of dislocation & graceful unravelling

feminist rage intervention/good citizenship award

[tw for abusive dudebros]

Last night I decided to intervene in a domestic dispute in my neighborhood.

Read More

Sister My Sister (1995)

Pretty sure this is the first film I’ve seen with no (visible) male characters. Five Stars!

"Hanging out with a group of girls is like dousing yourself in penis repellent. Guys are terrified of large groups of girls and will avoid them at all costs."

paraphrased from Cosmo’s dating advice while I was waiting in line at the grocery store (via mappingthemoon)

I THINK THEY THINK THIS IS A BAD THING

(via katydidnot)

I also want to note that another advice question on this page was from a lady who found a picture of her man’s dick on his phone, but he didn’t send it to her and does this mean he sent his dick-pic to Another Woman? Cosmo’s response was not to be worried because “men are fascinated with their own penises” and he probably just took the picture for his own personal collection; however, if you are going to confront him about it, be sure to mention that the picture is “really hot” and you were wondering why he didn’t share it with you.

MEN: PLEASE WEIGH IN ON THIS IMPORTANT ISSUE.

Also what about: Underhanded Techniques to Justify Casual Unfounded Cell-Phone Spying on Your Man.

I mean this one time I spied on my man but it was because An Unnamed Informant told me GUESS WHAT YOUR MAN IS CHEATING ON YOU AND IT’S BECAUSE YOU ARE A TOTAL BITCH. Except it wasn’t true and then I felt like a piece of shit, a piece of anxiety shit; also cultivating a sense of eternal suspicion and paranoia is not conducive to when one actually wants to be in an intimate relationship with another person.

SERIOUS MORAL QUANDARY Y’ALL.

(via katydidnot)

"Hanging out with a group of girls is like dousing yourself in penis repellent. Guys are terrified of large groups of girls and will avoid them at all costs."

paraphrased from Cosmo’s dating advice while I was waiting in line at the grocery store

this morning i got on the bus and i could sense pending hassle* from a certain dude who often rides this bus, so i took a book out of my bag and started reading furiously, only to realize that the book i had grabbed was the one my cat peed on weeks ago.

so i sat there in a cloud of ammonia and read through my angry stinking tears and no one dared sit next to me.

*this dude was a dude who bummed a cigarette off me months ago and in the process of “making polite conversation” desperately confessed how lonely he was as he “hadn’t been with a woman” in four months and by the way am i single and looking for a roommate because he is “financially responsible?” because at our initial meeting i was being polite in broke-ass cigarette solidarity, he knows my name and therefore tries to talk to me. all the time. about loneliness, et al ad nauseum. i forgot his name.

"What men mean when they talk about their ‘crazy’ ex-girlfriend is often that she was someone who cried a lot, or texted too often, or had an eating disorder, or wanted too much/too little sex, or generally felt anything beyond the realm of emotionally undemanding agreement. That does not make these women crazy. That makes those women human beings, who have flaws, and emotional weak spots. However, deciding that any behavior that he does not like must be insane– well, that does make a man a jerk.

And when men do this on a regular basis, remember that, if you are a women, you are not the exception. You are not so cool and fabulous and levelheaded that they will totally get where you are coming from when you show emotions other than ‘pleasant agreement.’

When men say ‘most women are crazy, but not you, you’re so cool’ the subtext is not, ‘I love you, be the mother to my children.’ The subtext is ‘do not step out of line, here.’ If you get close enough to the men who say things like this, eventually, you will do something that they do not find pleasant. They will decide you are crazy, because this is something they have already decided about women in general."

Lady, You Really Aren’t “Crazy” (via theramptosilverspring)

(Source: sparkamovement, via recklesschants)

inspirational drawings by Eddy Lezama.

When I used to work at OK Coffee, Eddy sometimes left motivational drawings in my tip jar to help me with Serious Issues (cigarettes/quitting smoking, feminism/dude problems, academia/not dropping out of school).

ineffableshe:

suzy-x:

Frankly, my philosophy is that individualist feminism is fucked up and only promotes solipsistic notions of what feminism is. Yeah, so feminism means different things for everybody, but as long as we keep this moral relativist approach to feminism, it means people aren’t accountable or responsible for doing generally fucked up shit to others. It also makes it harder to identify fucked-up behavior when it happens.

