sorry, I don’t stop being feminist because it’s fandom

Long time, no see.
At Ohayocon I let a couple of emcees know exactly what I thought of them.
People shout at anime conventions, and I figured there was no reason I shouldn’t do so at an acceptable time, either – never mind that my shouting was of a political bent.
I can’t, or won’t, or don’t, check my feminism (or femaleness) at the door when I go somewhere. Even though I can compartmentalize a little (or I’d never enjoy anything), I cannot and will not simply stop caring about problematic stuff just because it’s “only fandom/entertainment/whatever.”
It’s never “just for fun.”
Usually, if a show bothers me, I try to just ignore it, unless it’s shoved in my face. If something I enjoy suddenly becomes problematic (or if it’s problematic from the beginning), I’ll think/talk about that, too – because, like I said, I can’t not enjoy anything ever because it’s not completely politically correct. There would be nothing left.
However, if I am at a convention – if my physical body is in a physical space, especially one I have paid money to inhabit – then I absolutely refuse to just ignore it. Even if it’s not a literal and immediate threat of violence against me, personally, the kind of “jokes” that I ended up shouting about were implicit threats against my personal safety – especially the first time.
One of the improv actors in the Anime Whose Line made a “joke” about violence against women, and that was the first (and probably loudest) time that I spoke up. “What other manly things can we do?” he asked, “beat women!”
And I sat up straighter, cupped my hands in front of my mouth, and told him to go fuck himself.
It was only a conference room, not a big theater like the Masquerade. I bet everyone heard me. I hope they did. I hope he went home and was terribly embarrassed that some chick called him out as the unfunny douchebag he is.
I was worried at first, but then nothing bad happened to me – the actor himself just ignored me, and I got a few approving nods.
Whether he realized it or not, and even if he didn’t ~intend~ to make me (and, you know, like half of his audience) uncomfortable, what he said was directly threatening to women’s safety – and con spaces are not known as very women-friendly spaces to begin with. (I’m sure there are more examples, those are just the first two that came to mind.)
Of course, everyone in that panel was just a douche. Another guy called on an attendee for a suggestion, then said “see, I didn’t call on you as ‘that Black guy there!'” and I was like wow, really? because come on, dude not funny. I think once upon a time, fandom was a place for white, straight, cis dudes, but the world has moved on.
After that, the actor added a disclaimer, saying that the 18+ panel later during the conference wouldn’t be “PC.”
If you can’t be “funny” without reinforcing the *ist status quo, you’re a shitty comedian and need to get a day job. Seriously, there is nothing entertaining or edgy about being a douchebag. It’s just a lazy way to get some cheap laughs; ditto this to the emcee of the Masquerade, who said “you want to hear a joke? women’s rights.”
I shouted about that, too, but I think my protest was lost in the general din – and while I was offended*, it wasn’t as threatening, because what can he, this one loser emcee, do to take my legal rights away? Of course, it contributed to a general culture of misogyny, but unlike the first emcee, would could literally go out and attack women at the con, this one couldn’t really do much other than stick his foot in his mouth and make himself look like a douche.
I also yelled at a couple of Hetalia cosplayers for letting their flags touch the ground† but I couldn’t’ve addressed every case of that I saw, and… well, tbh I care more about the feminism thing than the flag thing.
However, if there is a repeat of the Anime Boston ’10 incident, I will be speaking up – and loudly.
I won’t sit back and let the parts of fandom that I don’t like slide by. I won’t be made to feel uncomfortable in something I enjoy because I’m not a cis white straight man. Fuck that; we’ve all got a right to be here, and to feel safe here.
-M

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*and no, jokes about stripping me of my legal rights as a citizen to vote, to press charges, &c. are not funny and I’m not being ~over-sensitive~. just don’t start that with me right here/now.
†just don’t carry them, people. just don’t.

