mermaidxvx:

brute-reason:

I can’t answer that for you. Go out and learn it.

Go into the city with a female friend. Walk 20 feet behind her and listen.

Make an account on a social site. Use a female name and photo. Post something, anything.

Go to a Take Back The Night march. Listen to the survivors speak out afterwards.

Set a timer on your phone or watch for two minutes. When the alarm goes off, another woman in the United States has been sexually assaulted.

Make an account on a dating site as a woman. Check your messages.

Take a walk through a toy store. Look at which toys are “meant” for boys and which are “meant” for girls.

Hang out with six of your female friends. Statistically, one of them has been raped. The chance that her rapist served any jail time for it is 3%.

Watch a movie. Almost any movie will do. Who’s the hero? Who gets saved? Who speaks the most?

Listen to other guys insult each other when they REALLY want to put each other down. “Pussy.” “Bitch.” “Sissy.” The worst thing for a man to be is like a woman.

But most importantly, read. Read bell hooks, read Jessica Valenti, read Amanda Marcotte, read Gail Collins, read Julia Serano. Read blogs and essays. Read literature written by women. I bet they didn’t assign you much of that in high school English class.

If I had unlimited time and energy to debate with you and patiently explain Why You Should Care About Feminism and counter each of your points with all the books and articles I’ve read, believe me, I would. But I don’t.

So go out and learn.

reblogging again because I really need to tell all my male friends.

neil-gaiman:

amandapalmer:

i won’t link to the full review of our show the other night, or even name the publication (if you care, google), because i don’t want to give the writer the satsifaction of the hits. but can i talk for a moment about how incredibly much this pisses me off? thanks, i will. the review begins:

“‘How can I make my friends into feminists?’ ran one of the more odd questions put to Amanda Palmer during a sit-down Q&A in the midst of this show. One answer, if you happen to be an internationally adored cabaret artist, is probably not to coo and gaze adoringly at your bestselling fantasy author husband for two hours in public.”

…and it goes on to give the rest of the show a great (four star) review. the show was, by the way, fantastic. neil read for about an hour, i played for about an hour, we did a bunch of great songs together, and i think pretty much everybody had a stellar fucking time.

anyway.

i’m not even sure what the journalist MEANT by this statement. did he mean “real feminists shouldn’t show open affection for their husbands?” or did he mean something else? the fact that i’m “internationally adored” and neil is “bestselling” seems to be part of the point he’s making, but….what’s the point? that if i were a real feminist i’d stand there screaming “I KNOW YOU THINK YOU’RE HOT SHIT, GAIMAN, WITH YOUR BEST-SELLING MAN-PENNED NOVELS AND ALL THAT CRAP, BUT I AM FAMOUS CABARET WOMAN! FUCK YOU MAN! I ALSO MAKE AN INCOME! I STAND HERE, EQUAL TO YOU, AND SHOWING YOU AFFECTION WOULD CLEARLY BE A SIGN THAT I KNOW I BELONG TO THE WEAKER SEX.”

rawr.

what?

the larger irony, of course, is how i ACTUALLY answered the question, which was something along the lines of:

“if you’re trying to turn your friends into feminists, i think you’re taking the wrong tack. i would back up and start off by not trying to turn them into ANYTHING…this is how we got into this whole mess in the first place.”

as far as i’m concerned, the most powerful feminist can do WHATEVER SHE WANTS.

