundred of dollars, told his family that he was going to reconnect with his European family and on May 11th, 1950 arrived in Denmark on a one-way ticket to his new life.

Christine settled in with Helen, her friend and confidant from Los Angeles, and her family a few weeks later, she’d check in the at the Seruminstitut where she would meet her future doctor and friend Dr. Christian Hamburger whom was recommended to her by Helen’s doctors. Once the consultation had ended, Dr. Hamburger offered Christine the chance of a lifetime. If she would acknowledge becoming a guinea pig for hormone research, the operation would be free of charge. On a letter to Dr. Joe and Gen back home she told them “Just refer to me as guinea pig 0000!” The George Jorgensen to Christine Jorgensen transformation had now officially begun. 

Tests begun in August and George started carrying around on a daily basis what he jokingly called a yor mor taske , Dutch for “midwife’s bag”, containing daily urine samples to test her hormone levels. Christine’s medical dream team would be rounded up with Dr. Georg Stürup who would deal with the psychological aspect of the transformation. Right before she was set to go under the knife, the Danish Government tried to stop the initial operation due to the fact that Mr. Jorgersen was not a Danish citizen. After Dr. Stürup advocated to Justice Minisitry and Denmark’s Attorney General, Helga Pedersen, a women’s right activist, the veto was revoked and the operation continued it’s steer course. After paying a $30 fee, on September 24th, 1951 the first of three operations, the removal of George’s testicles, was conducted. Days prior his 26th birthday, George visited the American Embassy to change the name on his passport and in honor of Dr. Christian Hamburger, on May 1952 Christine Jorgensen, 5’7”, 120 pounds was born. For her first ensemble as a woman she chose an elegant green skirt, pale brown jacket and brown suede shoes and headed to the Beauty Parlor. She continued her work as amateur photographer and filmmaker documenting Denmark and on June of that year broke the news to her parents in a heartfelt letter, which included photos taken of her transformation “You have lost a son, but gained somebody new.” As soon as they received the letter they replied immediately via cablegram: LETTER AND PICTURES RECEIVED. WE LOVE YOU MORE THAN EVER, MOM AND DAD.  Her mother and sister could not hold on to their excitement and indulged on reckless shopping sprees for their new daughter and sister.

Her second operation, the removal of any remaining “maleness”, performed by Dr. Paul Fogh-Andersen and Erlig Dahl-Iversen occurred in November 20th, 1952, 13 months after the initial operation. Even though she was operated in a public hospital that lacked private bedrooms, accommodations were made for Christine to have a suite all to her own. While recuperating, news of her transformation reached US Shores. Her father wrongfully confided in one of his friend who sold the news to the New York Daily News for $200 and on December 7th, 1952 the newspaper’s headline read BRONX GI BECOMES A WOMAN. DEAR MOM AND DAD SON WROTE, I HAVE NOW BECOME YOUR DAUGHTER. A cablegram was hand delivered by a journalist from the Information, a Danish newspaper, looking for a quick interview. Obviously, her plan backfired. Christine could feel nothing but remorse, resentment and rage. At the same moment, another cablegram is sent to Ms. Jorgensen. This time it was her mother, to tell her that her beloved Aunt Edie has passed away. Years later, in her audio memoirs, Christine Jorgensen Reveals, she tells us that her psychiatrist feared that this moment would’ve been her breaking point. She was aware of what she had become and as any serious and smart woman under pressure; she kept her posture absolutely calm.

Up to this point Christine lived a frugal life in Denmark. Besides her life savings, her mother sent her $10 a week as well as film equipment for the documentary she was making about Denmark which would end up becoming the first color film about the country. The penny picking was soon about to change. Immediately after the news arrived, offers started pouring in via telegram (for you kids out there…it was our grandparents alternative to e-mail). Everybody wanted Christine – Warner Brothers in Hollywood, The Copa Club in Pittsburgh, The 46th Street Theatre and The New York Press Photographers at the Big Apple. Offers even came from New Orleans Strip Club performances at $500 a night. Dr. Hamburger also received a deluge of requests from around the world for sex change operations. Journalists, who camped out the Jorgensen’s residence, blackmailed her parents, who would finally reunite with Christine on Christmas 1952 at Denmark, if they did not cooperate with them. Christine caused sexual revolution that such journalistic raucous not been seen until Betty Ford’s family intervention or Monica’s little blue Gap dress.

Christine Jorgensen would not stay mum for much longer. She accepted to publish her tell-all story on six installments in American Weekly magazine for a cool $20,000 dollars. The feature would coincide with Christine’s arrival on New York’s JFK Airport then known as Idlewild Airport on February 13th, 1953. Her departure from Denmark was cause of a grand celebration amongst friends, so big that she almost missed her flight. Reporters documented every bit of her life, including her choice of travel luggage. One journalist mentioned that one of her cases that contained almost 3 and half years of her life in Denmark was a box of petal soft toilet tissue to which Christine said in her autobiography, “I’ve always traveled in a grand manner.” On a press junket with international members of the press, a British Journalists asked her if she was worried about her reception in the U.S. hence all the media frenzy; her response “Why should I be?” Once she boarded the plane, and a few hours prior her arrival, it hit her: the anonymous life she’d wanted as a woman would not happen. “In my long, painful search for a normal life, I had created a paradox: a life that was to be, for me, abnormal and unconventional.” She was now on the road, or shall we say up in the air, to become a bona fide household name.

When the Scandinavian Airlines flight landed she was received by total and utter pandemonium that wouldn’t be matched until 10 years later when 4 Britons stepped off a Pan Am flight arriving from the United Kingdom. Reporters were everywhere, flashes were ablazin’, everybody wanted a piece of Christine. She felt she had stepped of into a scene from Dante’s Inferno and panicked; she thought “Pull yourself together. This, as everything else, must pass”. Countess Alexandra of Rosenberg, who was on the flight with her, a relative of the King of Denmark was subdued to mere coach status. Christine tittered and tattered through the chaos, holding on to her books, purse and train case while keeping her outfit, including her mink coat, hat with diamante broach, and gloves intact. Once inside, she gave an instant press conference; as everyone wanted a reaction she simply replied to all "I am very happy to be back and I don't have any plans at the moment and I thank you all for coming but I think it's too much."

Her arrival was skyrocketing. The American Weekly story was translated into 14 languages and published in 70 countries. With the money she earned she was able to build her parents their dream house where she settled in with them. Christine received over 20,000 letters from around the globe, some even postmarked “Christine Jorgensen, United States”. Of all the fan mail, only a handful was derogatory, while the rest of tens of thousands were congratulatory notes to her and her parents. Even when she went to renew her drivers license, she was followed everywhere by the paparazzi. The press continued for weeks to have her as a Cover Girl. The In-Crowd lauded Christine’s presence; Ladies Luncheons with original Perez Hilton, Elsa Maxwell, Elaine Carrington and Margaret Case, Vogue Magazine’s Society Editor with special appearance by an impressed Cole Porter and a one to one with Truman Capote. On March 7th, in front of 5,000 guests, including Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen, the Scandinavian Societies of Greater New York named her Woman of the Year. She reluctantly hired an agent, Charlie Yates, who would handle all the Jorgensenmania for two years until his sudden death in 1955. Her original ambiguity towards a life of sing, dance and pizzazz came because all she really wanted to be was a photographer. Years later, on a TV interview she’d  set the records straight on her fame, “Making a living of life is cashing in on it. Then I did, and I suppose I don’t regret it”.

