Tag: women’s rights

July 7, 2015

Fuck That Fucking Shit To Fucking Hell

I keep writing posts and then abandoning them because I didn’t have the energy to tackle the subjects that are eating up all my mind-space.

I’ve been working really hard on packaging and writing up product descriptions and photographing products for Sugar & Pith. I’ve done no fiction writing in a month now. No blog writing in probably just as long. I’ve been focused solely on getting Sugar & Pith up and running. Just as I got all my newly photographed products listed in the Etsy shop I started doing my reading on FDA and USDA regulations on selling herbal products. I will now have to more carefully name and word all my products and product descriptions. Etsy (must look into this more to be sure) apparently doesn’t allow shops to describe any medicinal properties of herbs. Several shops I saw were sending customers to links where they could read about what the products they’re selling are actually FOR claiming that Etsy won’t let them include such descriptions in their listings any more.

I actually agree with all industries having regulations because when things like Energy companies are de-regulated all kinds of abuses happen at the cost to the consumers. When food is unregulated all kinds of important information is withheld from consumers. Reasonable regulation is vital to keeping companies responsible and accountable to consumers.

But the FDA has made it almost impossible for small companies to sell herbal products effectively. They can’t keep us from selling them, by some miracle or other that right has been safeguarded, but they cripple a person’s ability to explain to potential customers what a product is meant to DO.

I’m also fostering an adorable kitten named Petra who’s scampering around at my feet getting into all kinds of mischief as I write.

I’ve got so much dark shit in my head these days what with the the recent mass shooting of black people and the burning of black churches and most of my countrymen still thinking we’re the best nation in the world while people like Donald Trump mouth off heinous racist shit against Mexicans and we still have an off-shore torture prison where we flex our muscles and practice torture on people we claim “might” be our enemies, but no one really actually cares that much. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

I don’t believe that humans are basically good and unlike some friends and family I don’t think that the bigoted, hateful, ugly voices out there are a minority.

There’s nothing Americans like better than to masturbate to recitals of the Bill of Rights and the Amendments . Those rights Americans are constantly citing as the thing that makes our country so great and so different from everyone else. The rights that ALL Americans enjoy equally. Unless you have been a person of color in this country for the last few hundred years and even though the Civil Rights movement rectified this to some degree (a mere 50 some odd years ago), they are still having their rights violated constantly in insidious ways that white people are very comfortable believing are mere isolated incidences. We only just forced the bigots of this nation to allow same-sex marriage but it’s still legal in many states to fire someone for being gay. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

These precious rights we supposedly all have and have been so proud of having since our founding fathers gave them to us really haven’t applied to many people who aren’t white men for most of our history. These “inalienable rights” have been reluctantly parsed out to non-whites and non-males only at gunpoint and under major duress.

Our dedication to individual rights over human safety (witness: the second amendment) is breathtaking. I don’t think any person’s individual rights are more important than the public having a reasonable expectation of safety from mass shootings, shootings, and also all that pesky rape we spend so much time debating, denying, and under-prosecuting because women are basically all just whores and are asking for it. Americans love to say that only responsible people have guns. Oh, except for the mentally ill criminals (because all criminals are mentally ill, don’t you know?) who would have them anyway regardless of our laws*. We have become so mired in our obsession with individual rights and the money that lobbyists throw around to make sure we stay obsessed with that that we’d rather not make gun ownership illegal or highly restricted even if it kills many thousands of people every year to protect the rights of Americans to carry whatever guns they like. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

