Finally, a makeup advertisement addressing the fact that makeup is an ARTFORM, and isn’t only used to “hide your flaws”.
YES! I love this!
But like deciding to devote a book to a character from literary canon or a figure from history whose previously consigned to obscurity does not automatically win you the mantle of being a Feminist Writer with a capital F or even a woman-friendly one.
Especially if the route you choose to take to make said character likable and/or sympathetic is to set them on one end of a spectrum (be it “good” or “clever” or “normal” or whatever one-note trait you decide to centre their characterisation round) whilst placing a stick figure version of another woman (typically better known and/or exalted) at the other end, for readers to essentially hiss at whenever they draw close.
That is not “being woman-friendly” and worse still, it’s plain lazy writing to bring characters into being for the sheer sake of having them “liked” or “disliked”. Of course, villains are a narrative necessity but good villains are not created in vacuums - you can still give your heroine an antagonist without reducing them both to single-characteristic templates.
You can write a good novel about Mary Boleyn without tearing down Anne Boleyn. You can write a good novel about Morgan le Fey without tearing down Guinevere. You can write a good novel about Penelope without tearing down Helen of Troy. I could go on.
And if you can’t…well you don’t deserve to be valourised as a good writer and you certainly don’t deserve any feminist medals, goddamn.
If a novel is divided between Good Women and Bad Women, it is not a feminist novel.
I don’t care whether the Good Woman is a virtuous tower maiden and the Bad Woman has vagina dentata and knows how to use them or if the Good Woman is a sexy Wiccan part-time knight and the Bad Woman a moralizing icicle in skirts. If the women earn their morality by Doing Womanhood Right and Doing Womanhood Wrong, if the author can’t write a Good Woman without showing the malevolence of Bad Women who aren’t like her, the book’s not feminist. The paradigms themselves don’t matter.
sabrina_il (via tumblinfeminist)
YES! I still watch TV shows and read magazines and enjoy things that have problematic aspects, but that doesn’t make me any worse of a feminist. Feminism doesn’t require you to become an ascetic about all media. It just means acknowledging that things are wrong and could be changed.
(via stfuconservatives)
PSA post to my fellow feminists
trans*women can’t appropriate a woman’s identity
why?
because they are women.
Maybe this needs repeating- but being a woman transcends your genitalia or your chromosomes Being a woman is how you identify. That’s it. That’s all it takes to identify as a women. If you know in your heart of hearts that you are a woman- that’s all it is.
So don’t be that douche bag that has the audacity to degrade a transwoman or demand her to prove her womanhood. She owes you no explanation.
Now if you really are a feminist, you will defend her existence to the death and ensure that she always has a safe space and voice with in the movement.
can I just voice a few unpopular opinions regarding my take on feminism?
- the idea of a damsel in distress is not anti-feminist until the need for saving becomes the sole purpose of the character. while stories of women who don’t need saving are groundbreaking and empowering, it’s, in my opinion, anti-feminist to place the character so high up on a pedestal that they will never need saving. feminism isn’t about glorifying a gender; it’s about equality. so a woman (who is defined outside of being a damsel in distress) that needs saving at some point is, therefore, not anti-feminist.
- the structure of marriage, family, and what may be viewed as the stereotypical lifestyle that follows is not anti-feminist. some women choose this lifestyle. some women want to be stay at home moms and raise a family and do household work while their husband provides financially, versus being a career woman. and there is nothing wrong with any of those choices.
- while many of us agree that slut shaming is anti-feminist, the girl who chooses not to engage in a sexual lifestyle is not anti-feminist either, unless they are participating in slut shaming themselves. some women will choose to remain abstinent, some may even choose to wait until marriage or at least until they’re in a long-term relationship to have sex. that’s perfectly acceptable. shaming them for that choice is defying feminism.
- females and female characters do not need to be doctors, lawyers, scientists, physicists, linguists, psychologists, intellectual creatures, or super heroes with super powers to be strong women. this idea in itself is anti-feminist, as it implies that anything mediocre or below is shameful. feminism is an inclusive cause, meaning that every person of every background, belief, status, orientation, and intellectual level are represented equally.
disclaimer: I don’t claim to represent everyone’s ideas of what feminism is and should be. the only person I’m representing is myself and my own opinions. and if you just happen to agree with me, that is fantastic!
Portrait of Juana Inés de la Cruz at age 15
Juana Inés de la Cruz de Asuaje y Ramirez was born in San Miguel Nepantla, near Mexico City. She was the illegitimate child of a Spanish Captain, Pedro Manuel de Asuaje, and a Criollo woman, Isabel Ramirez. Her illegitimacy was due to her mother’s refusal to marry.
She learned how to read and write at the age of three. By age five, she could do accounts, and at age eight she composed a poem on the Eucharist. By adolescence, she had mastered Greek logic, and at age thirteen she was teaching Latin to young children. She also learned the Aztec language of Nahuatl, and wrote some short poems in that language.