On her first visit to LA, she was bashed by the Californian city, because they believed (and oh, how they have changed) that you couldn’t simply sell an act by its name. After this incident, Christine travels back to England to film the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Back in the states, on August 9th, at the Copa Club in Pittsburgh she, alongside her performance partner Myles Bell, gives her first song and dance act. She receives an invitation from Dr. Alfred Kinsey to be interviewed at the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University. She’s banned from performing for the Army and in Boston, the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas refused to let her perform until she could present proof that she was a woman, yet, after her shows at the Copa, the offers started pouring in and they were officially in business. Critics were courteous with her saying that “She sings like an off-key Garbo” and “Nobody expected anything and all they got was Gravy.” Christine became a fashion icon, she was a vivacious woman draped in the latest 50's fashions: ball gowns with mink stoles, silk cocktail dresses, full skirts, swing skirts, tea dresses, tiaras, kimonos, her hair, coiffed in a permanent wave, apron styled swimsuits, and lets not forget...hats, gloves and estate jewlery to match. Lest not forget: red lips. She even sparked her first impersonator and instead of suing her, she settled for a gentlewoman’s apology and when in Miami, a deranged woman tried to pull her hair off, thinking it was a wig, she simply walked away and had people take care of it. She traveled to perform in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Cuba, Miami, New York and Dallas. She had a pop hit in Cuba called “Christine of Denmark” and finally, the owners and showgirls of the Sahara Hotel had to shut their trap, issuing an apology, when they saw that Christine Jorgensen was a gold mine.

Did I mention that all of this happened in 1953?

Christine took a small break in the early summer of 1954 for her third and final operation, a vaginoplasy performed in a small hospital in New Jersey. Christine now had the body of a woman who’d have a hysterectomy and was at peace with the fact that she could not bear children. She was as complete a person as she’d dream of being emotionally and physically. After she was ready to get back on track, she went off to Sweden where her fans waited for her anxiously and with such candor that she ended up staying an extra 3 weeks for an unscheduled cabaret show. Her fame instigated the rumor mil full speed on, bogus affairs with Vanderbilt and Woolworth heirs. Had she lived today these dangerous liaisons would’ve been with a Casiraghi or an heir to PPR. Muy CANDY Caliente! 

Just as Christine was to act in her first role as an actress on the play “To Dorothy, A Son”, Charlie Yates died playing golf with Bob Hope in Palm Springs on January 9th, 1955. Christine was devastated, she thought of not continuing with the play but solid as a rock, she continued and delivered a great performance. It was a year of big changes. Her manager died, she gained a new show partner, Mr. Lee Wyler, after breaking up her career with Myles Bell and during a trip to Venezuela she faced heavy interrogation by the Police in order to enter the country. She was even accused of being a Communist for making a quote on quote “non-American” comment at the time of her return from Denmark. All the while, she perfected her impersonations of Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich, whom she would to homage all the way into her death. Christine also found herself amongst the religious ones. She was invited to appear in Jewish and Masonic centers, leaving the latter aghast when she told them that as a young George Jr. she was a member of the Demolay International, a Massonic group for teenage MEN whose hall of fame included Walt Disney and Bill Clinton.

The last years of the 50’s saw her shuffling through agents and having troubles with the IRS. She was $30,000 in debt with her taxes and agreed to record the LP, Christine Jorgensen Reveals, thinking it would be a success, yet it flopped in sales. Looking back on it and listening to it more than 50 years it was recorded, the album is a masterpiece. Christine battled out aggravating questions about her sexuality, being a woman and banal questions on body hair, dating, cruising and the army. She came out a winner while she KO’d telling him that if she had not changed, she wouldn’t have adapted, but rather receded into the world and when she was lauded for making Denmark a household name she told Mr. Russell;  “Denmark did not need me to be famous. It had blue cheese before me.”

The subject of love was always one of a delicate manner. Cupid and Christine weren’t exactly BFF’s. As George, she had a handful of platonic lovers that never consummated beyond wishful thinking. Then on 1959 her friend Howard Knox proposes marriage. Christine says yes. Once they got to City Hall with all the necessary papers, the lawyers found a legal loophole. Christine’s birth certificate still had male as the specified gender. Even though her Passport, Drivers License and NYPD Cabaret Card enlisted her as female, the fact that she never changed her sex in her birth certificate vetoed any possibilities of marriage. She was even recognized as a female by the World Health Organization; yet, down at City Hall they simply did not budge an inch to help. Christine and Howard took to the media, seeking their support, yet, it dug them a deeper grave with Howard losing his job as a labor-union worker. Eventually, they would break up. She had a 2nd engagement years later that also faded into thin air. “I was never in love with the men I was engaged to and I was never engaged to the men I was in love with.” She was as stern when it came to her love-induced-independence as much as she wanted to become a photographer. In the 1984 documentary Paradise Not for Sale, 58 year-old Christine states: "Loving is wonderful, but falling in love is very stupid. I don't think I'd like to marry. I'm free. I do exactly what I want. I live in a manner to which I prefer. I've had men in my life, but I've never let a man move into my house. I'm very selfish; I don't have to bargain with anybody to do what I want. I play hard, I drink hard, I smoke hard and I do everything to a point of excess." For Ms. Belanger, organizer of christinejorgensen.org, Christine’s resentment towards real relationship was due to her surgery setbacks, performed at a time when sex changes were at a premature stage. She says; “if she had been able to have had the quality of MTF surgery that is offered today, her life would not have been so guarded. She's very much a heterosexual woman, but not really being able to fully experience that was a disappointment."

Ending the decade with a bang, Christine gave Los Angeles a second try and they welcomed her with open arms. She settled into a bungalow at the notorious Chateau Marmont, moving door to door with Eroll Flynn’s recent widow (as fresh as the day prior to her arrival!) and soon became good friends. All the biggest stars wanted to rub elbows with Christine, Natalie Wood, Esther Williams, Robert Wagner, Betty Garble, Ann Miller and Judy Garland just to name a humble few. The night she met Judy she was advised not to talk about Ms. Garland’s weight problems, telling her people “What do you think I’m going to say? ‘Hello, Fat Lady?!’” Tensions disappeared once they met; Judy asked Christine for fashion advise after admiring Christine’s look, she told her that women of her frame should not wear such tight-fitting clothes rather a black velvet toreador pant, a stiff, stand-out jacket with a mandarin collar encrusted with jewels, and adding the comfort of flat shoes. “That means no girdles!” Judy said. Needless to say, a couple of weeks later, Christine felt like a modern day Formichetti when she saw Ms. Garland wearing exactly what she had told her!

