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Listen to one woman speak of her experiences – magically becoming fully human when it was presumed she was male. Women and men experience so many things in society differently, sadly being treated as a human being is one of them.
For the most part, I had enjoyed the privilege I’d experienced. I enjoyed being a human being.
In her article she shares her experience as posing as a man – Alex Blank Millard – on Twitter. Read here what happened.
It appears TLC is quite aware on which side its toast is buttered. Look what they were airing a couple weeks before the Duggar scandal broke:
Feminists beware: the new TLC special “Submissive Wives’ Guide To Marriage” is sure to stir a hot debate by showing marriages in which the woman caters to her husband’s every need and allows him to be the king of the castle.
And that means he gets plenty of sex, too—even when she’s not in the mood.
sigh… anybody remember when it was The Learning Channel, and showed actual educational programming?
Divide and conquer has always been an effective strategy. Applied against women, it has blossomed into one of tap roots of Foppression.
“The feminist historian, Gerda Lerner, showed that prostitution has not always existed. It first arose at the beginning of patriarchy, which was relatively recently in the long history of the human race. Prostitution began when men systematically seized control over women. One of the key ways they controlled women was to divide them into two groups: respectable women and prostitutes. Respectable women had to cover their heads and the prostitutes were not allowed to cover their heads – so all could see which group each woman belonged to. The respectable women were dependent on the patronage of a named man – her husband or father. The prostitutes were fair game for all men, any man, to rape. So women accepted “respectability” to avoid being fair game. And then she had to make sure that she was always taken as a respectable wife so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a prostitute who was fair game. She had to distance herself from the prostitutes. And so women were divided, one from another. In order that they could be more easily fucked.”
[Source]
Dancing season is rapidly coming to close. Not a moment too soon, I must heartily add, as I will miss nothing about the hot chaotic mess that is hosting a Dance Festival. Children running, crying, scurrying about, being chased by frazzled Moms – all to the backdrop of shitty canned music and the omnipresent sickly smell of too much hairspray. One can feel the anxiety in the air as troops of children are herded about for their stiltedly choreographed time on stage. So many shades of awesome; but not the reason for this post today. Today we look at the larger issue of the replication of the patriarchal beauty standard via the innocuous vehicle known as the teen Dance Festival.
Daughter Crying while being attended to by Mom.
I see this happening multiple times during the festivals I work. A distraught daughter being made up by her Mom in preparation for some sort of dance routine that will be judged and graded during said competition. Young girls being preened and made up to look like something they are not. Not all, as in the above picture, are really that into the entire process. Yet, the show and the make-up must go on. They are groomed into dancer approved appearances like this:
Step 1
Or this:
Step 2
The question I have is this – how important a quality is ‘sexy’ for female dancers? The pictures provided certainly seem to prioritize a certain look: Lithe, heavily made up, and much skin showing. Does this standard apply to all dance? Of course not, but in dance festival land as I’ve seen, step 2 could be considered the norm.
Against the backdrop of our societies standards, “step 2” can send a ruinous message to girls/women about how they should look to be successful in their personal pursuits and society in general.
How did dancing get to be like this? We need only to look at the standards set by society in general for women.
Errr…yah.
The cultural transmission of these toxic norms is carried across generations – the norms ingrained on the mother are inscribed onto the daughter as she grows up and looks to her mother to help cope with being female in our society. So, the in the dance festivals I observe, I can see this transmission of patriarchal norms in action. Small children are plucked and primped, made to wear revealing clothing and generally forced to embody what is considered to be ‘sexy’ as per the male-gaze. This process is only made possible with the cooperation and willingness of older women to groom their children into what has been deemed as an acceptable female pursuit by society. It is a vicious cycle that needs to be examine more and unpacked to find ways in which dancing can be made less of a grooming tool of the patriarchy and more of an actively fun pursuit for children who want to express themselves in a venerated art-form.
Let it be said that I am not against the art of dancing, but rather, the poisonous patriarchal outer shell, that has encased much of the art-form within its clutches.
The front flowerbed at Arb’s and my place is starting to take off – perennials that I’ve planted over the couple years we’ve owned the house, are established enough now, that they can dedicate some energy to blooming! Of course, weather that’s good for flowers is also good for weeds, and our weed crop is plentiful, so I was out pulling weeds yesterday evening.
Working in the front yard is not a peaceful and relaxing experience for me. I feel self-conscious about bending over with my back to the street and my butt in the air and often get into weird positions trying to avoid it. I’m on edge and there’s a constant stream of snarky comebacks and verbal self-defense going on in my head, along with self-pep-talks about how this is my yard and I have the right to be in it and what I look like while doing yardwork is nobody’s business.
Why?
In a word: men.
Like last night when a carload of young men appeared seemingly out of nowhere, yelled something about my fat ass, and peeled out with a screech of tires and raucous laughter.
This shit doesn’t happen super-often – not every time I’m out in the front yard, for example. But it’s often enough that anticipating it and steeling myself against it, takes a non-negligible portion of my mental CPU cycles. It doesn’t matter that not every man who passes by harasses me, and that in general not all men harass women. Enough men harass women often enough, that being on guard against it is an almost-constant thing you do, if you’re a woman.
Another great strip from Tatsusya Ishida.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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