Tag Archives: feminism

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Gone Feral

Last Saturday, I was interacting with a group of ladies. My female friends might occasionally swear or make raunch-tacular jokes, but I see them all as ladies. They maybe open about things not always considered polite, but that never mattered in my assessment.  My female friends are ladies. They were talking about something that seemed very civil and lady-like, and I was, of course, clueless. I made a joke that I had gone feral from being single too long. I made a couple more penis jokes, and we all moved on.

Last night, I made the same joke, but I was forced to explain it. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

By I had gone feral, I meant that I had lost my “polish.” By my polish, I mean I meant that all that bullshit about how I was supposed to act to come off as appropriately feminine and to be an acceptable girlfriend to a gigantic dickbag.

I’m very lucky, and the person I was talking to is the complete and total opposite of a douchebag and pointed out to me that some of me “feral” aspects were the best parts of me.

Now I’m just pissed off. PISSED OFF. I know it shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize this shit, but I am a slow learner.

Yes, I make dirty jokes constantly. I find everything funny. Sex is one of the funniest things out there. Making dirty jokes doesn’t make me less feminine or less acceptable as a girlfriend. It means that I would make an AWESOME girlfriend. (I’m sorry but also find farting funny, too. It might make me less than classy, but I don’t care.)

I’m bossy. I’ll admit it. If something needs to get done, and no one else is stepping up to lead, I will start trying to organize things. It might not make me some meek submissive little thing, but I am not going to waste time sitting around while people mill around not getting shit done. If you want to be the leader step up, but if you don’t step up, don’t bitch if I do. That’s not ‘masculine’ that is called time-fucking-management.

I’m aggressive about things I want. If I want something, I don’t know why I should have to wait for someone to notice and give it to me.  Most of the time when I go out with friends, I am laid back, because I genuinely don’t care what we do, but if I want something, I’m going to ask. We can’t always get what we want, but I have to feel like it is okay to try.

I say what I think. I do everything in my power not to hurt people (that don’t deserve it), but if someone is being a douche noodle, I am going to call them a douche noodle. If you ask for my opinion, I will give it to you with few exceptions. If I have something to add in a conversation, I will add it. I don’t care if it seems like I am controlling a conversation. Get over it.

Now, my friends, whom all I consider ladies, have these behaviors. Almost all of these friends are married.

GRRRRRR.

I don’t know. I think I am stopping my rant here.

 
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I AM a Girl ThankYouVeryMuch

Last night I got accused of something I have never been accused of in my life: I was told I am too femme (feminine).

It was pretty shocking for me. I have been told I am too masculine by a few people (mostly by insecure men) but never that I was too feminine. The comment came from a woman who had said she hated women because she couldn’t relate to anything they talked about and they seemed silly and inconsequential. At first I was a bit hurt and it made me feel insecure about whether or not I had become some sort of air headed do-do that only thought about lip gloss and hair products. I posted on Facebook and my friend Sara made me feel better. I left the comment alone for awhile and went back to writing.

Later Kathleen and I talked about it. Kathleen is incredibly insightful and has exposed herself to some of the best of the most intelligent material on the interwebz. While the rest of us are looking at funny pictures of cats and naked people, Kathleen is reading about things going on in the world. She had shown me the video below a few days ago, so we had a previous base of conversation started. Watch the video. It is brilliant but feel free to fast forward through the spoken word poem at the end. It isn’t bad, for spoken word poetry.

Kathleen went to sleep and I put it out of my mind as I wrote some more. When I finally decided to sleep I laid in my bed and thought about the comment more. I wrote a fiery blog in my head but then I fell asleep. I have been thinking about it more all day. I think I have decided what I think about it all.

I understand the comment and I understand why the woman felt that way. I used to feel the same way.