            In the early sixties she took her show on the road to Australia, Honolulu, Hong Kong and Manila deciding then to settle on the West Coast as her new base. She was lauded for her work on the other side of the Pacific; the Philippines proclaimed her as “the best Goodwill Ambassador America has sent us in years!” Although living a life of money, fame, success and glamour Christine was flat out broke. On her final trip to Manila she returned home with only $5 to her name. The rest of the decade she’d live a frugal life back in New York, settling in for the Theatre and shows here and there, as Cabaret acts were becoming a distant and dated memory. In 1963 her father would pass away, 5 years later so would her mother after a long battle with Cancer. In 1967 her tell-all autobiography, Christine Jorgensen A Personal Autobiography, would sell 500,000 copies on its first hardcover edition. After the death of her mother she moved permanently to California, becoming an advisor on the movie, the Christine Jorgensen Story, released in 1970. The movie is beyond bogus camp. Christine is loosely portrayed, including absurd and untrue stories like that of a cross-dressing George Jr. and visits to prostitutes while in the Service. On set she met an actress you may have heard of called Mae West who was working in the next lot starring in Myra Breckinridge becoming good friends, she also befriended 1962 Playboy Playmate June Wilkinson who thought when they met that Christine prettier than her! The rest of the decade she became a fixture in universities across the country giving lectures on transgender issues. 

            Christine attempted a comeback in the 80’s with a cabaret act entitled “I enjoy Being a Girl!” after Flower Drum Song’s signature song. She strutted and trotted around comedy clubs in over the top costumes and headpieces, belting out show tunes like “Falling in Love Again”, “Welcome to My World” and her act’s title. This new Christine had no qualms about anything; she voiced her comedic resentment towards Hollywood “they took everything” and “this Raquel Welch woman” who apparently was not in Ms. Jorgensen’s best graces. She also talked about working on a new autobiography, and I quote “suggested title ‘After the Ball’”. If you’ve turned into a bona fide Christine Jorgensen fan (which you should be if you’ve come this far) I recommend downloading this recording, available in Itunes. In 1984 Christine returned to Denmark to work on the documentary Paradise Not For Sale, reuniting Christine with her beloved Dr. Hamburger and Dr.Stürup, hoping it would be picked up by Northamerican Cable Television, two clips from this very hard to find documentary can be found in Youtube. Upon her return from Denmark she took nude photos and shopped them to Playboy. Hugh Hefner declined the offer, yet Christine was unstoppable. Or so she thought; three years later she was diagnosed with bladder and lung cancer. During her chemotherapy sessions she didn’t change her lifestyle continuing to smoke and drink her vodka rocks. On May 3rd 1989 she died. For this article, I got in touch with Ms. Brenda Lane Smith, Christine’s flat-mate for the last six months of her life. When I requested a statement she declined to comment on Ms. Jorgenen.

            Christine’s legacy lives on to this day. If it weren’t for her courage and strength to become adversity and be happy for whom she really was, all while wearing mink, the transgender community would not have its First Lady. For Ms. Belanger, "Christine was a real pioneer for what she needed to do. She had no support group or peers for information. She was able to find a needle in a haystack in her trip to Denmark and the world for so many is better for it." Christine kicked ignorance by the balls and she says she gave the sexual revolution “a good quick swift in the pants”. Her living family remembers her dearly, her nieces and cousins remember fondly playing dress-up at Auntie Chris’. Now who wouldn’t want to go home to their aunt and get to wear fabulous heels, jewelry and fur coats? I would most certainly do. Christine said that there were three things she would have until the day she died: laughter and hope and a good sock in the eye. For her funeral, she didn’t want a somber remembrance, she had carefully organized a party for all her friends to laugh and remember her. When it was time for the toast, they all lifted their vodka on the rocks for Christine. Even at home, every day was a holiday; she kept a Christmas tree year round to remind herself of her good life. Christine Jorgensen, first Lady of Candy Magazine, I raise my Stoli on the Rocks for you. Originally published in the second issue of Candy Magazine - The First Transversal Style Magazine - Fall/Winter 2010-2011  

[queernuck]

What Isn’t Gender Nihilism?

Gender Nihilism, as a means of thinking, develops a specific aesthetic of critique that situates itself in opposition, that relies on articulation against and through a structuring of gender that is external to the text, one that is elaborated upon and explored through certain poststructuralist modalities, but largely remains unremarked upon specifically because to do such would be to imply a certain ontology of gender beyond that which the manifesto specifically means to do away with.

Gender expression as related to nihilism of gender is not useless but rather without the meaning by which a gendering of the body takes place. It is through an assemblage of both phenomenological ontic qualities, qualia of womanhood, and a process of relating to others or to the Other that structures womanhood, that creates one as a woman. This reflects notions of a continual becoming-woman, but goes further in an importantly distinct fashion, due to the means by which it signifies the larger structural importance of womanhood not as merely a situation, a structure which one becomes, but in fact that it is defined in and through process, that the violence of womanhood is its most prominent qualia, and that the way in which relating to this violence is specifically realized in relation to structures such as transness and lesbianism allows for the further articulation of womanhood in relativity, through a dispelling of the ontology of womanhood through both a primary relating of womanhood in a structuralist sense and a move toward specifically, indelibly poststructuralist modalities within considering the possibility of womanhood as such, after the raising of this Nihilism. After Nietzschean pronunciations on the Death of God, one must justify God if one is to imply a presence or even lack in its place. Conversely, no such suggestion of lack is made through the manifesto, but rather a rearticulation against the creation of lack necessitated by other ideologies of gender abolition.

In Nina Powers’ analysis of the Gender Nihilist Anti-Manifesto, she acknowledges that the process of gendering is largely feminine, and while it is not exclusively such, that gendering in relation to colonial ideology can serve multiple purposes is part of its multifarious character. The coloniality of gender, as described in the writing of Lugones, is something that has been unduly downplayed in its influence on the manifesto, and moreover is  more explicitly present in earlier drafts of the text. That gender presents itself as a specifically colonial stration, that it is evidentiary of a creation not only of the colonial but of the subaltern (and thus through this what Spivak describes as the shadow-of-the-subaltern in which women lie) and that the means by which gender operates, the becomings of gender, are in fact punctuated through their relation to coloniality. That norms of neocolonial transfer are adapted to structures realized through gendering of the body is part of what makes gender colonial, but moreover that there is the primacy of colonial dominance, that the very structure of gender cannot be recognized without first understanding it as eventually sublimating itself into a larger structuring of white supremacy, of capitalism as the articulatory system of colonial exchange and the vital force which underpins colonial power. 

Accusations about the Anti-Manifesto ignoring the coloniality of gender come, in many ways, from a confusion about the way in which sublimation through the naming of the cultural as an easily understood but moreover objectual relativity for the colonizer shapes the realization of gendered violence. Ignoring contingency within the hegemonic conditions of articulating gender specifically strengthens this notion, in that it leads to the understanding of roles within the social, articulatory bodies that have been gendered at certain points, as bodies which are sublimated entirely by gender, just as all relations are sublimated in the Deleuzean concept of capitalism. Capitalism is the nightmare lurking on the edge of all of woman’s earliest fires, and it was in this moment that she was makred as a woman. The importance of this similarity, the affinity between the two realizations, is that not only does it lead to the understanding of gender as a contingent structure based within capitalist articulations of violence, but that defense of a structure that has been gendered must not be done as part of a reactionary means of reclaiming the definition of the self from the colonial. This does not sufficiently change the body at hand, the body that will be already contained within the structural articulation in progress, as it necessarily evokes the traumatic Oedipal structure with which gender is first articulated. In effect, it reinserts the colonizer into the definitions held by the anticolonial effort. Thus, a becoming-woman in this sense is defined because it neccessarily is becoming a woman that has been noted by the ledger of capitalist control, articulated in an arboreality of womanhood. That there are differences (and processes of differance) between structures leading to the realization of womanhood (or any other gendered state) does not collapse them by necessity into these arboreal hierarchies, but that the becoming-becoming-woman that results is assured by the colonial nature of gender as articulatory process.

