This humorless, dead-earnest feminism that denounces even the mild criticism of some talentless dime-a-dozen singer as “sexist” is beyond annoying.
Finally! Life without parole is ruled an unconstitutional punishment for minors.
A very powerful response to people who keep chirping “rape is not about sex” like trained parrots.
Great news from Germany! “A court in Germany has ruled that circumcising young boys for religious reasons amounts to bodily harm. The court said that a child’s right to physical integrity trumps religious and parental rights.”
This analysis of the Texas Republican Party platform made my hair stand on end.
A very interesting post on Justice Scalia.
I commiserate with the suffering of this fellow caffeine addict.
What I find very disturbing about these stories of people who supposedly raised great children and now share the wisdom of how they got there is that nobody ever consults the actual “great children” on how happy they are as a result of this parenting. The author of the linked post has heard from his friend that the friend’s daughters feel no resentment against their parents. How can anybody know that without asking the daughters themselves? So many people are in a hurry to declare themselves amazing parents without waiting to see if their children share that opinion. Even though the only people who can judge the quality of parenting are the children subjected to said parenting.
Why are Americans more religious tan Europeans?
Why are all bloggers called Clarissa so similar? 🙂
“Men have long been the predominant sources for the news media on issues such as the economy, politics and the military. And a new analysis of campaign coverage found that women aren’t even the principal news source on a topic they would presumably know best: women’s issues. . . Michael Howe, a spokesman for 4th Estate, said his group’s findings suggest that reporters might have “an unconscious bias” when it comes to selecting people who offer expertise and opinions about the news.” Another explanation is that it’s much easier to get American men to offer opinions than American women. In class, I have to work very hard to pry an opinion about anything from women. They tend to feel very uncertain and apologetic about the possibility that they might opine on some topic. Maybe the journalists just tire of fighting with women to get them to respond to questions instead of hearing them apologize for existing for fifteen minutes.
If you are a professor in Illinois, beware of skipping the ethics training!
If you want to be heard by a group of people, don’t address them with an insult. One would think this is obvious but here a blogger insults feminists in the very title of his post and then seems to expect the group he so blatantly despises to be interested in his opinion. Mind-boggling.
Yet another fantastically stupid article on the bugbear of “objectification.” I’m going to have a huge collection soon. I wonder what prevents the authors of these boring and extremely long pieces from stating honestly and concisely, “Anything with sexual overtones bothers me for a vague reason I can’t explain and I hide that issue behind a pretense of having a political stance.”
What, if anything, did the Founding Fathers “envision”?
People have the strangest definitions of what “a radical feminist” is. Here is a woman who claims to be one but who considers prostituting herself to buy medication for her dog and support her male partner. No discussion of the partner doing the same thing seems to be conducted. A clue: feminism is not about sacrificing your body to nurture others, be they men or pets. Still, these people are obviously suffering and it isn’t like the patriarchally minded don’t deserve assistance. Please consider helping them out if you can.
Americans seem to think that Obama inherited the current economic crisis from Bush yet did nothing to improve the economy.
And the post of the week from a truly brilliant Orthodox deacon from South Africa. I always wanted to write this post but he did it so much better. Do read.
Clarissa's Blog 
“In class, I have to work very hard to pry an opinion about anything from women. They tend to feel very uncertain and apologetic about the possibility that they might opine on some topic. “
I noticed that to. Our culture does not value women’s opinions as much as men’s.
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I value them! Yet they refuse to speak. And as for our culture, it has been rewarding me like crazy for being opinionated.
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Yeah, I always had a lot to say in my English classes. (My science classes tended to be less discussion-oriented, and not provide very many opportunities for participating in class. The labs were the participatory part of those courses).
Funny story: I had one professor who kept confusing me and another female student, though we look nothing alike — she was petite and blonde with curly hair, I am big and tall with long, straight brown hair, she tended to wear light colors and I tended to wear dark ones — and even though we often had very different interpretations of the same text, just because we both spoke up so much in class! No other similarities, but that was enough to make us one person in his mind …
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I wrote a piece on the 20th anniversary of the Planned Parenthood v. Casey Supreme Court decision for my state’s PP Advocates blog.
And also one at my own blog on crap high school PE teachers and square dancing.
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Thank you for that very flattering description 🙂
I just read the chap who wrote about ‘funfems’. I’m not sure who these people might be, but I imagine he means non-serious feminists; people who have no real grounding and/or interest in structural roots of gender equity. You ridicule such people quite often yourself, and I am sure they deserve it. Plus, it is my experience that the things he says about the police force is largely accurate. Unfortunate, certainly, but all too very real. So what, exactly, did you find offensive about the post? I’m very curious.
PS: And thank you especially for introducing me to ‘Notes from the underground’ 🙂
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No, funfems are people like me. It means feminists who enjoy sex, don’t hate men, and think life can be good EVEN if you are a woman.
I always get called this in the blogosphere. Which us why this makes me angry.
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Aaand that completely confuses me. Feminists are supposed to be misoandrist self-hating prudes?
You really must share your blogroll once again, Clarissa. I would *love* to read some of the people who believe this stuff. They must provide a lot of entertainment.
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Here is Francois Tremblay trying to pretend he is a girl, notice that the entries after “Hello World” go into pure Francois Tremblay psycho babble.
http://mechantechatonne.wordpress.com/2011/09/
His wife appears in briefly in this video, they eat marshmallows cooked over burning computer paper.
Franky Tremblay 2007
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Duct tape someone to a chair and make them watch this.
I agree with your Hypothesis that Francois needs to get “Laid”.
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I didn’t know there was a video component to the whole thing. 🙂 🙂
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Definitely it seems the new Americans are distinctly unhealthy with a hunger for toxic chemicals on their food substances.
