Intersectionality vs. Being Human

I read yet another screed on intersectionality in feminism that both made sense and irritated me. There is this assumption in a lot of the talk about intersectionality in feminism (which I don' see cropping up in conversations about racism, it's only the women who leave things out, I guess) that individual feminists should talk about the issues of all women whenever they talk about feminism. White feminists talk about the things that affect white women. Cis women talk about what affects them. Straight women are all about talking about dating issues in heterosexual couples. Western women talk about being a woman in America or Europe. And of course they do, because that is what they are, that is their experience. A black cis hetero man still experiences racism and still has things to complain about. A white cis hetero woman, likewise, has issues. Privilege doesn't even out oppression.

I get the complaint that most articles and talking about feminism is coming from a straight, cis, white, western perspective. I get that annoyance that they are the ones getting the big writing deals and having their voices and concerns heard. I get that they sometimes - or even usually - don't acknowledge other types of women, much less talk about the issues facing them. I get it, I really do, because there is something I've left out, maybe two, three, or more somethings. Two because being obese isn't seen as a 'real' disability and three or more because I don't remember every piece of identity all the time either.

One of the things feminist articles - especially those regarding the issue of dating or men hitting on women - is that all women are thin. When a fat woman pokes her head up and says "I wouldn't mind being hit on every now and then", she's told that she really wouldn't. And like clockwork, she backs down in the face of all of the thin/normal sized women's stories of creepy guys not leaving them alone. But as a fat woman, I can say that I don't mind being hit on now and then because it happens a lot more rarely than that. I've had people call out to me on the street. In New Orleans in March, a guy a block away started swinging his arms. When I got closer, he indicated that he wanted a hug. I shook my head and smiled, but I didn't feel creeped out at all. Being bigger than the average male - same average height, more average weight - I am not really afraid of them. In fact, I actually do feel flattered when people call out to me on the street, and I don't give a shit if the guy intended it that way or not. It is my feeling to have.

But I would never begrudge a thin, normal sized woman her feelings about those situations either. I think their experiences are important to understand and those issues are important to talk about. Sure, I'd like to read more about how fat women experience sexism (and without the concern trolling about our health, please). Intersectionality is important, but I can't stand the comments about how this article or that article didn't touch on this type of person or that type of person and therefore their feminism is oppressive, unwelcoming, racist, homophobic, anti-trans, and everything else. Nothing can be everything, so take it for what it is and write your own article that does talk about those kind of people.

Oh, Shut Up Already

But, but, but,
I have all these reeeeeeasons why
I can't do that
It isn't that big of a deal
I'm laughing it off

Good gracious
If you're complaining
You have a problem
I will help you fix it
Get over your pride
Grow up, please

Oh, so you're just gonna do this this and this
You're gonna make sure you don't meet the definition
But you %&$#ing do
With every breath, you can't see how it manifests
Do you need a phd in gender studies to see the problem?
Do you have to be black to know racism?
How much evidence do you need to %&$#ing trust me?
I do not lie, I know what I know
And you are all @^*& monkeys, dancing on a string
%&$# you
%&$# you
%&$#

---

I went for a walk while at work, at this time, after calling people out on [Social Media], only to face people doubling down, and other frustrations. I started walking, but was going too fast, and my legs were hurting, so I decided to sit on some exercise things that were set up under a tree. There, I wrote that little poem.

That's Why I Don't Read Movie Reviews

I saw Inception last night, and apart from some bright spots, I was mostly bored with the movie during the second half. Its about these spies that go into people's dreams - an implausible thing in reality, but I buy it for the movie - to collect secrets or plant ideas. In the dream state, you can still feel pain, but if you are killed you just wake up - that is until the characters are in the first stage of the main dream state of the movie when we get the "oh, wait, we need more suspense" addition to the movie where people killed in the dream now just enter a limbo state as their real brains melt. At that point, I rolled my eyes and started eying the time.

Like most action/heist movies, this one starred mostly men, which is part of the reason that I don't like such movies (the other part is that the typical heist plot bores me). A couple of the things I did like about this movie were the addition of a female character playing a role in the team on the heist who never becomes romantically attracted to any of her co-workers and the Cobb's realization that he can't create an accurate representation of his dead wife because no one's perception of anyone can match the complexity of an actual human being.