Our right to speech is a famous subject for wanking off to. That’s all well and good unless you say something that the government can classify as “a national threat” in which case they can send you to prison with very few rights because we were happy to let rights erode when we think it’ll catch us some more brown Muslim people. So people who uncover and use their freedom of speech to reveal Government war crimes (Chelsea Manning) go to jail. And people who speak up to tell us what illegal infringements the Government is enacting on the general populace have to leave the country to escape being tried as a traitor (Edward Snowdon). These are people who were looking out for us and dared to speak out against the government’s wrong doing. So much for free speech. The only entity people have ever needed their freedom of speech protected from is the government (or monarchy) under which they live their lives. We are free to say anything we want here in the US unless the government DOESN’T FUCKING LIKE IT IN WHICH CASE THEY CAN TRY YOU FOR TREASON, MOTHERFUCKERS. So yeah, go ahead and say how much you hate the president all you want. People in other countries can be jailed for that. Yay! Wank off Americans, wank freely! Just don’t say anything that really matters against our government because then your freedoms don’t mean shit. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

So while you can get a gun with almost no limitations and you can carry it openly in many states, and you can freely say all the nasty bigoted things you want to say against other citizens and even the President of the United States, I can’t tell potential customers of my herbal products how my herbal products might benefit them. No, seriously, my freedom to communicate the actions of medicinal herbs as they’ve been observed for thousands of years is prohibited unless I make it explicitly clear that it probably isn’t true since the FDA hasn’t yet confirmed any of it. Because I’m selling products that the government doesn’t approve of, my freedom of speech is being seriously impaired. So I can go around saying I think Obama is a shithead (I DON’T BECAUSE I REALLY LIKE HIM) but in most ways that freedom of speech truly affects my life I’m not actually that free to say what I want. Fuck that fucking shit to fucking hell.

A friend of mine was arguing that you can’t make people be unracist with laws. The example was the Confederate flag. As far as he was concerned, making the Confederate flag illegal would just make more fans of it OR racists would just find another symbol. While I agree that they might find another symbol for it. His idea is that you educate people and you fix the situation that creates the racism in the first place (often poverty causes or exacerbates racism and violence around racism). While I agree that those are things that need to be addressed. We are at a standstill because the people in this nation that control pretty much everything (laws and all) are all white rich people. My belief in the inherent badness of human beings is substantiated by the fact that nearly all laws protecting the rights of minorities have had to become law because people couldn’t be counted on to “do the right thing” or “treat people with respect” or “share equal rights” or “not set crosses on fire on black Americans’ lawns” or to “not execute black people with legally acquired guns”. Men never gave women equal rights willingly. WE FUCKING FORCED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS COUNTRY TO LET US VOTE AND WE STILL DON’T GET EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK. Maybe laws don’t fix everything but without them we’d still have slavery, women wouldn’t vote, bi-racial couples could literally be sent to jail for sleeping with each other, parents could still use their kids for punching bags legally, and employers could legally refuse to hire people based on their race. FUCK THAT FUCKING SHIT TO FUCKING HELL.

Do white people find other ways and legal reasons to not hire black people? HELL YES. Do men still find many legal ways of putting women in their place and subjugating them and paying them less? HELL YES. Having laws to protect rights or the freedoms of minority groups doesn’t mean they won’t be discriminated against but the laws are important because they give us legal recourse to set things right, they send the message that at least officially our country is required to honor all its citizens from certain dangers and discriminations. Will evil still exist if you make it against the law? Sure. Yes. Always.

Most humans will only do the right thing if it suits them or profits them to do so.

Making laws that make evil have to work harder are important because they give recourse to those upon whom it has unleashed its damage to punish and prosecute that evil. This is vitally important to keeping law and order in a nation and to creating and maintaining a fair and healthy society.

These are my thoughts this week. And last week. I’m sick of people saying that the U.S. is great “compared to other countries”. That we did genocide “less heinously than other colonialists” or that “yeah, this country was founded on genocide and slavery, but so is pretty much every country in the world.” And that makes us great….HOW?!

Do you all not see what’s wrong with that attitude? It means “Sure, we might have done terrible awful nasty inhumane evil things to become the country we are, but it’s okay because that’s how all countries do it”

Okay. So I’m a great human being because when compared to way worse human beings I’m not as bad? And it’s okay that I’ve hurt the people I’ve hurt along the way to achieving the things I have and becoming who I am because that’s just what humans do?