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Also, that’s a funny sentence he made in the second video: “You are trying to apply a dichotomy to a situation where there probably isn’t one.”
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One of my favorite Tremblay quotes,
“I never initiated attacks on anyone. Everyone on the “shit list” had attacked my blog or myself publically at a previous time. I did it to attract more controversy – that’s how you get people to read you. You know, the whole point of having a blog ?”
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One of my favorite Tremblay quotes,
“I never initiated attacks on anyone. Everyone on the “shit list” had attacked my blog or myself publically at a previous time. I did it to attract more controversy – that’s how you get people to read you. You know, the whole point of having a blog ? “
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” I did it to attract more controversy – that’s how you get people to read you.”
– Ha!! Didn’t I say from the start that he was just self-promoting?? And people called me cynical for that. Thank you for letting me know I was right!
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I haven’t heard this until today:
Another news. On Monday 25 June 2012 in Netanya, Israel:
It’s the 1st official, created by Israeli government monument to Red Army.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/06/22/putins-official-visit-to-israel-for-red-army-memorial-syria-and-iran-come-after-photos/
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If you’re interested, Sexuality Project is going strong:
http://phoenixandolivebranch.wordpress.com/category/sexuality-project/
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That’s horrible:
There are a number of people who’ve been put in jail because it was believed they were guilty of a federal crime, but when it turned out that this was not in fact the case, there’s nobody whose job it is to tell anyone that these people shouldn’t be locked up.
What was the “best” for me, was this quote:
Justice Department officials said it is not their job to notify prisoners that they might be incarcerated for something that they now concede is not a crime. And although they have agreed in court filings that the men are innocent, they said they must still comply with federal laws that put strict limits on when and how people can challenge their convictions in court.
…
These cases are largely unknown outside the courthouses here, but they have raised difficult questions about what, if anything, the government owes to innocent people locked in prisons.
“It’s been tough,” said Ripley Rand, the U.S. attorney in Greensboro, N.C. “We’ve spent a lot of time talking about issues of fundamental fairness, and what is justice.”
If anything? Most basic justice is “tough”?
I notice the original article has a pic of a Black man. Probablt helps to call it “tough”.
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Well, I don’t really consider funfems to be feminists. They are feminists in name only. This is why I call them “funfems” and not “feminists.” Feminists don’t try to convince other women to submit to the male gaze and treat PIV as “fun” and “empowering,” that’s just absurd.
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“Feminists don’t try to convince other women to submit to the male gaze and treat PIV as “fun” and “empowering,” that’s just absurd.”
– Actually, feminists don’t submit to men telling them how to call themselves, how to have sex, and what to enjoy. Sex, for your information, is not “empowering.” At least, not to healthy people. It’s orgasmic and ecstatic. It’s sad that nobody wants you and you have no idea about what sex is all about.
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“Actually, feminists don’t submit to men telling them how to call themselves, how to have sex, and what to enjoy.”
Funny, I am not telling any feminist what to call themselves. Funfems are free to lie and call themselves feminists all they want. I am saying *I* don’t call them feminists.
” It’s sad that nobody wants you”
LOL what? Personal insults now? That’s just pathetic. When did I attack you?
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“Funny, I am not telling any feminist what to call themselves. Funfems are free to lie and call themselves feminists all they want. I am saying *I* don’t call them feminists”
– And I’m saying that *I* have the right to express my opinion on my blog about your attempts to analyze a political movement you know nothing about.
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“I especially like it when some guy tries to inform me on how I should have sex.”
I never “tried to inform you how you should have sex.” There was actually NO discussion of sex on my entry. So where did you get this bizarre straw man?
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For English speaking people, PIV means “penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse.” If you meant something different when you mentioned PIV, you should have explained that.
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Again, what are you talking about? There is NOTHING in my entry about PIV. It’s an entry about why women should not cooperate with cops. Why are you obsessing about sex and PIV when there is nothing in the entry about sex or PIV?
If this is some kind of code, you’ll have to explain it to me, because apparently I am too dumb to get it.
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I’m talking about the comment YOU left on my blog yesterday and that said: “Well, I don’t really consider funfems to be feminists. They are feminists in name only. This is why I call them “funfems” and not “feminists.” Feminists don’t try to convince other women to submit to the male gaze and treat PIV as “fun” and “empowering,” that’s just absurd.” This is what I’m discussing here. Scroll up in this thread and you will see this comment.
It’s very weird that people would leave comments and then start pretending like the didn’t so soon after that.
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Yes, and? When did I tell you how to have sex? I am telling you what my position is regarding the word “feminism” (stating the obvious fact that someone who supports the exploitation of women cannot be a feminist), not what I think about your sexual activity, which is none of my business. I have never, ever told anyone how they should have sex. The fact that you persist in accusing me of this is just bizarre and shows me that you are unable to object to my initial entry or my use of the term “funfem.”
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This discussion has run into a dead end. I see the comment: ” Feminists don’t try to convince other women to submit to the male gaze and treat PIV as “fun” and “empowering,” that’s just absurd.”” as an attempt by a man to tell women which kind of sex they should not enjoy because if they do, you will deny them the right to call themselves feminists. I find that attitude extremely offensive to women. I also find the word “funfem” to be insulting to women. I have found that only passionate woman-haters use this nasty terminology.
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So… the fact that I exclude people who cheer the exploitation of women as being feminists entails an obligation on your part to… not enjoy sex? Because apparently you need a MAN’s approval to call yourself a FEMINIST??
Clarissa, I seriously can’t think of anyone who’s less of a feminist than you. But if you want to call yourself a feminist, I couldn’t care less. Just leave me out of it.
And refusing to support the exploitation of women makes me a woman-hater? Really?
About the kindest thing I can say at this point is that you’re full of it.
