"Swear to God, I can’t stand to hear a woman claim that she thinks like a guy and hates women because they’re all catty. That’s misogyny. The very fact that you, as a woman, think differently than how a socially-stereotyped woman is supposed to think is proof that our gender “norms” are fucking us over. Women are not all alike. Some of us like football. Some of us like talking on the phone. Some of us like religion. Some of us are emotional. Some of us speak three languages. Some of us have boyfriends. Some of us have girlfriends. Some of us wear lipstick. Some of us don’t shave our pits. Some of us have kids. Some of us worry we’ll drop our best friend’s baby. Now please stop claiming that you don’t act like a woman. It doesn’t make you a special fucking snowflake. It makes you a perpetrator of misogyny."

owlonthesill  (via fuckyeahfeminists)

(via cassios)

@1 week ago with 21872 notes
#feminism #basically this 

: This is a specific moment 

wilwheaton:

ferniecommaalex:

Thanks to disgusting and/or ignorant people like the Steubenville rapists, their enablers, Todd Akin, teems of moronic internet commenters, over 20 senators voting against VAWA, and a tragically tone deaf and clueless media, we are at a specific moment in…

@2 months ago with 2969 notes
#feminism #rape culture 

"First you’re taught to fear a phantom, a man in black, a man with a knife, a man who’ll pounce in dark alleys. Well-intentioned women—mothers, aunts, teachers—will train you to protect yourself: Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail; it’s easier to grab. Hold your keys in one hand; hold your pepper spray in the other. Avoid dark alleys. When you reach young adulthood, the lessons change. They acquire an undertone of disgust: Don’t drink so much. Don’t wear such short skirts. You’re sending mixed signals; you’re putting yourself at risk. If you follow the advice and it never happens—if you end up one of the three out of four—you can convince yourself that safety is a product of your own making, a reflection of inherent goodness. But if you’re paying attention, you realize something doesn’t add up. Because it keeps happening: to your sisters; to your friends; to little girls and grown women you’ll never meet, in places like Cleveland, Texas; Steubenville, Ohio; New Delhi. Good people, bad people, neutral. It keeps happening in TV shows and novels and movies—they open on the missing girl, the dead girl, the raped girl. If you’re paying attention, you begin to realize that it isn’t happening. It is being done. And you are not safe. You have never been safe. You were born with a bulls-eye on your back. All you have ever been is lucky."

The Female Gaze: SO MUCH PRETTY by Cara Hoffman - review Cara Hoffman’s really amazing, really important novel So Much Pretty at The Female Gaze this month. (via cocothinkshefancy)

(via vannozza)

@3 months ago with 19572 notes
#feminism 
roseaposey: “Judgments”I took this last year, but in retrospect, I think it’s my strongest piece from high school. Working on this project really made me examine my own opinions, preconceptions and prejudices about “slutty” women and women who choose to cover all of their skin alike. I used to assume that all women who wore Hijabs were being oppressed, slut-shame, and look down on and judge any woman who didn’t express her sexuality in a way that I found appropriate. I’d like to think I’m more open now.

roseaposey:

“Judgments”

I took this last year, but in retrospect, I think it’s my strongest piece from high school.

Working on this project really made me examine my own opinions, preconceptions and prejudices about “slutty” women and women who choose to cover all of their skin alike. I used to assume that all women who wore Hijabs were being oppressed, slut-shame, and look down on and judge any woman who didn’t express her sexuality in a way that I found appropriate.

I’d like to think I’m more open now.

(via fauxkaren)

@4 months ago with 494977 notes
#But it's particularly interesting how drastically the words change by what amounts to really small increments #I saw something like this that was rather similar #Only it was an actual stocking so it could be worn #feminism 
brinaelegiraffe: shelzie: hatewizard: devidementia: smellestine: chipperwhale: what you fail to realize is that video games shouldn’t cater to females in the first place. It’s largely known that it’s targeted towards the MALE demographic and has been for so many years, so why would they ask for something like that to be handed to them on a goddamn silver platter? that’s like a guy walking into the women’s department of clothing at a sears and demanding that there be more clothing for men there. Separation of sections be damned. that’s not how it fucking works no not really the game industry is more like walking into a regular department store and seeing that all the clothes are only men’s clothes and when you ask the cashier where the women’s clothing section is, they wheel out a small rack of cheaply made tutus, g-strings, and high heels all in bright pink and then when you go “wow really that’s it” you get called an uppity bitch and everybody assumes you want all the focus on you when in reality you’d just like to be considered a worthwhile demographic since you also like to wear clothes, it’s not like you want some ridiculous getup, you just want a solid shirt and pair of pants that fits you alright. I mean hell you even sort of like men’s clothes and you have no problem wearing them. They suit you well. But it’s very obvious once you throw on a pair of men’s pants that they were not made for you. ^^^ Perfect metaphor is perfect.