THAT IS WHAT DEFINES A TRUE FEMINIST.

this includes: wearing heels, wearing combat boots, wearing nothing, sporting lipstick, shaving, not shaving, waxing, not waxing, being political, being apolitical, having a job, being homeless, gazing at men, gazing at women, gazing at porn of all sorts, glamming up like a drag queen, going in man-drag, being in a five-way polyamorous relationship, being childless, being a stay-at-home parent, being single, having a wife, having a husband, and gazing/cooing adoringly at those that wives or husbands anywhere they fucking choose, including elevators, restaurants, puppet shows (well, maybe keep it g-rated if there are small children present), ….or on theatrical stages at fringe festivals. are we getting the picture here?? the most powerful feminist can do WHATEVER SHE WANTS. the minute you believe you’re a “bad feminist” because you said the wrong thing/wore the wrong thing/got married/chose to have children…or otherwise broke some unspecified ”code of feminism”: DON’T BUY IT. THERE ISN’T ONE. you can do ANYTHING YOU WANT. ANYTHING. THAT’S THE POINT.

let’s say that one more time for good measure:

ANYTHING.

don’t let anyone try to turn you into a feminist.

just be one.

Reblogged for the whole thing (I’d done it from my phone before, and just the first paragraph link went up)

muchomegamountains:

look. i’m glad, i’m really REALLY glad that there’s a million emails in my inbox talking about the upcoming “drinks for vaginas” and “rallies for vaginas” events that are set to happen in michigan. i really am. there’s next to NO feminist movement in michigan, and as such, there’s been next to no coordinated response *from feminists* to the attacks on reproductive rights in michigan that have happened over the decades.

so i’m glad to see all this outrage and that there’s actually an inclination to do something like organize.

but fucking fuck. shut the fuck up. that’s all i can think when i read the next new vagina email.

on the one hand, yes, it’s nice that they’re not all connecting vagina to woman. but on the other hand—the cutsy tootsy get drinks and talk about vagina aren’t i outrageous type of organizing that these emails represent? make me gag.

1. it’s gross. as in “too linked to upper class college girls going out and getting drunk and calling it activism” gross (yes, THIS HAPPENS. before anybody gets outraged, THIS TYPE OF ACTIVISM HAPPENS ALL THROUGH FEMINISM).

2. as a poor person who has had to use planned parenthood for multiple reasons—i need these bitches to be much more fucking serious about this shit. as in, outraged here for the long hall ready to fight for years if we must outraged. yes, i recognize that going out for drinks and celebrating vagina can very well lead to marching in the streets licking envelopes for hours and leading feminist sit ins—but as we’ve seen the past few years in femmoland—going out for drinks only very rarely goes much deeper than “EVERYBODY iS INVITED.”

3. and my bitch ass needs us to go deep. waaaay fucking deep. as in “why are we trying to shut down clinics that provide abortions during the depths of the endless fucking michigan recession we’ve all been sitting in for decades?” deep. as in, “why is the control of “what a woman is” and “what a woman can do” all of a sudden so important for a state that people want to “let die” and that obama has centered as the cornerstone of his “recovery” project?” deep. deep as in, “why do the fucking white christians who have more money than anybody else in the state get to decide what’s best for all the poor ass broke folk who can’t manage to get a fucking break” deep.

4. if you want to talk to me about how vagina has been positioned as weapons in the destruction of michigan—pour my bitch ass a drink. if you want to get drunk and yell vagina really loud in the bar so that everybody looks at you and you can feel special?

shut up. shut. the. fuck. up.

(Source: iinventedeverything)

khaleesi:

bigfatfeminist:

Originally this was written as a response to a single inbox message, and then I got a couple more of them, and now it’s a letter to all of you. I am tired of you.

[TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, rape culture; eating disorders]

It must be exhausting carrying all this hate around, huh? You’re right! It is fucking exhausting! And if it makes me seem like a cranky, miserable bitch, then more power to me.

Do you know why I do it, though? You don’t really deserve an explanation, but I’m going to tell you anyway.

I do it because women’s bodies are sold and used to sell products and somehow this has become one and the same. Because a woman’s accomplishments will never be as important as her appearance in this society as it stands now. Because 65% of girls and women have reported eating disorders.

Because so many, many people — most of them men — tell me I am overreacting or hysterical or a cranky, miserable bitch when I talk about sexism. 

Because if I had a dime for every time some privileged, pompous ass doesn’t listen to me or tells me I’m wrong for no reason, really, just because he has a thing for Scarlett Johansson’s hair and doesn’t want to think about the fact that hey, maybe women are represented badly in the media, I could probably pay my rent for a year.