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“So… the fact that I exclude people who cheer the exploitation of women as being feminists entails an obligation on your part to… not enjoy sex”
– Exploitation of women in this statement still refers to the PIV, I presume? Which is still sexual intercourse?
“Because apparently you need a MAN’s approval to call yourself a FEMINIST??”
– No, I need to give men approval or withdraw it.
“And refusing to support the exploitation of women makes me a woman-hater? Really?”
– The exploitation is still PIV? I ask because you seem to keep forgetting what you said 3 seconds ago. What makes you a woman-hater is you attempts to equate PIV with exploitation and your use of the word “funfem.”
“Clarissa, I seriously can’t think of anyone who’s less of a feminist than you.”
– Why should I or any other woman care about your opinion about us? Who are you to offer your judgment on this subject?
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“- Exploitation of women in this statement still refers to the PIV, I presume? Which is still sexual intercourse?”
No… exploitation of women means the exploitation of women. Treating women as second class citizens, treating women as objects, treating women as a means by which men’s constructed needs can be satisfied. Which includes, but is not by far limited to, PIV.
“- No, I need to give men approval or withdraw it.”
Since no man by definition can be a feminist, what is the relevance of your approval? Do you rubber stamp “sensitive” men so they can be free to rape women while hiding under the cloak of “being a feminist”?
“- The exploitation is still PIV?”
Again, I can’t believe how someone who supposedly is a feminist does not know what exploitation of women means! PIV is one way in which women are exploited, but not the only way.
“I ask because you seem to keep forgetting what you said 3 seconds ago. What makes you a woman-hater is you attempts to equate PIV with exploitation and your use of the word “funfem.””
By your definition, feminists (people who actually oppose the exploitation of women) are all woman-haters. Do you realize how insane you sound?
“- Why should I or any other woman care about your opinion about us? Who are you to offer your judgment on this subject?”
Well YOU seem to care quite a bit, since you have stated that you must change your behavior to conform to my definition of what a feminist is. YOU also posted about my entry on your own blog, showing that you really care who I call a funfem. If you didn’t care about my opinion, you wouldn’t be posting my entries and you wouldn’t be using personal attacks against me in your own comments thread. You simply would move on. But you’re not, so we are still here…
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““- Exploitation of women in this statement still refers to the PIV, I presume? Which is still sexual intercourse?”
No… exploitation of women means the exploitation of women. Treating women as second class citizens, treating women as objects, treating women as a means by which men’s constructed needs can be satisfied. Which includes, but is not by far limited to, PIV.”
– So removing the empty meaningless verbiage, you do equate sexual practices crowds of women dare to enjoy with their exploitation? That is precisely a condescending woman-hating attitude of yours I’m bringing to your attention. It is not your place to tell other people, people whose experiences you cannot conceivably share what constitutes their exploitation. On the subject of exploitation of a group to which you do not belong, you cannot possibly have anything legitimate to say. Your only acceptable role is to sit quietly and listen. Anything else is grossly offensive to that group of people. Got it?
“If you didn’t care about my opinion, you wouldn’t be posting my entries and you wouldn’t be using personal attacks against me in your own comments thread. You simply would move on. ”
– This is a very pathetic and childish attempt to manipulate me and script my behavior. What are you, five years old?
The rest of your comment is completely meaningless and incomprehensible. You need to work on your writing and on your logical skills. At this point, they are both quite inferior. You’d be much better served improving yourself intellectually than blabbing about things you are incapable of comprehending.
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I don’t think you understand what “hatred” means. Raping a woman is woman-hatred. Using, abusing and murdering prostitutes, or promoting the use, abuse and murder of prostitutes, is woman-hatred. Fighting against women’s rights or saying that women should remain inferior is woman-hatred. Belittling women for being worried about their spouse’s porn use is woman-hatred. Disagreeing with a woman is not woman-hatred.
“On the subject of exploitation of a group to which you do not belong, you cannot possibly have anything legitimate to say. Your only acceptable role is to sit quietly and listen. Anything else is grossly offensive to that group of people. Got it?”
FUCK YOU. I do not need to be a child to be against child trafficking and child abuse. I do not need to be a black person to be against racism. I do not need to be a woman to be against the exploitation of women. And I don’t care if it offends anyone. I will not sit quietly and remain silent when I see evil, and your demand that I do so IS offensive to anyone who cares about the truth, whether they are men or women, children or adults, white or black.
It’s obvious by now that you have no respect for me, but you have no right to tell me to shut up in the face of evil. You have no right to try to guilt me into silence. You are a despicable human being. You sure as hell are no feminist. You are a sociopath and I have just exposed you for who you really are. I am done with you.
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“Disagreeing with a woman is not woman-hatred.”
– Please pay attention. This isn’t about disagreeing. It’s about you labeling women for engaging in practices you don’t approve of.
“FUCK YOU. I do not need to be a child to be against child trafficking and child abuse. I do not need to be a black person to be against racism.”
– Control the fit of hysteria. You can be against racism but it is not your place to tell black people if their anti-racist stance is legitimate in your eyes or if they are being anti-=racist in a way you approve.
“I will not sit quietly and remain silent when I see evil, and your demand that I do so IS offensive to anyone”
– Please don’t pretend that you don’t understand what it is I demand.
“It’s obvious by now that you have no respect for me, but you have no right to tell me to shut up in the face of evil. You have no right to try to guilt me into silence. You are a despicable human being. You sure as hell are no feminist. You are a sociopath and I have just exposed you for who you really are. I am done with you.”
– Poor little lonely boy, you need to get laid urgently. Your sexual misery has turned you into a total hysteric. I hope somebody takes pity on you and helps you release some of that pent-up sexual energy. Good luck!
