I find it especially cute when brainless who idiots feel vaguely disturbed by my posts but are prevented from responding to them by a deplorable lack of brain matter start mewling incoherently in response. Here is a recent example of such impotent blabbering on the subject of my post on why FEMEN and Pussy Riot have nothing to do with feminism:
I agree strongly with Clarissa that these issues need to be addressed, and that “There is a dire need in these countries for a feminist movement that will create a different narrative.” We differ greatly, however, on what that means. In my mind, simply being a woman with an opinion, and voicing that opinion so loudly that it can’t be ignored, is a feminist act.
If this weird creature’s mind were a little bit less empty than it is right now, s/he might have found an opportunity to learn a thing or two about the countries s/he feels entitled to discuss. Ukrainian and Russian women are not and haven’t been for almost a century wilting flowers, terrified of voicing our opinions. If you believe we are, it means that you are trying to analyze our reality through the prism of your own cultural stereotypes, which is ignorant and offensive.
Right before I found this pathetic outpouring of idiocy on the subject of Russian and Ukrainian women, I was watching a TV program on the most popular channel in Russia. The show’s host, a brilliant, ultra-successful, intellectual woman, was saying that a woman’s only true sphere is the kitchen, women who privilege their careers over marriage and babies are defective, childless women are freaks, and feminists are pathetic shrews who haven’t managed to get anybody to fuck them properly. She was saying it in a very self-assured, confident way and her female co-hosts (brilliant, ultra-successful, intellectual women) supported her passionately. In terms of how loudly these women defended their opinions, there is not a single TV personality of the female gender in North America who even comes closely to them. However, there is nothing feminist about what they said or the fact that they said it.
In our countries, we grow up listening to women speak. In the classroom, at school, in college, on television, on the Internet, in public spaces and at home, we hear women voicing their beliefs loudly, passionately, and relentlessly. Starting from 1st grade, teachers have to work hard to make the female students shut up for a second and get the silent, mumbling male students to say anything. I already told on this blog the story of how shocked I was when, at the age of 22, I became a student at a Canadian university and heard my male colleagues make comments in class. I wouldn’t have been more disturbed had I heard the chairs and the door participate in the discussion because, in my experience, men never spoke in class and you had to push them hard to make them voice any opinion in any context.
What is a huge feminist achievement (yip-dee-doo, women managed to have an opinion and got somebody to hear them!) for people in one country, is a matter of course for those who come from a different culture. This is why it’s always best to try to learn something about other cultural realities before blabbering stupidly about them.
P.S. Every two weeks or so, somebody publishes a silly anti-Clarissa rant. What happens after that never changes. Readers from the anti-Clarissa resource come over to my blog, read the referenced post, then become curious and read more posts, then read the entire blog from the beginning, and finally become permanent readers. So, if you want to bellyache about being offended by my opinions and send me your readers, feel free. Just remember that whenever you babble ignorantly about my culture, I will get on your case and tear you to shreds. You know why? Because we are a culture of very outspoken, loud, and brash women.
I hope this unintelligent detractor manages to celebrate my belief that s/he is a vapid fool as a deeply feminist act.
Clarissa's Blog 
I understand why women would say this, it sounds exactly like the Republican broads here in the states who say this crap because they hate women and think this is going to make them more acceptable to Republican men. It sucks when these broads have educations and no small amount of brains and neither have husbands or children, yet they say women should stay home and crap out babies and do nothing with their lives. That’s what I mentioned earlier about that Debbie Schlussel creature, she’s so nuts even other Republicans can’t stand her. I like to say about women like this that they are the first to cry sexism but are sexist towards other women. I want to say to them that if they hate being women so much, they are going to be treated like guys in that instead of crying sexism, they fight back instead of whining. If this is a rambling post, I just had four beers and a margarita tonight so I’m kind of drunk 😀
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A few drinks always make for great comments! 🙂
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Ah, you definately have Cojones. 😉
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At my first job, somebody brought in a quiz titled “Find out who’s the biggest macho at the office.”
My colleagues laughed and said, “We know already that Clarissa is, so who needs the quiz?”
🙂 🙂
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More chicks like you and who would need feminism. 🙂 🙂
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I still like and heavily approve of you 🙂 I really wish I could have been in one of your classes… I think we would have had many after class discussions!
