Black Friday

I see tons of pictures of women zealously guarding their carts and even more of them ready to trample one another in consumeristic delight.

This is my first entry in a month, and all I have to say is that I don’t give a fuck about black friday.

Also, I’m working on something regarding diminuative language.

I hope you other bloggers are rife with inspiration, as I have nothing at the moment.

 

The importance of feminist bloggers and diarists.

As a frequenter of the Feministing community (community.feministing.com), I’ve learned a lot about the things I enjoy reading, the things I learn the most from and what stories/articles hit closest to home. Since I discovered the Feministing community, I’ve come to find that the things that I care about most are the stories of women. The things that affect them on a day-to-day basis, the things that make them ask ”What is the appropriate response” or say  ”Maybe I’m over-reacting or wrong to feel this way”.

We all encounter sexism in our daily lives, and its not always possible to find feminist friends offline. The lack of that emotional outlet  can lead to self-doubt and intellectual loneliness. It makes me wonder how many feminists have lost their fire because they were so alone in their beliefs that they didn’t have anyone to share their ideas, their actions, their words, or their experiences with.

I truly appreciate the Feministing community for being that kind of outlet, but I honestly believe that is just the first step. I think there is an overwhelming need for an active, online space where women can discuss their lives. The importance of this being, if we can see how other women live, we can learn. We can understand that its not a singular experice, that other women are facing the same issues we are facing, or even learn issues that some women are facing that we aren’t. We can offer our own insight, our advice, or what helped us pull through in especially difficult times. We could congratulate others on our successes, and lend some compassion when things don’t go as planned.

I did an admittedly unthorgough check for online spaces like I described above and was a little disheartened. The vast majority were links to news articles, which while important, don’t address the need.

If anyone knows of active blogrings for feminists, please let me know.

I strongly encourage feminists of all ages, races, sexes, genders, of all educational and economic backgrounds, to start a blog or update your old one. Visibility is so important. I understand that its not always  possible or desired  for everyone to dedicate the time to blogging, but if you’ve thought about it and weren’t sure if you should, know that there is the chance that someone could learn from you, or that you could learn from them, simply by sharing your knowledge and understanding.

Until I find a community, I’d like to open my blogroll to feminists everywhere, because I’d love to read what you have to say, just leave a comment or send me a message.

“Feminism is cool and shit, but like, women shouldn’t be MORE powerful than men.”

Do you know how many times I have heard that shit? If you are a fellow feminist and you have (ever) tried (ever) talking to a man/guy/boy/bro/dude, you’ve heard it too. I’d put money on it. As this blog serves as a public workbook for my still developing critical thinking skills, I am going to address this as the first of many things that I hear on a constant basis that have always caused some degree of cognitive dissonance.

Do I agree with the title statement? Sure, I do. I am for complete and absolute equality between all sexes, races, all that. But whenever the subject is broached with males, the first thing I hear approximately 75% of the time (yeah, I don’t fucking know, its more than half and less than 100, no studies were conducted) is for some sort of assurance that I don’t want to take from them. Like has been taken from us. For thousands of years. (Of course they manage to leave out that last bit.)

When I receive that as a response, several things run through my head.

a.) Duh.
b.) Feminism 101 much?
c.) This conversation will be worthless and frustrating.
d.) Why am I still bothering to even attempt to discuss feminism with men?
e.) Why so fucking defensive?

I’m not going to get into what ”all feminists” think, because should this get any traffic, the trolls favorite offense is to use the collective and pretend we have a hive mind, that all feminists think the same, and then ask the poster what every feminist has to say about this or that. I’m also not going to say who or what makes a ”good feminist.” I don’t know that either.

But what I do know is that for some reason, when faced with the idea of women in power, with power, or having any power, a pretty unfortunate number of men’s penises retract inside their body and they stutter their way into an insecure oblivion asking me to assuage , no I don’t want to take ”their power.”

You see, what they’d have me believe is that they don’t have a problem with women being in control of anything so long as women don’t gain control of things men are ALREADY in control of. Which leaves us with… Oh. Wait. Absolutely nothing. Which is where we are now. Yay! Time to give up my feminist struggle, right?

Nevermind, I just remembered I still want things that make all those Dudes Who “Get It” feel as nervous as that time they were 15 and forgot to X out of all the porn when their mom sat down to use the computer.

I want to walk down a street and not be harassed. I want to be able to go to a website and not be bombarded with advertisements telling me that unless I look like this model, wear this outfit, or succumb to X beauty standard, I am ugly and therefore worthless to society. I don’t have to want stupid tacky shit for a present on Valentine’s Day to make up for the fact that I’ve been treated like a cumdumpster every other day of the year (…but I still have to put out on Valentines night because he bought me shit, right?) , I have the right to love myself even if I’m toofat-toothin-toohateful-tooangry-toocold-tootall-tooshort-tooanything.

These things are power that have been stripped from women because its easier to make us buy dumb shit and believe stupid lies when we have been trained to hate ourselves from the get-go. This is the power men don’t want us to have, and this is what I’m supposed to be reassuring them of. That they will still get to treat us like shit and tell us who we should be (for their benefit) but we’ll be mollified and feel like our little feminist movement has done something. They just want us to shut up and spread ‘em.

So, what am I saying? A synopsis, please?

Only idiots, jackasses, sociopaths, despots and dumbfucks are concerned with maintaining undeserved power when they’ve been shitting on their equals for thousands of years. The end.