brinaelegiraffe:

shelzie:

hatewizard:

devidementia:

smellestine:

chipperwhale:

what you fail to realize is that video games shouldn’t cater to females in the first place. It’s largely known that it’s targeted towards the MALE demographic and has been for so many years, so why would they ask for something like that to be handed to them on a goddamn silver platter?

that’s like a guy walking into the women’s department of clothing at a sears and demanding that there be more clothing for men there. Separation of sections be damned.

that’s not how it fucking works

no not really

the game industry is more like walking into a regular department store and seeing that all the clothes are only men’s clothes

and when you ask the cashier where the women’s clothing section is, they wheel out a small rack of cheaply made tutus, g-strings, and high heels all in bright pink

and then when you go “wow really that’s it” you get called an uppity bitch and everybody assumes you want all the focus on you when in reality you’d just like to be considered a worthwhile demographic since you also like to wear clothes, it’s not like you want some ridiculous getup, you just want a solid shirt and pair of pants that fits you alright.

I mean hell you even sort of like men’s clothes and you have no problem wearing them. They suit you well. But it’s very obvious once you throw on a pair of men’s pants that they were not made for you.

^^^

Perfect metaphor is perfect.

(via monanotlisa)

@5 months ago with 63522 notes
#feminism #among other things #gaming culture and communities are horribly sexist and troubling 

(via writeanotherballad)

@5 months ago with 274 notes
#Because forbid that anything should ever change with the male outlook #Cause obviously women wanting to get some rights and actually you know #Females thinking for themselves oh no that's just horrible #Of course if men aren't getting married and are upset then it must be the females fault! #Take a stand and challenge things while society is telling them to be any number of things #That whole male entitlement is utterly justified by society right so it's gotta be right #The Colbert Report #feminism 

"Lewis’s Law (coined by journalist Helen Lewis) holds that ‘the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism’."

I genuinely feel that my existence is justified by this Wired piece.  (via helenlewiswrites)

I love this so much! Am now adopting “Lewis’s Law” into my writing and speech forever more!

(via burnthispress)

Oh fuck, that’s accurate

(via omgfabulous)

(via kilodalton)

@1 month ago with 3594 notes
#this is pretty true in a lot of cases #feminism 

"

Here’s a situation every woman is familiar with: some guy she knows, perhaps a casual acquaintance, perhaps just some dude at the bus stop, is obviously infatuated with her. He’s making conversation, he’s giving her the eye. She doesn’t like him. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She doesn’t want him near her. He is freaking her out. She could disobey the rules, and tell him to GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER, and continue screaming GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME every time he tries to step closer, or speak to her again. And then he will be all, “I was just talking to you! WTF!” and everybody else will be all, “Yeah, seriously, why’d you freak out at a guy just talking to you?” and refuse to offer the support she needs to be safe from dude. Or, the guy might become hostile, violent even. Ladies, you’ve seen that look, the “bitch can’t ignore me” look. It’s a source of constant confusion, as soon as you start budding breasts, that the man who just a moment ago told you how pretty you are is now calling you a stupid ugly whore, all because you didn’t get in his car.

OR

You could follow the rules. You could flirt back a little, look meek, not talk, not move away. You might have to put up with a lot more talking, you might have to put up with him trying to ask you out to lunch every day, you might even have to go out to lunch with him. You might have to deal with him copping a feel. But he won’t turn violent on you, and neither will the spectators who have watched him browbeat you into a frightened and flirtatious corner.