a little Greco-Roman know how

In this post, the app in question (it tracks menstrual cycles – for men in heterosexual romantic/sexual relationships) has “a female symbol …sporting devil horns.”
For those of you who failed Greco-Roman mythology and/or astrology or just plain ol’ fashion do not give a damn about either subject, let me remind you: the female symbol (♀) is the astrological sign for Venus. (The male symbol (♂) is the astrological symbol for Mars.) However, the Venus symbol with horns (☿) is no longer the Venus symbol at all, but is, instead, the symbol for Mercury, and it’s used to represent intersex individuals the way the Venus/Mars symbols represent ciswomen and cismen.
Whoops. (KNOWING STUFF: It helps!)

the F word (no, the other F word)

I fucking hate when anti-feminists blame feminists for shit that is actually the fault of the patriarchy/kyriarchy. Like, seriously, it is not feminism’s fault that girls are sexualized. Feminism said “hey, you know, women should be able to have sex if they want to and not have sex if they don’t! it’ll be awesome,” and the patriarchy said “hey, all women need to be sexually available for all men, even if they don’t want it!” and feminism said “wait, that’s not what we said at all because you totally missed out on the consent part!” and the patriarchy says “yeah, but if you have consensual sex outside of my pre-approved, God-given framework of heterosexual marriage, you were asking for it,” and feminism says “no, that’s not okay! women are autonomous human beings and we have the right to sleep with whoever we want to sleep with and to not be forced into sexual situations we don’t want!” and anti-feminism says “you made your bed, now sleep in it” and this feminist says “die in a shark on fire, anti-feminism” and then anti-feminism usually tells me off for having a potty mouth and not being submissive enough (though it has yet to clarify for me who, exactly, I should be submissive to as the unwed daughter of a widow – and yes, I have asked).
(Likewise, should an anti-feminist happen to be reading this, call me a feminazi and I will gladly kick you in the teeth. Do not accuse me of being a Nazi and do not insinuate my views are anything akin to Nazism. Learn something about a) what I’m actually saying and b) actual Nazis.)
Don’t you hate being reprimanded for something you didn’t do?

women in public cause problems

You know that whole “women are distractions” theme I’ve been harping on lately? Well, the new Allstate commercial is the most blatant example I’ve seen. There’s a guy who is supposed to be the embodiment of reasons you need car insurance; in another one, he’s a guy driving an expensive car that your current insurance won’t fully cover, so he’s going to sue you. In this one, he’s “a hot babe jogging on the side of the road” which causes “you” (in this part, a youngish (late teens/early twenties) man) to crash his car into a tree or a sign or something.
So what do we get from this commercial? Two things: first, women exist to be looked at (“woman as image, man as bearer of the look”*) and second, women are distractions.

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*Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema“

feminism: the solution, not the problem

Women (and men, but I mostly see this from women) who make it sound like feminists are stealing femininity, or devaluing it. Newsflash, that would be the Patriarchy. Some radfems, like Twisty advocate for renouncing femininity, but in case you missed it, radfems are a minority (a vocal minority that’s right about a lot of things, but saying someone like Twisty is representative of all feminism is like… I don’t even know what, but it’s inaccurate and unfair).
Even the radfems like Twisty aren’t the ones who originally made femininity of lesser value than masculinity. People like Twisty advocate for trashing it because it is, under the current system (i.e., the Patriarchy), devalued and therefore being “feminine” devalues us by association. (I’m not saying I agree with this, I haven’t made up my mind on femininity yet, but roll with it.) They’re saying femininity is hurting us because the Patriarchy is using it to hurt us. (Maybe there’s a way to trash the Patriarchy and keep the fun trappings of femininity, like hair dye and cute shoes, and maybe there’s not. Maybe post-Patriarchy, hair dye and cute shoes won’t seem fun any more because we’ll have stuff that’s way cooler. I don’t know.)
You know who made it so women have to act more “masculine” to be accepted in the workplace or w/e? Wait, wait! Maybe you know this one: the Patriarchy, because it values masculinity over femininity (although unlike men, women have to keep up a precarious balancing act of masculine and feminine traits, which I think is one of the reasons women have to be “pretty” to be successful in fields completely unrelated to their looks). If femininity was valued equally, we could all wear Lolita to work if we wanted to. (See, this is kinda related to my paper.) All of us, and that includes men! because, if masculinity and femininity were equal, men wearing skirts would be as acceptable and normal as women wearing pants. (Okay, we’re not counting reactionary weirdos like LAF in that last statement. They’re beyond help.)
So please stop blaming feminism for the Patriarchy’s fuck-ups.
… and before you jump to defend it, remember: the Patriarchy hates you. Yes, you. Personally!
(It definitely hates you if you’re female. It probably also hates you if you’re male, unless you meet a list of criteria as long as your arm. Even if it doesn’t hate you, you still suffer.*)
Feminism is trying to destroy that system of oppression, so stop getting in the way. It’s scary, because none of us have ever lived in a Patriarchy-free world and because we rely on our oppressor to protect us (oh, the irony!), but feminism isn’t out to get you (unless you’re a douchebag, in which maybe we are… me, I am, but I can’t speak for all feminists (funny how that works, us ladies having opinions!)).

