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Insight time folks. Many thanks to Alicen Gray for this.
“I often catch men in public checking me out with eyes full of lust, until they see the hair on my legs – at which point, they resort to a theatrical display of disgust. I’ve eavesdropped on groups of college-age guys talking about how they won’t perform oral sex on a woman if her labia are too prominent. One man who had been pursuing sex with me for three years, suddenly changed his mind when I revealed that I do not, and will not, shave off my pubic hair. In other words, many men stop being attracted to me when reminded that I am a woman, and not a young girl. Surely all of these men, who have a “preference” for the aforementioned qualities in women, aren’t pedophiles by the strict definition of the word. But it seems that a high number of men, likely as a result of deep cultural conditioning, find many of the same things attractive in a woman that a pedophile would find attractive in a girlchild. Small labia, tight vaginas, intact hymens, baby-soft skin, hairless limbs and vulvas, eternal youthfulness, tiny frail bodies …”
-Alicen Gray writing at the Feminist Current.
A concise guide to the levels of Science in popular science fiction:
Star Trek: This is science-fiction, but we want our science to at least sound plausible. Therefore, most of the time, our scientific explanations will be rooted in scientific fact or at the very least solid, generally accepted theory.
Stargate: We’re about half and half. We try to make it plausible sometimes, but usually you just have to technobabble your way through it.
Star Wars: This man has a laser sword. Why does he have a laser sword? Because laser swords are cool. This is all the explanation you need.
Cultural analysis at its finest.
“Cultural mythology is often used in this way to distort what goes on between subordinate and dominant groups. It enables dominant groups to avoid seeing how much they depend on others to perform disagreeable labor in return for the low wages that help make privilege possible. Members of the upper class, for example, typically are portrayed as ‘wealth producers,’ the ones who build buildings, bridges, and empires, even though most of the work is performed by others, by ‘little people’ who pay taxes and often live lives of chronic anxiety about making ends meet. Donald Trump, we are told, ‘built’ Trump Tower, just as turn-of-the-century robber barons ‘built’ the railroads and steel mills that made vast personal fortunes possible. Entire nations also indulge in this kind of magical thinking. In the United States, for example, we rarely realize how much third world poverty subsidizes our own standard of living. We like to believe that our affordable abundance is solely our own doing, unaware of how much it has always depended on a steady supply of cheap labor and raw materials provided by countries in which much of the world’s population lives in poverty.”
— Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy
Here is a just a snapshot of what it’s like…
“What’s on my mind, Facebook? Glad you asked.
I am angry.
I’m angry because before I moved to the UK, I worked at a bar where the manager proposed a new uniform where the men wore waistcoats and button up shirts, while the women wore corsets. And no one saw the problem with that.
I’m angry because when I told him that if I wanted to wear that I’d be a stripper and earn ten times more, my coworkers were embarrassed and looked away.
I’m angry because even though he eventually admitted that my objections were valid, this incident (“Corsetgate,” I like to call it) is not remembered as the time I defended myself and my female coworkers from being objectified at work, but rather as the time that I “totally flipped out.”I’m angry because when I threw a customer out of the bar for grabbing me (twice, once after I explicitly told him it was unacceptable), I was asked repeatedly where exactly he grabbed me. As if there is some ranking system as to what must happen before I am allowed to feel violated by a stranger’s hands on me.
I am angry because the (female) bouncer told me afterward that his behavior was a compliment to me. I’m angry because she believes that. Because misogyny is so much a part of our society that women really believe that their bodies aren’t their own.
I’m angry because last night, out at some random club in London, a man walked up behind me and thrusted against me. And when I told him to get the hell away
from me, he moved on to another woman who was too drunk to say the same thing.
I’m angry because when I asked the bouncer to throw him out, he told me I was overreacting. I’m angry that when I decided to stand up for myself, my friends told me I was overreacting.I’m angry because my reaction, my refusal to allow myself to be treated as a subhuman slab of meat, is perceived as an overreaction.
I’m angry because men have a monopoly on anger. Because when I, a woman, am angry, it’s either “cute” or it’s “crazy.” It is never acknowledged that I could be a sensible, intelligent, educated person with a justifiable concern. Of course not. I’m a woman. (And a blonde at that. Strike two!)
If my boyfriend had punched Pelvic Thrust Guy out, he would have been applauded. Whereas my impulse to simply inform PTG that I was displeased with his behavior was met with a chorus of “Just let it go!” “We just don’t want to see you so upset!” “It’s not worth it!”
I’m angry because I was made to feel like I was being unreasonable for expecting to be treated with basic human decency. And PTG just strolled out of that bar without consequence. I cried all night, and he probably spent the rest of the night gleefully groping women who were too afraid or too brainwashed to speak up.
I’m angry because this (and much, MUCH worse) happens every day. And it happens everywhere, from small towns in West Virginia to great cities like London. To me, and to every other woman on the planet. And we’re still not allowed to be angry.
I am angry. And you should be too.”
I didn’t realize that I needed a new tag for posts, but indeed I do. Observe.
Yah. Wow. Hard to cram more wrong into a picture.
“Rape/revenge is replete in tension and bloody cathartic release; there is terrifying violation, and then there is revenge you can feel good about. The films use women’s trauma to justify stereotypically male pleasures of hyperbolic violence. So Thelma and Louise get to pick up guns and shoot people like they’re in a Western, while Furiosa drag races across the desert and then gets to murder and take the place of the evil patriarch. Rape/revenge fits feminism into male genre narratives that Hollywood can embrace.
…rape/revenge films are designed, often quite consciously, to let everyone in the audience experiment with, and experience, different gender roles, whether as trauma, empowerment, or both. That instability leads to a wide range of responses—and perhaps explains why rape/revenge is responsible for both some of the most critically lauded and most viscerally derided films of the last 40 years. For better and worse, the rape/revenge trope reveals how violence squats upon our understanding of gender—and how rarely, and timidly, that is confronted in popular culture.”
-Excerpts from the article by Noah Berlatsky found on The Establishment.
Two Christmases? Yes you can. Oh yah, find some borscht, cabbage roles, nalisnyky and of course perogies and celebrate Ukrainian Christmas. :) Christmas Eve is tonight. :)
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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