So we learn the rules will protect us. We learn that, when we step out of line, somebody around us might very well turn crazy. Might hurt us. And we won’t be defended by onlookers, who think we’ve provoked the crazy somehow. So, having your ass grabbed at the bus stop, having to go out to dinner with a guy you fucking can’t stand, maybe even having to fuck him once or twice, it’s a small sacrifice to avoid being ostracized, insulted, verbally abused, and possibly physically assaulted.

It’s a rude fucking awakening when a woman gets raped, and follows the rules she has been taught her whole life — doesn’t refuse to talk, doesn’t refuse to flirt, doesn’t walk away ignoring him, doesn’t hit, doesn’t scream, doesn’t fight, doesn’t raise her voice, doesn’t deny she liked kissing — and finds out after that she is now to blame for the rape. She followed the rules. The rules that were supposed to keep the rape from happening. The rules that would keep her from being fair game for verbal and physical abuse. Breaking the rules is supposed to result in punishment, not following them. For every time she lowered her voice, let go of a boundary, didn’t move away, let her needs be conveniently misinterpreted, and was given positive reinforcement and a place in society, she is now being told that all that was wrong, this one time, and she should have known that, duh.

For anybody who has ever watched the gendered social interactions of women — watched a woman get browbeaten into accepting attention she doesn’t want, watched a woman get interrupted while speaking, watched a woman deny she is upset at being insulted in public, watched a woman get grabbed because of what she was wearing, watched a woman stop arguing — and said and done nothing, you never have the right to ever ask, “Why didn’t she fight back?”

She didn’t fight back because you told her not to. Ever. Ever. You told her that was okay, and necessary, and right.

You didn’t give her a caveat. You didn’t say, “Unless…” You said, “Good for you, shutting up and backing down 99% of the time. Too bad that 1% of the time makes you a fucking whore who deserved it.”

Nobody obtains the superpower to behave dramatically differently during a frightening confrontation. Women will behave the same way they have been taught to behave in all social, professional, and sexual interactions. And they will be pretty goddamned surprised to come out the other end and find out that means they can legally be raped at any time, by just about anybody.

"

http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/another-post-about-rape-3/ (via seebster)

SO IMPORANT

(via callingoutsexists)

(via vannozza)

@2 months ago with 11207 notes
#feminism 

sarapocock:

This happens all the time.  Every car horn, every whistle, every cat call and lewd exclamation, strengthens the lesson I’ve been taught over and over and over again throughout my entire life: as a lady, my body is on public display and open for judgment—from anyone.

Most men who will see this are decent, rational guys who will sympathize with my feelings.  A small, vocal handful of dudes will send me private messages about how women like me can’t “take a fucking compliment.”  This is not for either of you.  This is for the guys who don’t know yet that attracting unwanted attention doesn’t make women feel good, no matter how nice their intentions are.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I can say that I personally get embarrassed, often scared, and always—ALWAYS—ashamed, in some way, in how I look.

So… now that you know, cut it out.  Tell all the girls how nice they are and how amazing they are at their jobs instead.

(via girlsbravo)

@3 months ago with 40678 notes
#feminism 

"In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that – hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly – whether physically, emotionally or both – in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to just give him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance!"

Lamenting the Friendzone, or: The Nice Guy Approach to Perpetuating Sexist Bullshit (via expensivebirdcage)

(Source: fozmeadows, via vannozza)

@4 months ago with 56064 notes
#feminism 

myadamantiumheart:

rickybrugal:

Oh holy shit this is one of the best things ever.

(via monanotlisa)

@5 months ago with 41156 notes
#feminism #among other things 
"Swear to God, I can’t stand to hear a woman claim that she thinks like a guy and hates women because they’re all catty. That’s misogyny. The very fact that you, as a woman, think differently than how a socially-stereotyped woman is supposed to think is proof that our gender “norms” are fucking us over. Women are not all alike. Some of us like football. Some of us like talking on the phone. Some of us like religion. Some of us are emotional. Some of us speak three languages. Some of us have boyfriends. Some of us have girlfriends. Some of us wear lipstick. Some of us don’t shave our pits. Some of us have kids. Some of us worry we’ll drop our best friend’s baby. Now please stop claiming that you don’t act like a woman. It doesn’t make you a special fucking snowflake. It makes you a perpetrator of misogyny."
owlonthesill  (via fuckyeahfeminists)

(via cassios)

1 week ago
#feminism #basically this 
"Lewis’s Law (coined by journalist Helen Lewis) holds that ‘the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism’."