eta: Anna, in her unending geniusness, has come up with… the solution! (to my failed metaphor, not the Patriarchy… yet) saying Twisty represents all feminists is like saying PETA represents all vegetarians.

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*list of “ways the Patriarchy hurts men, too” available on request! (even if it didn’t, it’s still bad and it would still have to go, but you know)

“I’m not a feminist, but…”

“I’m not a feminist, but [insert complaint about the patriarchy here].”
Am I the only one who is filled with rage at this? It’s collusion of the highest order. “Oh, I’m not one of those people working against you, but since I’m working for you, could you reward me as one of you own?”
Hint: they won’t. The patriarchy does not love you. It sees you as a disposable object, one of many interchangeable, identityless bodies. The patriarchy thinks you are flawed and defective and dirty. It tells you to be quiet and then blames you for not being loud enough. It tells you to be demure and then blames you for not fighting hard enough.
If you’re white enough, rich enough, skinny enough, straight enough – in short, if you’re privileged enough – you can get by. They might take you seriously if your skirt isn’t deemed “too short,” if you weren’t “too drunk,” if you didn’t know him. You probably won’t go without eating.
Perhaps, if you’re compliant – if you’re pretty and nurturing and don’t complain – you can eat the crumbs of their pie, if they’re feeling generous. What the hell? Why don’t you give up begging for their table scraps and help us make our own damn pie? I know you’re afraid of going hungry – we all are – but we’ve got the ingredients, between us all. It might not taste the same, but we’ve had the same pie for two thousand years or more. Don’t you think it’s starting to go a little stale?

nobody’s “helpmeet”

a black and white photo of a white woman and her daughter in 1950s era aprons and holding baking equiptment; the wife, smiling, is looking at her daughter (who is also smiling) and saying "That's right, sweetheart; dreams and goals are Satan's way from distracting you from making dinner."

D’you know what word fills me with rage?
Helpmeet.
Every time I read it, I just want to stomp around like fucking Godzilla.
It just… ew. The connotations are disgusting: submit to him, damn it, because he’s the man and you’re the woman, he’s smart and you’re stupid he’s right and you’re wrong.

A few men are born with more than their share of dominance and, on the surface, a deficit in gentleness. (source)

… but that’s okay, because he will “exalt” (and presumably stop abusing*) her if she just sits down and shuts the fuck up (and if he’s not exalting you, it’s your own damn fault, fucking uppity whining harpy bitch).

If you are married to a king, honor and reverence is something you must give him on a daily basis if you want him to be a benevolent, honest, strong, and fulfilled man of God.

