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A Look into the Experience of Being Female – The Fascism that Has No Name – Abigail Bray

November 22, 2016 in Feminism | Tags: Abigail Bray, Feminism, Patriarchy, Radical Feminism, The Female Experience | by The Arbourist | Comments closed

An excerpt from “The fascism that has no name.“

“They made it clear from the start that the slightest deviation from the norm would be punished. They turned everything into prisons, even our own bodies.
Wear pink. Play with dolls. Look in the mirror. Go to school. Learn to smile when they abuse you. Diet, wax, apply make-up, and swallow your medication. Follow fashion. Work. Consume. Be silent. Give him a porn star experience. Get married. Shop, cook, wash, iron, dust, vacuum, scrub and polish. Work a 15-hour shift (but don’t call housework ‘work’). Get into debt. Have children. Stay married (or they’ll destroy you and your children). Watch TV. Wear stilettos. Obey their laws. Save for your old age. Now repeat after me: ‘I am free’.

Just to make sure I knew who my masters were they spat on m, groped me, pinched me, grabbed me and shoved me at school, in the street, in homes, on buses, in parks, pubs, clubs, everywhere. They shouted at me from cars, building sites, pub windows and doors, everywhere that I was a slut, an ugly bitch, a fat slag, a stupid cow, a skinny cow, a sexy dog, that they would fuck me, hit me, damage me, and destroy me. They made grunting noises and flapped their tongues. They raped me, beat me, pulled the hair out of my head, and kicked me. They threatened to kill me and told me to kill myself. They always wanted to know my weight, size, age and height as though this information was useful for their plans. They harassed me when I studied or worked, they just wouldn’t leave me alone. Then they told me I lacked a sense of humour.
…
They told me to practise positive thinking and to cleanse myself of toxic emotions. They told me to live in the ‘Now’ like a toddler, or a goldfish with a five-second memory. They treated me like a child, demanded that I behave like a child and look like a 15-year-old, and then they told me I was immature and childish.

They said, “Consider yourself lucky, this is a democracy and we’ve given women the freedom to choose their own lives and be what they want to be.”
When I mentioned the word ‘misogyny’ they called me a man-hater. When I spoke up against fascist pornography they told me I needed a good fuck. “The answer to your problems,” they said, “is between our legs.” When I spoke about the rise of rape culture they told me I definitely needed a good fuck. But by then I had stopped taking it personally.

“Listen,” I said, “what we really need is a vigorous, earth-shaking, relentless, uninhibited, wild, passionate, intoxicating, angry, unapologetic, long-overdue, exciting, luscious revolution.”
Because this was never personal, this was always political.”

— Abigail Bray, “The fascism that has no name” in Misogyny Re-Loaded

Why Time is a Feminist Issue – Brigid Schulte

November 12, 2016 in Feminism | Tags: Feminism, Flow, Time | by The Arbourist | Comments closed

“I came to learn that women have never had a history or culture of leisure. (Unless you were a nun, one researcher later told me.) That from the dawn of humanity, high status men, removed from the drudge work of life, have enjoyed long, uninterrupted hours of leisure. And in that time, they created art, philosophy, literature, they made scientific discoveries and sank into what psychologists call the peak human experience of flow. Women aren’t expected to flow. I read feminist leisure research (who knew such a thing existed?) and international studies that found women around the globe felt that they didn’t deserve leisure time. It felt too selfish. Instead, they felt they had to earn time to themselves by getting to the end of a very long To Do list. Which, let’s face it, never ends. I began to realise that time is power. That time is a feminist issue.”

Bridgid Shulte: Why time is a feminist issue

The article itself is quite fascinating as it postulates that most of women’s leisure time is ‘contaminated’ and fragmented as it deals with putting the needs and well-being of others ahead of their own. How can one obtain flow, when your priorities are always on someone, or something else?

The DWR Feminist Quote of the Day – Stevie Nicks

November 8, 2016 in Feminism | Tags: DWR Feminist Quote of the Day, Feminism, Stevie Nicks | by The Arbourist | 2 comments

The Female Experience – It is Not About That I Know How to do Laundry…

November 7, 2016 in Feminism | Tags: Feminism, Gender Roles, Laundry | by The Arbourist | 2 comments

The experience of society is different depending on whether you are female or male – one woman’s story.