I genuinely feel that my existence is justified by this Wired piece.  (via helenlewiswrites)

I love this so much! Am now adopting “Lewis’s Law” into my writing and speech forever more!

(via burnthispress)

Oh fuck, that’s accurate

(via omgfabulous)

(via kilodalton)

1 month ago
#this is pretty true in a lot of cases #feminism 
: This is a specific moment→

wilwheaton:

ferniecommaalex:

Thanks to disgusting and/or ignorant people like the Steubenville rapists, their enablers, Todd Akin, teems of moronic internet commenters, over 20 senators voting against VAWA, and a tragically tone deaf and clueless media, we are at a specific moment in…

2 months ago
#feminism #rape culture 
"

Here’s a situation every woman is familiar with: some guy she knows, perhaps a casual acquaintance, perhaps just some dude at the bus stop, is obviously infatuated with her. He’s making conversation, he’s giving her the eye. She doesn’t like him. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She doesn’t want him near her. He is freaking her out. She could disobey the rules, and tell him to GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER, and continue screaming GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME every time he tries to step closer, or speak to her again. And then he will be all, “I was just talking to you! WTF!” and everybody else will be all, “Yeah, seriously, why’d you freak out at a guy just talking to you?” and refuse to offer the support she needs to be safe from dude. Or, the guy might become hostile, violent even. Ladies, you’ve seen that look, the “bitch can’t ignore me” look. It’s a source of constant confusion, as soon as you start budding breasts, that the man who just a moment ago told you how pretty you are is now calling you a stupid ugly whore, all because you didn’t get in his car.

OR

You could follow the rules. You could flirt back a little, look meek, not talk, not move away. You might have to put up with a lot more talking, you might have to put up with him trying to ask you out to lunch every day, you might even have to go out to lunch with him. You might have to deal with him copping a feel. But he won’t turn violent on you, and neither will the spectators who have watched him browbeat you into a frightened and flirtatious corner.

So we learn the rules will protect us. We learn that, when we step out of line, somebody around us might very well turn crazy. Might hurt us. And we won’t be defended by onlookers, who think we’ve provoked the crazy somehow. So, having your ass grabbed at the bus stop, having to go out to dinner with a guy you fucking can’t stand, maybe even having to fuck him once or twice, it’s a small sacrifice to avoid being ostracized, insulted, verbally abused, and possibly physically assaulted.

It’s a rude fucking awakening when a woman gets raped, and follows the rules she has been taught her whole life — doesn’t refuse to talk, doesn’t refuse to flirt, doesn’t walk away ignoring him, doesn’t hit, doesn’t scream, doesn’t fight, doesn’t raise her voice, doesn’t deny she liked kissing — and finds out after that she is now to blame for the rape. She followed the rules. The rules that were supposed to keep the rape from happening. The rules that would keep her from being fair game for verbal and physical abuse. Breaking the rules is supposed to result in punishment, not following them. For every time she lowered her voice, let go of a boundary, didn’t move away, let her needs be conveniently misinterpreted, and was given positive reinforcement and a place in society, she is now being told that all that was wrong, this one time, and she should have known that, duh.

For anybody who has ever watched the gendered social interactions of women — watched a woman get browbeaten into accepting attention she doesn’t want, watched a woman get interrupted while speaking, watched a woman deny she is upset at being insulted in public, watched a woman get grabbed because of what she was wearing, watched a woman stop arguing — and said and done nothing, you never have the right to ever ask, “Why didn’t she fight back?”

She didn’t fight back because you told her not to. Ever. Ever. You told her that was okay, and necessary, and right.

You didn’t give her a caveat. You didn’t say, “Unless…” You said, “Good for you, shutting up and backing down 99% of the time. Too bad that 1% of the time makes you a fucking whore who deserved it.”

Nobody obtains the superpower to behave dramatically differently during a frightening confrontation. Women will behave the same way they have been taught to behave in all social, professional, and sexual interactions. And they will be pretty goddamned surprised to come out the other end and find out that means they can legally be raped at any time, by just about anybody.