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Look, I already said all there was to say. You are an evil sociopath. There is no reason for us to talk to each other any more. I will post an entry on what you said so I can expose you on my blog, and that’s the end of it. Please kill yourself.
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“Look, I already said all there was to say. You are an evil sociopath. There is no reason for us to talk to each other any more. I will post an entry on what you said so I can expose you on my blog, and that’s the end of it. Please kill yourself.”
– You are a funny little thing. 🙂 🙂 It’s OK, you’ll feel better the moment you take care of your sex deprivaton.
And I sure expect you to promote me on your small blog after all the visitors I sent to you. That would be only fair.
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Damn, she was no fun at all!
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I do agree with many of the “radfem” precepts but when they start positing that there is _no_ place for healthy, heterosexual sex, I draw the line. (And the acronym PIV is just silly.) To me, it’s akin to Catholics telling gay people that it’s OK to be gay as long as they live in chastity. Our patriarchal/puritanical society HAS made healthy heterosexual sex difficult for many people. But we should work on breaking away from that. Telling women that they can’t have healthy, fulfilling sex–one of the great joys of adult life–actually just replicates patriarchal norms.
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“Telling women that they can’t have healthy, fulfilling sex–one of the great joys of adult life–actually just replicates patriarchal norms.”
– I especially like it when some guy tries to inform me on how I should have sex. Seriously, you’ve got to be one bizarre creature.
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On the feminist, would-be prostitute issue – certainly, if a dog has cancer, you had better face the inevitable that it is on its way out. I don’t proclaim to be the greatest at facing issues of life and death, as I’ve never taken a dog to the vet to have it put down myself. Still, I face the issue very well philosophically. You’ve got to allow for this cycle as it is natural and inevitable, whereas prostituting oneself isn’t.
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What I find really striking is how people try to preserve middle-class realities (chemotherapy for a dog) in the midst of a lumpen lifestyle.
Of course, I agree completely with you in that it would be kinder to the old dog to let it go.
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Chemotherapy for a dog is an abomination. You do have to let the dog go. To elaborate on what I said yesterday and Marechera and his attitude to liberals, being a revolutionary is more like a sleep in the park than a walk in one. I confess, though, that I speak from a certain ignorance concerning what it might be like to expect a great deal from industrial infrastructures, like chemotherapy for a dog. I tend to expect too little, but I’m happier with life not being too complex. My mind is complex enough to keep me going for a few more lifetimes, so I demand that external reality not place too many requirements on me — such as caring for a dog that wasn’t going to live.
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Wait a minute. The person who wrote the radfems article is a man? Having read it I assumed the writer was female.
If so…a man telling women how to be feminists. How cute.
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That’s the funniest thing! He spends tons of time on his blog teaching women how to manage their bodies, have sex, not procreate, abort, etc. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
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You know, I was JUST about to make a comment about how I hate it when people claim that there are right and wrong ways to be feminists. Not that I agree with everyone’s personal choices; I just think that an ideology as vague and all-encompassing as feminism can be defined in many ways.
However. Now I’m going to amend that sentiment and say: if you’re a man telling women how to be feminists, you just might be doing it wrong.
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Francois banned me from his Blog for me asking him about how to implement his Forced Abortion a.k.a. “Pro Abortion” policy on a Global Basis.
He wants all Potential Lives to be sacrificed so people can try to focus on removing the “Suffering” from the lives of people like him and his wife.
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Of course, this is a policy that admits of no questioning because of its sheer stupidity. And then he is shocked that I consider him a woman hater.
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On the article about “objectification”, the media avoids showing the heads of fat people because they don’t want to seem to shame them as individuals and end up with a law suit. It’s not about showing bodies without heads in order to remove the subjectivity of the respective fat people. I don’t think the images displayed convey objectification, necessarily, since objectification is (paradoxically enough) a subjective attitude of being prone to treat other people as objects. One has to wait and see whether or not this attitude is present before assuming that it is — otherwise, like most forms of identity politics, you are engaging in objectification yourself (in this case, objectification of the potential onlooker).
I’ve mentioned here before the case of Georges Bataille and how he used prostitutes in order to engage in perverse forms of intersubjectivity. Feminists don’t seem to like this guy, but what he was involved in was not “objectification”.
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“On the article about “objectification”, the media avoids showing the heads of fat people because they don’t want to seem to shame them as individuals and end up with a law suit.”
– That’s exactly what I thought.
“One has to wait and see whether or not this attitude is present before assuming that it is — otherwise, like most forms of identity politics, you are engaging in objectification yourself (in this case, objectification of the potential onlooker).”
– Good point!
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Do you really think journalists ask a male instead of a female economics professor to offer their opinion on the economic crisis because they think the female profs would be too shy to give their opinion? I highly doubt that.
I think it is because the old role model of “expert=male” is deeply ingrained in the brains of most people in our culture. People in journalism should really make an effort to try to have a better gender balance in this respect, in order to offer female role models to girls.
Don’t you think it is possible that part of the reason that the women in your class are so quiet because they have spent their lives seeing men on TV explaining the world and offering opinions? As a teenager I was always thrilled when I heard a clever woman say something on TV, but it happened very very rarely. For example, in my home country the weather is presented by competent male meteorologists with a PhD, and by pretty young women who have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. This sends a terribly distorted message and it took me a some effort to get rid of this huge amount of “expert=male” brain-washing.
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Thing is, you can’t do anything to bring girls and women out of themselves, once they got stuck in that mode. Male and female roles become part of their identity and they’ll turn on you sometimes if you try to coax forth something different.
