My Not Breakup Letter
I was going to write a breakup letter, but as we all know, I have no passion in my soul. Certainly not right now, having just jumped back into the grind of classes and labs. Anyway, the last time I mentioned Feministing.com, I was pretty thrilled with it.
I think I found it at a time when I was unsure of myself and my view of feminism - it always seemed to be the kind of thing where you hate on men and also the world is a toilet and the women get flushed and oh, yeah, there are other people who suffer too, but they aren’t all that important. I wanted more. My kind of feminism is the kind where we fight for the right for everyone to have an equal chance of going their own way and living their own lives. It is, frankly, so horrifically idealist that I giggle sometimes when I think of a future possessing these qualities.
Sorry - exams seemed to have hardened what little was left of the carcass of my inner child.
Anyway, I dove head first into Feministing.com because it appeared to offer my kind of feminism. One where feminism included non-white women (!), queer women (!!), men (!!!) and even those who didn’t fit that whole societal gender norm thing (!!!!).(!!!!!) I like these (!!).
After a few weeks, the shine wore off. Before the shine faded to that crappy grey plastic underneath, it looked like a place to meet real live feminists who were interested in making the world a better place, and not just for the hallowed few who bothered to drop by the site. But like I said, the shine wore off.
I first noticed the spots appearing when some commenters began calling a long time poster ‘not feminist’. Excuse me? In my shiny idealistic world, we define our own feminism. As long as it includes equality, inclusion, and welcoming all people from all walks and all lives, we’re okay. Really shiny, really idealistic. Are your teeth melting yet?
The thing was, no one jumped in to say, ‘Hey, we all see things differently. It’s part of what strengthens a society, a cause, a forward motion for change. No one made you the boss of feminism. STFU, noob.’
In fact, they dogpiled the ‘not feminist’. I saw this happen a couple of times. Eventually, I stopped reading the comments unless the post was so damn WTF that I felt I had to get a grip on some kind of reality.
Anyway, the shiny world listens to voices of non-white women. These are POC, these are black, Asian, mixed, everyone. Only in Feministing.com, I began to notice a pattern. The world was divided into three races: white, black, and not our country (aka not our problem). The Not Our Problem women were generally given some kind of token feel good support, but no real conversations evolved. WTF indeed. And the only mixed people were half black, or half Jewish, or something that was not Asian. Actually, aside from like two posts, Asians need not apply. And if you were something other than a straight up halfsie? I guess you existed in that imaginary fraction of POC who are not black but still live in the USA, but don’t really exist. You can go sit with the Asians.
So the shine really had some gaping scraps now, like a shitty piece of kiddy jewelry you get for a buck and carry around for more than a day. But I kept going back. It was like an addiction, part of my daily routine. I just couldn’t quite put into words why it made me so exasperated to see that site, over and over.
One of the ladies on the posting roster made a blurb about how she saw a white guy wearing what some of us call ghetto chic, basically a mock gangsta getup. But he lived in the inner city.
Here’s an exercise: You see a guy sitting in the inner city in a fast food restaurant, eating. Do you ask - how long have you lived here? Do you ask - where do you live? Work? Play? Who are your friends? What is your upbringing? Do you have both parents, are you adopted? Do you have a heritage? A culture? A tight societal enclave separated from the mainstream through clothing, in jokes, and a plethora of subtle facial and body gestures that make up a language unto itself?
Are you from the area?
If he wears clothes that you would expect on someone of another skin color, do you get so angry that you run off half cocked and post something on a supposedly feminist website?
And when a white woman posts a comment asking if it would insult people of Asian descent if she were to wear a kimono in daily life (even though she has studied Japanese and been to Japan many times in an effort to learn about and respect their culture) - do you jump in snidely and say that’s not the same thing?
That last one is a trick question. Silly goose, Asian people don’t exist!
The shine was nearly completely gone at this point, as I watched the board devolve into a bizarre circle jerk of backpatting about how she really should have gotten in that kid’s face or something like that. The thing was, it wasn’t her neighborhood. Honestly, if the kid’s lived there his whole life, who the motherfuck are you to come in and tell him he cannot identify as he always has?