The Anti-Manifesto is vitally understood as a radical work because it operates through a sort of metapolitical means, displacing the way in which gender is largely defined in order to open up not a lack, but a specific questioning of the structure at hand. It is for this reason that I specifically elaborate upon it as meaningfully poststructuralist: while there is plenty of structuralist feminism to be realized and already-realized through claims made within or adjacent to the Anti-Manifesto, the Anti-Manifesto itself relies specifically on a divestment from these claims and moreover a process whereby the contingency of structures, the way in which the structures interact through knots of rhizomality in order to retain larger arborealities is paradigmatically important to understanding gender nihilism as a course of thought. Effectively, rather than taking any single definition of gender as even particularly important, it displaces the means through which these structures are imposed in order to question the relationships that necessitate them, in order to enter a profound refutation of lack and in fact embracing of the ontological in-itself as a necessity for a larger process of anti-ontological thought, of being able to examine gender as part of elaborating upon modalities of examining the political, the social, the striations of race and even the particularities of class given the hyperrealities of the first world and the neocolonial deprivation of the third world.

In a practical sense, the Anti-Manifesto is not a complete work, nor should it be assumed as one. It is both a relic of a certain means of articulating transness, and part of realizing a certain discursive possibility regarding articulatory processes of gendering and striation that present intriguing genealogical and archaeological possibilities given the proliferation of thought based upon it. The value of the Anti-Manifesto is, in effect, that it is not a manifesto, and perhaps not much of anything at all.

[ramblingthoughtsofayoungadult]

Riverdale’s Pagliacci-Riverdale Imagine

Requested: No

Warnings: some depressing thoughts and it’s pretty long

A/N: I really like Riverdale and had this idea in my head while watching it. Hope you enjoy it! Slight Y/N X Archie

There’s an old story about a man who goes to the doctor because he’s depressed and feels all alone in the cruel world. The doctor tells him to go see the great clown Pagliacci since he’s in town tonight and is sure to lift his mood. The man looks up at the doctor and bursts into tears and says that he is Pagliacci. It’s an old trope about how the funniest people are really the most depressed people. It helps explain things like how the great Robin Williams, who brought joy to so many people, would kill himself. However, when we really think about it, it makes sense: funny people make jokes about the crappy things going on around us to not only distract us but themselves from the horrors of the world. Sure, they’re known as a bright light, but it’s also hard for funny people to express how sad and in pain they really are because they’re supposed to see the humor in everything. Little did my friends and I know that we had our own Pagliacci: Y/N Y/L/N. She used to say that she came out of the womb pulling a funny face and then her mom dropped her so her face would straighten out. It was definitely one of her darker jokes, but it always made people laugh. She always had this look in her y/e/c eyes that said “If you thought that was funny, wait until you see or hear this...”. However, a little after the death of Jason Blossom, the brightness in her eyes was fading away and it was almost too late before my friends and I noticed it. It started off as a normal night at Pop’s for me, writing and brooding until Y/N walked in.

    The bell on the front door of Pop’s dinged as someone else walked into the dinner that fateful night. It was only eight o’clock but Jughead was already three pages into the latest part of his novel and he was in a zone if he did say so himself.

    “Pop’s, the usual please but make my milkshake a double, it’s been one of those days,” Y/N said as she sauntered over to Jughead’s booth.

    The owner chuckled behind the counter. “Right away, Miss Y/L/N.”     “A double chocolate milkshake with extra whip cream? You must plan to die a heroic death by diabetes,” Jughead said without looking up from him laptop screen.

    “My body needs sugar. Without it, it goes all haywire,” Y/N said as she sat in the seat across from Jughead. “Who are you writing about this time? Is it the mysterious Veronica? The golden Archie? Or is it your beloved blonde, Betty?”      “None of the above,” Jughead said, but not without a notable bristle at the word “beloved”. 

     “Then who could you possibly be writing about?” Suddenly, Y/N’s eyes widened and she placed a hand over her heart. “Is it about me? Are you writing about how impossibly charming and witty I am?”

      Jughead couldn’t fight the smile off his face as he tried to remain serious. “I see you’ve humbled with age and no, I’m not writing about you.”

      Y/N scoffed and stole some fries off his plate. “Whatever, I do expect a full chapter of me in that finished novel though. We both know how much amazing material I’ve given you over the years.”

     “Yes, but we’re not all talented at writing jokes about our dearest friends,” Jughead said.

     Y/N’s eyes widened as she remembered something. “That reminds me, I came up with some new jokes.”

    “Have you been invited to perform somewhere?”

    “No, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” She began digging her notebook of jokes out of her backpack without waiting for Jughead’s response.

     “Y/N, I’m kind of busy.”      Y/N narrowed her y/e/c eyes at him and Jughead couldn’t help but smirk. They had a tradition of meeting at Pop’s and they would run their ideas by each other. Jughead would critique Y/N’s jokes and Y/N would critique Jughead’s stories. Sometimes, Jughead would get annoyed with all the physical humor Y/N would do in her acts because he thought she was being lazy while Y/N didn’t always appreciated Jughead’s use of prose nor his metaphors. However, their writing relationship worked and helped strengthen their long friendship.

     “Alright, I’m all ears.” Jughead closed his laptop and leaned forward, giving Y/N all his attention.

     “Okay, I came up with this one during history,” Y/N said.

     “You were writing jokes during history class? No wonder you have a C minus.”

     “It’s not my fault Mr. Sherman isn’t giving me good material. Anyway, it’s all about feminism and how I’m the worst feminist ever,” Y/N said.

     “Okay.”

    “Alright, so, you know how all these girls are upset about getting catcalled. I can’t go five minutes without hearing some girl complain about how a guy whistled at her or fed her a stupid pick up line. Yes, this is probably one of the most common ways that women are degraded by men but you must notice that it only happens to the hot girls. Think about it, when was the last time you saw an ugly girl walking down a street and some guy whistled at her and she rolled her eyes or told him to shut up. Because it doesn’t happen!”

   Jughead started chuckling. “That’s horrible.”

   “I’m not done. When you have a face like this,” Y/N gestured to her own face, “you take what you can get. I am probably the only reason catcalling still exists because when I guy says ‘Yo baby, you got some fries to go with that shake?’, I say, ‘Honey, I don’t just have fries, I also come with a burger and your choice of toy’.”

    Jughead burst out laughing and he held his stomach because it hurt so much. He had tears in his eyes and when he wiped them away, Y/N was smirking. “Do you really say that stuff to guys?”

    “Yes, yes I do. It’s amazing that I’m still single, right?”

    Jughead sighed. “You know, you’re not hideous, Y/N.”

    “Gee, thanks, Jughead. You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

    “I didn’t mean it like that,” Jughead said.

   “Didn’t mean what like what?” Veronica asked.

   She and Betty had just walked in and were standing at their booth.

   “Jughead just said that I was not hideous and it’s probably the most confusing compliment I’ve ever received,” Y/N said.

   “Well, he’s right, you’ve got great legs,” Veronica said.

    “See, Veronica appreciates me!”

   Y/N moved over and Veronica sat next to her. Jughead rolled his eyes.