I don’t give myself such excuses and neither should you and none of us should be extending such stupid excuses for our country either. When I’ve hurt people I examine my behavior and I honestly ask myself what the fuck is wrong with me and I apologize to the people I’ve hurt and I work at becoming and behaving better and more thoughtfully. At no point do I ever think that it’s “okay” that I hurt someone because all people hurt other people at some point. That may be true, but it doesn’t make it okay. Those aren’t words that need saying. We can move on with our lives after we’ve learned lessons and improved ourselves but at no point do any of need to congratulate ourselves for not being worse than we are or that the terrible things we’ve done are “okay” because everyone else does them too. Fuck that fucking shit to goddamn fucking hell.

I’m not perfect, and I’m going to make mistakes. That’s a fact of life. I’m going to keep learning and hopefully keep growing and keep becoming a better human being. But when I fuck up and I hurt someone or I do something mean or stupid you will never hear me say “That’s just the collateral damage of being human” or “at least when I hurt people I hurt them in a less hurtful way than other people hurt them”.

I will say “I’m sorry” and “I can do better than that” and then I will examine the ways I can do better AND THEN I DO BETTER because I’m not caught up in personal pride. Pride has no place in learning and improving and being a better human being today than you were yesterday. Humility is what allows us to see our faults and correct them. Humility is what allows us to stop and feel for other humans, to see from their perspective, to understand how our actions affect them.

I said this in an earlier post. I’m saying it again. More and more I find pride in people distressing and disgusting.

So this is why I keep not writing. I’m angry at everyone. I’m tired of having people’s legal rights trump people’s safety and well being. I’m angry that pretty much everyone I know is in love with saying how “complicated” all these issues are which is code for “we don’t agree with each other and since people can’t agree about stuff, stuff can’t be fixed and no one can be expected to change anything because someone is going to be uncomfortable with it.

YEAH, FUCKERS, I KNOW! A LOT OF MEN ARE STILL UPSET THAT WOMEN GOT THE VOTE AND “INFILTRATED”
POLITICS AND DON’T HAVE TO HAVE SEX WITH THEM IF WE DON’T WANT TO AND WOMEN ARE STILL BEING RAPED AND BEAT BECAUSE SO MANY MEN ARE GRIEVOUSLY UNHAPPY HAVING TO LET US HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS. SO MAYBE, FUCKERS, MAYBE WE SHOULD GIVE OUR HARD-WON EQUAL RIGHTS BACK BECAUSE IT MADE MEN UPSET? BECAUSE IT WAS UNCOMFORTABLE CHANGE?

FUCK THAT STUPID-ASS GODDAMN FUCKING SHIT TO GODDMAN FUCKING HELL, FUCKERS!

I’m too tired to edit this post. The first asshole to come along and correct my typos, grammar, or my disconnected ideas gets a gold-plated scrotum for a medal. I just let my thoughts come out. This was not an organized essay or dissertation. It was an exact (and therefore imperfect) first draft stream of consciousness post of my thoughts as they are today.

I admit that I feel a lot better for having let these thoughts OUT.

*This has been proved to be untrue in many other countries who have instigated (or have always had) very strict gun laws and have a correlating low number of gun-related deaths in their countries compared to ours.

September 5, 2013

True Feminists Aren’t Hot and Don’t Wear Stilettos

Is Feminism only for the fat un-hot girls? If a girl is wearing underwear and is thin and attractive and confident – does her feminism mean less than that of an obese girl who no one objectifies? I want you to really think about this. Does feminism only apply to women who take great care to never expose cleavage, wear heels, or short skirts? Does feminism only mean something if women are dressed chastely and in no way presenting a temptation to the men around her?