Around this time, gawker or some celebrity chaser site made their own feminist web site. I didn’t really check it for details or add it to my routine. One feminist train wreck is enough, thankyouverymuch. Anyway, Jezebel (the site) has some okay posts once in a while that try to connect to young feminists with some misguided posts on American Apparel (thin people need to wear clothes too, FFS). Then came the post on gray rape.
Gray rape was this funky little bullshit thing about how it’s date rape only not really, or how if you say no in the middle of sex, it’s gray rape. Something like that. So one of the posters on Jezebel’s pool makes an entry about how her experience was gray rape, not date rape. Because gray rape means you haven’t really been raped, or whatevs. The thing is I think the point she was trying to make is that when ‘real’ rape happens, there’s a victim. She didn’t want to be a victim, so this gray rape thing was a real boon. It meant she could acknowledge what had happened to her without falling to the floor dramatically, or turning into a vengeance seeking whotchum like TV says we’re supposed to.
So Feministing.com catches ahold of this. The main poster that time went off about the horrors of gray rape. If it’s rape, it’s rape. I think another problem I have with them is that they refuse to deal with the real issue. They fall back on the comfortable stance of POC exist! And like gay people are okay! But only gay women! And black people! (Asians, anyone? Hell, immigrants? Haven’t seen much of those women, either).
The real issue with gray rape was echoed over and over: why is the rape victim a ‘victim’? Is there something wrong with her? There’s something wrong with victims, everyone knows that. But there isn’t. Feministing fell into its own trap. The new (new new new? Wave?) feminism is about changing perceptions. Do men see women as people? Or as something other? Okay, let’s change that. When men see women as people, as equals, we’ve made progress. Believe or not, we’ve got a helluva ways to go.
Do we see victims as having something fundamentally wrong with them and being forever broken and tainted by their experience? Okay, let’s change that. Not necessarily by rolling out this gray rape bull, but giving people a chance to try out these new words to define a deeply traumatic experience with some distance may work - at first. If they need that distance, give it to them. Like I said, who the fuckity fuck are you to define what words she may and may not use to speak about herself and her experiences? I know you’re worried that some pundit will grab onto this and go ‘see! Rape isn’t real! Goddamn women.’ But why are you worried about what the men think before you’ve even listened to the women?
The straw that broke the camel’s back popped up with this elections crap. Everyone’s dogging on Hillary Clinton, Clinton, the not yet prezzed Clinton, about her laugh, her neckline, etc. Why not dog on her so-called experience? Why not dog on her bitter war waged on Obama in a tasteless, dirty, shamefully public manner? So Feministing.com calls newssites out on their behavior and all is well and good.
One of the things used to keep women down, at least in our societal perception, is the freedom or lack of freedom regarding sex and reproduction. This is apparent in abortion issues, contraception issues, childbirth, natural or c-section, midwife or hospital, OTC birth control or skyrocketing costs. Simple jibes about her vagina and use thereof. Anytime an article appears on Digg.com and has to do with a woman the diggers don’t like, out come the gendered words. Whore, bitch, slut. It gets old.
You know what else gets old? Hypocrisy. Feministing.com, watchdog of Clinton and the gender wars makes a post about Guliani and his new slogan. But they choose to do so in such a way that it pulls them right down to and below the level of the sites they called out regarding every snotty remark made about Clinton the not yet prez. The other sites have yet to wonder about Clinton’s sexual status, her possession of STD’s or lack of, how many men she has in the sack. Guess who pops up with that one liner about the now dropping out G-man (okay, I’ll admit. He does look damn scary. But no one said you had to be telegenic to run for president…oh, wait).
I make my last comment, expressing disappointment about the sexism in the post. One commenter agrees with me. One of the moderators and several other commenters are quick to tell me STFU, noob.
That’s not my kind of feminism.
So - this was really quite cathartic. I’ve taken Feministing.com off my daily routine, and am quite happy being a feminist in my own right, working to make change in the world on my own terms. I guess Feministing is called lite for a reason. Black people exist, but you know, so do Asian people. The disabled need to be heard, but are they welcome under our umbrella of inclusive feminism? Without including these people and so many more, aren’t we kind of sliding back into the sixties when the then new wave feminists got worried about losing the POC voice amid the sea of white women and their right to choose?