Yeah: do as your told and he’ll be nicer to you.
This is the sort of apologist bullshit I expect from, well, abusers; it takes on a whole different level of disturbing and upsetting when the victims are going on about how this is totes okay because God says so. (They probably have some bullshit caveat about how “this isn’t really abuse” (the same way beating your children with PVC piping is also just good upbringing “training,” or how a good man of God would never harm his spouse (bullshit, I say, and here’s one example)). They might say that’s not the ~intent but people love abusing their power; that old truism “absolute power corrupts absolutely”? they call them truisms for a reason. I mean, c’mon people: if your husband’s word is law and you’re not supposed to challenge his authority, telling him to stop abusing you is breaking the law… and this, my friends, is what we call a Catch-22.)
If you’re not a wife yet, being your husband’s helpmeet, you should stay at home and help your dad, since you’re his property until you get married, anyway. No, really. There’s tons of bullshit about glorifying your [male relative]’s achievements and doing a lot of legwork but taking no credit and just being glad your [male relative] gets all of this cool stuff done, or something, and the most important part is that you never once complain about doing arduous and menial labor for no thanks, let alone pay. This all comes down to stroking male egos (many of the articles are about how a woman should never chastise or correct her husband, even when his behavior is out of line or he’s just plain old fashioned incorrect) and ensuring that their fantasy of what women are or should be (unpaid laborers who do so without ever striking and demanding better workplace conditions and thirty days of paid leave each year). It’s win-win if you’re a man: you have a penis, so you’re always right and the whole family belongs to you and exists for your pleasure. If your wife says otherwise, just remind her that if she doesn’t follow your directions explicitly, immediately and cheerfully, she is rebelling and will go straight to hell for daring to disagree with you. That’ll shut her up. (It does, too; these men exploit religious beliefs and deeply held fears of damnation to their own, ultimately self-serving, ends and they never have to examine what that means because that’s just how God made it, and us uppity, hairy feminist bitches need to shut up and get back to the kitchen, already.)
No, let me tell you how it is: women are people, too.
We all have the right to pursue our own dreams. I do not exist merely to serve some man’s every wish and whim, to suffer abuse for failing to be “cheerful” about performing arduous but menial tasks for no thanks, let alone recognition. Subjugation is, by nature, never joyful; it breeds resentment and discontent. Collaboration and compromise that takes the needs of both partners into account is the only way to a truly joyful relationship.
… but I forgot, didn’t I? These people aren’t talking about respectful, loving relationships between people, they’re talking about the relationship between a man and his property, because women aren’t really people in their minds, just nameless, faceless mothers and wives at best, and nameless, faceless “incubators” at worst.
This whole patriarchal religious movement is just a way to ensure that male fantasies about the role of women continue to be fulfilled, at the expense of actual women.

I know I’m taking potshots at easy targets, here, but I run emotional and intellectual laps every day. It’s a great workout for my brain and I’m a better person for it, but sometimes I get tired. Sure, all this makes me see red, but I can say, with 100% certainty, that I am right and they are wrong, because I am human and female and I know that I am human and that my desire to be treated like one is not sinful rebellion, it’s righteous outrage. This isn’t even moral high ground; right now, I’m on the moral Mount Everest and they’re at the bottom of the deepest, darkest ocean crevasse of morality. This feeling of being right, with no nuances or disclaimers, is not one I am afforded often, and I’m going to take it for now while I relax. I’ll get back to the grindstone tomorrow.

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*a “deficit of gentleness”? c’mon.

[open thread] slashfic, social justice and you

If you’re not into meta/fandom, you might’ve missed the ongoing debate about slash. There’s a lot going on, so I’m going to link to a few articles instead of trying, and doubtlessly failing, to come up with something coherent on the subject, as all I have been able to do is chase myself in circles. (Ask Y: I do not enjoy not knowing the answer to something; as I have no answer for this, I’m asking y’all.)
Henry Jenkins, ever my hero, wrote the book (literally) on fan cultures, including an essay called Normal Female Interest In Men Bonking, which is one of my favorites; Geek Feminism has a post on women writing m/m erotica and the queerness or misogyny of slash fandom, and there’s a summary on why male/male fiction written by women is problematic in the eyes of some. metafandom‘s slash tag on Delicious is full of articles and entries, if you really care that much.
So, potential discussion questions: is slash misogynist? if it is misogynist, is it because of the original author’s misogyny (failing to create female characters female readers can identify with), or because of internalized sexism (girls are icky!), both or something else entirely? is it objectifying? fetishizing? Othering? appropriation of another group’s struggles? if so, what should slash writers do about that, if anything? is slash awesome because it gives women symbolic control over men’s bodies when we have, for basically ever, been denied control over our own bodies and sexualities, and basically gives us an excuse to talk, in detail, about what we find sexually appealing? or is it bad because it’s asserting hetero privilege over a marginalized group for our own entertainment? does that change if the (female*) creator/audience is queer, ourselves? if so, in what ways? can slash be a subversive genre? can writing/reading slash empowering, even as it is fetishizing? how do you tackle this particular quandary?
Or basically anything else you can think of. I wanna hear what y’all have to say. Talking in circles, tossing in facts, figures and links to relevant information (as long as they’re relevant), etc. is all fair game. Whatever you want, go!

