Fembots Have Feelings, Too

I mention, every once in a while, that the worst kind of misogyny I experience is in the trans community, and well, here’s a whopper.

It was brought to my attention because the person writing is commenting on my post about the “misogyny-watch” blog I mentioned earlier this month. Jamie, the author of this post, doesn’t seem to understand that I was fully cognizant that the blog’s creator was critical of misogyny, and when someone assumes I’m an idiot, and blasts forth like this without checking in, I can pretty much guarantee they think the words “angry” and “feminist” go together too. Oh but wait! Not just angry, but:

Perhaps, if same sex marriage ever becomes legal, she might someday even find herself as an acceptable alternative as a wife, compared to the angry, selfish, calculating, uncompromising, increasingly unfeminine creatures that more and more men are starting to view women as.

The “she” refers to a “t-girl” which is some communities is parlance for a trans woman, although it tends to be a label assumed by a kind of trans party girl, and which is the label Jamie uses for herself. If you can get past the atrocious grammar, do check out that list: those of us born with vaginas are a fcuked up lot indeed. And yes, that was saracasm, meaning: I do not actually think people born with vaginas are fcuked up, but the fembot who wrote it sure does. Get ready for one surreal, post-modern piece of archaic bullshit:

So she doesn’t mind deferring to a man. In fact, unlike real women, or most transsexuals, it delights her to do so. She’s an old-fashioned kind of girl. She expects her man to take charge, and is completely comfortable adopting a subservient role. She knows how hard it is to be a man, and she knows she doesn’t enjoy it. So instead of trying to be a man that wears heels, which is what so many women these days seem to aspire to, she’s more than happy to be a man’s idealization of what a woman should be: soft, feminine, unchallenging to his masculinity. Someone who uses their femininity to comfort a man, and make his life more bearable, not who uses it to give him another headache that he needs to find a way to escape from.

Someone who understands that cleaning the house, making dinner, and taking care of all those little details in life, and providing a sexual outlet for her man is not a “chore,” but one of the advantages of being a woman. That accepting one’s feminity is realizing that you have not been relegated to second-class citizenship, but instead, you are being protected and shielded from the harsher realities of the life, and your acceptance of a man’s dominant role is a fair exchange for being shielded from those realities.

But, it takes a man, a man who has lived those harsher realities, to realize just how precious and valuable a thing femininity, and the traditional women’s role in our society is, instead of viewing it as a prison as women tend to do these days.

Hooboy: Only a man understands what it takes to be a woman. I think we may have broken the space-time continuum with that one.

For the record: I will not engage this issue any further than this. Having been misinterpreted and slammed on someone else’s blog, I thought it necessary to clarify my original intent and to further define misogynist views. That is all.

Happy New Year to one & all!

How the Other Half Lives

My friend Lynne alerted me to a post about the uselessness of women. I wish I could say it surprised me, even a little, but essentialism is essentialism is essentialism, whether that’s expressed in “women should rule the world” attitudes or “women are useless” attitudes. To me: same coin, different sides.

What amazed me even more was this post on the same blog about terminology in this “manosphere.” I hate to say it, but the stuff is so pathetic I just feel sorry for them in their hateful little world. Okay, not really, but I can’t even imagine what it’s like to live in that tiny a brain.

Stoning A-Okay

I seemed to have missed this news, as did my outraged friend who sent me the link (it must have been an otherwise busy news week), but did you know that the UN elected Iran to be on the Commission on Women’s Rights? What the hell?

The letter draws a dark picture of the status of women in Iran: “women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women’s admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws.”

The Commission on the Status of Women is supposed to conduct review of nations that violate women’s rights, issue reports detailing their failings, and monitor their success in improving women’s equality.

You can read more about Iran’s stunning record on women’s & human rights abuses – there’s plenty more to read, believe me – but this is horrific.

Enlightened Sexism

I love this article by Susan J. Douglas on the idea of “enlightened sexism.” It’s a pattern/ethos I’ve been looking at & couldn’t come up with a name for, but i think of it as one of the problems the 3rd Wave brought:


Since the early 1990s, with all of the surgeons, chiefs of police, law partners, detectives and even female presidents on TV, much of the media have come to over-represent women as having made it –completely — in the professions, as having gained sexual equality with men, and having achieved a level of financial success and comfort enjoyed by only the more jewel-encrusted doyens of Laguna Beach. At the same time, there has been the resurgence of the retrograde dreck that began clogging our cultural arteries in the late 1990s —
The Man Show, Maxim, Girls Gone Wild, Bridezillas. But even this fare, which insisted that young women should dress like strippers and have the mental capacity of a vole, was presented as empowering: while the scantily clad or bare-breasted women may have seemed to be objectified, they were really on top, the argument went, because now they chose to be sex objects and men were their helpless, ogling, crotch-driven slaves.

I love this bit especially:


More to the point, enlightened sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power, power that is fun, and power that men not only will not resent, but also will embrace. So in the age of enlightened sexism there has been an explosion in makeover, match-making and modeling shows, a renewed emphasis on women’s breasts (and an explosive rise in the promotion of breast augmentation), an obsession with babies and motherhood in celebrity journalism (the rise of the creepy “bump patrol”), and a celebration of stay-at-home moms and “opting out” of the workforce.