Andrew O'Hehir's review review of Inception mostly mirrors my own take on the movie, except for one detail. He never mentions the second thing I liked about the movie, and that being such a tiny, unimportant scene, I don't care about that. He does, however, refer to Ellen Page's character as "genderless" and refer to the dead wife character as "all the female, erotic energy" that is missing from a universe of professionals. Apparently, Andrew must be reminded that women are different from men and only exist in a sexual space lest he forget to be attracted to them. He never refers to DiCaprio's character as genderless, even though he has all the sexual masculinity of a cardboard box throughout the film - just like most male movie characters. This is just another reminder of how most movie reviewers can't see women as people. When one is presented not as window dressing, but as an average woman, they claim she is androgynous. It's as if Andrew never met a woman in real life.

At the Expense of Others

The movie Leap Year asks if women should propose marriage. That begs the question of if women should be making decisions at all. Really, should women be leaving their homes or even spending money?

The only people that think this way are narrow minded idiots that think "tradition" is a valid reason to continue bad policy. Unfortunately, these people also happen to be the majority of the population. So, sorry gals, looks like you're not in charge of your own lives.

In the Meantime

I have a couple more Stupid People posts coming up, but in the meantime, allow me to link an article by Barbara Ehrenreich: The Pink Ribbon Cancer Cult

Unrelated, but "Her presence underscores the impact and importance of bowling." I'm not sure if that line can be any funnier.

Another Quote

Over at Pandagon, I don't care for the bloggers that quote a lot because I want to read their analysis. I read the blog because I like the writing and opinions of the bloggers, so reading a bunch of quotes bores me. But, I'm not as skilled a writer as Marcotte, or this writer, so I guess I have to quote.

The fourth point: If you fail to respect what women say, you label yourself a problem.

There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?

Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.

This man scores higher on the threat level scale than Man with the Cockroach Tattoos. (Who, after all, is guilty of nothing more than terrifying bad taste.) You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

So if you speak to a woman who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps her right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.

For women, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.

-Sweet Machine

Here is something that I already realize, but I did not have the capacity to put it into words. Fortunately, I can leverage the words of someone else and use this to put words to instances in my own life.

We Do Not Exist Just to Breed

Something is said to be alive if it is an item that grows on its own and creates identical items that grow on their own. So it happens that the life patterns of humans would include a period of growth, then procreation. A major difference between humans and other species of life is that we don't just stop at making copies of ourselves. We create and build, we discover and invent, we fix and improve, sometimes never stopping to have more than one or two children.

But many people have it in their heads that our purpose is to breed, they may be forbidden by others from preventing pregnancy, and many are unable to resist sexual contact. In the past, the human population stayed stable because we were unable to keep a large segment of babies from dying shortly after birth. The population was further held down due to disease, war, and in Europe, witch burnings killed a significant portion of the young adult population. These days, science gives us the technology to limit the number of people we create and to take good care of the ones that we do create.

But now and then, the past comes back to haunt us. Will we make the right assessment of the problem and fix it? Will we discourage religious dogma and encourage contraception? I hope we do.

O_O

Let's play with women by lying to them and then pretend it doesn't matter! We'll call this a game, in fact, The Game. Let's exploit the fact that sexism harms women in a number of understood ways. We can call that the "special psychology" of women, and use it to get them to do things that they don't want to do! Hahahahaha - yeah, dude, dehumanizing rocks!

WRONG

Once again, we see that Obama, despite his mention of "non-believers,"* still needs to play to the delusional.

"There is no god who condones taking the life of an innocent human being," [President Obama] said, and all religions teach people to love and care for one another.

Not the god of the Old Testament! That god LOVED killing anyone and everyone. Oh, but I guess because they were living on land that some other people wanted, no one could consider them "innocent". It all hinges on the definition of that word, and few, if any humans (American or not) are actually "innocent" according to these outdated, hateful, xenophobic, and misogynist texts. And I’m talking about the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and yeah, even Eastern religions have crap about what women should and should not do because guys got all freaked out by us shedding unused uterine lining once a month. It’s easy to put on blinders and think that because one character in a book told us to love our neighbors as ourselves that religion is harmless. Just be careful that you don’t get stoned, set on fire, or cast out of your family for accidentally breaking one of the other asinine rules also written in those mega-violent novels.

*I actually don’t like that term and was not that encouraged by it in the inaugural address. It wasn’t until I read other blog posts that were so happy about our inclusion that I even know that it was a big deal. I don’t like being defined by what I lack. The terms atheist and even godless are less bothersome, even though they mean the same thing. I’d love to start using the term rationalist, but there are so many religious misogynists (though misogynists can also be atheist) that also think they are rational so the word isn’t very descriptive.