:( And to kick my inner child’s carcass back to life, one last childish jibe: stop calling Jezebel hypocrites without looking in the mirror first, fuckers.
I think I found it at a time when I was unsure of myself and my view of feminism - it always seemed to be the kind of thing where you hate on men and also the world is a toilet and the women get flushed and oh, yeah, there are other people who suffer too, but they aren’t all that important. I wanted more. My kind of feminism is the kind where we fight for the right for everyone to have an equal chance of going their own way and living their own lives. It is, frankly, so horrifically idealist that I giggle sometimes when I think of a future possessing these qualities.
Sorry - exams seemed to have hardened what little was left of the carcass of my inner child.
Anyway, I dove head first into Feministing.com because it appeared to offer my kind of feminism. One where feminism included non-white women (!), queer women (!!), men (!!!) and even those who didn’t fit that whole societal gender norm thing (!!!!).(!!!!!) I like these (!!).
After a few weeks, the shine wore off. Before the shine faded to that crappy grey plastic underneath, it looked like a place to meet real live feminists who were interested in making the world a better place, and not just for the hallowed few who bothered to drop by the site. But like I said, the shine wore off.
I first noticed the spots appearing when some commenters began calling a long time poster ‘not feminist’. Excuse me? In my shiny idealistic world, we define our own feminism. As long as it includes equality, inclusion, and welcoming all people from all walks and all lives, we’re okay. Really shiny, really idealistic. Are your teeth melting yet?
The thing was, no one jumped in to say, ‘Hey, we all see things differently. It’s part of what strengthens a society, a cause, a forward motion for change. No one made you the boss of feminism. STFU, noob.’
In fact, they dogpiled the ‘not feminist’. I saw this happen a couple of times. Eventually, I stopped reading the comments unless the post was so damn WTF that I felt I had to get a grip on some kind of reality.
Anyway, the shiny world listens to voices of non-white women. These are POC, these are black, Asian, mixed, everyone. Only in Feministing.com, I began to notice a pattern. The world was divided into three races: white, black, and not our country (aka not our problem). The Not Our Problem women were generally given some kind of token feel good support, but no real conversations evolved. WTF indeed. And the only mixed people were half black, or half Jewish, or something that was not Asian. Actually, aside from like two posts, Asians need not apply. And if you were something other than a straight up halfsie? I guess you existed in that imaginary fraction of POC who are not black but still live in the USA, but don’t really exist. You can go sit with the Asians.
So the shine really had some gaping scraps now, like a shitty piece of kiddy jewelry you get for a buck and carry around for more than a day. But I kept going back. It was like an addiction, part of my daily routine. I just couldn’t quite put into words why it made me so exasperated to see that site, over and over.
One of the ladies on the posting roster made a blurb about how she saw a white guy wearing what some of us call ghetto chic, basically a mock gangsta getup. But he lived in the inner city.
Here’s an exercise: You see a guy sitting in the inner city in a fast food restaurant, eating. Do you ask - how long have you lived here? Do you ask - where do you live? Work? Play? Who are your friends? What is your upbringing? Do you have both parents, are you adopted? Do you have a heritage? A culture? A tight societal enclave separated from the mainstream through clothing, in jokes, and a plethora of subtle facial and body gestures that make up a language unto itself?
Are you from the area?
If he wears clothes that you would expect on someone of another skin color, do you get so angry that you run off half cocked and post something on a supposedly feminist website?
And when a white woman posts a comment asking if it would insult people of Asian descent if she were to wear a kimono in daily life (even though she has studied Japanese and been to Japan many times in an effort to learn about and respect their culture) - do you jump in snidely and say that’s not the same thing?
That last one is a trick question. Silly goose, Asian people don’t exist!
The shine was nearly completely gone at this point, as I watched the board devolve into a bizarre circle jerk of backpatting about how she really should have gotten in that kid’s face or something like that. The thing was, it wasn’t her neighborhood. Honestly, if the kid’s lived there his whole life, who the motherfuck are you to come in and tell him he cannot identify as he always has?
Around this time, gawker or some celebrity chaser site made their own feminist web site. I didn’t really check it for details or add it to my routine. One feminist train wreck is enough, thankyouverymuch. Anyway, Jezebel (the site) has some okay posts once in a while that try to connect to young feminists with some misguided posts on American Apparel (thin people need to wear clothes too, FFS). Then came the post on gray rape.