When I was younger I believed that things that were womanly or girly were weak. I used to think that if you cared about how your hair looked or if you admitted to liking makeup you were somehow inferior. I was smart and strong and therefore had to be masculine and reject my emotional and feminine side. I work to be aggressive and to be competitive. I also saw my physical self as ungraceful and unfeminine because I am not just tall but I am also broad shouldered and I am strong like ox. (Yes, I know I would be less stocky if I lost weight, thanks for pointing that out jerkface, but I would still be broad shouldered and big framed.) In my mind I decided if I wasn’t like the other girls around me then I must be masculine. My strong opinions, personality, and my disinterest in slavishly molding myself into some sort of sexy barbie made me feel even less like a proper girl. My humor even made me feel less comfortable in my girl skin. I decided that since I was funny and I had no desire to build my self esteem based on whether or not I had a boyfriend I couldn’t be a proper girl. I shot all the way in the other direction.

I developed society’s disdain for all things soft and female. Think about it. Think about the things we say when someone is being irrational or over emotional:

Don’t be such a girl

Ugh you are being such (word for female gentalia)

Don’t be so butt hurt (because you got penetrated up the rear and being penetrated makes you weak like a woman.)

Okay I will stop with that one.

As I grew older, I started slowly becoming more comfortable in my own skin. I saw these incredibly strong kick ass women around me who were still very feminine. I realized I really don’t enjoy forcing myself to be aggressive and trying to bludgeon people over the head with my superiority. I am soft but that softness has made me a lot stronger than I ever was when I was an armored tank. I love my softness because it shapes some of my very favorite things about myself.

It is my softness that allows me to empathize with people I love when they are in pain. I can take care of people much better with an open heart than trying to force myself into pure logic. Life isn’t logical and neither is pain. It is my softness that gives me so much joy in my nieces and nephews and wanting to pick them up and smother their faces in kisses. My femininity is the part of me that gives me the courage to walk through the world trying my best to be kind and open and to care about people I don’t know even though it is painful and scary and not always appreciated and sometimes it is so hard and heavy.  My femininity is the part of me that will go into a bloody battle with anything or anyone that threatens the people I love.

I have found that my femininity doesn’t make me weak, it makes me far far stronger than I was when I denied it.

Plus, I am now okay with my obsession with eyeliner and getting my hair done.

 
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Humble

I spent over a year with someone I loved very much constantly insinuating that I was dumb. He very rarely straight out called me stupid but he would make little comments about things I did or would tell me things like “when we got together you were always so full of intelligent conversation and witty observations, what happened?” (I should have pointed out to him that he made it very clear that he had no desire to talk about things that did not directly relate to him or the the game and that he also made it very clear that I was pretty dumb about the game.) Honestly, he was not the first man to treat me like that and I was never very confident about my intelligence in the first place.

I am finding myself trying to rebuild my self image and part of that is trying to make myself believe I am smart and trying to relearn to interact with the world as Selina McSmartypants. My writing is helping immensely. The problem is that I was raised in this strange culture that it is uncouth for women to take too much pride in their intelligence. We are supposed to be humble about it and pretend that either we have no clue that we are as smart as we are or hide it. It is almost a sin for me to hint that I am smart or, even worse, that I might be smarter than other people and therefore don’t fit in with everyone around me. I live in a part of the world where few people read and the majority of people have different social values than I do. I don’t think I am better than most of these people. I actual admire people who work hard and build things from nothing. I think taking care of your family is one of the most noble things you can do. I am just a wuss and I know it. I do not believe not having a college degree means you are unintelligent. I just think I am different. I’m a geek.

Right now I need to tell myself I am smart. I am not telling myself that to lord myself above other people, I am just trying understand myself and figure out who I am again. For some reason, I am not allowed to do this simple thing. It distresses me. I can think of myself as tall and no one gets offended or feels the need to slap me down or I can like my fake red hair and it is okay. What is so damn upsetting about me taking pride in my brains?