But Only When the Person isn't an Adult Woman!

Choads in the Senate, sad that they are on the wrong side of history, voted against Clinton's nomination to be Secretary of State. There were only two of them and one was David Vitter. Wasn't he the diapers guy? Not that it is fair to make fun of someone for their kinks (though I've got my own feelings about those), it is more the hypocricy that matters. The other choad decided to vote his misogynist conscience:

In addition to concerns surrounding the foundation, [South Carolina Republican Jim] DeMint said he opposes Clinton's positions on such matters as providing aid to foreign groups that offer abortions.

"I do not plan to slow up this nomination, but I do find it difficult to support a nominee who I know will pursue policies so contrary to American sovereignty and the dignity of the human person," he said.

Dignity of the human person? What about the human person who knows she will die if the fetus inside her is not removed? What about the human person that was violently raped as an act of war at the age of 12 and finds herself orphaned and pregnant in a refugee camp in the DRC? Oh, I forgot, women aren't people, and since that fetus MIGHT be male, well, we musn't allow that woman to live a productive life in that case. Duh.

Do women in South Carolina understand that their senator thinks their lives are trivial things and that fetuses matter more?

Who Gets to Talk to the Imaginary Friend?

Everyone is pissed off about Rick Warren. Well, at least everyone with a basic understanding of discrimination, hate speech, and human rights. A guy on the Jim Lehrer News Hour compared Warren's appearance before the innaguration and a more liberal preacher giving the Benediction later with having an anti-semite in Warren's place and expecting to smooth it over by having a rabbi speak at the end.

But people HATE comparisons like that when talking about anything relating to gender and breaking outdated roles built for XX or XY people. Comparing gay people with Jews? How can you compare homophobia with the Holocaust? Oh... wait... homosexuals were rounded up then too...

Homosexual people and women who want to control when and how often they will or won't become pregnant are still expected to take this as "tolerance". When someone's politics don't directly affect my life, then I will tolerate them. However this guy wants to tell me how to live and interfere with my ability to be a productive and happy citizen, so sorry, no tolerance here.

8:30pm Update: As bad as this is, it is five minutes. The more we focus on this, the less we focus on the new regulation to make it more complicated and, in some places, impossible for people to get abortions, emergency contraception, normal birth control methods, or really make any decisions about one's own body without some doctor, pharmacist, nurse, assistant, or janitor slut-shaming and denying what could be a life-saving service. Even a month of that is enough to fuck up a lot of people. In my case, I get to spend my vacation grilling prospective pharmacies about whether or not they will fill my prescriptions, saying nothing about finding doctors. (my new and better insurance kicks in on January 1 - so long, Kaiser!) Hooray for stress that I don't need.

Stonewall

39 years ago today, in New York City, there was a spark that started it all. Sure, there had been activists before, bringing people together and shedding light on the subject. However, it wasn't until that last raid at the Stonewall Inn in the early morning hours that the forces brewing in America burst onto the stage.

But LGBT rights are not my fight, I know that. I am not in danger of losing my job, my family, my friends because of the person that I love. Furthermore, I can be assured that when I marry, I will be able to visit my spouse in the hospital, extend my health insurance to him (or vice versa), and be allowed all of the other rights that married couples receive in America. So really, there is no need for me to care. My stake in gay rights is second hand, but as MLK once said, "a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

But really, my stake in LGBT rights goes beyond just my desire to see all people treated with dignity and respect. The struggle for LGBT rights and the visibility of non-heterosexual people and couples throws a wrench into gender norms and male-female relationships. They show the world that manhood and womanhood are not predicated on their relationship with eachother, but on their own merit. A man is not a man because he controls a woman that has "his" children, and a woman is not worthless if she does not marry [or devote her life to the church]. LGBT rights affirms the humanity of us all. Tomorrow, I will be proudly attending the San Francisco Gay Pride events, LGBT Rights=Human Rights.

Ya Voté

I did something yesterday that would have gotten me arrested if I did it in 1908. When I left, the guy that gave me my ballot thanked me for voting. It made me feel good.