A feminism that is all about choice means people who DO NOT have the choice to “give consent” or DO NOT have the choice to stay at home with the kids or DO NOT choose to work low-wage jobs are NOT addressed. And the majority of non-cis men today haven’t had the same plethora of choices as white middle-class cis women, who have embedded choice rhetoric into current mainstream feminism. (I also think it’s a symptom of late capitalism, in which choice feminism prioritizes a careerist approach to “fighting the man,” and “shopping around” for industries to try and equalize, even if they’re intrinsically unethical— i.e. finance.) I am done with choice rhetoric, because the choice to do much of anything is restricted to only one chunk of people lucky enough to have the choice of whether or not to suffer. Patriarchy is a complex system of social relationships, some of which some of us have no choice but to endure, and others which some of us cannot access or benefit from because of race, class, etc. Examples include being able to go to college, to have heath insurance, to be CEOs, to be ruling-class. Choice feminism is about picking and choosing which social relations and positions are most personally bearable for you, but at the expense of ignoring or even legitimizing others’ suffering. (Ex: “But I can do this, why can’t all women?”) Choice feminism makes intersectionality impossible when it’s about the individual.

Now, do I think people should be able to choose to get abortions? Yes, and in fact I’d rather that people didn’t have to pay for them. Do I think sex work should be decriminalized and taken seriously as a profession? Absolutely, as long as we understand them as workers and make the distinction between worker and trafficking victim, then sure, go right ahead. Being against choice rhetoric as a central theme in feminism does not mean I want to restrict peoples’ choices. “Choice” rhetoric is just dangerous in a world in which non-cis men have very few choices. It means we only account for those of us who have a choice. Leaving feminism up to choice is a superficial and lazy analysis of patriarchy. It fails to address larger systemic issues like institutional sexism, racism, ableism, etc. as long as it’s “all about me.” Choice feminism allows for more conventionally ambitious members of the “marginalized” (i.e. women, LGBTQ folks) to abandon the rest of us in their endeavor to sit in the oppressor’s chair.

Sex-positivity also toes this line of people thinking feminism is all about them and not about a larger system of violence perpetuated against non-hetero/cis men. Also, sex-positivity vs. sex negativity is a terrible way to polarize discourse on sex within feminism; and oftentimes when people call someone “sex-negative” it’s really just because they don’t center sexy sex in their analysis of patriarchy. My feminism, at least, is not just about what I do in my bedroom, but how to challenge systems of domination that keep me from functioning as a working-class queer woman of color. Few sex-positive advocates on tumblr do any analysis of the latter— and I can say that as someone who spent 4 years in college giving talks on consent.

As for “sex-negativity,” all the people who responded to my post on sex strikes with “Ew, I’d NEVER CHOOSE to sleep with an anti-choicer” clearly don’t understand that not everyone has the luxury of “choosing” whom they sleep with, or are sexually assaulted by. Nobody fucking chooses to be raped, which is why choice doesn’t have a place in anti-rape rhetoric. It is why consent is better left as a safe sex practice than an anti-rape tactic. Call me sex-negative, but believe it or not, there are people out there who do NOT care what you want and WILL violate your space the best they can while they can benefit from it. Sex-positivity only goes so far in mediating mutual sexual relationships, but doesn’t take power (or abuse of power) into account. The feminism of our generation must address power. Because behind having a choice is even having the power to make it.

TL;DR I have a headache and I think your feminism is bullshit if it’s only about you and not the implications of your actions/others.

EXACTLY.

another related problem i see with choice individualism feminism is that it  assumes that you always know what is best for yourself and for others. patriarchy / racism / other systems of power are very sneaky and coercive. kyriarchy frames how you understand both your self and your life circumstances. it makes you think that actions and circumstances which are disempowering or even inflict direct damage onto others are normal and healthy. you can justify pretty much any action under the guise of “well it’s working for me me me right now,”  you know? 

the personal is political not because the choices you make are necessarily subversive but because restructuring your narrative in a way that identifies systems of power in your own is a first step towards liberation.

[snip]

in re: “choice individualism feminism […]  assumes that you always know what is best for yourself and for others,” gosh, some of my most “radical”-feeling (personally & politically, as for moments that caused me to change my behavior towards others) and theory/praxis-altering moments were those in which I realized I was wrong about something, especially something that was “good intentions,” something that was previously believed to be “subversive” or “revolutionary.”

but really i just want to embolden all of the above because as we say on teh intarwebz THS IS SO IMPORTANT.

Sometimes when I get upset about Important Issues on the Internet, I watch this clip and imagine that Pee-Wee is feminism (especially @0:25) and Francis is dudes.

PS I’m not really a misandrist…

(Source: insecurelobster, via femmepoop)