(xposted from lion-hearted girls prefer blond(e)s.)

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*yes, I am operating under the assumption that slash fen are female; I know there are exceptions.

why this girl isn’t good at math

You all know there’s some debate about why girls are good at math until about puberty, and then we suddenly start underachieving. There are a lot of theories about why: learning math anxiety from female teachers, people telling them girls just can’t do math and science as well as boys, Barbie.

So now I’m going to tell you a story. Once upon a time, when I was a middle schooler, I was good at math. Okay, that’s an understatement: I was great at math. I routinely scored over 100% on our tests (the highest I managed was 131% on a geometry test), finished homework quickly and easily and actually enjoyed the work once we got past things like memorizing multiplication tables (something I still have trouble with). I think my class average for the year was 103% or something.

I also knew, as a fifth grade girl, that there would be people who didn’t want me to be good at math. I was ready for them. I dared my teachers and fellow students to tell me I wasn’t supposed to be good at math. I flaunted my high grades; humility was a trait I hadn’t mastered yet, and why shouldn’t I be anything but proud of my high grades?

So then came sixth grade. I was no longer with the math teacher I had done so well with, though I remained with the same home room teacher, who quickly became my nemesis. I got bored and turned into a little monster. If I had been in her shoes, I probably would have hated me. I finished our entire workbook early in the year and proceeded to spend the rest of the time alternating between thinking up ways to annoy her and playing video games. (I’d get in trouble for one and switch to the other.) She couldn’t really tell me I had to pay attention, either, since I always knew the answer to the question she’d ask me and I continued getting really good grades.

Sometimes, when I wanted to feel like I was involved with the class, I would help my friend JT. I showed him how to do the work. (We sat together in the back of the classroom.) One time, my poor, frustrated teacher told me that if I knew the work so well, I should teach it. So I went up to her overhead and did so… probably not what she was expecting.

“We get it, Fangirl, you were good at math and you tormented your teacher because you didn’t have much else to do during class.”

I asked, early on in the school year, if I could be bumped up a grade level, as it was clear that I was competent in sixth grade math. Since the seventh grade is in another building in Nowhere, they said they couldn’t send me to seventh grade math classes. Could I be put in seventh grade and skip sixth entirely, since I was also proving more than competent in all of my other classes? Nobody ever told me why they couldn’t do that.

I found out recently that they took me so unseriously that they never asked either of my parents about this. Apparently it never once came up that little Fangirl was asking for a challenge. When my dad told my teacher I was leaving fake snakes in the bookshelves because I didn’t feel like I had anything else to do and like I was being ignored, she gave me more work. (Not higher level work, just more of the same.) I did some of it, got bored again, and fought with her when she threatened to give me zeros on the extra worksheets I didn’t do, because I refused to be held to a higher standard than the rest of the class without being held to a higher standard. (I won.)

What sixth grade taught me, basically, wasn’t that people would fight to keep me out of math classes, but that they would simply ignore me. It wasn’t that they actively wanted me to fail, they just didn’t particularly give a damn either way, as long as I at least passed and stopped rolling my eyes at the teacher. As a sixth grader, I had no idea to fight this; I did the best I could, but since the teacher wasn’t actively discouraging me, what was wrong wasn’t so obvious, and I didn’t know how to fix it. There weren’t dragons to hunt. I couldn’t come to a direct confrontation with her because she wasn’t being overtly sexist. She never told me “you can’t be good at math,” which is what I thought sexist people told girls; I had no way of knowing how to deal with this subtle sexism. I didn’t even think of it as discrimination; I just decided Mrs. H must be evil.