  “You’re so sensitive.”

   “Your face is so sensitive!”

   “Oh, could you stop being a child for a second?”

   But Jughead had to fight back a laugh since Veronica and Betty were already in stitches. As the two girls laughed, they had genuine joy in their eyes but when Jughead looked at Y/N, there was something missing. They didn’t sparkle like they used to when she told a joke. Sure, she was grinning like a Cheshire cat but when the emotion didn’t reach her eyes, something was up.

   “So, Y/N, do you have any new material?” Betty asked.

   “Yes, but it will definitely trigger all the feminists. It’s going to be great.” Y/N grinned again.

    They quickly fell into a conversation concerning Jason Blossom and Polly which Y/N was barely paying attention to. Whenever Jughead looked her way, she was staring out the window, looking at the pitch black night. Something was definitely wrong but he couldn’t say anything, not right there. 

    Suddenly, her phone dinged and Y/N jumped before answering her phone. Her eyebrows furrowed immediately and then she stiffened.

    “What is it, Y/N?” Veronica asked.

   “I have to go, the maternal parental unit is beckoning me home. I must bid you all adieu.” 

    Veronica let her out of the booth and Y/N turned to Pop’s and told him to make her special to go. 

   “What’s going on?” Betty asked.

   “She’s just worried that something’s going to happen to me if I don’t come home before ten o’clock. Parents, right?”

   “And you will take my suggestions on your catcalling joke?” Betty asked.

   “I’ll see what I can do with fitting the playbook in there but I’d rather not have to worry about the football team coming after me,” Y/N said.

   Betty shot her a look. “Y/N...”

   “Come on, did I not hold the camera while you scared the crap out of Chuck? I am a feminist, Betty, I just like having the door opened for me, I prefer not to pay for the bill at the end of a dinner date, and I really, really like having heavy things carried for me.”

    Betty smiled. “True, I’ll see you tomorrow.”    “Okay, and Jughead, please mention my amazing charm and wit in your novel.”     “We’ll see.”

    Y/N playfully rolled her eyes before strolling away and grabbing her dinner from Pop’s. Archie nearly ran straight into her as she tried to leave and he was entering.

     “Oh, sorry, Y/N! You okay?” Archie asked.

     “Yeah, you just nearly knocked the breath out of me. Someone’s been lifting.” Y/N playfully grabbed his arm and squeezed.

    “You’re leaving already?”

    “When my mom calls, I must answer. You do not want to see that woman angry. She puts Godzilla to shame.”

     Archie chuckled a bit. “That’s too bad. I was hoping we could talk.” 

    “About your deep, passionate love for me that you thought was unrequited for all these years?” Y/N spoke in a mock passionate voice. “Of course, my dear ginger, we will speak about it but at some other time. I really must be off.”

    Archie laughed nervously as he rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. “Yeah, uh, you know me so well. I’ll talk to you later?”

     “Sure.”

   If only she had stayed at the diner a few minutes longer, if only Riverdale High’s talented class clown had decided to stay with her red-headed knight and the rest of us. Then maybe, just maybe, she would have avoided witnessing a tragedy. Nothing changes a person’s life like a parent dying, especially if that parent’s death was because of the other parent.

   Police cars surrounded the humble Y/L/N house and the neighbors were all out in the driveway and on the road, trying to get a peek at what had happened. The sheriff and the rest of the policemen did their best at trying to keep them away, but it wasn’t every day that a man killed his wife in cold blood and their daughter witnessed it. Kevin, Veronica, and Archie were three of the first people there while Jughead and Betty came a few minutes later. No one saw Mr. Y/L/N get led into a police car by the sheriff nor did anyone get a glimpse of Mrs. Y/L/N’s body in a body bag, but everyone kept trying to get a peek.

    “Is Y/N okay?” Jughead asked.

    “I think so, she hasn’t come outside at all, though,” Archie said.

     “I can’t believe this happened to Y/N of all people. She must feel awful,” Veronica said.

    “Part of me thinks this is some sort of horrid, cruel joke or prank, but it can’t be,” Betty said. “I just want to talk to her.”

    “Well, they’re not letting anyone in,” Archie said.

    Veronica turned to Kevin and his eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t know, V.”

    “Come on, Kev, you have strings, pull them.”

    Kevin gave up quickly but managed to convince his dad that at least one of his friends should be allowed to go see her.

    “Who’s the closest to her?” the sheriff asked.

    “Well, Jughead, Betty, and I have known her since we were three,” Archie said.

    “You should go see her, Archie,” Jughead said. “I’m not good in these kinds of moments.”

    “Are you sure? You’re her best friend.”

    “Yeah, I’m sure.”

    The sheriff let Archie through and instructed him to be extremely careful about walking into the crime scene. The CSI team was spread throughout the Y/L/N home, looking for any sort of incriminating evidence against Mr. Y/L/N. It was like a ghost house now because Y/N’s house used to be so light hearted and filled with light. Mrs. Y/L/N would offer Y/N’s visiting friends cookies or other baked goods and would ignore Y/N’s comments about how cannabis would make her baking taste better. Mr. Y/L/N would seem like a threatening shadow since he was about 6′3″ and made of pure muscle----doing four tours in Iraq could do that to a man. However, he seemed to be a big softie when Y/N was around.

    Archie didn’t even know what to say when he would see Y/N. She was never a super sensitive person but she rarely showed any emotion besides being goofy or taking things not too seriously. He wasn’t surprised when he found her leaning against the kitchen wall with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked up when she saw him and smiled.

   “My knight in a shining letterman jacket.”

    Archie couldn’t find the words to speak. They seemed to be caught in his throat and it wasn’t the first time Y/N had such an affect on him. She had done it the first time he saw her in preschool. She had been running away from Jughead because he was upset that she’d tried to steal his hat. She was laughing the whole time and teasing Jughead to come get her. When she ran smack into Archie and knocked him down onto the grass, all he could do was stare into the prettiest y/e/c eyes he had ever seen before in his life. So, yes, Y/N was right about him being in love with her. He just never had the guts to admit it. There was no way he would admit it right then and there. So, he did the next best thing: he held her in his arms.

    Y/N didn’t hesitate to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his neck. She didn’t cry or shake or do anything that most people would do in that situation. She was just quiet.

     “Are you okay?” he finally whispered.

     “Peachy,” Y/N muttered into his skin. She pulled away a little. “My house has turned into a Law & Order crime scene. I’m just waiting for Olivia Benson to walk through that door and ask me questions.”     He knew it was an attempt to make light of the situation, so he just smiled. “Still joking around.”

    “I have to.” Y/N looked at him. “Hey, so, is everyone else here? I’m dying to get out of this house.”    “Are you sure? Don’t they have to question you?”    “Yeah, but they can’t be too mad at me wanting to get some air,” Y/N said.

   Archie nodded and they walked outside together. Y/N paused for a split second when she saw how many people were standing outside of her house. Then, she strode confidently over to her friends with Archie at her side.

   “Y/N!” Betty, Veronica, and Kevin immediately hugged her while Jughead simply watched on.

    “Don’t squeeze the life out of me, ladies and Kev. I’m fine.” She pulled away from them.

     “What...what happened in there, Y/N?” Betty asked.

      Y/N glanced around before leaning closer to her friends. “There isn’t much to say: my mom told my dad that she was leaving him for the man she’s been sleeping with for the past three months and my dad responded by shooting her in the face.”