This girl is thin and not dowdy. She likes to wear Victorian underwear. Is she less a feminist than this woman:

Obese, middle aged, almost sexless… do you think this woman has more credibility as a feminist than the thin chick in the corset? Does the fact that the only man who is attracted to her is her husband make you feel comfortable with her as a feminist role model? You would like your daughters to eat too much cheese and drink too much beer and hate their bodies so much they want to crawl out of their skin? You would prefer this to them being able to safely express themselves and not be afraid that men might take their stiletto heels as an invitation to violate

No you wouldn’t. You know what’s fucked up? That women are so exacting in their expectations of other women as role models. Women who are confident in their bodies and who are perceived as being “hot” can live by strong feminist values and still be discredited by other women as not being “real” enough. But a woman can be too real, too fat, too unattractive. No one will hold up an obese woman as a healthy role model for young girls any more than they will hold up a centerfold as a role model.

You don’t want your daughters to grow up and let their hot young bodies be objectified and so you don’t really want them to learn to celebrate the strong young beautiful bodies they’ve started off with but you also don’t want them letting themselves go – becoming fat and ugly and unwanted because that’s almost worse.

Women are the worst critics of other women.

Equal rights for women isn’t about women being equal only when clothed conservatively. It isn’t about women being equal only when not feeling hot and sexy and ready for a romp (which would be wrong because obviously it’s okay that men have appetites but not women). It isn’t about being equal only when women are ugly and asexual. It isn’t about women being equal only when men can still feel confident around them and not get boners.

Equal rights for women is about women living by the same standards as men. It’s about ALL women being treated with respect no matter what their personal style is or how much of their skin is showing or how smart they are or how confident they are or how beautiful they are or how young they are or how old they are or how many wrinkles they have or how big their boobs are or how thin they are or how chaste they are or how sexual they are.

Equal rights for women is about women being able to express their individuality and let their lights shine without ever having to worry about being sexually harassed or ridiculed by men or other women. Equal rights is about getting equal pay for equal qualifications. It’s about getting treated respectfully in courts of law, in schools, and among peers. It means that rape victims are taken seriously and offenders are punished severely. It means that skinny girls and fat girls experience the same respect of body and mind. It means that the opinions of all women COUNT and that being hot or having big boobs doesn’t disqualify your point of view.

Feminism is for ALL women.

It’s for the good girls and the bad girls. It’s for the strong girls and the weak girls. It’s for the smart girls and the dumb girls. It’s for all the girls in-between.

ALL WOMEN.

And if boys were girls it would be for them too because it’s really about equal rights for everyone.

Today I watched this parody of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video:

“Defined Lines” feminist parody of “Blurred Lines”

Haven’t seen the original? Me neither, until today. So check out the original:

“Blurred Lines” chauvinist parody of what women want

And here’s a critique of the feminist parody in which a woman thinks she might get behind it more if the women in the parody weren’t so hot and wearing stiletto heels:

True Feminists aren’t Hot and Don’t Wear Stilettos

Feminism isn’t about being better than men. It isn’t a contest with men. Or other women. It isn’t a contest, period. It’s about being held to the same standards as men and enjoying the same civil rights as men. If men can walk through town without their shirts on, women should be allowed to walk around town without their shirts on too – and be treated the same as the shirtless men. There are men who feel threatened by feminism but they shouldn’t be. Women love sex. Straight women love sex with men. There are lots of dirrrrrty women who would love to get nasty with men but who expect to be safe and be able to trust that when they’ve had enough and say “no” that they will be heard and have their drawn lines respected. Women want sexual fulfillment too so it doesn’t serve men to be misogynists.

Feminism is a message that every woman can embrace and embody.

Feminism is smart, obvious, essential, sexy, sizeless, and human.

Feminism is for all of us.

*So many of my regular readers have called me “brave” over the years but I haven’t felt brave until the moment I published the fat picture in this post. It makes me feel sick to my stomach to have it here on my blog but those of you have come to respect my honesty keep me honest.

January 20, 2013

Designing new heroines and the importance of ignoring other people’s yardsticks.

The perfect heroine does not exist because there is no such thing as a one size fits all role model. I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I’m seeing people on Face Book posting all kinds of pro-girl and feminist content meant to challenge the still prevalent and insidious chauvinism and bigotry directed towards the women of the world. I’m always glad to see women standing up and fighting this kind of bullshit – and becoming fierce whenever a girl is felled by rape or other forms of cruel injustice. It’s important that women keep speaking up and speaking out.