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Thank you, Matt. 🙂
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I once read that the blind spot of Western culture is that it thinks it’s universal. I think the problems with Western culture go deeper, in that everybody assumes you want nothing more than to be identified as Western, hence to gain a feeling of belonging.
An example of this was when I was doing my course on postmodernism at an honors level. I stated that my background and early culture had nothing in common with Western culture, particularly urbanized Western culture. The lecturer moved instantly to misinterpret and obfuscate what I’d said by informing me that there was no need to feel left out, as he had himself been brought up in rural Western culture.
This reaction, which is the rule, suggests that even very educated people have an enormous degree of difficulty processing the fact that others may simply think differently from them, due to cultural factors. And, no, it’s not that we “want to”, or that we “need to feel we are special” or that we have “made choices” — all fundamentally Western tropes. It’s not an issue of hidden motivations. We’re not deciding not to belong in order to become the new form of revolutionary soap powder on the market. It’s not a strategy or a means to vie for power. And, furthermore, just because we have to repeat that we don’t have a strategy because the fact that we are different is denied, doesn’t mean we are “protesting too much” and therefore do have a strategy.
It’s just the simple sense of being different that is an unacceptable fact to Western ears.
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“The lecturer moved instantly to misinterpret and obfuscate what I’d said by informing me that there was no need to feel left out”
– Hilarious. “It’s OK, don’t suffer too much, you can be one of us if you try really hard!” Jeez.
” It’s not an issue of hidden motivations. We’re not deciding not to belong in order to become the new form of revolutionary soap powder on the market.”
– Exactly. This is precisely the kind of understanding that I seek with these posts. But people refuse to engage with what I say as a manifestation of a different cultural reality that exists for its own sake. They feel threatened by the idea that it is even possible for such a reality to exist. Hence the endless attempts to tell us what our narrative should be.
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Yes!
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Hence the endless attempts to tell us what our narrative should be.(Clarissa)
At the present moment isnt your narrative technically Western?
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Believe me, once a Soviet woman, always a Soviet woman. 🙂
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Please, tell me how small my penis is again. It’s such a cogent rebuttal.
Confused is still a good look for you.
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I think people should still try to be careful with their drinking. Try not to drive tonight, OK? Even small-penised people might have some use on this planet.
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Clarissa, Nobody is a total waste, they can always serve as a bad example 🙂
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If there were an article saying that FEMEN is a bad example, I would whole-heartedly agree. But this is not what this article said.
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Hmm. I have seen this power technique among right wing women here, that coming on strong thing. They are well-groomed and expensively dressed and express themselves in belligerent ways. And it is a strategy.They want to succeed and be powerful and smack down opponents. They never, ever admit to being wrong. Sarah Palin is the best example, but I have seen several women in local politics here who use the same technique and they are even farther out than she is, some of them. When I hear friends say they are crazy, I just smile, because I know what they are up to. They are crazy like foxes.
Don’t think American women don’t operate this way! Watched Fox News lately?
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I didn’t see the article (which was what linked me to your blog in the first place) the same way you did at all! I saw it as a disagreement with parts of your stance, and it was framed in language that was neither “empty-headed”, “mewling”, or “anti”.
Also, the article wasn’t disagreeing with you about Western/American/Russian/etc. culture at all – just about what makes a “real Feminist”.
I’m new to your blog – are you so hostile to anyone who disagrees with you (not even aggressively!!)?
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“I’m new to your blog – are you so hostile to anyone who disagrees with you (not even aggressively!!)?”
– As any Russian-speaking woman, I am, indeed, very aggressive. 🙂 Of course, within my own culture, people see me as a timid little wallflower. These are cultural differences for you. 🙂
I don’t know which culture you belong to, but imagine how it would make you feel if you constantly read completely wrong and ridiculous things about it.
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“As any Russian-speaking woman, I am, indeed, very aggressive”
Heh. I get that. But I meant the blog you were responding to wasn’t being very aggressive toward you.
“imagine how it would make you feel if you constantly read completely wrong and ridiculous things about it.”
I can certainly imagine that – but what I’m saying is, I didn’t see that happening in the quoted blog at all.
Thank you for your response.
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“Heh. I get that. But I meant the blog you were responding to wasn’t being very aggressive toward you.”