   “I’m so sorry, Y/N,” Veronica said.

   “Did you see it happen?” Kevin asked.

   “I heard it. My dad was sitting at the table, drinking a beer while my mom bled out onto the kitchen floor. He called 911 and now we’re here.”

    None of her friends knew how to deal with it, not really. Jason Blossom still had just died but this one hit far too close to home for all of them.

    “I hate to break this up but Y/N needs to come to the station for some questions,” the sheriff said.

    “But she didn’t do anything,” Archie said.

     “Of course not. We just want to clarify the story.”      “I’ll be fine, Ginger.” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”      As Y/N walked along with the sheriff with her head held high to begin strengthening the case against her father, we couldn’t help but be amazed. Most people would have been crying or screaming at that point. But Y/N was still joking around. It was as though none of this had really happened. Then again, Y/N Y/L/N was certainly not like most people, but she still felt grief and sadness, she just wouldn’t show it to anyone for a long time. For the next few weeks to come, Y/N acted completely normal. She continued cracking jokes in class and in the hallways. She would go to the Vixens practice and make fun of Cheryl’s instructions or see the Bulldogs practice and cheer for Archie. When her mother’s funeral came around, her eulogy was full of humor and hope. She didn’t dare mention how her mother died nor that she was having an affair. We all became concerned that Y/N wasn’t displaying grief or any kind of emotion besides happiness at the funeral nor at the wake. In fact, when our dear Pagliacci finally expressed her feelings, it was on a normal night.

     “Just you, Jughead?” Pop asked as he slid him a milkshake.

     Jughead nodded. “It seems as though I’ve been stood up, this never happens.”

     “Maybe she’ll show up, still,” Pop said. 

     “It’s almost nine thirty. She never comes later than eight.”       “Still can’t believe what happened to her. First Jason Blossom and now Y/N Y/L/N. A real shame.’

     Jughead nodded, closed his laptop, and called Y/N.

     “Sup?”

     “Where are you? I’m still waiting for you at Pop’s,” Jughead said.

     “Ha! I probably fooled you, didn’t I? I’m probably busy writing a new joke or I’ve gone underground because I’ve been a spy this whole time. Leave a message at the beep!”

     Jughead groaned and hung up. Y/N never let her calls roll to voicemail. Something was definitely wrong.

     “Hey, Juggie, where’s Y/N? She’s usually with you by now, isn’t she?” Betty asked as she slid next to him in the seat.

     “Yeah, but she isn’t answering her phone.”

      “What?” Veronica asked as she and Archie sat on the other side of the booth. “She always answers the phone, even during class.” 

     “Especially during class,” Archie said. “We have to go see her.” 

     “It might not be a good idea for all of us to rush her at her house,” Jughead said. 

     “But we still all have to go. Y/N’s our friend too, Jughead,” Veronica said.

     “Fine, but we have to do it gently.”

    As they all headed out, Veronica grabbed Betty. “You don’t think she hurt herself, do you?”     “I would say Y/N would never do that but I don’t know. She was always super close with her parents and one of them just killed the other in front of her. There’s no telling what she might do,” Betty said.

    They got to Y/N’s house in record time. Archie rang the doorbell and knocked on the door without any answer. The group quickly got more anxious and Jughead grabbed the spare key under the potted plan on the porch and opened the door.

    “Y/N, are you home?” Jughead called.

   “I’ll try her room,” Betty said.

    “I’ll try her parents’ room,” Veronica said.

    “I guess we’ll all split up until we find her?” Archie asked.

    They nodded and went their separate ways. Betty ended up being right because when she knocked on Y/N’s door, she heard something shifting around.

     “Y/N?” she tried to open the door but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s me, Betty, I just want to know if you’re okay.”     “I’m fine.” Y/N’s voice sounded muffled through the door. “I’m just sitting against the door, I got tired of sitting on my bed.”

    Betty slid down to sit on the other side of the door and texted the others that she had found Y/N. “Why didn’t you meet Jughead tonight?”

    “Oh, that’s what I forgot about. To be honest, Betty Blonde, I don’t have any new material right now. I’d hate to just be critiquing JJ’s work the entire time.”

    “He wouldn’t have minded if you would’ve just called. He was really worried about you. We all were.”     “I’m fine, though. I just wanted to take a nap and then I think I overslept. All I wanted to do was sleep today, honestly.”

    Y/N definitely sounded sleepy and quite sad. The need for sleep was a symptom of depression and it would make sense for Y/N to be depressed in that moment. Betty definitely had to handle this carefully.

    “Do you remember the time that Polly and I got into a big fight and I went to my room crying?”     “You have to be more specific.”

    Betty smiled slightly. “We were eight and I called you because I thought that she would never speak to me again. Then, you came over with your CD player and the soundtrack to the Aristocats and demanded that I dance with you to “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”. So we dance and sang around my room for hours just listening to that song on repeat. Then, you told me that if Polly didn’t want to be my sister anymore, I would always be your sister. And that’s when I knew that you were my very best friend. You made me forget about my problems and I can only hope that one day I can make you forget about yours.”

    “Yeah, I remember your mom yelling at us for being too loud and then banning me from coming over for a week,” Y/N said. “Did anyone else come with you?”

    “Yeah, Archie, Jughead, and Veronica.”     “Tell them to please not eat all of my food. I can barely cook, let alone shop for food.”

     Betty laughed a little. “Okay, I will.”

     “Thanks.”

     Betty went downstairs and was nearly knocked down by Archie since he was the first one to reach her.

     “How is she? Is she okay?”

     “I think she’s suffering some form of depression. All she wants to do is sleep and she wasn’t motivated to do her favorite thing in the world: write jokes.”

     “That’s so sad. Do you think we could talk to her?” Veronica asked.

     “Yeah, one at a time, maybe,” Betty said.

     And that was how it went, one at a time, the four of us tried to talk to Y/N and get her to let us in, not just into her room but into her mind and emotions. It proved to be a difficult feat. 

    “And I must say, the best thing you ever did was ask Cheryl if all her hair was hers in front of all the River Vixens.” Veronica chuckled. “Her face had to have matched her hair. And it was really nice of you to not judge me because of what my father did. No one really does that in this town.”

    “You’re not your father, Veronica,” Y/N whispered. “You must dress a lot better than him.” 

    Veronica laughed a little. “Do you ever stop joking around?”     “Never.”

     A few minutes later, Veronica walked downstairs and she shrugged. “She seems to be acting fairly normal with me, just a little more subdued.”

    Jughead played with his hands. “She’s definitely down but she’s still acting like she’s not. Maybe I should go to talk to her next.” Jughead turned to Archie. “If that’s okay with you.” 

    Archie nodded. “Of course. She’s more likely to open up to you anyway.” 

    “Maybe,” Jughead said. “She wasn’t very open for these past few weeks, though.”

    “Trust me, she’ll say something to you.” Archie didn’t seem bitter about this at all, rather just sad that Y/N hadn’t really confided in him.

     Jughead opened his mouth to speak but kept it close as he went upstairs to talk to Y/N. He didn’t bother knocking on the door as he sat with his back against it. “So, is your phone dead or something? I called you.”

    “I was asleep.”

    “I heard. Are you having fun in there?”

    “No, not really.”

    “You know what would make it a lot more fun?”