Some, myself included, have referred to this state of affairs and this kind of media mix as “postfeminist.” Scholars like Angela McRobbie and Rosalind Gill have written very astutely about “postfeminism.” But I am now rejecting this term. It has gotten too gummed up by too many conflicting definitions. And besides, this term suggests that somehow feminism is at the root of this when it isn’t –it’s good, old-fashioned, grade-A sexism that reinforces good, old-fashioned, grade-A patriarchy. It’s just disguised much, much better, in seductive Manolo Blahniks and an Ipex bra.

Exactly. The time spent self-grooming has to explode exponentially, which again leaves women with less time to accomplish other things. That, & of course the whole issue of being “attractive” is culturally loaded and impossible for most women to achieve.

Welcome Jezebels

Welcome to anyone who’s coming over from my post on Jezebel and the F*cking While Feminist series that’s been happening over there all weekend.

The comments posted over there did make me want to clarify a few things:

I was talking about celibacy & monogamy as ways to be feminist *in addition to* being slutty, liking casual sex, BDSM, or whatever else you do that turns you on. What upsets me is that sometimes it seems like you somehow can’t be seen as a sex positive feminist if you don’t like those things, as if choosing to be monogamous or celibate or being vanilla perforce means you’re denying your sexuality. It doesn’t. Sometimes it just means you’re not fucking anyone right now.

I can certainly see how my “just anyone” might imply slut shaming, but I certainly didn’t intend that. Some sluts are picky. Some aren’t. However you like it.

My starting point is safe, sane & consensual. Perhaps I should have made that clear. That would imply:

(1) I was talking about a willing vulnerability, or choosing to be vulnerable, with someone you trust;

(2) imagining turning someone into a sweaty, exhausted mess who WANTED to be turned into a sweaty exhausted mess by you;

(3) it doesn’t matter whether or not you actually could do that (is there anyone in the world who could seduce anyone?!); I was trying to get at the powerful feeling you have when you imagine you could, &

(4) the implication that imagining fucking someone automatically implies either ogling or rape kind of blew me away. I’m talking about something that’s going on in your head and which you are exactly not broadcasting, sharing, or indulging.

In a sense what I was getting at is that acknowledging your own desire and feeling empowered by it is entirely feminist, whether or not you’re actually indulging that desire with anyone but yourself.

(& Thanks, CollegeBookworm & a few others, for getting it.)

(Not) F*cking While Feminist

Sometimes I get the feeling that being either celibate or monogamous is somehow not feminist & that bugs the hell out of me. Joan or Arc was celibate after all; the whole idea of feminism, I thought, was to value your autonomy and power as a woman – and sometimes that means choosing NOT to share your sexuality and vulnerability because doing so might make you feel less than. In other words: I find it far more feminist to get myself to my 5th orgasm than to have mediocre sex with someone who can’t seem to figure out what to do with a clitoris, and I worry, when it comes to young women, that people believe you can’t be feminist if you’re not fucking anyone but yourself.

I’ve rarely liked one night stands or casual sex of whatever kind. More power to you if you do; it’s probably a lot easier to get off with someone else. The hottest sex I’ve had throughout my life is with someone I’ve got a deep simpatico with, an intense connection, and that doesn’t necessarily mean someone I can have meaningful conversation with; sometimes it’s just there, in the charge that comes every time your eyes meet.

I hate the idea of some patriarchal Christian Cult of Prudery owning celibacy; those were the guys who put Joan of Arc to death, after all. But to me there’s a huge difference between repressing your sexual desire because Your Daddy Says So (whether that Daddy is the Big Man in the Sky or your actual father) and acknowledging your desire but not necessarily doing anything with it. Being able to enjoy your sexual self even when you’re not fucking is the feminist bit – it’s about having desire, celebrating desire, your power and hotness and vulnerability. It’s that feeling of power-in-reverse, walking around with the inscrutability of Mona Lisa, imagining your own desire and someone else’s, as you run around doing your mundane errands or going to classes, that someone you might choose could help you – and them, become a sweaty, exhausted, happy mess.

That doesn’t mean sluts don’t rock. They do. Sometimes, though, you’re the only one in your life whose worth your effort.

Choosing being the keyword.

It’s that other story about Catherine the Great’s sexual predilections that always appealed to me: she had her ladies in waiting “try out” potential lovers for her so she didn’t waste her time with a dud. (& It’s my best guess that it was one of the duds who started the horse rumor.) She wouldn’t fuck just anyone. Most of us don’t have ladies in waiting to serve this useful function, however, so instead, maybe, we just choose to be picky.

90 Years Ago Last Week

To hell with Ken Mehlman, today Wisconsin is celebrating the 90th anniversary of Wisconsin’s signing of the 19th amendment! (I don’t know why they’re celebrating a week after the anniversary date. If anyone does, let me know. WI ratified in June, so it’s not that.)

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Once upon a time it was argued that we would make politics more moral, because women were, naturally, more moral. Ha!