Because men feel entitled to tell me their opinions on women and entitled to be skeptical of my opinions on women as if I am not better able to comment, as if men are considered the experts on absolutely everything — oh wait, because the entire fucking news media thinks that they are.

Because I live in a world where I spend way too much of my time calculating the possibility that I will be assaulted. I do not know any woman who doesn’t do this. I do not know any woman who doesn’t constantly consider and reconsider the risk of her activities, even if she doesn’t do it consciously, even if she no longer thinks twice about going to the grocery store by herself — if she does it late at night, you can bet there’s a part of her that’s thinking it.

Because I live in a world where I have been told since I was single-digits young that men can hurt me. I live in a world where one out of six of my peers will be raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime, and 54% of those assaults will go unreported, and 97% of those rapists will walk free. I live in a world where nine out of ten reported rape victims are female-bodied and the vast majority of rapists are men. I live in a world where 2/3rds of the women who are raped are raped by people they know and trust. This is the world I live in. This is a world you don’t even have to think about. This is a world that allows you to feel entitled to tell me my opinions don’t matter to you because they were presented in a way that didn’t cater to your ego, and call me a “cranky, miserable bitch” in the meantime as if you have any idea of whether or not I am actually either of those things. 

So no, I do not need to be polite about your “counter-points.” I do not need to say “Ah, yes, good point,” when you’re not making a good point at all. You are not unique. You have said to me what literally hundreds of other men have said to me before.

And I don’t need to listen to your bullshit, or anyone else’s bullshit. Ever.

dank-potion:

If you tell a Muslim woman that her hijab (which she chooses to wear on her own terms) is oppressing her, you are wrong.

If you suggest to a woman that she doesn’t respect herself because of what she wears/does with her body, you are wrong.

If you agree with the use of the slogan “Woman is the Nigger of the World”, although black women have consistently stated their unhappiness with it, you are wrong.

If a non-heterosexual woman tells you she doesn’t like the term feminism because it’s not inclusive and you shun her for her concerns, you are wrong.

If a non-cisgender woman says her problems aren’t addressed and you tell her that feminism isn’t for her, you are wrong.

If you ignore the painfully obvious degrees of patriarchy, misogyny and oppression women of different backgrounds face, you are wrong.

If you derail any woman who is not white and voices her concerns over the mis/under representation of her ethnicity, you are wrong.

(Source: maarnayeri)

bigfatfeminist:

fungi:

I seriously hate everyone on tumblr

No. You don’t get to escape this. You said something stupid and now people are responding to it.

Here is what I attempted to reblog that has since been deleted:

fungi:

So rape jokes aren’t acceptable but talking about castrating men and shooting them to death is? Makes sense

Let me explain something to you: the threat of violence is a constant low hum in the background of every woman’s life. Women are the subject of constant threat of violence, particularly sexual violence. You will never understand living under that kind of threat because you don’t have to go LITERALLY EVERYWHERE thinking about taking precautions against sexual violence, and knowing that all the precautions you take may not be enough.

We are allowed to express our anger against the violence we are threatened with violence in kind, and yes, it is less reprehensible, because you don’t actually have to fear being shot to death every single day everywhere you go or castrated by an angry feminist every single day everywhere you go. Nope, you really do not. And lest we forget you just framed a rape threat - the kind of threat women face EVERY DAY, the kind of threat you will probably never have to deal with (and I genuinely hope you don’t) - as a joke. Let me repeat that: you just framed a rape threat as a joke. And now you’re complaining that women are angry with you, and with men (because you are CERTAINLY not the only one who acts this way, your attitude is actually a small symptom of the world’s attitude about women), and how dare they, boo hoo?

The joke was something along the lines of:

When a woman tells you even if you were the last man on earth she wouldn’t sleep with you, just turn to her and tell her, “Who’s going to stop me?”