    “Dave Chapelle?”     “No, if you let me in. Come on, Y/N. Two’s better than one.”

     “But there’s five of us in this house.”

     “Yeah, but let’s be honest: you are more likely to let me in than the rest of them.”

    “And why is that?”

    “Because we are the most alike. Because we share so much time together. You don’t have to be so happy all the time, you know. It’s okay to be sad, or melodramatic, as long as it isn’t constant.” 

    There was a long pause and for a moment, Jughead thought he lost her.

    “I don’t like feeling sad, Jughead. It feels like a huge weight is on my chest and shoulders. Joking around makes me and everyone else feel better. How could I be sad?”     “You’re allowed to be upset, Y/N. Especially after what you’ve just been through. It isn’t healthy to keep all this stuff bottled inside or keep joking about it. And it definitely isn’t healthy to try to push the people who care about you away.”

     There a long, tension-filled pause before Y/N spoke again.

     “My dad did four consecutive tours in Iraq. He became a decorated officer in the US Navy and did a lot of covert stuff. I was proud of him, though, because my dad was a big, brave soldier. Mom didn’t feel the same way, though,” Y/N said. “She felt lonely because he was never around for four years. So, she started staying out later and coming home later. I knew about the men, all of them. I’ve never seen them, but I would hear her talking to them when she thought I was doing homework or sleeping. I hated her for doing that to my dad, the hero, and hoped it would stop when he got back. Well, it didn’t because for all three months he’s been back, she’s been screwing some other guy. I wanted to tell him but I couldn’t. He seemed too happy to be home but he wasn’t as happy as before he left. He would get real moody sometimes and real unpredictable with his actions.”

     Y/N sighed. “They started fighting a lot and the more they fought, the more jokes I wrote to try and forget about it. Jokes are an escape because if I joke about it, it’s not real. That night, my mom told my dad that she was leaving him for the guy that she’s been sleeping with for the past three months. His PTSD was triggered and he shot her, right in my kitchen.”

    Jughead swallowed and he could only imagine what Y/N must have been feeling. Suddenly, the door opened and Y/N stood there, looking like a dejected doll. Jughead scrambled to his feet.

    “Then, he sat there, drinking a beer as though he had just shot and killed a dear rather than my mom. He went on a mini rampage throughout the house, breaking things and screaming but he never touched me. All I could do was stare at my mom’s dead body as she kept bleeding until there wasn’t any blood left,” Y/N whispered. “And the worst part is he didn’t say anything to me.”

     And that was the first time I ever saw Y/N Y/L/N cry. She is going to hate that I wrote this, but to be completely honest, it’s necessary to explain the kind of person she is. She has to be one of the most stubborn but funniest people I ever met. To see her so vulnerable and miserable in that moment was nearly too shocking. She cried for about twenty minutes, not wailing or wheezing or making any other sort of sound affect. Her shoulders shook as tears ran down her face and I hugged her, feeling tears of my own well up. Misery certainly does love company.

    When Y/N pulled away, she quickly wiped the tears from her eyes. “Sorry about that meltdown.”

    “It’s fine, I’ve seen you at your worst before.”

    “This isn’t my worst?” Y/N teased gently.

     “No, I do recall a time where you forgot to bring swimming clothes with you to the pool but still jumped in.”

    “Yeah, I spent the whole day soaking wet,”  Y/N said. “But I was seven.”

    “The most stubborn seven year old I’ve ever met.”

    Y/N shrugged. “I’m sorry if I worried you about me.”

    “I wasn’t that worried, but the others thought you might be suicidal.”

    Y/N scoffed. “I could never hurt myself. All the possible ways are horrifying. Plus, I’m a bit of a wimp.”

    Jughead smiled. “Same old Y/N.”

   “Same old Jughead.”

   Y/N followed Jughead downstairs and slowly approached Archie. Betty and Veronica sat up in their seats at the dining table while Archie just kept staring at Y/N, looking anxious.

    “Hi, guys, sorry if I made you think that something bad happened. I was just a little down is all but I appreciate your concern,” Y/N said. “It’s good to know that I’ve got people looking out for me, even if it is this motley crew.”

    They all laughed except Archie who walked slowly towards her as though moving any faster would scare her away. “Please, try not to scare us like that again. I hate to think that something else could have happened to you or---”

    Y/N cut him off by cupping his face in her hands and pressing her mouth to his. Betty looked stunned, Veronica seemed smug,and Jughead fought the urge to roll his eyes.

     “Perfect timing,” Jughead muttered as he walked to stand by Betty.

    Archie kissed Y/N back almost immediately but pulled away. “I, uh, what was that for?”

    “I knew you wouldn’t do it and I felt a little sentimental, Ginger,” Y/N said with a smirk.

     And that is the story of Riverdale’s Pagliacci. While she couldn’t cheer herself up, her friends definitely helped her. 

[judedoyle]

Basics

A lot of debate, in the past year or so, has come down to putting a label on people’s politics. So-and-so is A Liberal; thus-and-thus is A Leftist, or A Socialist. Mostly, this serves as a reason to dismiss somebody, whether or not they’re right — you would say that, you’re a liberal, or well, that’s just purity politics talking. But, as a feminist, it’s also my job to at least try to have solidarity with women who disagree with me. In the process of trying that, I realized I’d really never tried to write down a coherent description of my politics before. I’d called myself a “socialist” until maybe 2015, found myself called a “centrist” from 2015 through 2017, took a bunch of stupid political-compass tests where I always wound up on the same square as Jill Stein and/or anarchists (pretty far left, all the way at the bottom toward the “anti-authoritarian” end, to answer your burning question) and still really had no idea how to communicate where I stood or why I stood there in discussions with other women.  

Here, just because I imagine the question will come up again, is an attempt at a description of my politics — economic, identity-wise, role-of-Nazi-punching-wise, what have you. It’s not much, but as women increasingly have more good-faith arguments on the direction of our movements (which is lovely; I would rather do that than hear some man explain Why Identitarianism Is Ruining The Left any day of the week) it might give some grounds for an assessment of what I’m saying and why I’m saying it. I mean, assuming an “assessment” is the point, and not a Twitter fight — my optimism is boundless, I guess.

1) The center point of my political engagement, the thing everything else revolves around, is feminism — ending misogyny and default male power in America. I don’t think it’s inherently superior to any other locus; your activism could center queerness, black lives, economic inequality, and be just as meaningful, if not more so. But I choose feminism, because feminism chose me. By the time I left elementary school, I had seen two instances of near-fatal domestic violence within my immediate family. In one of them, a woman was shot in the spine and left paralyzed for life. I knew about other cases where women’s boyfriends or husbands controlled what they ate, or “accidentally” killed their pets. I knew two girls who had been raped by my sophomore year of high school, and that count only increased once I got to college. And, of course, I experienced my own share of violence. Basically, by the time I was sixteen, I knew I lived in a world that violently hated women — that hated us enough to kill us, and that did kill us more often than anyone wanted to admit. I have spent the rest of my life figuring out what to do about that. It’s what I care about, and I admittedly care about it more than anything else, including my own self-interest at times. You’re free to choose your focus. This is mine.