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“Don’t you think it is possible that part of the reason that the women in your class are so quiet because they have spent their lives seeing men on TV explaining the world and offering opinions”
– Do you want to know what I saw on TV and around me in my extremely patriarchal 3rd world culture? Believe me, it is so much worse than anything you can imagine seeing on TV here. Especially since every female TV character in the US that I can think of is very much into offering opinions. I can’t think of any popular recent TV show where women massively sit there in silence, cowered and scared of saying a word.
I have asked my female students once why this happened. They said they felt inhibited when male students were present and found it much easier to express their opinions where no men were present. I think from this answer it becomes very clear that these women are not irrational brainless creatures who act out what they saw on TV. Holding back their opinions is a choice they make and that choice has a purpose.
NOBODY WOULD ENGAGE IN ANY SUSTAINED COURSE OF ACTION UNLESS THAT COURSE OF ACTION BROUGHT THEM CERTAIN VALUABLE BENEFITS.
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//they felt inhibited when male students were present
Doesn’t their answer support what may follow from zinemin’s claim – that women are taught to feel inhibited, to be quiet in men’s presence?
Btw, I never felt that. A fear of audience is 1 thing, but gendered one in a classroom?
Which benefits can it bring?
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“Doesn’t their answer support what may follow from zinemin’s claim – that women are taught to feel inhibited, to be quiet in men’s presence”
– Again, with the passive voice. Taught by whom? This is a choice people make. Or not.
“Which benefits can it bring?”
– This is a declared choice of a role in life. Being passive, weak, confused and self-infantilized brings the enormous bonuses of not having to grow up. Back at Yale, in the graduate courses where participation was key (literature seminars are that way) the people who kept talking were immigrants with limited economic means. The poorer a person was, the more s/he talked and participated. The people who just sat there were most female students and the guy with a huge trust fund. The female students baked, though. Their participation in the class was to bring home-made baked goods. The one who baked the most boycotted her father for several months because he did not wholeheartedly support her plan of being a housewife and mentioned that he hoped she’d have a career. It’s like in the novel Irlanda that I keep recommending. The character there kills for the right not to grow up.
By the way, in my 22 years of teaching experience, the female student who has all the men in the classroom develop a huge crush on her is the one who keeps delivering her opinions more loudly than anybody else. 🙂
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I don’t think being influenced by what you see during all your life on TV makes you a brainless creature. Anorexia, for example, has become a wide-spread phenomenon also thanks the depiction of extremely thin models in the media. Sure, anorexia has some benefits, like the illusion of control, but it is also, unfortunately, deadly. Therefore, I think it would be great if it was normal for the mass media to show more normally sized women. It won’t happen, I know, but still, it would be better.
Similarly, shyness has benefits, like avoiding criticism, but it can also stunt growth and lead to misery. And seeing female experts on TV can help to overcome shyness. I am sure of that, because it was a huge relief for me to see a female physicist on TV when I was a teenager. This was good for my motivation, and so it might be for others, too.
By the way, women with opinions, and women who are experts, are not the same thing. I does not help to hear the strong opinions on world peace of the Miss Universe 2012, but it helps to hear the opinion on radioactive waste disposal of a female expert on nuclear physics.
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“Therefore, I think it would be great if it was normal for the mass media to show more normally sized women. It won’t happen, I know, but still, it would be better.”
– It will happen the moment super skinny people become the majority. What’s valued is what’s rare and hard to achieve.
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This is true, of course, but I think other factors are involved, too.
To provide a bit of context: I possess a body type that is rare among women, and hard for most women to achieve. I am large, broad-shouldered and muscular, like a man with breasts and hips. I got this way through years and years of intensive strength training, starting shortly after I went through puberty. I love my body for what it can do, and I love the way it looks, too.
However, most women do not aspire to have a body like mine. On the contrary, they do whatever they can to avoid it! Most men, though they admire what I can do, and the fact that I pursue strength and athletic excellence without apology, do not find my body sexually desirable. (This is, obviously, just fine; what they desire is their business.) Bodies like mine are nowhere to be seen in the media, unless you look at websites or magazines devoted to weightlifting. And most of those are geared toward men.
I have been in an environment where the skinny body type was, if not common, at least not all that rare, while the large, muscular body type was vanishingly rare among women. Still, it was the skinny body type that most people of either sex considered beautiful.
So, in my experience, it can’t be just rarity that makes a body type seem desirable,
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Let’s not confuse what people CLAIM to be attracted to because they think it’s the right thing with what they actually do find attractive. I’ve never seen any evidence that skinny people are even marginally more successful in their personal lives than non -skinny people.
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That’s true — the biggest disparity between what I experience and what a more conventionally beautiful woman experiences lies more in the area of how many random people flirt casually with me, announce that they would totally have sex with me, and otherwise loudly proclaim that they have socially acceptable sexual desires and aesthetic tastes. I do not get any of that, for which I am quite frankly grateful. But I *do* get people who are interested in having romantic and/or sexual relationships with me — not a lot, but some.
So I guess I am thinking of beauty-as-social-currency rather than the actual experience of beauty, which *is* very subjective.
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//A clue: feminism is not about sacrificing your body to nurture others, be they men or pets.
Do those issues have to be always connected/ contradicting? I mean, pets can’t ever earn money. This case may seem extreme: prostitution for a dying dog, but, as I understood, even without a dog they must get money fast not to become homeless. Also one has to “thank” American health system & safety net, which leads people to such position.
I don’t see the connection between choosing how far to go to help a dog and feminism.
As for a man, he works a lot, but, like she, can’t find a good job.
I suppose they: 1) don’t think any woman would be interested to pay him 2) he isn’t going to do such a thing and this can be seen as patriarchal. However, he doesn’t tell her to do it either.
Btw, have you written about sex work & feminism? Can’t a sex worker call herself a feminist in your eyes?
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“Btw, have you written about sex work & feminism? Can’t a sex worker call herself a feminist in your eyes?”