In 1664, at age sixteen, Juana was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother’s permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university. Not being allowed to do this, she continued her studies privately. She came under the tutelage of the Vicereine Leonor Carreto, wife of Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. The viceroy, wishing to test her learning and intelligence (she being then seventeen years old), invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer, unprepared, many questions, and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. The manner in which she acquitted herself astonished all present, and greatly increased her reputation. Her literary accomplishments soon made her famous throughout New Spain.
She was much admired in the vice-royal court, and declined several proposals of marriage, for in the spirit of her mother, she refused to marry. In 1667, she entered the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of St. Joseph as a postulant. In 1669, she entered the Convent of the Order of St. Jérôme.
In Juana’s time, the convent was often seen as the only refuge in which a female could properly attend to the education of her mind, spirit, body and soul. It was Juana’s only refuge from marriage. Nonetheless, she wrote literature centered on freedom. In her poem Redondillas, she defends a woman’s right to be respected as a human being. Therein, she also criticizes the sexism of the society of her time, poking fun at and revealing the hypocrisy of men who publicly condemn prostitutes, yet privately pay women to perform on them what they have just said is an abomination to God. Sor Juana asks the sharp question in this age-old matter of the purity/whoredom split found in base male mentality: “Who sins more, she who sins for pay? Or he who pays for sin?” For these works, she is regarded as one of the first feminists.
Foolish men who wrongly accuse women, Without seeing that you are the cause of what you fault them for; You want with unthinking presumption to find in the woman you seek… Either love women for what you force them to be, or fashion them according to what you want them to be.
If you’re like me and you read a lot of YA fiction aimed at girls, you can recognize the tendency of YA authors to appeal to (what they consider to be) their base with so-called “average,” “nice,” and “relatable” protagonists. These girls tend to be “average” looking, though that’s only on their heads. Anyone with eyes can see that their pale skin is actually luminescent, their straight brown hair is glossy and hides their beautiful sharp cheek bones and long eyelashes and that their eyes are really pools of some jewel tone — think sapphire and emerald and occasionally amethyst, despite green eyes being increasingly rare and amethyst eyes being not a…real..human thing… — and of course, they are always thin (but they never try, fast metabolisms, you know). These average looking girls are always sweet and kind to everyone; except of course the main bitch. This bitch is usually blonde, though that’s not written in stone, who walks like sex with a perfect breasts and lips and butt and an AMEX black card to match. The sweetness and kindness and averageness of the YA protag is always contrasted with the luscious sex appeal and ambition of the YA bitch. With some exception (varying hair colors, sometimes the blonde is sweet and the brunette is a bitch, sometimes they’re rich), these tropes are in 70-80% of YA chick lit in any major book store. They span the genres, from remakes of the Illiad (Troy High is a thing that exists) to paranormal romance to plain old contemporary high school fiction, these are the girls that girls read about, and that shit is harmful!
Girls are being unwittingly taught that in order to be happy and get the guy, they can’t be ruthless or vain, they can’t have confidence, they can’t have ambition. No, YA protags never snap at anyone or want things (other than the Main Boy of course) or try hard at anything. They just exist to be a blank slate to project upon, except for the virtue of Niceness which they always have, to prove that they are the Good One. The Good One can eat as much as she wants and never gain weight, she’s always overlooked until the last minute when the Main Boy falls madly in love with her, she somehow steals a group of friends from the Bitch with that niceness and sweetness, and lives happily ever after! (At least until college.)
My question is, if we continue to teach adolescent girls to be Nice and wait, how are we going to get anywhere? If we teach them to prize docility and loathe ambition, how are we going to fight? How can we in the same breath tell our children to be extraordinary while bombarding them with media that limits them? Do you think CEOs and lawyers and surgeons and agents and actresses and politicians and anyone with power got there by being nice? If we want the Fortune 500 to include more women, how can we continue teaching girls to sit and wait and hope that their niceness will bring everything good to them?
The answer is, we can’t.
Fuck niceness.
Fuck YA protags.
Just say no.
Stop writing girls that sit and wait and are Nice and start showing that wanting things for yourself is bad. Stop telling girls that ambition and sex and trying makes you a bitch! Or, even better, stop saying that being a bitch is a harmful thing because it’s not. The only harmful thing here that I see is the idea that the best thing a girl can be is nice.
I’m crushing pretty hard on Patrick Stewart now“I am doing this for my Mother who earned 3 pounds 10 shillings for working a forty hour week in a weaving shed.”—Patrick Stewart
His mom was also an abuse victim and he’s an anti-domestic violence advocate.
Sir Patrick Stewart is, hands down, one of my favorite people.
I love this man with a passion. He’s an amazing person.
Reblogged to add source. Also to say that 3 pounds 10 shillings is worth about $53.
Just reminding people how awesome Patrick Stewart is.
Perfect human being.