“it’s not about that i know how to do laundry. it’s that when i was four i knew how to fold clothes; small hands working alongside my mother, while my older brother sat and played with his toys. it’s that i know what kind of detergent works but my father guesses. it’s that in my freshman year of college i had a line of boys who needed me to show them how to use the machine. it’s that the first door they knocked on belonged to me. it’s that they expected me to know.

it’s not that i know how to cook. it’s that the biggest christmas present i got was a little plastic kitchenette i never used except to climb on. it’s that my brother used it more, his hands ghosting over pink buttons and yellow dials. it’s that when my work needs cake for a birthday, they turn to me. i get it from costco. i don’t even like cooking. a boy burns popcorn in the dorm microwave and laughs. a week later, i do the same thing, and he snorts at me, “just crossed you off my wife list.” it’s that i had heard something like this so many times before that i laughed, too.

it’s not that i don’t love being feminine. it’s that i came home with bruises from trying to be a trick rider on my bike and heard the word “tomboy,” felt my little mouth say, “but i’m not a boy, i’m a girl”. it’s that they laughed. it’s that until i was sitting in my pretty dress and smiling with a big pretty smile and blinking my big pretty eyes, i wasn’t given back the title “girl”. it’s that until i wore makeup and styled my hair i was bullied; it’s that when i don’t wear makeup i’m a slob, that my mental health diagnosis hangs on the hook of being dressed up. it’s that my therapist sees me returning to bright red lipstick and tells me i am looking happier and i have to explain that i am more sad than i have ever been. it’s that i dress myself in as many layers as i can every time i ride a train because it’s better to be laughed at than harassed.

it’s not that i know how to clean, it’s that my brother’s chores were outside where i wanted to be, and mine were inside. it’s that i would have weeded the garden better than he did if they had just let me. it’s that i am put in charge of fixing other’s messes, expected to comply without complaint.

it’s not that i can’t open the jar. it’s that you ask my brother first every time. it’s that i am pushed into docile positions, trained to believe that my body when it’s strong and healthy is ugly, trained into being less, weaker. it’s that the jar is also science, is also engineering, is also every job, every opportunity. it’s that you laugh faster when he tells a joke, that you take him seriously but wave off me, that when he raises his voice he’s assertive but when i do i’m hysterical. the jar is getting into a car with a stranger as a driver and wondering if this is our last ride. the jar is knowing that if something happens to us, it’s our fault.

it’s that i’m weak and i don’t know if it’s because i just am or i was trained to be. it’s that we need to sit pretty with our pretty smiles and our pretty words trapped pretty and silent in our throats, our hands restless but pretty when idle, our bodies vessels for nothing but a future white dress. it’s that we are taught someone else needs to open the jar for us.

here’s the secret: run metal lids under hot water, they’ll expand faster than the glass they’re around. here’s the secret: when you keep us under hot water, we do more than boil. we expand over our edges. and we learn how to open our mouths, our claws, our screams hanging in kites over cities. just give me a chance. give me a chance when i am four when i am seven when i am twenty-three. i promise i can be amazing. give me the jar. i’ll show you something.

[Found on Inkskinned]

The DWR Feminist Quote of the Day – On Gender – Sheila Jeffreys

November 3, 2016 in Feminism, Gender Issues | Tags: Feminism, Gender, Sheila Jeffreys | by The Arbourist | 2 comments

“Gender functions as an ideological system that justifies and organizes women’s subordination and for this reason it must be dismantled. Women and girls cannot access full humanity and the rights and opportunities of full human status while the idea that there are personality traits and appearance norms that are naturally and essentially associated with girls and women still has social currency and serves to control and limit their lives.”

— Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts

The Female Experience in Society – One Woman’s Journey Through Patriarchy.

October 24, 2016 in Feminism | Tags: Feminism, Patriarchy, The Female Experience | by The Arbourist | 2 comments

Is it every females experience in society, no of course not. But here is a glimpse of what growing up meant for one person and the challenges she faced in growing up female in our patriarchal society.

“I could talk about the PE teacher in my town who was asked to resign due to his harassment of female students, who was then hired as a school bus driver for a rural route with both primary and high school students. I could talk about how, from the age of seven, I refused to wear skirts or dresses, and from the time I entered high school at 10 to when I moved at 16 I always wore bike shorts or CCC shorts under my dress, because he was not particularly subtle about the way he looked at us – and those bus steps are high. I could talk about how this was common knowledge and was never denied by any authority figure we ever raised it with, but rather we were just kind of brushed off. I could talk about how, sometimes, I was the last person on my bus in the afternoon and I was never quite sure if something bad would happen to me, even though for a long time I probably couldn’t have articulated what it was that I feared.I could talk about how I spent ten years of my childhood believing it was perfectly normal and acceptable for a seven year old child to stop wearing her favourite clothes because a grown man she relies on to get to and from school from a relatively remote location gets a thrill from looking up her skirt.

