repost from tumblr. huge tmi, mostly about pubic hair.
So yeah anyway, pubes.
I don’t like ‘em.
Well, that’s not strictly true. I don’t give a fuck about anyone’s body hair of any variety or whether I can see it or not or whatever. You do not have to shave, wax, epilate or whatever any part of your body. You can be the fucking Wolfman and I will still happily associate with you, hug you, spoon with you, and braid your armpit hair. I will. That is all good.
But if you want me to put my mouth on your junk, your pubic hair is not going anywhere near my nose.
I have had endless, weird, pointless rows with people who would rather eat a bag of live wasps and then take a bath in industrial bleach than sleep with me who are still mortally offended that I might have some practical preference regarding the pubic hair of people who have vaginas (people with penises less so because I can usually get my mouth on the end of it without being attacked by the pubeforest at the other end and also anyway I don’t like putting penises in my mouth so I stopped doing that… eventually). I’ve been told I must be utterly shit at giving head because I want to use my hands for something other than holding primeval follicle forest away from my breathing holes, or that I don’t really like women, or that I’m a paedophile, the latter of which was a weird afternoon.
Now those rows were pretty weird and pointless because, idk, my preference for not putting my mouth into a pubic jungle (and only my mouth, all other body parts are fair game, I will stick my hand in whatever unholy thicket you are cultivating in your underpants), which extracts no requests regarding any other body hair, is hideously unfeminist and controlling. It’s a vile ultimatum: I won’t perform this voluntary sex act on you if stipulations like “you must not have a crotch that oozes green pus” are not met is fine, but if the stipulations are “please do not suffocate me with hair” aren’t, does this mean I don’t get a choice?
Those rows were weird enough, but the ones where people go “you shave your crotch therefore you hurt all women” are outright bizarre. Hell, even DEMON QUEEN ANTI WOMAN HATE FESTIVAL Amanda Palmer only said “it makes you look like a child” and “the stubble hurts”, not “you are letting down womankind and a victim to the patriarchy and you ARE HURTING FEMINISM”.
I really don’t think my stubble-rash cunt is hurting feminism. It is hurting no one apart from occasionally me and whoever gets a half-inch of very stiff hair scraped over the back of their leg. And it comes off not because other people find it attractive - plenty of people have moaned about how they’d prefer it if I didn’t cheesegrater their genitals by hamfistedly hacking off my DOWNY PUBIC CUSHION or whatever I’m meant to call it. It comes off because I hate having pubic hair. I hate the texture, I hate the change in colour from pale-ass skin to ENJOY MY RAVEN-THATCHED LADYCAVE, VISITORS; I hate the way it spreads like a fucking black fungus down my thighs, I hate the old memories of teen me getting strands of it stuck to the gluey bit on sanitary pads and everything that stood for. I hate having pubic hair, and since it’s my hair on my cunt and my razor that I paid for with my money that I earned from my fucking job, I will damn well shave it all off if I want to.
If self-determination about my body is patriarchal brainwashing, then it’s possible I would be slightly more concerned about not turning into a goat-legged sideshow freak every winter. I might make some sort of effort to cover up my ginormous purple stretchmarks, or affect some sort of shame about the fact that I have face skin like a junkie’s ballbag; I might even, god help us, do something about the “disgusting monstrosities” my feet apparently are, like trim my motherfucking talons and hide the fact that they’re nicotine-yellow and cracked. I could sand down my elbow scrag, pluck the random boob hairs, wear something that hides my self-inflicted scars instead of walking around with them out like I give no fucks about them.
And no, that’s not “sad”.
Don’t fucking take umbrage because I said “don’t throw rocks at me” and turn it into transparently passive-aggressive pity speeches instead. My relationship with my body is not sad. My self-loathing, or disassociation, or dysphoria, or occasional delusions of physical invulnerability are not “sad”. Nor is the fact that I don’t damn well want pubic hair and I’m not damn well going to have it: this shitcave I live in, that I cart around with me, that I use to hit people who try to touch it without my permission, that I feed with dirty disgusting food that isn’t morally or medicinally perfect, that I let people fuck, that I fuck other people with - it is MINE. You do not have to live in it. I do. I have to stick to this poop processing plant until the day there is no more “I”.