– I use the term “prostitution.” Of course, anybody can call themselves anything they want. But I’d need to find something out about such a person’s politics before I could say whether such an appellation makes sense to me.
The entire story (which I’m starting to suspect of being a bit of a hoax) really reminded me of Sonechka Marmeladova who is the perfect example of self-sacrificial patriarchal femininity.
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//I use the term “prostitution.”
Now another interesting topic for a post – who uses which terms and why. 🙂
I suppose feminists, who use “sex work”, feel “prostitution” has too long history, carries huge negative, shaming connotations. So they want to use more neutral, newer term, which stresses “it’s a work” component.
There have been & will be long, heated discussions trying to pinpoint to what amount it’s a work unlike *any* other (cleaning, doing massages, etc), even if you don’t consider physical heightened risk of STDs.
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“I suppose feminists, who use “sex work”, feel “prostitution” has too long history, carries huge negative, shaming connotations.”
“Sex work” can also be used as a catch-all phrase to describe porn stars, strippers, and phone sex girls as well as prostitutes. It was used, for example, by $pread magazine, which catered to people in all of those professions.
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I don’t understand why one can’t just call a stripper a stripper and a prostitute a prostitute. I, for one, don’t have a problem with being called a college professor and don’t see the need to come up with any “intellect worker” label for myself.
Of course, people should call themselves pink bananas with wings if that makes them happy. But they shouldn’t expect others to cater to their preferences.
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“I don’t understand why one can’t just call a stripper a stripper and a prostitute a prostitute.”
All I’m saying is that “sex worker” is to “prostitute” as “teacher” is to “college professor.”
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Character structure comes about not just in relation to benefits offered but (much more in my view) in order to avoid punishment. I’ve never understood the view that we are all one hundred percent free and we make choices and therefore have to deal with them. The “choice” to be shy really isn’t one in my view. That would be like blaming you for your skin color or your gender and implying these were necessarily choices. We don’t live in a vacuum.
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The choice lies not in whether one is shy or not but in whether one does anything about one’s characteristics that bother one. I used to be painfully shy. To the point where I’d rather go thirsty for hours than face the necessity to buy something to drink. I chose to stop being that way. It took a lot of hard work. Years of hard work. But I did it. And now I’m the least shy person you’ve ever met. That was my choice.
Of course, we don’t choose the trauma that make us a certain way. But we choose what we do with the trauma.
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Yes, we do choose what we do with the trauma. Sometimes we can overcome it, if it’s not too strong and if there are mechanisms for doing so, or if the environment does not remain hostile.
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Thanks for reporting my blog to WordPress, you sociopathic woman-hater. Even if they close it down, I WILL create a new blog and you WILL be exposed whether you like it or not. You’re wasting your time.
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Clarissa, have you really done it? I find it hard to believe, but if yes, why?
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Let’s not be ridiculous. I respect the freedom of speech and would never want anybody ‘s blog to be banned. Francois is having a bad day, I guess, so he sees conspiracies everywhere.
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Are you on drugs? I haven’t reported you anywhere. Cant you have an online discussion without a fit of hysteria?
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Somebody reported him very soon after you talked and he can’t use his blog now. He thought it was you.
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I have neither visited his blog since posting the link nor reported it anywhere. Why would I report it, for using the term “funfem ” that I object to?
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He posted:
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I went to a blog on his page for the first time and found out that I had already made a comment there.
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Francois Tremblay’s response: http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/stop-complaining-about-the-exploitation-of-women-sit-down-and-shut-up/
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I’m not going to read it. I’ve wasted enough of my time on this weirdness already.
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I think that David Gendron is Francois Tremblay, watch out for someone called Gomi also….
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No, I know David. He likes Francois for some reason but he is a good person.
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All of this is because of a word in his title? What about his post?
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I didn’t read it. I will not waste my time on people who insult members of my political movement.
I also don’t know what you mean by “all this.” I just gave a link to a post mentioning that I found the title insulting.
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All this discussion between François and you.
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“All this discussion between François and you.”
– The rest of the discussion had to do with his insistence that PIV sex was “exploitative.” I find that statement to be patently ridiculous.
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His post was about cops who brutalize women, what’s the problem with that?
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“His post was about cops who brutalize women, what’s the problem with that?”
– Did I say I had a problem with that? I had a problem with the title that used offensive terminology.
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Circular Argument just like “Francois”.
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“here a blogger insults feminists in the very title of his post and then seems to expect the group he so blatantly despises to be interested in his opinion.”
Funfem is a insult used by feminists against “fake-feminists”, not by a MRA against feminists.
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“Funfem is a insult used by feminists against “fake-feminists””
– I find the term offensive no matter whether the people who use it call themselves feminists, MRAs or blue dragons.
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Maybe it’s offensive to yourself, by why this should be offensive to feminists?
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“Maybe it’s offensive to yourself, by why this should be offensive to feminists?”
– I’m a feminist and I posted my opinion about something I find offensive on my blog. Please observe that I did not go to anybody else’s blogs to call people sociopaths for having an opinion.
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“The rest of the discussion had to do with his insistence that PIV sex was “exploitative.” I find that statement to be patently ridiculous”
For you, is this possible to have sex without PIV? Funfems answer “no” to this question, and this is very detrimental to women…and many men like me.
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“For you, is this possible to have sex without PIV? Funfems answer “no” to this question, and this is very detrimental to women…and many men like me.”
– Adult people have the right to enjoy any forms of consensual sexuality they prefer and nobody is entitled to have opinions about that.
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So even PIV-integrism (I do not say PIV by itself) should be morally acceptable?
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“So even PIV-integrism (I do not say PIV by itself) should be morally acceptable”
– I have no idea what this even means. What’s PIV-integrism? What does morality have to do with it?