I could talk about the art teacher at my high school who used to run his hands up and down our backs, right along the spot where your bra sits. Considering most of us were fairly new to wearing bras in the first place, this was a decidedly uncomfortable experience. I could talk about how he used to get just a little too close for comfort in the supply room. Nothing overt, nothing nameable – just enough to make you drag someone else along with you if you needed a fresh piece of paper or you ran out of ink. I could talk about how the odd comment or complaint that was made was completely handwaved, that we were told to be very careful about what we were saying, that we could get someone in a lot of trouble by “starting those kinds of rumours”, and did we really want to be responsible for that?

I could talk about the first time I was made to feel ashamed of my body, at twelve or thirteen, getting into a water fight with my stepfather and uncle in the height of summer. I could talk about my grandmother completely flipping out, talking about how disgusting it was, how grown men should be ashamed of the way they were behaving with a girl. I could talk about how she then spent the next few hours trying to convince me I was being somehow victimised, while I was mostly confused about what had taken place – it took me a long time to work it out. I could talk about the unvoiced but ever-present fear for months afterwards that my grandma would bring it up again, that she would bring it up in the wrong place or to the wrong people and that my uncle, a schoolteacher, would suffer for it.

I could talk about how that destroyed what had been a fantastic relationship with my uncle, and how, ten years later, he still won’t hug me at Christmas.

I could talk about being called a frigid bitch and a slut in the same breath in high school. I could talk about multiple instances of sitting in a big group of friends, hearing someone trying to get into someone else’s pants, starting off sweet enough but quickly descending into emotional manipulation and thinly veiled abuse. I could talk about the time I went off with someone willingly enough and being followed by someone I considered a friend, someone who would not leave no matter how many times I said “no”, who only went away when the person I was with said that he “didn’t feel like sharing”.

I could talk about the family friend who always made me feel a little bit off for no discernible reason. The one who if I was left alone in the room with him, I would always find an excuse to leave. The one time I expressed this, I was told I was being a drama queen, and that I needed to grow up and stop being so precious, that one day I was going to have to deal with people I didn’t like and I might as well get used to it. I could talk about how he never did anything untoward, never gave me any specific reason to feel unsafe – but years after I last saw him, when he was found guilty of four historical sexual assault charges, one of rape and three of indecent assault on girls under twelve, I was, for reasons I still don’t entirely understand, completely unsurprised.

I could talk about my boyfriend justifying his rape of me with “you could have fought me off if you really wanted you, you slut”. I could talk about how, when I tried to tell people, I was told I was being a nasty, spiteful, vindictive bitch. I could talk about how selfish it was of me to say such things, that he’d overcome such a hard life and was going to go on and make something of himself, who the hell was I to try and stand in his way?

I could talk about how my response to being raped was to sleep with anyone and everyone because I rationalised that if I never said no, then no one could force me. I could talk about how I have been told time and time again, by people who should know better, that this is a sign that I wasn’t really raped at all.

I could talk about how, when I finally worked up the courage to make a formal complaint of sexual harassment against my boss, I was asked why I had let it continue for so long, and what I had done to make him think his behaviour would be welcomed.

I could talk about how when a much later boss got me completely wasted at my leaving party, to the point where I couldn’t walk, and fucked me in a back alley, he waited until I was sober the next morning to tell me that he had a pregnant wife, because he heard through the grapevine that I was very strict about not sleeping with married people or straight women, and he thought I should “learn my place” and realise that I’m “not such a high and mighty bitch with a moral high ground after all”.

I could talk about these things, but I very rarely do. Since I was seven years old, I have been told that my body is not my own, that my consent is not my own, that my feelings of discomfort are not my own. I have taught myself to suppress my gut instinct upon meeting people. I have been taught to smile, to be polite, to suck it up if I feel unsafe. When I complain, I have been told I’m being irrational, oversensitive, and selfish. The underlying message is, how dare I try and ascertain any kind of control over my own body?

I should talk about it. But I don’t actually know whether I can.”

