The Forthright Feminist: misandry isn't real, dudes

home-of-amazons:

ouyangdan:

mohavemamba:

riotrite:

I’m a guy, and I need feminism. Not “men’s rights.” Feminism. Here is why.

Everything that MRAs talk about that men can’t do or are socially punished for arise directly and immediately from misogyny. Not “misandry.” Misogyny.

Whether I am expressing my emotions, playing with children, baking, having sex wherein I am penetrated in any way, wearing the wrong color, talking the wrong way, moving the wrong way, being sexually harassed/assaulted, or paying too little attention to looking like I’m not paying attention to how I look, when society punishes me or derides me or marginalizes me for these things, it is happening because they are things women, not men, are expected to do, and our society at large fucking hates women.

Has that sunk in yet?

Men, can you even think of a single goddamn way you have ever been mocked that wasn’t related to something that a misogynist society sees as feminizing? Even when large men are mocked for their bodies, they are referred to as having “man-boobs,” for fucks sake.

How do you expect to improve those things with “men’s rights?” What right are you fighting for? I can tell you what I think you’re fighting for. I think you’re fighting for the right to contain and control misogyny, and direct it back at women, where you think it belongs. You want to maintain your privilege but erase its consequences, and that’s why your movement is farcical; it’s a big fucking feedback loop. How do you expect men to be free from the peripheral effects of misogyny when you refuse to even fucking believe it’s real?

Well here is a good post. 

*slow clap*

surprise

closetosalem: spookedlikehell: gynoscream: WOMan… read BOOK? BUT HOW READ…. WITH BoOBs?? lol oh god for real how did you go about finding it?? what’s a book store i’m a girl so i’ve heard of it but idk The next time someone is wondering “why is there feminism, why do we need it, what are these people talking about” remember that things like this screencap happen regularly, in the year 2012.

closetosalem:

spookedlikehell:

gynoscream:

WOMan… read BOOK?

BUT HOW READ…. WITH BoOBs??

lol oh god for real how did you go about finding it??

what’s a book store

i’m a girl so i’ve heard of it but idk

The next time someone is wondering “why is there feminism, why do we need it, what are these people talking about”

remember that things like this screencap happen regularly, in the year 2012.

(Source: hell-is-okcupid, via alcindora)

sendforbromina:

men can’t be feminists but it’s rather irrelevant since the end game is to kill them all anyway :)

(via radscum-deactivated20130401)

“Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That’s their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.”
Gloria Steinem (via womenorgnow)

(via zhenotdel-deactivated20121112)

“A woman’s worst nightmare? That’s pretty easy. Novelist Margaret Atwood writes that when she asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women, he answered, “They are afraid women will laugh at them.” When she asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men, they said, “We’re afraid of being killed.”

http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/articles/nightmare.html (via alullaby)

That sums it up

(via erikawithac)

This reminds me of a discussion we had in school, and one girl was talking about living in fear of her safety because she is a girl, and this guy chimed in and was all “It’s hard for guys too! I’m so awkward around girls! It’s embarrassing!” Yeah, not the same thing, exactly?

(via tulletulle)

Wow.

(via kittencoaster)

This reminds me of an article about online (heterosexual) dating that I read a while ago. It listed men’s and women’s worst fears about meeting someone from online. The highest ranked fear that men had was that their date would be fat, whereas the highest ranked fear that women had was that their date would turn out to be violent and kill them. 

I think that says a lot. 

(via kaitg)

(via killyourenemies-deactivated2013)

“[I]t is illegal for women to go topless in most cities, yet you can buy a magazine of a woman without her top on at any 7-11 store. So, you can sell breasts, but you cannot wear breasts, in America.”

Violet Rose, in Three Steps to Better Sex (via muffdiver)

And in cities where it is legal (like New York), women still don’t feel safe going topless, because all the dudes stare and ogle and yell stuff and try to grope.

(Source: slingshot.tao.ca, via shameandcupcakes-deactivated201)

“Making women seem anti-sex and joyless if we want the right to be sexual without being humiliated or hurt, and making men seem wimpy and undersexed if they prefer cooperation to domination, is clearly the tactic of choice for isolating anybody who tries to separate sexuality from violence and domination — which is a challenge to male dominance at its heart.”
Gloria Steinem Preface of “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions” (2nd ed., 1995)

(via octagon-surgeon)

melloknee: I hate feminine hygiene product commercials ...

melloknee:

I hate feminine hygiene product commercials that act like having your period is a “dirty little secret! *gasp!* here, have a tiny tampon that is discreet and looks more like an after dinner mint or one that you can hide anywhere!” It’s like they’re telling me I have to be embarrassed about menstruating. Who cares?!? I get my period, if that isn’t obvious to you then you obviously haven’t passed the 7th grade. Because my body quite obviously hit puberty. I don’t understand why women can’t talk about their bodies but it is perfectly socially acceptable for men to talk about their dicks and getting it in or whatever the hell they want. Whatever.

