Posts tagged misogyny
Posts tagged misogyny
Call me hyper-sensitive, but I’m a bit raw. After all, during the past couple of years, First Lady Michelle Obama has been vilified … for being married to one of the most reviled Black men on the planet these days. And one of the highest–grossing Hollywood films of 2011, The Help, featured two of the best Black actors who are working today — relegated to play maids. But my side-eye to this weekend’s events is centered around the lack of respect that were given to Houston and Rihanna, and how as Black female entertainers, their main role was simply that: to entertain. Their lives as human beings off the stage are not as important.
[TW: rape culture]
You don’t have to step foot into a college women’s studies class to see that people use insults like “you throw like a girl,” “you are acting like a girl,” etc. You don’t have to follow social justice blogs to see a father yelling at his son for being interested in “girly things” or “girl toys.” You don’t have to take a class on women and politics to see women politicians are treated differently than men. You only have to turn on any new station to see them complaining about Hilary Clintons pant suits and not her opinions. You don’t have to step foot in a women’s studies class to know you are uncomfortable when someone calls you a “cunt,” “slut,” etc. You only have to have someone call you that. You don’t have to step in a women’s studies class to know you are uncomfortable when men get pissed off when you don’t give them the attention they demand from you. You don’t have to be well versed in feminism to know this. All you have to do is trust your gut (if you are a woman) or talk to your mothers, sisters, aunts, grandma, girl friends, etc.
The only thing feminism does is connect you with other people who think that everything I mentioned is fucked up and want to change society. The only thing women’s studies classes do are put everything you know into perspective and show you other women care enough about women to create a whole field around their experiences. All taking women’s history classes does is show you how this is systematic and has been going on for a long ass time. While these things are great, they are not needed to know your experiences are valid and patriarchy exist. We see it every damn day. We understand that when we get creeped out by some guy not being able to take a fucking hint. We understand that when someone calls us a bitch. We understand that when we see people focusing on how female politicians look and not what they are saying. We see something every day that shows women being degraded.
Every single thing I mentioned is fucked up. So fucked up a bunch of people have joined feminist movements, womanist movements, etc. to fight against sexism. Women’s centers are on college campuses. Women’s studies was created to show women’s experiences matter. There are kick ass women in politics, media, academics, the sciences, medicine, law, etc. doing kick ass work to change how society views women. There are kick ass parents who are raising their kids to be who they are and teaching them there is nothing wrong with who they are. There are amazing organizations working to end intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and gendered violence. There are amazing people who are willing to actively change the fucked up notion that women are bad and change how society views women.
So this post that ended up not really having a point was started by me asking myself “is it really that hard to understand patriarchy is rooted in a hatred of women and all things associated with women?” I don’t think it is. We see how people degrade women every single day. Whether it is something like someone making a rape joke, harassing women on the street/in school/etc, or just not taking a woman’s opinion seriously. If every single person things hard enough, they can think of a time when they have seen a woman be degraded. Women can think of times where they have been degraded. Then I started to realize that no, this is hard to understand because society does not value women’s opinions and experiences. Women can list every single instance they have been degraded and they will most likely be told they are over reacting and imagining things. Men wonder why women do not always trust them. When men tell us we are imagining sexism, we aren’t going to fucking trust you. Not all men do this but enough do for our experiences to be ignored. It is fucked up and needs to change.
I’m going to stop because I have no hell of a clue where this is going…
(Source: historicalslut)
[I]t is illegal for women to go topless in most cities, yet you can buy a magazine of a woman without her top on at any 7-11 store. So, you can sell breasts, but you cannot wear breasts, in America.
Violet Rose, in Three Steps to Better Sex (via muffdiver)
This reminds me of the post going around which contrasted the pathologizing of public breastfeeding with the gratuitous, objectifying images of women’s breasts that can be found in advertising.
The legal and social message is that our bodies are for purchase and exchange between men—and their liberty to buy us and sell us should never be infringed! NOT EVER! FIRST AMENDMENT! FIRST AMENDMENT!—not for us to do with as we please. Never that!
(via mswyrr)
(Source: slingshot.tao.ca, via mswyrr)
All of this is typical girl-fear. Once you realize that The Exorcist is, essentially, the story of a 12-year-old who starts cussing, masturbating, and disobeying her mother—in other words, going through puberty—it becomes apparent to the feminist-minded viewer why two adult men are called in to slap her around for much of the third act. People are convinced that something spooky is going on with girls; that, once they reach a certain age, they lose their adorable innocence and start tapping into something powerful and forbidden. Little girls are sugar and spice, but women are just plain scary. And the moment a girl becomes a woman is the moment you fear her most. Which explains why the culture keeps telling this story.
Rookie, The Season of the Witch
For readings on the correlation in horror between puberty and the monstrous, see:
I will add Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chain Saws here, although she’s concerned more with identification, monstrous-feminine as men’s horror, and the maternal aspects of possession tales (including a section on possession as oral penetration). Although both Creed and Clover are important feminist horror theorists who work in Psychoanalytical lenses, Barbara Creed talks more about transformation than Carol Clover does. And transformation is key to horror movies about how women are terrifying.
For variations on a theme, watch Ginger Snaps, Carrie, and Teeth together.
(Bonus: here is Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection for free online)
(via mswyrr)
And this is why I hate How I Met Your Mother. I got through season 1, watched half a dozen of the second, and skimmed through about 4 random episodes from the second half of season 2. It’s not a funny show. It’s not an original show, and the only intriguing conceit — that somehow all of these stories, some of which do not even feature the main character, have something to do with how he meets the future mother of his children — got old before the first season was even finished.
I get it: Neil Patrick Harris is charm. I wish he had a better character that wasn’t one of the most worn-out tropes of laugh-tracked sitcom television, but his delivery makes even the most overdone lines semi-palatable. What NPH’s charm cannot do is make a character winking and nodding at rape culture amusing or acceptable on any level.
Marshall and Ted are bland, spineless, and schlubby. They are emasculated because they want relationships and devotion and only regain their ‘manliness’ when they objectify the women in their life, act like frat boys to impress the Bro of all Bros, or doggedly pursue women who have rejected them. Naturally, for the 30-minute happy ending: the objectified women are aroused by mistreatment, they learn a valuable lesson about tucking their tail and going home to their women because that’s what being in a relationship means, and the women who don’t want what they have to offer fall swooning into their arms.
As for Robin and Lily, they aren’t characters. They aren’t even caricatures. If they pursue their own interests, they have to fail, and then be punished for trying. If they want something different than the male characters, they are in the wrong — and being pretty heartless about it, too, those bitches. Meaningful professional success cannot be a part of their lives unless they are not in a relationship. They are not identifiable as female characters except by extremely shallowly portrayed, male-defined markers. Most of all, they’re the ‘cool’ chicks, not because they are actually cool, but because they act like their male friends. Certainly they never do more than roll their eyes and shake their heads at some of the more disgusting misogynistic behavior of their male friends. They are often complicit in it, allies with Barney, Marshall and Ted against every other woman they meet.
I always thought that, given what I knew of the concept for the show, its long-term success, and the fact that my best friend loves it, that HIMYM would be worth watching. It’s not. It is a truly horrible show, and the only reason it gets less criticism than something like Two and a Half Men is that Charlie Sheen is truly crazy even out of character and Neil Patrick Harris is truly charming no matter what he’s doing. That’s all I can come up with.
(via feministfilm)
This is one of my favorite Youtube videos, I love the Women’s Media Center. Thanks to -ravenclaw to sending it my way and reminding me of it!