–Anonymous Woman’s Story Found on The Lady Garden

U.N. Picks Powerful Feminist (Wonder Woman) for Visible Job (Mascot)

October 18, 2016 in Culture, Feminism, International Affairs, Rant | Tags: Feminism, Tragic Irony, United Nations, Wonder Woman | by The Arbourist | 2 comments

Well, time for a different sort of cringe-worthy news item. The United Nations has made an Onion worthy press release. Unfortunately, this isn’t satire.

“The United Nations just rejected seven female candidates vying to lead the global organization.

Now, to promote women and girls, it is picking a cartoon character as its mascot: Wonder Woman.

Yes, the comic book figure.”

*headesk* What the ever-living-frack is going on in the UN? I mean is this throwing over half the population of the world a ‘bone’ for overlooking them with regards to leadership positions in the UN.

Uh…sorry, those female parts you have – you know the unmentionable ones because of religion in the East and the po-mo gender politics in the West (stage whisper: “Vagina, Uterus, Ovaries” – duck and cover) – that exclude you from positions in power. Let’s not deal with that problem, let’s get serious about fighting for women’s rights by making a comic book character our mascot.

How very fucking empowerful of the UN and their bold team of deciders.

“Dozens of countries pushed this year for a woman to be chosen as the next Secretary General, pointing out that the United Nations pledges to promote gender equality around the world and arguing that it needed to “lead by example.”

After months of internal jockeying, the Security Council last week picked António Guterres, who ran the United Nations refugee agency for 10 years, to be the world’s top diplomat.

Then on Wednesday, the United Nations announced that it would appoint Wonder Woman as an honorary ambassador for “the empowerment of women and girls.”

The appointment of the heroine will be made official on Oct. 21, when Wonder Woman turns 75, only slightly older than the United Nations itself.”

Leading by example indeed. :/

“Too bad Wonder Woman will not actually traipse through the halls of the United Nations headquarters. If she did she would inevitably have to vanquish a few problems, like peacekeepers who sexually abuse civilians and major military powers that bomb schools.

The United Nations, in making the announcement, said that Diane Nelson, the president of DC Entertainment, would come to the United Nations to accept the designation, along with “surprise guests.”

Surprise guests? – Is the liberation of women some sort celebrity cause that needs to be ‘punched up’ with some ‘star power’? I keep looking for the Onion tag line somewhere in this story.

“Wonder Woman’s avatar, Mr. Nasser said, would be used on social media platforms to promote important messages about women’s empowerment, including on gender-based violence and the fuller participation of women in public life.

That, too, is a bit awkward. The United Nations is woefully behind on its pledge of gender parity in senior appointments. One analysis found that nine of 10 senior leadership jobs last year went to men.”

*Looking through fingers as this train wreck plunges over cliff* – Oh, this *IS* the UN leading by example – the problem is that its the wrong farking example. Replicating normative patriarchal society with a high-sheen glossy-dross of “equality” is precisely the message denatured neo-liberal feminists rally-on about. Prattling on about supporting gender equality while leaving the systems in place that objectively prevent gender equality and then having this boondoggle of a position mirrored at the UN under the auspices of ’empowering’ women….

*sproing* – My irony meter just shorted out. :/

“Not to mention, a woman has never led the United Nations system, and none will for at least the next five years. The Security Council chose Mr. Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, to be the next Secretary General, dismissing the candidacies of seven women and five other men. Mr. Guterres, who is expected to be approved on Thursday morning by the General Assembly, has promised gender parity in senior appointments.”

Well of course, we should wait for the gender parity to be given to us, by the class of people who have no interest in achieving gender parity. I’m as pleased as punch, honest.

“Wonder Woman is not the only fictional character to be celebrated by the United Nations: Winnie the Pooh served as its honorary Ambassador of Friendship in 1998; Tinker Bell was its honorary Ambassador of Green in 2009; and Angry Birds dared fans on Twitter last year to make the game’s characters happy by conserving water and energy.”

I, for one, am grateful that the symbol for the advancement of women in the world shares such auspicious company.

[Source: The New York Times]

Dear United Nations, if this is your idea of advancing the cause of Women – please just stop.

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Tag Archive

A Look into the Experience of Being Female – The Fascism that Has No Name – Abigail Bray

Why Time is a Feminist Issue – Brigid Schulte

The DWR Feminist Quote of the Day – Stevie Nicks

The Female Experience – It is Not About That I Know How to do Laundry…

The DWR Feminist Quote of the Day – On Gender – Sheila Jeffreys

— Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts

The Female Experience in Society – One Woman’s Journey Through Patriarchy.

U.N. Picks Powerful Feminist (Wonder Woman) for Visible Job (Mascot)

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