Offensive

~ Clarissa

Pretty much everything that is published on the super popular “feminist” websites is offensive to my sensibilities, but this post is just the limit. Just so that you prepare yourselves before going there, the tags for the post are: “bodies, body acceptance, Body Image, butts.” These freakazoids seem to think they are making some feminist statement by promoting this garbage.

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Published by Clarissa

34 thoughts on “Offensive”

  1. I’ve stopped reading this site long ago. And nobody warned it wasn’t work safe! If they use numerous trigger warnings, where is “don’t click, unless you want to have problems at work” ? Why not put such picture under cut?

    I do read AM at Pandagon sometimes. Even if she doesn’t often write something original, she is not offensive in such a fashion and I like her writing style. For instance, I thought her recent post was fine:

    If you’re going to warn girls about being “sluts”, warn them about the dangers of marriage
    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/if-youre-going-to-warn-girls-about-being-sluts-warn-them-about-the-dangers-of-marriage/

    Liked how she rewrote the traditional advice. Some people do need to read that.

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    1. They also chose the most impeccable ass of all to grab for their “feminist” article. Somehow, the asses with cellulite were not deemed as crucial to the feminist site.

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    2. If this had been written 100 years ago, it would have value. But it’s 2014. Who are those women who are so desperate to get married? Since the 1980s, the people who are desperate to get married on this continent are overwhelmingly male (Susan Faludi had a great analysis of this in Backlash, published years ago.)

      “A casual sex partner who doesn’t call the next day when you wanted him is surely a bummer. But a husband who ignores you and talks down to you will wear down your very soul.”

      – If you are 11, it’s OK to write this way but if you are a day over, the faux childish style is just annoying.

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  2. Nothing says feminist like a faux cutesy slideshow of ass shots. If you want to look at ass shots, or show off your ass, do it without fishing for some social justice warrior cookies. It’s like posting the color of your bra or posting a cleavage shot on Facebook “to raise breast cancer awareness.” Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got reclaim my ass from the patriarchy gravity.

    Note that trackbacks are turned off for that post.

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  5. Oh, Clarissa. I had no idea this blog was such a butt-negative space. In truth, I’m not sure what to think about your butt negativity. I fear it’s part of a pattern of butt-negative microaggressions. I’m not sure what to do now. My butt and I will have to go find a more butt-positive space to think it over.

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  6. The sprinkles are reminiscent of the 1969 novel by Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman. Except, 45 years ago, Atwood was critiquing the presentation of women’s bodies as objects to be consumed, not celebrating it.

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    1. I also vaguely remember the times when there was feminist critique of publishing the photos of female body parts that seemed to exist separately from the rest of the body. . . Gone are those times, it seems.

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  7. Ugggg. I followed Feministing for a while and had to stop. I gave up after a series of posts that were supposed to be take downs of academic research. In every case, the critique of the research was based on a mainstream news article about the research project, but none of the Feministing bloggers actually bothered to read any of the studies that the news articles were supposed to be based on. On every one of those posts, someone in the comment thread would track down and read the original article(s) and point out that all of the “problems” identified by the blogger were either limitations explicitly addressed by the researchers and/or the result of inaccurate reporting in the news articles. These commenters who bothered to track down and read the actual research articles would then be attacked for being trolls or apologists for sexist researchers. I don’t know how many times I saw this play out, but in the end I had to conclude that the people in charge had absolutely no journalistic standards and no understanding of how academic research is conducted and reported in peer-reviewed journals.

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    1. “I gave up after a series of posts that were supposed to be take downs of academic research. In every case, the critique of the research was based on a mainstream news article about the research project, but none of the Feministing bloggers actually bothered to read any of the studies that the news articles were supposed to be based on.”

      – This is a huge, huge problem. This is why I always feel so wary of any pop article that claims to be based on “a study.” More often than not, pop articles pervert the scholarship they claim to address completely.

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  10. Feminism at present reminds me of a cult sometime after the great leader died and the appointed (or assumed) successor just doesn’t have the same charisma or natural leadership skils. The devotees are eyeing the door while the not-so-great leader jr is breaking out in flop sweat and fixin’ to start up some show trials to whip up some enthusiasm.

    The original mainstream goals were largely met over 20 years ago and most of the better minds have given up active feminist theory in favor of other things (like the Spanish civil war…)

    I certainly have a lot of sympathy for the original mainstream goals. But most of modern feminist activity seems to me like
    a) it would either be better addressed somewhere,
    b) is just downright absurd or
    c) depends on a radical change of human nature itself (which never works out too well).

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    1. I don’t really understand this. What leaders? Feminism isn’t about leaders. Maybe you’re talking about feminism in US academia, which is a very limited arena. Here in the UK most current feminism is grass roots stuff and in my experience it always has been; supporting women’s refuges, marching to reclaim the night, etc. These issues have not been resolved and don’t get much publicity. We also support and campaign on women’s issues in other countries, for example FGM and rape being used as a weapon of war.