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“- Did I say I had a problem with that? I had a problem with the title that used offensive terminology.”
So, this discussion is mainly about terminology, not his post’s contents.
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I did not read the post. I never read posts that have titles I find offensive. If I saw a post using the word “Ukes” (an offensive title for Ukrainians”, I wouldn’t read it either and would criticize it on my blog.
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Hummm, this is a very limitating behavior. So, I should never read rightist blogs! 😉
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“Hummm, this is a very limitating behavior. So, I should never read rightist blogs!”
– You should, of course, do whatever suits you. But I have too little time to waste on things like that.
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“- I have no idea what this even means. What’s PIV-integrism? What does morality have to do with it?”
PIV-integrism is the idea that men and women can’t have sex without PIV (remember Clinton-Lewinski 😉 )
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An idea that funfems support.
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“An idea that funfems support.”
– Can I ask you to stop using offensive terminology? Enough with this already.
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“PIV-integrism is the idea that men and women can’t have sex without PIV (remember Clinton-Lewinski )”
– You are talking about people who think that oral sex “doesn’t count as sex”, right? Such people have absolutely nothing to do with feminism. These are stupid, repressed prudes. The fact that these prudish beliefs are assigned to feminism makes me realize that we are talking about a concerted effort to discredit feminism by assigning ridiculous ideas to the movement. It makes me sad that you have bought into this attack on a progressive movement.
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“. The fact that these prudish beliefs are assigned to feminism makes me realize that we are talking about a concerted effort to discredit feminism by assigning ridiculous ideas to the movement”
This is a concerted to assign ridiculous ideas to some pseudo-feminists, not feminists.
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“This is a concerted to assign ridiculous ideas to some pseudo-feminists, not feminists.”
– I know you are a smart guy. Just think: how can this possibly be linked to feminism, in any of its form or permutation?
In any case, this is all completely beside the point because there was nothing of the kind in the original discussion. I find the term “fun fem” offensive. It has been assigned to me on numerous occasions simply because I don’t hate men and enjoy heterosexual sex. I refuse to sit here and be labeled for this. On my blog, I will denounce the terminology that insults me.
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An idea that pseudo-feminists called “funfems” by François Tremblay support.
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I cite this quote: “If any ******** reads this entry (as my readers are mostly radicals, this is rather unlikely, but always possible), he or she will no doubt accuse me of being “sex-negative,” based on the bizarre belief that PIV, and only PIV, is sex. This is a common tactic used against people who argue against PIV. It is also completely, absolutely insane. But when you point out to these people that there obviously are other kinds of sex than PIV, they will tell you that those other kinds of sex are “not really sex.”
This leads to 1984-level redefinition of terms: anal sex is not really sex, oral sex is not really sex, mutual masturbation is not really sex, other uses of genitals that lead to orgasm are not really sex, and so on. It’s only “really sex” if it can lead to procreation and inflict trauma on a woman, just like how marriage is only “really marriage” if it can lead to procreation.
The belief in PIV as a man’s right is responsible for keeping women in their place socially and economically, beat down women physically and psychologically, and shackle them to procreation as their life’s highest duty. This is why abortion is such a convenient divisive topic for the prevalent PIV-positive ideologies: it maintains domination over women by making the actions of men (PIV) into the responsibility of the women (having an abortion or childbirth). But abortion is just one part of the debate.
I realize it may sounds hypocrite of me to say that abortion is just one part of the debate when I’ve spent four months arguing about abortion. Fair enough. I just have little to say about a debate where the other side’s arguments are basically sophisticated versions of “me feel good when stick pee-pee in pussy, me big dick, me make baby, baby good” and “me feel good when pee-pee is in pussy, me ‘modern woman’,” because this is basically what the PIV discussions reduce themselves to.
At least the other sides in the abortion debate have arguments. They’re not particularly good arguments, but they have substance to them. But then again, it looks rather better to argue against abortion than to argue in favor of tens of millions of unwanted pregnancies and the exploitation of women all over the world, so I understand why PIV-positive dupes may not want to think about it too much. “
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“The belief in PIV as a man’s right is responsible for keeping women in their place socially and economically, beat down women physically and psychologically, and shackle them to procreation as their life’s highest duty.”
– This is extremely insulting to women. But it seems very hard to explain this to people who are not women. The entire quote is such a total insult to women that I have no words to describe it.
I’d rather not have any more of these egregious quotes on my blog, OK?
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He said “the belief” not that this man’s right is really a good thing. I don’t see at all what’s insulting to a feminist in this?
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Nobody has the right to tell people – especially people whose physiology is very different from yours – what kind of sex they should or should not enjoy. Assigning ideological explanations to sexuality of other people is always wrong. This is in no way different from the fundamentalists who insult people for not using only the missionary position and only for procreation purposes.
Attributing the oppression of women to a form of sexuality that millions of women enjoy and prefer is offensive to those women because they get blamed for their own oppression. We are not oppressed by sex. We are oppressed by lack of it. Female sexuality has been proscribed for millenia. Now when finally women are starting to liberate themselves and enjoy their own bodies, some guy appears to tell them that this makes them bad feminists! How ridiculous is that?? This is as stupid as saying that literacy and the right to vote oppress women.
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This person has obviously never have been “Enslaved by the Pussy”.
I wish that I could have used better vocabulary on that phrase.
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“I know you are a smart guy. Just think: how can this possibly be linked to feminism, in any of its form or permutation?”
I agree but these pseudo-feminists linked themselves to feminists, not François.
“On my blog, I will denounce the terminology that insults me.”
So this is about insulting yourself, not insulting feminists.
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“So this is about insulting yourself, not insulting feminists.”
– We are going in circles. I’m a feminist, so I feel insulted by this term. What’s so hard to understand?