But along the way I find myself irritated, too, at the strange narrowness that stems from the fight. I suppose it’s inevitable. You want girls to know that being a princess isn’t the only dream a girl can have, that they can be whatever they want. I don’t think the best way to get this message across is to swing to the opposite pendulum and tell girls that unless they do something WORTHY with their lives (meaning: attaining achievements previously dominated by MEN) that they are letting us all down. It’s the same thing as berating women whose main desire in life is to stay at home and have children because you think they should have chosen something more than that since previous generations of women fought so hard to give them a choice. But choice is the key – and what right does anyone (male or female) have to dictate what life choice is right or worthy for others?

I loathe hearing women talk about how they were always tomboys and not interested in girly stuff with that tone that implies that their “boyishness” and their disinterest in fashion or other “girly” stuff somehow makes them more substantive, makes them BETTER. It doesn’t. I would argue that it’s just as girly to like sports as not based on how many girls I know who like sports. Playing sports doesn’t make any woman smarter any more than loving fashion makes any woman dumb. I would argue that being a girl should not be about placing value judgements on women for the things they’re interested in. Women make up roughly half the population of the world and the point of feminism is not to limit us to just a few accepted life choices or to scorn each other for having different interests. It is, in my opinion, chauvinistic to look down on any woman for having qualities traditionally considered feminine.

It implies that women are only equal in worth to men in relation to how much LIKE men they are. That’s some fucked up shit.

I thought feminism was about both genders being equal in worth without regard to their sameness or differences. I thought feminism was about equal civil rights – not gender neutrality.

I’ve been thinking about the two heroines I have designed. I’ve looked at the choices I’ve made for them in physical attributes, interests, issues, personality, and asked what kind of women am I building? I can see already that I can only build the type of heroine that fits my own needs- women that I can relate to and admire and strive to be more like. I find myself purposely trying to steer clear of the tired stereotypes I’m sick of. Women who kick ass with porn star bodies. We can be SEXY while being tough. Sure, that’s a good message. But the idea that porn star is the only version of sexy out there really chaps my ass.

Here is where I’d like to say that women with porn star bodies, whether natural or manufactured, certainly ARE sexy to some people’s tastes and there is nothing at all wrong with having a double or triple D sized chest and a skinny young girlish body. If that’s your thing – why should I come along and trash it?

What bothers me is that there is so little representation of other versions of sexy in movies and in books. I concede that literary fiction alone tends to be independent of these heroine stereotypes. It also doesn’t sell nearly as well as Romance and Science Fiction in which the busty lusty ass kicking lady is still the main attraction.* It also bothers me because we seem to be pushing the idea that men only like women who have enormous boobs but otherwise fairly prepubescent bodies (emphasized creepily by the removal of pubic hair – but that’s a whole different discussion). The men of my acquaintance who are heterosexual find a variety of body types sexually attractive. Here’s the other thing – heterosexual men aren’t just attracted to women based on their looks. Suggesting that that’s all men care about is as sexist as it gets. That’s all SOME men care about but for most men I’ve ever met – how a woman looks is simply the starting point for interest. And that’s totally natural. Before you know a person all you have are visual cues and they can only tell you so much.

I have designed two heroines so far and I have been conscious of creating very physically different women. The first one I designed is Jane Bauer. She’s tall, she’s voluptuous, she’s dark haired, she’s green eyed, and very pale skinned. I really thought about what kind of a heroine I was building. What was the significance of this choice or that. Jane Bauer is not an ass-kicker of men. She has been a victim of the violence of a man. Her strength is in her recovery, her friendships, and her personal evolution. She’s shy, she’s quiet, she shrinks into corners. She loves vintage fashion. She’s neither a tomboy or a girly girl. She’s a complex person.