"

http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/another-post-about-rape-3/ (via seebster)

SO IMPORANT

(via callingoutsexists)

(via vannozza)

2 months ago
#feminism 
"First you’re taught to fear a phantom, a man in black, a man with a knife, a man who’ll pounce in dark alleys. Well-intentioned women—mothers, aunts, teachers—will train you to protect yourself: Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail; it’s easier to grab. Hold your keys in one hand; hold your pepper spray in the other. Avoid dark alleys. When you reach young adulthood, the lessons change. They acquire an undertone of disgust: Don’t drink so much. Don’t wear such short skirts. You’re sending mixed signals; you’re putting yourself at risk. If you follow the advice and it never happens—if you end up one of the three out of four—you can convince yourself that safety is a product of your own making, a reflection of inherent goodness. But if you’re paying attention, you realize something doesn’t add up. Because it keeps happening: to your sisters; to your friends; to little girls and grown women you’ll never meet, in places like Cleveland, Texas; Steubenville, Ohio; New Delhi. Good people, bad people, neutral. It keeps happening in TV shows and novels and movies—they open on the missing girl, the dead girl, the raped girl. If you’re paying attention, you begin to realize that it isn’t happening. It is being done. And you are not safe. You have never been safe. You were born with a bulls-eye on your back. All you have ever been is lucky."

The Female Gaze: SO MUCH PRETTY by Cara Hoffman - review Cara Hoffman’s really amazing, really important novel So Much Pretty at The Female Gaze this month. (via cocothinkshefancy)

(via vannozza)

3 months ago
#feminism 
3 months ago
#feminism 
roseaposey: “Judgments”I took this last year, but in retrospect, I think it’s my strongest piece from high school. Working on this project really made me examine my own opinions, preconceptions and prejudices about “slutty” women and women who choose to cover all of their skin alike. I used to assume that all women who wore Hijabs were being oppressed, slut-shame, and look down on and judge any woman who didn’t express her sexuality in a way that I found appropriate. I’d like to think I’m more open now.
4 months ago
#But it's particularly interesting how drastically the words change by what amounts to really small increments #I saw something like this that was rather similar #Only it was an actual stocking so it could be worn #feminism 
"In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that – hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly – whether physically, emotionally or both – in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to just give him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance!"
Lamenting the Friendzone, or: The Nice Guy Approach to Perpetuating Sexist Bullshit (via expensivebirdcage)

(Source: fozmeadows, via vannozza)

4 months ago
#feminism 
brinaelegiraffe: shelzie: hatewizard: devidementia: smellestine: chipperwhale: what you fail to realize is that video games shouldn’t cater to females in the first place. It’s largely known that it’s targeted towards the MALE demographic and has been for so many years, so why would they ask for something like that to be handed to them on a goddamn silver platter? that’s like a guy walking into the women’s department of clothing at a sears and demanding that there be more clothing for men there. Separation of sections be damned. that’s not how it fucking works no not really the game industry is more like walking into a regular department store and seeing that all the clothes are only men’s clothes and when you ask the cashier where the women’s clothing section is, they wheel out a small rack of cheaply made tutus, g-strings, and high heels all in bright pink and then when you go “wow really that’s it” you get called an uppity bitch and everybody assumes you want all the focus on you when in reality you’d just like to be considered a worthwhile demographic since you also like to wear clothes, it’s not like you want some ridiculous getup, you just want a solid shirt and pair of pants that fits you alright. I mean hell you even sort of like men’s clothes and you have no problem wearing them. They suit you well. But it’s very obvious once you throw on a pair of men’s pants that they were not made for you. ^^^ Perfect metaphor is perfect.
5 months ago
#feminism #among other things #gaming culture and communities are horribly sexist and troubling 
5 months ago
#feminism #among other things 
5 months ago
#Because forbid that anything should ever change with the male outlook #Cause obviously women wanting to get some rights and actually you know #Females thinking for themselves oh no that's just horrible #Of course if men aren't getting married and are upset then it must be the females fault! #Take a stand and challenge things while society is telling them to be any number of things #That whole male entitlement is utterly justified by society right so it's gotta be right #The Colbert Report #feminism