Gray rape was this funky little bullshit thing about how it’s date rape only not really, or how if you say no in the middle of sex, it’s gray rape. Something like that. So one of the posters on Jezebel’s pool makes an entry about how her experience was gray rape, not date rape. Because gray rape means you haven’t really been raped, or whatevs. The thing is I think the point she was trying to make is that when ‘real’ rape happens, there’s a victim. She didn’t want to be a victim, so this gray rape thing was a real boon. It meant she could acknowledge what had happened to her without falling to the floor dramatically, or turning into a vengeance seeking whotchum like TV says we’re supposed to.
So Feministing.com catches ahold of this. The main poster that time went off about the horrors of gray rape. If it’s rape, it’s rape. I think another problem I have with them is that they refuse to deal with the real issue. They fall back on the comfortable stance of POC exist! And like gay people are okay! But only gay women! And black people! (Asians, anyone? Hell, immigrants? Haven’t seen much of those women, either).
The real issue with gray rape was echoed over and over: why is the rape victim a ‘victim’? Is there something wrong with her? There’s something wrong with victims, everyone knows that. But there isn’t. Feministing fell into its own trap. The new (new new new? Wave?) feminism is about changing perceptions. Do men see women as people? Or as something other? Okay, let’s change that. When men see women as people, as equals, we’ve made progress. Believe or not, we’ve got a helluva ways to go.
Do we see victims as having something fundamentally wrong with them and being forever broken and tainted by their experience? Okay, let’s change that. Not necessarily by rolling out this gray rape bull, but giving people a chance to try out these new words to define a deeply traumatic experience with some distance may work - at first. If they need that distance, give it to them. Like I said, who the fuckity fuck are you to define what words she may and may not use to speak about herself and her experiences? I know you’re worried that some pundit will grab onto this and go ‘see! Rape isn’t real! Goddamn women.’ But why are you worried about what the men think before you’ve even listened to the women?
The straw that broke the camel’s back popped up with this elections crap. Everyone’s dogging on Hillary Clinton, Clinton, the not yet prezzed Clinton, about her laugh, her neckline, etc. Why not dog on her so-called experience? Why not dog on her bitter war waged on Obama in a tasteless, dirty, shamefully public manner? So Feministing.com calls newssites out on their behavior and all is well and good.
One of the things used to keep women down, at least in our societal perception, is the freedom or lack of freedom regarding sex and reproduction. This is apparent in abortion issues, contraception issues, childbirth, natural or c-section, midwife or hospital, OTC birth control or skyrocketing costs. Simple jibes about her vagina and use thereof. Anytime an article appears on Digg.com and has to do with a woman the diggers don’t like, out come the gendered words. Whore, bitch, slut. It gets old.
You know what else gets old? Hypocrisy. Feministing.com, watchdog of Clinton and the gender wars makes a post about Guliani and his new slogan. But they choose to do so in such a way that it pulls them right down to and below the level of the sites they called out regarding every snotty remark made about Clinton the not yet prez. The other sites have yet to wonder about Clinton’s sexual status, her possession of STD’s or lack of, how many men she has in the sack. Guess who pops up with that one liner about the now dropping out G-man (okay, I’ll admit. He does look damn scary. But no one said you had to be telegenic to run for president…oh, wait).
I make my last comment, expressing disappointment about the sexism in the post. One commenter agrees with me. One of the moderators and several other commenters are quick to tell me STFU, noob.
That’s not my kind of feminism.
So - this was really quite cathartic. I’ve taken Feministing.com off my daily routine, and am quite happy being a feminist in my own right, working to make change in the world on my own terms. I guess Feministing is called lite for a reason. Black people exist, but you know, so do Asian people. The disabled need to be heard, but are they welcome under our umbrella of inclusive feminism? Without including these people and so many more, aren’t we kind of sliding back into the sixties when the then new wave feminists got worried about losing the POC voice amid the sea of white women and their right to choose?
:( And to kick my inner child’s carcass back to life, one last childish jibe: stop calling Jezebel hypocrites without looking in the mirror first, fuckers.