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      1. I’m talking about academic theory supporting feminist goals which has gone off the rails in the last twenty or so years.

        “Here in the UK most current feminism is grass roots stuff and in my experience it always has been; supporting women’s refuges”

        So male refugees have no special needs that aren’t met by general refugee support systems or can they just go fuck themselves? Refugee rights are important but not necessarily a separate feminist issue.

        “marching to reclaim the night, etc”

        Best addressed within a framework of law enforcement (which has never been a feminist concern in general since it requires letting down the adversarial positions vis a vis the police to some degree).

        Has any UK feminist written anything of importance about Rotherham? I’ve done some looking and couldn’t find anything. Do you have any recommendations?

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        1. I vaguely heard that there was a child abuse scandal in Rotherham but I don’t know of any feminist angle to the issue. Nothing in the world is more important than child abuse but I’m wary of promoting the “women and children” label any further.

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    2. I think the test is whether they can support and engage with another woman who has real difficulties. I’ve found out that this seems not to be true. It’s more about creating an aura of self-righteousness and not allowing complex matters to be discussed.

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  11. I should mention I often read feministing out of schadenfreude (and am stil wondering what they did or will do with the money they collected for a ‘relaunch’)

    But lately thoughtcatalog has taken over that slot: A bunch of vacuous millenials raising shallow self absorption to levels I scarcely thought possible.

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  12. Over-react, much? This is a silly photo-essay, nothing more. I am not going to get worked up about whether the women therein are typical, skinny, well-endowed, whatever. Consider this post the equivalent of your Ukrainian cooking posts – you shouldn’t have to be serious all the time, and neither should the non-academic feminist site providing the link to the original site hosting the silly photo-essay.

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    1. It isn’t about serious or not serious. It is about treating women as body parts that exist to titillate and be ogled.

      I’ve heard all this about such stuff being “for fun” and I’ve also been told not to be a humorless feminist. I understand that the compulsion to reduce women to asses is invincible. But I don’t see why people who call themselves feminists should so joyously embrace this kind of thing.

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  13. “I vaguely heard that there was a child abuse scandal in Rotherham but I don’t know of any feminist angle to the issue. ”

    wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal

    the skinny: groups of men (overwhelmingly of pakistani background with almost all the rest also being muslim) sexually groomed and then prostituted (on threat of violence) young mostly white, almost all non-muslim girls, some as young as 11 or 12. About 1400 cases are known of in the city of Rotherham alone. The reports of violence and sexual abuse are completely horrific and are likely to scar anyone who reads them.

    The police knew and did essentially nothing for years. One of the main reasons was that they didn’t want to make the cases public for fears of fanning ‘racism’ or were afraid of accusations of racism.

    This is hardly an isolated event and there are similar cases (mostly suppressed by the mainstream media) all across England.

    This is the single most literal example of ‘rape culture’ that I can think of and feminist comment has essentially been zero (while the guys who made the roofie-detecting nail polish were pilloried by feminists).

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  14. Just to clarify, in my last comment/reply I was referring to women’s refuges, not refugees. The Refuges are places for battered women in the UK, and their children, to live and be safe from the men who have battered them. Refugees are an international matter, I support campaigns to help and provide safe haven for refugees of whatever gender, age, race, orientation or faith.

    As for the Rotherham (and other towns) exploitation cases, what has happened there to a large number of young girls is disgusting and vile. The police are to blame for not acting against the offenders much sooner. It is the usual thing, those victims who dared to complain were simply not believed, or regarded as having made ‘a lifestyle choice’ to be drugged and raped by groups of men. For feminists to be accused of saying nothing is bizarre and ignores the actual issues of rape culture and victim blaming. I don’t claim to know what all feminists think, feminists are individuals, not a homogenous political party or a faith.

    And I’ve never heard of ‘roofie detecting nail polish.’ I doubt if I care.

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    1. “I was referring to women’s refuges, not refugees”

      Ah, dialect difference. I’m used to the US term which is ‘shelter’.

      Interesting that one of the pioneers in the English movement (Erin Pizzey) has been strongly criticized by feminists for trying to extend help to male victims of domestic violence.

      “For feminists to be accused of saying nothing is bizarre and ignores the actual issues of rape culture and victim blaming”

      Then it should be easy to find a link or two by British feminists saying insightful things.

      “I’ve never heard of ‘roofie detecting nail polish.’ I doubt if I care.”

      Quelques linqs:

      http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/26/anti-rape-nail-polish-stop-rapists

      http://www.shakesville.com/2014/08/today-in-rape-culture_25.html

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    1. “here’s a link”

      Unimpressed. It’s as if the author was going out of her (? what’s a blag?) way to not mention the abusers themselves or their common denominators….. shifting the blame to ‘patriarchy’ is a way of deflecting attention from the perpetrators and the cultural/religious factors that facilitate their actions (since in the PC world perceived race trumps sex every single time).

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