Tag: feminism

The Promise of Misery | Becca Rothfeld

cr3v:

We are not shocked by naked women.
Skinny women. Women forced to field abuses in the bedroom or advances
in the workplace, women who have undergone operations to whittle their
waists into fine points. But an unhappy woman appalls us, especially if
she does not collude in regarding herself as deficient. All happy women
are alike, but each unhappy woman jolts us in her own defiant way. Each
woman sulking in the back of the photograph, ignoring injunctions to
smile. Each woman insisting that she isn’t angry, or at least, she
wasn’t angry before she was asked if she was angry, which made her
angry, and with reason.

But an unhappy woman, consensus has it, is unreasonable or unwell.
Her unhappiness is an illness she’s obliged to remedy, either by
sequestering herself in therapy sessions or by diligently annotating
self-help manuals in her domestic prison—in any case, in private, where
her discomfort cannot discomfit.

The Promise of Misery | Becca Rothfeld

ellaenchanted2004:

“The problem is—the problem has always been—that feminism is not fun,” Zeisler declares. “It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s complex and hard and it pisses people off. It’s serious because it is about people demanding that their humanity be recognized as valuable. The root issues that feminism confronts—wage inequality, gendered divisions of labor, institutional racism and sexism, structural violence and, of course, bodily autonomy—are deeply unsexy.“ So, no, we shouldn’t stop calling feminists “feminists.” To appropriate Simone de Beauvoir, one is not born, but rather becomes, a feminist. It is a deliberate political undertaking. It is an ethics of daily living, of fighting for gender equality under the law, of fighting for women’s agency and autonomy, of fighting for political power and representation for women. To be a feminist is to fight structural inequality and upend the patriarchal power structure. In this regard, it is inherently discomforting. But feminists are not here to make anyone comfortable—that’s the damn point. And no amount of clever, screen-printed tank tops will change that.”

— Marcie Bianco, We sold feminism to the masses, and now it means nothing

holyaura:

when i say “i hate men” im not talking about every individual man in the world, im talking about men as a social class, but if youre the kind of man that gets offended when i say i hate men then i do, specifically, hate you on an individual level

the-last-hair-bender:

hannahgadsbys:

“a seventeen year old girl is just never, ever, ever in her prime! ever! i am in my prime! would you test your strength out on me? there is no way, there is no way anyone would dare, dare test their strength out on me! because you all know there is nothing stronger than a broken woman who was rebuilt herself.”

hannah gadsby: nanette (2018)

I felt this in my fucking soul. God what an incredible show. What an incredible woman.

halfmoonhead:

the whole concept linking being open-minded, liberal, and free-spirited with being sexually available to men and having no sexual boundaries is an absolute tragedy. almost every woman i know has been traumatized or harmed by this ideology in some way, and it is being pushed on girls at increasingly younger ages 

teratomarty:

the-real-seebs:

the-rain-monster:

w0manifest:

Here’s a cool trick to see if a man actually respects you: try disagreeing with him

A friend of mine did something with online dating where, before meeting a person, she’d say no to something minor without a reason for the no. For example: “No, I don’t want to meet at a coffee shop, how about X?”, or “No, not Wednesday”, or “No, I don’t want to recognize each other by both wearing green shirts”. She said how the potential dates reacted was a huge indicator of whether she actually wanted to meet them, something I readily believe.

I’ve mentioned this to a few people and sometimes I get very annoyed and incredulous responses from guys about how are they supposed to know that it’s a test if the girl is being unreasonable? How are they supposed to know that and let her have her way? I find it difficult to explain that if you find it unreasonable for someone to have a preference of no consequence which they don’t feel the need to explain, then you are the one being unreasonable. You can decide for yourself that it sounds flaky and you don’t want to date her, but you don’t have a right to know and approve all of her reasons for things in order to deign to respect that she said no about it. Especially in the case of someone you haven’t even fucking met yet.

The point isn’t to know it’s a test, the point is that if you would only say “yes” if you knew it was a test, then what if it’s not a test, but because she hates coffee shops, or because she’s attending a funeral Wednesday and doesn’t know you well enough to want to share that, or whatever else? Because if you’re making rules for when other people can have preferences and not explain why… yeah, that is a thing they can reasonably want to avoid.

@ all the angry dudes in the replies: the point is not to trick or manipulate men. The point is to see how a potential romantic partner reacts to a minor inconvenience.  If they say, “oh, ok, would seven work instead?” or “well there’s this Armenian tea house I’ve been meaning to try out, want to go there?” then that’s a good sign that they’re safe to date.  If they throw a fit and/or demand to know every little detail about your rationale over something as simple as rescheduling dinner plans, that’s a bad sign. A really bad sign.

It’s like this, dudes. Women in Western society are socialised to cooperate and compromise. Some men are socialised to get all their own way, all the time.  These dudes are incredibly dangerous to women their partners,* and the only way to tell them apart from the OK guys is to pay close attention to how they react.  If you’re one of the OK ones, this isn’t about you. Learn to take “no” for an answer, and you’ll be fine.

*Updated to reflect the fact that abusive men can target any gender, and the fact that I used this screening tactic to good effect during my Big Gay Slut phase.