(via jickie-deactivated20120710)

paleotrees: "Mad Pride" and the perversion of "self help"

fuckyeahmadpride:

~~ ahahahhahahahahahahhahaha amazing. for me becoming more functional basically meant first realizing i have value, and then realizing that i am CAPABLE.  not only are we valuable, smart, and Madasfuck, we are CAPABLE. We can do things.  Take actions. Redefine & reframe.  Mylinate new neural pathways.  We can.

Right?! Neuroplasticity! Capability! Intrinsic human value! Everyone’s fucking loony, some of us just have the misfortune of getting caught and being labeled with it.

another piece of functioning that i think is so wildly important about Mad Pride, which comes from our roots in other movements like Disability Pride and Queer Pride, is taking an anti-normative stance. politicizing the ways in which many of us are always already out as Mad, as not normal.  This does not mean we should all join in some sort of ongoing anarchist black block shouting “fuck normal!” forever (maybe later tho, call me) and instead means valuing our weirdness as part of our functioning, and owning it. 

Yes! That’s what I mean when I say “no one is normal, some of us just have the misfortune of getting caught at it.” There is no normalcy, and what looks like normalcy for those who we consider “normal” is probably masking some sort of deep issue in them too … so as long as it isn’t hurting anyone else and isn’t too wildly self-destructive, I think we should all embrace our weirdnesses.

This came up for me recently actually. i was pretty manic anxious and happy, hanging out with some friends and eventually my one buddy was like “can i give you a hug?” hahahah so we go in for the hug and i just starting riffing on him, i said “why?  to make you less anxious? yeeeah that’s right, psych major in the house.  i know what’s up with this! i’m comfortable being anxious! i’m trying to have my own experience in this life!” and we all laughed and then they made fun of me being from the east coast and it was awesome.  for me, that was owning my mania.  the hug wouldn’t have eased my friend’s 2ndhand anxiety, but my open joking did.  it was a cool moment. 

If it had been me you were riffing on, I would have said something sarcastic back to ease my own anxiety, and no one would have understood wtf I was talking about.

i also wanted to add real quickly about how Mad Pride can learn a lot from Femme poltix, because i think the idea of simultaneously parodying femininity and defining it thru your own empowered aesthetic/actions can be seriously helpful as part of a Mad politic.  And many crazy ppl do this anyway.  We imitate normal, we pass, but we also include mad signifiers and comments which call attention to the performative nature of our functioning when it appears normal. 

Well, the thing is, I am not femme and I do not have femme politics: I am a feminist and I have feminist politics.

For me, as is the case with many women, femininity isn’t “normalcy” and it’s not “subversion”, it’s conformity and it’s a prison. Like many other women, I was first called mad when I refused to conform to femininity. When I refused to be femme, to live up to their expectations of women, they decided I was insane. 

To this day, I am considered mad because I refuse to be a good woman. I refuse to put on the makeup and the heels and I refuse to accommodate their delusional ideals (because I feel they are the deluded ones, not me). It’s not because I’m really a man inside, or because I am insane or because there is anything wrong with me — it’s because there is something wrong with society, and the constraints we are placed under are suffocating. Whether literally, because the clothing is uncomfortable or because we get panic attacks from being terrified of stepping out of line, or figuratively, because we are never allowed to be free or because we are never allowed to speak our truths — women are suffocating.

Femininity is a straitjacket, and many of us long to escape and see no value in replicating it for performativity’s sake.

like a loose example: a couple months ago i was in the grocery store and this white man in a wheelchair was checking out in front of me.  he had grabbed the wrong salad dressing or something and asked the clerk if maybe she could send someone to grab the right one for him.  she was not very responsive and did not seem to see this as an opportunity for allyship, and was kinda implying he should go get it.  pretty rude…  eventually she sent someone to the dressing aisle and kept checking out his other items.  At this point he turns to me and my friend because i think he knew we saw what was up hahahhahahahha and is like “this is why i don’t carry a gun.”  Now, i imagine for some non-Mad people that could have been a dark comment.  but honestly i thought it was amazing/hysterical!!!!  he’s out in the world, bein’ normal trying to buy some groceries, make some salad later, but his comment let me know his Mad location.  and instead of feeling extra angry and dwelling on whatever violent thought he was having, he dropped some dark treatment humor and went about his way. i loved it.

I think that sounds like an instance of a man wishing violence upon a woman, and I don’t love that at all. Yes, she was rude, but there’s a line we have to draw. Not to mention, he got away with this because he was a man. If I were to say, whenever a man threatened me or patronized me or harassed me or made a joke about my body or shouted a slur at me or or or or or, “this is why I keep a butterfly knife on me at all times and know how to head for the privates” … you probably wouldn’t love it so much. In fact, someone would probably get violent on me, and I might end up either in the hospital or in jail.

There’s a weird tendency for centrist-liberals to mistake “speaking truth” for “seeking pity.”

But of course many of them claim to be so into the intersections of oppression — ergo listening to poor people and people of color and disabled people etc. should logically be very important to them. Except no. They tell us to shut up and stop seeking pity (so they can keep talking about, and often garnering pity from other white middle class people because of, their own middle-class, white experiences).

I don’t know what’s up with that. I honestly do not understand what the mechanism is behind that. Other than an individual approach as opposed to a political approach — micro vs macro, failing to see the forest for the trees kind of shit.