In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: October 2009

Actually, I think it has something to do with our periods and moon cycles and blood and stuff. Can I write for Esquire now?

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Uh… what?

“Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men,” Stephen Marche writes in Esquire. “Not all young straight women, of course, but many, if not most, of them.”

He says consider the subtext of the relationship between Bella, the young heroine of the “Twilight” series, and the boy vampire Edward, to whom she is attracted “because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her.” Marche explains:

““Twilight’s” fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that’s the clincher. Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? Sex that’s dangerous and safe at the same time, risky but comfortable, gooey and violent but also traditional and loving. In the bedroom, we want to have one foot in the 21st century and another in the 19th.”

Just, no.

God I hate John Mayer.

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I hate John Mayer. Have I mentioned this before? Because I really, really cannot fucking stand John Mayer. His music blows. He is smarmy and full of himself. I like other people significantly less if they admit to liking him. I sincerely believe that “He lists John Mayer as his favorite music on Facebook” is a totally legitimate reason not to date someone.

And now I have even more of a reason to hate John Mayer. Think homeboy would talk to a male reporter like that? Seriously, screw that guy.

End Fat Talk

via Kate comes this great website combating “fat talk” — the constant little comments that women make to other women about themselves.

I hate “fat talk.” It makes me uncomfortable when other women do it. I never quite know what to say — I don’t want to issue the knee-jerk response of “You’re not fat!” because that kind of implies that being fat is The Worst Thing Ever. I also don’t want to ignore the comment, because then the commenting friend walks away thinking that I think she’s fat, and for her, that is a Very Bad Thing.

And yet I’m the absolute worst when it comes to fat talk. Like many women I have a whole slew of body issues; my weight is always on my mind, and I feel like I’m in a constant battle with my body. I’ve started to make my peace with how I look, and I’ve started to accept the fact that I love physical activity and exercise, I love to eat (and I like to eat food that feels nourishing, clean and healthy), but my body is just a certain build and shape and I’m never going to be 5’10” and 110 pounds. I can turn things I love — physical activity and food — into things I resent in order to be thinner, but it’s not worth it. I’ve done it, and it makes me unhappy. Deciding “I would rather be happy” sounds simple, but it’s psychologically challenging when for so long I associated happiness with thinness — as in, “I’ll be happy when I’m 20 pounds thinner.” I’m learning how to allow myself to be happy and not thin. It’s a process, though, and as I go through it I still find myself complaining to my friends about the way I look. I also have a group of friends who are mostly very thin — significantly thinner than I am. It can be very difficult to always feel like the “fattest” in the group. And when I spend time with women who are larger than I am, I also find myself feeling envious — of their curves or of the way clothes fit them or of their confidence or of whatever else they have that I don’t. I feel like I never measure up.

Part of the reason why Fat Talk is so harmful is that it’s a constant reminder that women have an obligation to look good, always. It’s our burden as women to present an attractive face to the world — to be ornamental and to decorate. It’s also about fat-hate and fat-shaming, but even for the not-fat among us, it’s that little whisper of you aren’t doing your job.

What’s especially difficult, I think, is balancing the need for honest conversation and support with the obligation to not do harm to other women. I want to be able to talk, even in feminist spaces, about body issues, but I also don’t want to engage in Fat Talk or trigger women who have have histories of eating disorders. Even more importantly (at least for me), I want to be able to have honest discussions with my closest friends — not in a vent-y “Blah I feel fat today” way, but in the intimate way we discuss everything else in our lives.

All of that said, though, it’s good practice to nix the Fat Talk. So that’s what I’m going to do this week. No Fat Talk starting now. Only positive body talk.

It’ll be a good exercise. Who’s with me?

Amish wife accused of not reporting sex abuse

Not sure how I feel about this story. On the one hand, I have very little problem with prosecuting those who aid or abet sexual abuse. But it does seem like the people most often prosecuted are wives of abusers, who are often victims themselves (in this case, however, it doesn’t seem like there are allegations that the wife was abused). And it seems that there’s more moral outrage when a woman knows about abuse and looks the other way than when other, powerful men either enable it or ignore it (or, hell, perpetuate and commit it).

I can’t help but compare it to this story about sexual abuse among closely-knit ultra Orthodox Jewish communities, or to the many stories of Catholic priests abusing children. Yes, with the priest abuse there was blame placed on the structure of the church, and the repeated moving of abusers. There were civil suits. But it’s rare to see criminal charges brought against non-abusers who knew about the abuse and didn’t interfere. Again, I don’t think it’s wrong to prosecute those who aid and abet abuse; I just wonder where we draw the line when it comes to knowing about and ignoring abuse, and how much we factor in obligation to the abused (i.e., in my opinion, it matters more if the person doing the ignoring had some degree of responsibility for the abused — a teacher, a doctor, a parent, etc), and the relative power of the abuser over the person who knew and did nothing.

You know it’s time for new friends when…

You’re drugged and wake up in the ER and they won’t get out of bed to come get you.

And you know you’re a pretty selfish person when your advice to said drugged-and-hospitalized woman is as follows:

Wow, that’s a tough call. A spouse or even a boyfriend? Yes, it would be his or her duty to haul ass to said hospital at 4 a.m. But your single female friends who are already, presumably tucked in their beddy-bies? I have to admit that, if I got a call like yours (or your mother’s) in the middle of the night, I’d do what I could from home, but would be hard-pressed to jump in my car until morning.

For one thing, it’s not even necessarily safe—depending on where you live and how far you live from the hospital—for a woman to head out alone at that hour. For another, presumably, by the time your mother called you were out of danger. Yes, overnights at the E.R. are the opposite of fun. So are disastrous drug trips. (I had one in my twenties, which pretty much sealed my fate as an illegal-substance ninny.) But only nuns make it out of youth without a few ambulance rides.

Here’s a little secret. BFFs are great when you’re upset about a boy/sick cat/whatnot. But there are limits to friendship—limits that don’t apply to our romantic partners or close family members. What I fault your friends for is not driving you all the way home the next morning, or at least following you there to make sure you got through the door on two feet. I also wish they’d been a less critical of what was, by your account, a freak incident. Why were they so unforgiving? I’d wager a guess that they think you’re lying about the mickey, tales of which are sometimes used as a cover for irresponsible behavior. (Only you know the truth.)

Really glad my pals are more loyal than Lucinda.

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