– The way Pussy Riot is being covered in the Western media is very dangerous for Russia because it strengthens Putin enormously. And right at the moment when his ratings finally started to drop and got to as low as 48%! Of course, he engineered this entire story to help himself and his ratings. The West lapped up the entire thing and served him popularity and support within Russia on a silver platter. I have family in Russia, so I follow the Russian news very closely. The frustration of seeing Putin recover his support simply because people in the West don’t want to see different cultural realities is harsh.
These are not just differences of opinion we are discussing. Some people say things without educating themselves and even realizing how much real damage it causes. As long as such posts appear, there will be no feminism in FSU countries and Putin will only get stronger in Russia.
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“- The way Pussy Riot is being covered in the Western media is very dangerous for Russia because it strengthens Putin enormously. And right at the moment when his ratings finally started to drop and got to as low as 48%! Of course, he engineered this entire story to help himself and his ratings. The West lapped up the entire thing and served him popularity and support within Russia on a silver platter. I have family in Russia, so I follow the Russian news very closely. The frustration of seeing Putin recover his support simply because people in the West don’t want to see different cultural realities is harsh.”
I can see the validity in these criticisms, absolutely!!! And I don’t know enough about the cultural differences, or frankly about the politics and culture in Russia, to comment either for or against those criticisms.
My point, though, is that it can still be *Feminism*, what groups like Pussy Riot is doing – even if it’s *not* what is needed at the time. And I think, or at least what I interpreted, what the article was saying was my last point – and nothing about Russian politics/culture.
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But we still need a reason to see something as feminist, don’t we? I ate a biscotti for breakfast, but if I want to consider this a feminist act, I still have to explain what makes it feminist. The explanation provided by the OP doesn’t take into consideration the cultural realities which rob the explanation of any value.
The damage done in Russia and Ukraine to the nascent and still quite weak feminist movement by FEMEN and PR is enormous.
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“But we still need a reason to see something as feminist, don’t we?”
I don’t think anyone other than the act-or does, no.
“The explanation provided by the OP doesn’t take into consideration the cultural realities which rob the explanation of any value. ”
Again, I see these as valid criticisms. But that doesn’t make the thing being criticized (in this case the OP) “empty-headed” or “mewling” – just something to be discussed.
“The damage done in Russia and Ukraine to the nascent and still quite weak feminist movement by FEMEN and PR is enormous.”
The damage done in America by many Second-Wave Feminists is enormous, too. That doesn’t make it “not Feminism” – it just makes it a Feminism whose message is either missed or too specialized for a good result with the general audience.
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So if Todd Akin decides that his recent comments on rape are feminist in nature, I will have to agree?
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“So if Todd Akin decides that his recent comments on rape are feminist in nature, I will have to agree?”
LOL. No.
But groups like Pussy Riot – or, in my example, American Second-Wave Feminists – is pro-woman, pro-equality, etc – where Akin’s comments (and beliefs) are decidedly *not*. Even if those pro-woman, pro-equality etc. ideas and actions are misguided, mistaken, or wrong for their time and/or audience – they’re still pro-woman, pro-equality, etc.
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There are crowds of people who believe that their anti-choice position is pro-woman. The entire justification behind women being violated with transvaginal ultrasounds was that it was done for the sake of helping women. If I say that what I do is pro-woman, that doesn’t make it so just because I say it does.
Paul Ryan insists that his budget will be hugely helpful to the unemployed. Are we to take him at his word or is it OK to question that?
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I read the article/blog entry you quote, and I don’t see it the same way you did at all. I saw nothing “empty-headed”, “mewling”, or anything about cultural differences at all. What I did see was someone disagreeing (in polite language, even) with your attempt to define “real Feminism”.
I’m new to your blog – are you so hostile to anyone who disagrees with you (not even aggressively!)?
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Argh – I’m sorry for the re-post – I had an error and didn’t think the first was posted.
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New commenters are always put through moderation initially. But once I approve them, they can appear freely without moderation.
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Thank you 🙂
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“So if Todd Akin decides that his recent comments on rape are feminist in nature, I will have to agree?”
I haven’t found many feminists that even think men can be feminists never mind do things of a feminist nature.
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That only speaks to their poor skills in selecting their male acquaintances. 🙂 Every man I’m close to is a proud and card-carrying feminist. N, for instance, often proves to be a better feminist than I am.
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Every man I’m close to is a proud and card-carrying feminist. (Clarissa)
Lol, if not they wont make it too close to you or else you would bring the hammer down. 😉
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Of course. Why on earth would I want to waste my precious time on losers?
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