This is fucking epic

[fierceawakening]

and I love it.

I'm not as fond of the song as I am of other songs of hers, but the concept? Goddamn.

Click to view

I have to say here how glad I am to have a fabulously kickass femme friend in my life to show me wonderful, wonderful stuff like this. HELL YES, WITH SPARKLES.

On that note I've been seeing rather a bit of nastiness aimed at feminine people lately,

Comments

[niyazi_a]

Of course it's for the money: I have students who dance for music videos or in non-strip clubs. For the money and what they think will lead to a full time career. The latter aim has never come true. They get the money, way less than they should be paid because they're not trained dancers and it's all under the table. And when next month's crop of girls comes up or they put on a few pounds...they discover that they didn't have that much power at all, when the callbacks stop coming.

Our youth obsessed culture has certain malignancies. And the pressure to be 'pretty' in a very narrow culturally circumscribed definition can have a dark side. Eating disorders. Youth obsessive treatments such as botox and chemical peels. Plastic surgery that turn a woman's breasts from objects of her pleasure to objects of someone else's (80% of boob jobs result in permanent loss of sensation on the breast).

My students are ripe for this sort of cultural pressure. Is it wrong I want to suggest they can push back? That everything's not 'fine' with our society's definition of the roles they can play?

Worse: is it wrong to suggest that they can also be *more* than their wardrobe? Have thinking minds and feeling hearts and careers as well as clothes and shoes and families? That they have an inner life that matches the outer?

Or.....I'm a feminazi b****, who is just jealous because I can't pull off haute couture. ^____^

[fierceawakening]

I don't actually disagree with you about the malignancy of the youth culture, or even the malignancy of the emphasis on a particular conception of beauty. (I can't imagine anyone would think I WOULD disagree with any of that.)

I just think... I spent many years in feminist circles, and I saw a lot of people really NOT being discerning about when they judged people. I saw a lot of people saying things like "Young women aren't feminists because they're IGNORANT and STUPID."

Not much fun to be called ignorant when you spent half of grad school trying to twist yourself into an ideology that is really, really obsessed with its own purity. I mean, YOU don't seem to be -- you write the kind of stuff that got me called ignorant or threatening and got my more feminine friends called fake feminists and infiltrators -- but when the whole movement is shot through with

"oh, she said she thinks we're piling on! She must not GET WHAT WE MEAN! IF WE EXPLAIN IT AGAIN SHE WON'T BE OFFENDED!"

rather than actually, you know, *talking* about why some of this stuff is actually *complicated*

yeah, I left. Yeah, I feel ill when I see people going "Most women who wear makeup are not using their brains, but sometimes there's a Lady Gaga!" Yeah, I'm tired of that.

I probably didn't teach in the same places you did, but yes, I saw more femininity in young female students than I did anything else. And is that culturally conditioned? Probably. But... I didn't meet anyone who I'd call stupid, even among those I thought carried it to a weird degree. And no one ever said to me "All I want's a huz-bin."

So could be our experiences are just different. But, uh... do you know for sure that these young women are all shallow? Because I'm... not understanding you, really.

[fierceawakening]

and of course I am okay with you saying everything's not fine with the roles society forces on us. FFS, I am a female, masculine top who likes feminine male bottoms and a whole lot of other lovely people besides. I grew up hearing that I was wrong, bad, a usurper, a threat, or maybe just a failure at every turn, damn it.

[niyazi_a]

Yes. I do have students who tell me that their entire purpose is to get married and be taken care of as a man. Absolutely. The first week of class when they write their 'in five years...' writing sample. I have them tell me that that's why they're in community college rather than real college, because it'd be a waste of money to go to a real college and just be a 'housewife' (their term, not mine). But they've been told they need some college, so...here they are in my class. I don't judge them for anything other than selling their brains a little short. I think they could do a LOT better than crappy comm coll, honestly. I don't judge their desire to have a family or to raise children. I do wish they'd give themselves a bit more of a chance, explore a bit more. Get out of the county at least once in their lives. Not grab the first guy who looks 'good enough.' If you must accuse me of being judgmental, that's where it lies: I wish they'd explore a bit more.

I don't think they're 'stupid' or 'shallow' or 'ignorant'--those are words you brought into this conversation. I think they're inexperienced. We ALL were at age 18. We all thought we knew everything and no one could tell us anything about the world because they were freaky and old and totally uncool. That's not 'stupid' or 'shallow'--that's...being 18, I think.

It's just as unrewarding being shut down because you're old and unattractive and unmarried, as being judged as ignorant because you're young and pretty.

But my whole point was in the actual post is that being shut down by them, being told to shut up and that I nothing valid to say because I was old, etc, was frustrating. I reserve my right to be frustrated.

But this is your LJ, so...I will shut up. ^__^

[fierceawakening]

Your right to be frustrated is something I totally understand and support. I get some of the same flack for not having "found a man" from some parts of my family. I do "have a man" -- I just don't have what they'd recognize as a relationship they want to see me in, and that's not even counting the kinky shit. :-)

So yeah, I get that. I really do.

I just... I have a really twingey radar when it comes to these things. I know I spent all my life feeling like I was wrong, defective, not female enough because everything I wanted out of intimacy was "backwards," as the culture told it to me. I thought I'd find a home in feminism. Instead, I found people scared of my power fetish, people scared of my darker side, people scared of my questions about how and why gender mattered. It really made me disillusioned and angry.

That's not because I don't listen to wise old feminists, though. I just wish some people understood that my disillusionment means more than that.

I think you do, but that... presses buttons.