2) There is no useful feminism without intersectionality. In fact, feminism, arguably more than any other cause, is bound to intersectionality, just because every single group in the world has women in it. This makes it practically impossible to craft a universally true statement about “women,” or to issue a blanket call for “women’s solidarity.” Women will probably always have opposing interests, or disagreements, and (as long as we live in an oppressive society) some women will always be able to oppress or exploit other women. I’m pretty obviously a flawed vehicle for intersectional feminism, given that I’m white, and straight, and cisgender. So I try to stay educated about the interests and experiences of other women, to reflect on those in anything I write as best I can, and to keep those women in mind before assuming my own experience is universal. I try to fight for the interests of all marginalized groups — or at least to support fighters, where I’m not qualified to speak up myself — because all of that is essential to supporting women as a whole.

2a) One place where you might disagree with me: I do believe that even extremely privileged women experience misogyny. Misogyny is a structural factor that impacts women because they are women, and for no other reason; I also believe that misogyny alone can ruin or kill a woman, even if she has everything going for her. So I don’t necessarily view even very privileged women as “enemies” — any woman can, potentially, be enlisted to the cause — and I try to frame any criticism in a way that steers clear of misogynist tropes.

2b) Another place for good-faith disagreement: I believe that getting women and other marginalized people into positions of power has real, positive impact on its own. Of course, you have to take into account what those women believe — no-one is saying Sarah Palin or Ivanka Trump are feminist sheroes — but if a woman is reasonably progressive, she represents a concrete improvement over the white man who currently occupies that position. There are different value levels to this: Getting women into government is far more important than getting women into corporations. But giving women higher-paying jobs matters, too. Sexism, like everything else, is economic; the reason women face economic discrimination is the same reason that over 90% of all abusive relationships involve financial abuse, which is that patriarchy wants to instill dependence in women. Patriarchy wants to make it impossible for a woman to survive without a man’s patronage and approval, and thereby render those women passive, submissive, and (this is important) unable to resist violence or walk away, because they cannot survive outside of the relationship. Ideally, all women would have equal access to resources. In the meantime, women should be supported in building bases of economic power within the world we have.

3) And, speaking of economics: I believe that American socialism is the goal, but that it’s not exactly a short-term goal. Which is to say: Everything I’ve read suggests that structural and identity-based oppressions are in fact improved under socialism, because the marginalized have that base of economic power from which to resist their oppressors. And, in America, class is deeply tied to identity; poverty is reliably caused by bigotry, and fighting poverty therefore fights bigotry. Yet I’m skeptical about getting there quickly, and don’t think any of us should live as if “the revolution” is going to happen tomorrow, or in five years, or in ten. The nation that elected Reagan in a landslide within my lifetime, the nation that made George W. Bush a two-term President, the nation that recently elected Donald Trump, does not seem like a nation that’s going to turn into Scandinavia (or even Canada) before I turn 40. I think we are more likely to get there via a gradual leftward culture shift, and pragmatic policies aimed at increasing the social safety net in specific ways (like the FAMILY Act or Obamacare) than we are through one huge victory or grand deluge that changes everything.

4) And, speaking of the deluge: I would prefer my activism to remain as non-violent as possible for as long as possible. Yes, I know the state is violent — more violent than any black bloc or riot could be — and I know that intolerable conditions inevitably generate violence. Still, my activism has its roots in resisting violence, and in witnessing violence, so I can’t romanticize physical force easily. I think violence tends to generate chaos and harm as many innocent people as it helps, and I can’t participate gladly in hurting or killing people.

4a) I do, however, make a distinction between violence and self-defense. Edward Crawford is not “being violent” in this picture — he is throwing a weapon that was intended to harm him back to his attackers, sparing himself from their violence. A woman who speaks up about being raped, harassed or abused is not “being violent” if that man loses his job or goes to jail, nor is she “being violent” if, in a one-on-one confrontation, she fires a warning shot into the ceiling; she needs to get the abuser or harasser away from her, to stop him, and if he will not respond to requests, she will have to use force. Taking Milo’s check mark or book deal away is not an act of aggression. Nobody reasonable has a problem with Nazi-punching. I believe that the oppressed must sometimes use force to limit or contain the oppressor’s violence, basically. Where that fits into the greater picture of limiting or containing state violence, or of “revolution,” I don’t know, except that I don’t want to shoot people.

5) Because those most impacted by economic oppression are women, people of color, and other marginalized folks, any leftist movement should be led by women, people of color, and other marginalized folks. In many cases, like Black Lives Matter (which is largely led by women, including queer women) this is already the case. But if I look at a group of “leftists,” I should see mostly women — or, at least, 51% of the attendees should be women. The reasons for this are practical, not ideological. For example, I recently saw a leftist say they supported the “Norwegian model” for abortion. Norway limits abortion at thirteen weeks. This is before any substantive genetic testing to ensure the viability of the fetus can be done (even the most expensive cell-free fetal DNA testing, which is normally done at around ten weeks, would take a while to return results) let alone before the 20-week test when many fetal abnormalities are first detected. It’s eight weeks earlier than Donald Trump’s proposed 20-week limit, which is already barbaric. Norwegian women & trans people can theoretically get an abortion at up to 22 weeks (still only two more weeks than a ban endorsed by Donald Trump, for fucksakes) but they need the government’s permission, and doctors are allowed to flat-out refuse at any point in the pregnancy for reasons of “conscience” — not exactly “pro-choice.” This is a socialist paradise, and their abortion laws are worse than America’s. There are other instances of this, like the racism of the New Deal, which have been rehashed endlessly. In short: The reason for leadership by oppressed people is that, if your socialism or leftism doesn’t specifically take their concerns into account, it will end up specifically leaving them out.

6) There are also a lot of old-school, probably “liberal” values I hold dear: I think people have a god-given right to disagree with each other, or with The Movement. I ultimately believe in democracy, no matter how frustrating it gets. I believe that it must always be safe to note that the Emperor has no clothes — and it doesn’t matter who this week’s Emperor is, or how “progressive” he claims to be. Hate speech and abusive speech needs to be checked, but “unity” isn’t a positive goal if it means you’re not allowed to make your own choices or say what you think. 

7) But she voted for Hillary Clinton! Yes, I did. I grade a candidate on gender politics first (see Item #1) and didn’t much like those of her opponents. I also just like her, as a woman, for reasons I’ve gone on about before. But Hillary Clinton lost four months ago, and won’t run again, so she’s really not the most important part of my work to anyone except people who hate Hillary Clinton. More generally, I believe that voting for mainstream, left-of-center candidates in a general election is not incompatible with further-left activism. I think the two are interdependent. You vote for the candidate who has a chance of winning (which means taking into account all Democrats, not just your own stripe or social group), who will preserve gains rather than rolling them back, and who will be at least somewhat responsive to leftward pressure. Then you apply the pressure through protesting, marching, striking, and creating media and culture change. Some people understandably harbor anger toward those politicians (my husband is intense about Obama and drone strikes, for example) but I mostly don’t — they work in a system designed to limit them, and it’s our job to alter that system. Electing Clinton, or Obama, or whoever, isn’t the end goal of progressive politics. It’s the beginning, setting an acceptable battlefield in the ongoing work of activism — which belongs, not to our elected officials, but to us, and which will not end within our lifetimes.

Well, those are the basics. I imagine there are a thousand points I’ve left unaddressed. But this is the core of what I believe, so that we can argue about that, rather than someone else’s fevered imagination about what I believe, the next time we talk.