I wonder, now, how all of this would have played out if I had been a boy. It’s possible my teacher would have continued to ignore me, except when I acted out (which she did even during more traditionally feminine classes, like English, though that may have been out of spite for how I acted during math), but it’s also possible she would have taken me more seriously. I’ll never know, of course.

What ended up happening, ultimately, is that I stopped paying attention (which nobody noticed, because I continued to get high scores) for long enough that I eventually lost my edge and by the time I really needed to pay attention, I was a little lost, got discouraged and gave up because my teachers didn’t realize that I had stopped just not bothering to do the homework, but that I actually had no idea how to do it. This is mostly my fault, but not having been ignored when I told them I was going to stop listening if it was going to continue to be boring would have been nice.

I’m actually not terrible at math, at least not as bad at is as I think I am, though I’m much better in those subjects that later teachers encouraged me in (like media studies and social justice*).

It’s not always blatant attacks that keep girls out of math and science; in my experience, it was neglect that ultimately lead to me dropping the math ball and I’d be willing to bet Mrs. Hs are still all over the country, ignoring bored girls during math class, except to yell at them for reading while she’s talking. We need to teach girls how to identify and combat this more subtle sexism. What that would look like, I don’t know yet; I thought I knew how The Man was going to attack me, so I was prepared for a head-on assault, but what I got was a siege that lasted so long that I starved in my castle walls because I had no idea what to do, and I know there are other girls going through the same thing.

It’s not enough to get girls interested in math. We have to keep them interested in math, and we can do that by addressing the educational needs of individual girls and providing what we can to ensure those needs are met. (Which now gets me into a rant about the school system, but that will have to wait.)

Also, Mrs. H just needs to retire already.

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*Hi, Mr. Bisson!

“oh, I love you.”

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the patronizing “oh, I love you,” spoken in the tone of voice one uses to address a small child.

One girl in my study abroad program, RK, would always say it when I finished explaining my position on something: I’m going to go with “marriage” as the example here, since it was the first time she did this. “Oh, look at how cute. Fangirl is up on her soapbox, frustrated with the patriarchy.”

Yeah. I’m fucking adorable.

No, I’m not. I’m not a small child explaining why I think Santa Clause is real because he leaves me presents on Christmas that use different wrapping paper than Mommy and Daddy. I’m a real, grown-up individual (or just as grown up as her) with positions that I have put a lot of thought into, instead of accepting wholesale and unexamined from anyone. My thoughts on marriage, abortion, public education… anything, really, are carefully crafted. I care about what I believe in, and I don’t want the wool pulled over my eyes by anyone.

I gather knowledge, facts. I check the sources of those facts. I consider other, related fields and questions and ultimately I weigh the options against my own personal code of ethics (itself constantly being fine-tuned so that I can be the best feminist and ally that I can be) and arrive at a decision.

I do this mostly for myself. I like to know where I stand, and to understand why I believe what I do, why others believe what they do, and what all of that means. It’s important to me: not just the result, but the process of achieving it. (Have I mentioned lately that I’m INTJ? This might explain a lot about me.)

So when I’ve explained my (admittedly unrealistic) thoughts on why I think the institution of marriage should be abolished all together, and my (more realistic) suggestions for what to do with the broken system we have now, I would at least like the dignity of a response detailing why I am wrong. That patronizing “oh, I love you” is the most frustrating thing to hear.

I’m not telling you this because I think it makes me quirky and funny, some kind of straw feminist class clown. I’m telling you this because you asked and because it’s something I care and have thought a lot about. Please, at least do me the favor of “but marriage is a holy and sacred institution and a fundamental part of our culture!” or “you know, you’re a fucking pinko commie” or something other than amusement.

‘Cause, you know: demanding equality is hilarious. Only silly people do that.