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François didn’t attributed this offensive term to feminists. (except when he calls you a ******)
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The term “funfem” consists of two parts “fun” and “fem”. Fun is self-explanatory. What do you think “fem” stands for here?
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They are feminist for fun not for real.
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“They are feminist for fun not for real.”
– Says who? You? And I say the opposite. Now what?
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I think that David Gendron and Francois Tremblay are the same person.
Dave! Francois!, this is Bagworm!
Pretend you are a girl Francois……………
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So you pretend that radfems are not feminists?
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“So you pretend that radfems are not feminists”
– I think they are total idiots and cause huge damage to the feminist movement. I’ve criticized them a lot on my blog.
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Dave is over from Francois Tremblay’s blogs, just ignore him. He might even be an alter ego of Francois.
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I’ve been watching “Franky” for some time now, his Psychological Profile is a bit Bizarre, He’s in a bad marriage and is emotionally under developed and did not have a Father Figure in his life.
His “Wife” has an Immuno Deficiency and is addicted to Opiates and had a troubled Childhood.
He wants to project his life onto other people.
I have trouble putting it into words……
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He manifests a lot of anger towards women in his endless fantasies about mandated abortions and the “correct” practice of female sexuality.
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I think he just doesn’t seem to understand that we’ve entered an era of birth control, so the old-fashioned fear of pregnancy is hardly an issue anymore.
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He believes that all procreation should stop. This must be fear of competition from younger generations. 🙂
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He presents himself as a market capitalist, so he ought to have no fear of competition.
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There has got to be a reason for this obsession with other people procreating. Maybe he hates women for being capable of something he isn’t.
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I would have to read more to try and get a gauge on it. It’s weird that he thinks “dichotomies” may or may not be *out there* (in the world), because of course, dichotomies are just a feature of perception. The world out there does not command us to view it in terms of any sort of dichotomy.
This indicates to me that he is very confused about what is reality and what is merely subjective impression. His ideas may be purely subjective, but he wants to see them as originating from “out there”.
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That’s exactly the impression I got.
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I really do believe that he wants others to live his life.
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It doesn’t sound like such a great life, though. I thought his blog was original at first but then I saw that there was a lot of weird obsessiveness and very little else.
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I have no problem with you having fun with PIV, I have problem with PIV-integrism and PIV coerced by men or patriarchical institutions for men-domination purposes, which is not the same thing.
“Nobody has the right to tell people – especially people whose physiology is very different from yours – what kind of sex they should or should not enjoy.”
I agree! So you should tell those PIV-integrists that they are retarded for this very reason.
“Assigning ideological explanations to sexuality of other people is always wrong.”
So you explain the sexual preference of many women for women-beaters with what reason? Are they retarded?
“This is in no way different from the fundamentalists who insult people for not using only the missionary position and only for procreation purposes. ”
I agree again, so you should criticize PIV-integrists with this also.
“Attributing the oppression of women to a form of sexuality that millions of women enjoy and prefer”.
…and more millions of women do not want to do!!!!
“is offensive to those women because they get blamed for their own oppression.
No, radfems blame patriarchical institutions and phallocrats men for this oppression, not the victims.
“We are not oppressed by sex. We are oppressed by lack of it.”
Absolutely! So the PIV-integrists, who limit sex only to PIV, shoud be also blamed for this oppression .
“Female sexuality has been proscribed for millenia. Now when finally women are starting to liberate themselves and enjoy their own bodies, some guy appears to tell them that this makes them bad feminists! How ridiculous is that??”
Out of topic. Again, you fall into the anti-sex trap: “If any ******** reads this entry (as my readers are mostly radicals, this is rather unlikely, but always possible), he or she will no doubt accuse me of being “sex-negative,” based on the bizarre belief that PIV, and only PIV, is sex. This is a common tactic used against people who argue against PIV. It is also completely, absolutely insane. But when you point out to these people that there obviously are other kinds of sex than PIV, they will tell you that those other kinds of sex are “not really sex.”
This leads to 1984-level redefinition of terms: anal sex is not really sex, oral sex is not really sex, mutual masturbation is not really sex, other uses of genitals that lead to orgasm are not really sex, and so on. It’s only “really sex” if it can lead to procreation and inflict trauma on a woman, just like how marriage is only “really marriage” if it can lead to procreation.”
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“So you explain the sexual preference of many women for women-beaters with what reason? Are they retarded?”
– I already wrote about this: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/10/08/why-doesnt-she-just-leave-on-domestic-violence/
“I agree again, so you should criticize PIV-integrists with this also.”
– I have bashed prudes on my blog more times than I can imagine.
“…and more millions of women do not want to do!!!!”
– So they shouldn’t. As you must have noticed, I started this entire discussion by mentioning CONSENSUAL forms of human sexuality.
“Absolutely! So the PIV-integrists, who limit sex only to PIV, shoud be also blamed for this oppression .”
– I don’t get this. How can people who do nothing but (according to you) discuss of oral sex “counts” as sex oppress anybody? So they have stupid conversations, what’s the big deal? As long as they are not attempting to pass legislation, who cares?
“No, radfems blame patriarchical institutions and phallocrats men for this oppression, not the victims.”
– They see all women as born victims. Which is an oppressive act in itself. I have never been as insulted, vilified and humiliated by any man or “phallocrat” as I have been by these radfem freakazoids.
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I accidentally rated this down.
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I like it. 🙂
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She was considered for vocalist for “Van Halen” at one point!
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Women are Super Cool, if it was not for Breasts and a Vagina I would be out “Butt Packing” some Dude.
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I was trying to delete the above comment but can’t. I shouldn’t have used that language.
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Was that the one with breasts and vagina? I can delete it for you but I don’t see anything wrong with it. 🙂
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