I get the strong feeling this is a feminist issue many women face. I know I am not the only one that has been made to feel that being anything but humble to the point of lacking self worth is unfeminine and opens us up to ridicule. Women can talk about how good their kids are or how well they cook and it is perfectly acceptable. We can take pride in our homemaking skills and sometimes even our business skills and it is okay. Why is it when we say things like I am smart that it is okay to smacking us down? This is not just evil men either, the two people who make me feel bad for making comments about my intelligence have been women. Why do we do this to each other?

If we are made to believe that it is not okay to take pride in our intelligence then we slowly begin to believe that either we are dumb or that being smart is something shameful. If a man knows he is intelligent, it is completely kosher for him to take pride in it and to speak with authority. I feel like I should talk with downcast eyes and my face hidden when I know a lot about something. If I try to participate in a conversation other men are having around me, I have to offer my input almost apologetically. Why do I have to fear appearing arrogant about my brains so desperately? Men are arrogant about their mental prowess. Other women are arrogant about things other than intelligence. (Don’t believe me? Go look at the comments on mommy websites. Mommies are arrogant AND cutthroat with each other.)

I do not really know where I am going with this. I am just hurt and frustrated with it. It feels like a double wounding to be squished so low by one person then being made to feel guilty about building myself back up by another.  I feel a big serving of “go screw yourself” coming for the next person who does it. I would rather be arrogant than squished.

 

 
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What the Hell is Wrong with You?

One of my Facebook friends linked this article by Lisa Bloom on her page and it really got my blood boiling.

I need to look at the actual survey and methodology and blah blah blah but what Ms. Bloom mentions blew my little mind.

Twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Twenty-three percent would rather lose their ability to read than their figures.

I stole these fact directly from her thus the indent.

Seriously. What the hell is wrong with women and society in general that almost one quarter of our women would rather not be able to read than be fat? What did we do to ourselves?

Let get this out of the way, I know it is dangerous and costly to be overweight. I know it is a serious national health problem and I know I need to fix myself. I got that, okay. Don’t be that douche that points it out. First, we all know that it bad for you to be fat. It is like telling a smoker that smoking is bad for them. Saying something does not inform people, it just makes you seem like a self-righteous, pretentious ass. The women who would rather be illiterate than fat are not concerned about their health, in fact they probably tan, they are being shallow.

I am ashamed for us women. What are we allowing? What are we teaching our daughters? What are we teaching our sons? I think women all over the country should be outraged that so many of us consider our only real asset is our looks. How can anyone be okay with that?

Its okay that you are dumb sweetie as long as you stay hot as long as you can and make sure that when you start to “lose your looks” your husband is willing to pay you good alimony.

Are you freaking kidding me?

When I think of all of the women that have struggled in the generations before us so we could be more then just beings made for our reproductive organs and the ego boost our owners get from having us. This article makes me so sad for those women’s rights crusaders who have to see it.

This is no longer the man keeping us down. This is us. We are allowing ourselves to be judged purely on our looks and we are refusing to stand up for ourselves. We buy into the mindset that a women cannot do well in corporate America unless she looks a certain way. (It is just the way of the world…. BULLSHIT! Stand up and rage against it.) Feminist has become a dirty word. We think it means some crazy woman who hates men and wants to destroy our femininity. I felt the same way. This article changed this for me.

Screw it.

My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I believe I have the right to breed as much or as little as I want. I have the right to be paid as much as an equal male counterpart. I believe that I am not the weaker sex, I believe I just have different strengths than men. I believe that my value is not in my looks but in my brains and my heart. I believe women have a responsibility to their world to make it judge them on their actual value. I believe we have a responsibility to think. I believe we have to stand up in big and small ways and shake our fists at injustices. I believe we should stop shunning and judging and start caring and supporting. I believe we need to love ourselves for ourselves and surround ourselves with people that love us for who we are and not what our jacked up society thinks we should be.

Stand up. Get mad. Tell your daughters, nieces, younger female friends to have self-respect and to demand respect in return.

My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I am fat. I am smart and funny and caring and loyal and hopeful and when I smile the world smiles back at me. I believe my value has nothing to do with my looks. If you cannot get past the outside, then I cannot help you.

 
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