The First Wave and Eminent Domain

Last night, I got my protein in the form of delicious raw fish at a local sushi place. Today, there was cheese and sour cream with the baked potatoes at lunch, which was a little more protein than yesterday. But before all of that, last night, I caught the end of the Hillary Swank movie about Alice Paul. I had seen clips of that at The Henry Ford exhibit about American women's suffrage. That was the first I'd ever heard of the movie, and my friends and I joked about what it must have cost The Henry Ford to cast an Oscar winner in their video. We then saw a "visualization" of a slave riots with nothing but recorded voices, timed lighting, and cardboard cut-outs. Obviously, they blew the budget on Hillary Swank.

Since then, the image of her playing Alice Paul, tied to a chair, with a tube in her throat, stuck with me. I'm not sure I would have her strength, but thanks to her, I don't need it. Not here, in the United States, at least. See, she and other activists were arrested for pointing out, in front of the White House, the hypocrisy of not allowing women to vote. She then went on a hunger strike in prison. When meeting with the prison psychologist, she said that the hunger strike was an old tactic of Ireland. Someone would starve themselves in strike on the another person's doorstep and if that person did not acquiesce to the striker's needs, that would result in a stinking corpse on one's front doorstep. When she encouraged other activists in the prison to strike as well, she was force fed. A leaked tale of her treatment made it to the press and it made news everywhere. The same thing today would barely bat an eyelash, but back before there were a billion people on the planet, it added to the changing tides in America after WW1.

I'm not sure if the movie captured the elation of the moment when the last necessary state ratified the 19th amendment or if it was me. I remember looking at old LHS yearbooks from before 1920, with all of the very relatable 17 and 18 year old women, thinking about how they could not vote. I don't think I remembered that the voting age was 21 until only a generation ago, but the feeling, much like the imagery, stuck with me. The thought of not being able to vote strikes fear in my heart. I guess that would explain why my potentially deadly near-miss on Super Tuesday didn't really hit me until the Friday afterwards. I just knew I had to vote.

Since the age of 7 and the 1988 presidential election, voting has been important to me. I've so-far only missed odd-year elections, which really, I shouldn't shirk the way I do. I'm voting on Tuesday, mainly because of the two state-wide ballot initiatives to do with eminent domain. The last statewide initiative about eminent domain did not go the way I wanted it to go. Obviously, Californians do NOT understand the "personal property right" of "crapping in your yard and sculpting with it."

Sun Signs and the Second Wave

I have an interest in astrological knowledge because I am interested in how the events surrounding our early brains shaped our lives. As far as I know, astrology is the body of knowledge with the most information about this. My co-workers know this, so last year, one bought me a copy of Linda Goodman's Sun Signs. Linda Goodman was a famous astrologer in the med 20th century, and this book has descriptions of different signs, including how to spot someone of a sign and understand a man, woman, child, boss, and employee of that sign.

Interestingly, the book describes Cancer women as having large upper bodies - having a sweater size larger than skirt size. A child born in July was conceived in October, just after the harvest, when food was plentiful. But as the year wears on, carbohydrates run out, and a mother will begin to eat more and more meat during a large part of her pregnancy. In the northern and western hemispheres (quadrisphere?), we have a lot of animal protein. I think this is accurate, and this dietary influence, which was much much more pronounced before this century, might be the reason for my "linebacker in drag" physique. But the assessment also describes a cancer as one who is not very open about "himself", which is not me, not at all. Its also not my dad for that matter, who is also a Cancer. Its also hard to know how much overlap there is between what the book says about a certain sign and a description of typical human behavior. Unlike global warming, I think we could do double blind studies with astrological information.

The book is interesting, but also infuriating, as it was written in 1968. Even though written by a woman, the sexism of American society before the second wave of feminism shines through free and clear. Someone is only called "she" or "her" and possessions/traits hers if the person has been specifically identified as a woman. Generic characters are always he, him, and the traits his. Female employees are secretaries, men anything else, and I haven't read the boss section, but I doubt that the words she, and her even appear in that section. Even the women's section is rife with sexism. The section on the Virgo woman warns the reader that "unfortunately" Virgo women are rarely virginal.

Reading the book makes me grateful for the work and sacrifices of all of the women in the second wave that allow me to realize this in the first place. Because of those bra-burners, I am free. Free to make my own decisions, earn my own money, and be my own person. Free from pandering, free from harassment, and free to enjoy myself. I am proud to carry on their spirit now, in the third wave, because we know there is still work to be done.

In other news, I just read that Sagittarius, the sign of my little sister, is very very incompatible with both Cancer and Capricorn, which might explain why she seems so distant. I'm going to see if taking this viewpoint for my sister improves my relationship with her.