Then there’s Cricket who couldn’t be more different than Jane. Cricket is of medium height, red headed, liberally freckled, has grey eyes, is small boobed but has womanly hips (classic pear shape), is a total tom-boy, is an ass kicker of men, is sexually liberated enough to meet her needs without hangups, she’s reticent but not shy, for all her physical strength she is emotionally immature, she is scrappy and loyal and enjoys music and drinking.

So I was thinking about building heroines and what it means to be a female role model and also thinking about tired stereotypes and how to rewrite women outside of the narrow definitions of women written by both men and women alike. There are a lot of worthy women characters that fit in between the hyper sexualized female super hero and her geek-girl counterpart.

I can tell you right now that there are certain kinds of women characters that I am incapable of making into my main characters. Women who desire having children is a major one. It’s not because I think poorly of women who find their true fulfillment in having children. It really boils down to the fact that I am tired of reading stories or watching shows where women always end up having babies. As though this is the only conclusion possible, even to women who choose careers. When women characters don’t have children they are almost always portrayed in a way I find unattractive and unfair. I don’t relate to women wanting babies. I have close friends who love having babies and it’s just something I don’t get, though I try. I find stories about women yearning** for babies really boring. I think it’s because it’s a story as old as time and there isn’t much more to add to it. I’m interested in NEW stories about women who don’t want babies but aren’t hard and driven (implying that the only women who don’t want kids must be just like men – a stereotype I LOATHE). But these stories aren’t being told so much. A few here and there. But really – authors and movies and musicians all seem to come back to the motherhood thing. That if you aren’t a mother it’s either because you are not womanly or because you are not capable of having them for one reason or another.

I will never write a main character who wants children. You can pick your motherly heroines all over the cultural map, they are everywhere, our culture is completely saturated with mothers of all kinds. Which is totally natural considering that motherhood has been the province of women since before language developed. But feminism opened up so many other possibilities for women and supposedly gave us the power and the permission to not have babies. It gave us choice. It gave us permission to decide what we want for ourselves without regard to traditional designated roles. It gave us the power to develop ourselves in whatever direction interested us – to find our inspiration and fulfillment in whatever ways suited us best. That is the best thing about the feminist movement. We now enjoy choice. So why is it that we keep fighting each other about what makes a woman worthy? And worthy of what? Of admiration from other women? Of admiration from men? I feel like the yardstick women keep using for themselves and for each other is the same negative one men have used against us.

When I was a little girl I loved the idea of being a princess. I loved the idea of prince charming. I loved fashion. I loved pretending to keep house. I made elaborate mud pies. I cherished the idea of being saved by a gallant hero. Is it wrong to want to be a princess just because I could be a knight if I chose? Is it a sign of weakness to want to be saved? If I cherish the fantasy of being saved by a man does that make me a lesser woman? A woman to be despised and dismissed by other women?

It is because of these narrow attitudes of my female peers that I didn’t consider myself a feminist for so long. I like chivalry and I don’t believe it diminishes my power and autonomy-of-self as a woman. I have always known who I am. My mother will tell you – I came into this world knowing who I am. I never measured up to anyone’s yardstick growing up and it was a disaster to my self esteem. I didn’t measure up to any ideals of either man’s making or woman’s making. I ended up building my own yardstick against which to measure my worth. I consider that the most feminist action I’ve ever taken.

If women want real progress with women’s rights then they need to take care not to become the new chauvinists casting women in specific roles they find acceptable or considering a woman’s worth based only on how they compare to men. Are we as strong as men, can we be exactly like them, can we compete in their fields, can we prove we’re better than them, can we have everything, can we be everything, and can anyone admire us if we don’t want to be a heroine or save the world?

The worth of a woman should not be judged against the choices other women or men make but against how close she’s come to living a life that suits her needs and desires, that helps her become the best version of herself she can be.

*Don’t spit out all the exceptions to me for I KNOW there are exceptions but we’re not talking about the ground breakers here.

**See how I used it in a negative way? If I’d used that word in an earnest way you would have felt kind of gross inside. I promise.