Vivat Libertas

Right, ready to get shot at by angry people for this. (Real bullets if possible - not feeling too keen on life at the moment - and for the sake of whatever is good and right don't miss.) I'm a feminist who likes all things STEM. I'm also vaguely feminine. No, this doesn't mean I'm a weird androgynous sellout to the patriarchy. If anything, it probably just means I'm human. I'm very, very sick of the fucked-up attitude towards femininity that I've seen everywhere. Sometimes it's a good thing to have, because a feminine woman fits neatly into society's little boxes. Sometimes it's a bad thing to have, because women are weak, girls have cooties and any kind of femininity is obviously  submitting to the kyriarchy. Most of the time femininity is crazily regulated. In short, society done fucked up. Again. Why do I oppose this? Because I'm sick of the stupid, the oppression, and the way people race around breaking and twisting themselves t...

Dear reader, whoever you are, I want you to know this: women aren't stupid. If you know me, you might be slightly confused because I'm constantly ranting about how stupid humanity is, so I might as well amend that statement: women are not some special kind of magical, sparkly, feminine stupid that somehow manages to make other genders look cleverer by comparison. We are just as intelligent (or as stupid) as you are. At this point, if you're going to trot out men having bigger brains than women or having higher IQs than women, I have this to say to you: firstly, men are physically bigger than women. This is why their brains are bigger. Relative body size has to be factored in when talking about relative brain size. As to men having higher IQs than women? Laying aside the debate about whether IQ is a decent measure of intelligence (because there is a debate, and because once you get past a couple of standard deviations it does break down quite spectacularly when it comes ...

In light of Caitlin Moran's incredible stupidity and in light of seeing so many other privileged white, cis feminists be racist, transphobic, ableist and other such things - whether out of malice or privileged ignorance - I have had an idea, and one that I think might be worth a try. In a conversation about this with @WeekWoman (who is well worth a follow) she mentioned that all feminists have different experiences and because of that it's so important that we all listen to each other, otherwise we're not promoting feminism: we're promoting individualism in the sense of doing what's best for ourselves, rather than for all women. Now, infighting pisses me off, as does lack of understanding. It angers, upsets and sickens me when people end up working at cross-purposes; it upsets me even more when it's because people don't understand each other. For those of you who don't get this: we could be busy tearing down the kyriarchy, but instead we're te...

Those of you who know me will know that I'm a feminist. A pretty crappy, isolated one, to be sure, but a feminist nonetheless and therefore one of those hairy, ugly, man-hating destroyers of the family. Okay, let's get the stereotypes over with: feminists come in all shapes and sizes and their looks (gasp!) don't actually have any bearing on the validity of their points - which vary wildly, sometimes to the point of contradicting each other. And, well...I got thinking about this because of a post by a fellow feminist, talking about how she initially thought that she could talk about feminism to people and have a logical conversation. As anyone who's ever tried to have a logical conversation about their pet cause will know, it really doesn't work that way. Whether that's because we're all biased or because other people are too set in their ways to have rational discussions about things, most of the time it ends up with people yelling and thinking their op...

So I've been thinking again...This is a dangerous thing, you know. It disturbs people. Then again, they don't have  to read my thoughts, so they can go away in peace, I can rant in peace and thus conflict is avoided. And as you can quite obviously see, I've been thinking about feminism and humour - to be more precise, the stereotype of the humourless feminist. Other people have written about it before, and better and more eloquently than I could ever manage, being as I am just a young woman with little knowledge of feminist history or theory, but I intend to offer my own perspective on it. I don't think feminists are inherently humourless - in fact, I know they're not. Fuck, I don't move in many feminist circles and the feminists I know are (for the most part) snarky, funny people who know how to laugh. Some are graver than others. That's fine by me - it's not a crime to be a serious person, especially when it comes to standing up against a kyriarc...

So radical feminists have pissed me off and stung me into creativity again . I suppose I've got to thank them for giving me all this material for blog posts! Anyway, read this piece of fail to understand what sparked this post off. I am very, very troubled and annoyed (and that's putting it mildly) by attitudes to femininity. What is femininity, after all? Womanliness or womanhood; people having and celebrating the quality of being a woman that is within them. That's what it should be anyway. Femininity should be a celebration of womanly qualities unchecked by patriarchy or kyriarchy; it should celebrate self-determination, vitality and the womanly element, whatever that is (since people should decide that for themselves). Instead, what is femininity? It's a set of rules and regulations that girls and women are pressured into following in order to be real  girls and women, good  girls and women, as if they weren't already good and true enough just by identifyin...

Firstly - an apology for taking the week off. I've had exams and personal things going on that made blogging even less of a priority than it already is. So I've written before about my problems with feminism , and I have a post squirreled away somewhere that explicitly addresses the bits of radical feminism I find problematic (to put it mildly). I may publish it someday. Anyway, yet another problem I have with radfems is their disparaging of any feminism that isn't radical feminism as "fun feminism", with its not-so-subtle implication that if you dare  to have a feminist movement without transphobia and denial of intersectionality, you're quite clearly not serious about smashing the kyriarchy and only want to - the horror, the absolute horror! - enjoy yourself. This is an absolute clusterfuck of logic fails, and I'll try to pick them apart. Firstly, there's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself while  working for a good cause. There is no rule tha...

So right now, I call myself a feminist. I might be dropping that label because of the racism, transphobia, classism, ableism, etc. of white feminists (who fuck up way more than I would like - and keep in mind I'm a white feminist). But still, for now I am a feminist. And for now, I am a feminist who is quite sick of misconceptions about feminism and would quite like to do some edumacating about what feminism is and is not. So sit your arse down, get comfy and do some listening. What is feminism? Good question, that, and if I had the answer I'd tell you. I am a feminist in practice in that I try to live my life in a feminist way - stand up for all and smash the kyriarchy - but I have never taken a women's studies class or read some of the theory (bad Osnat is bad). As far as I can work out, feminism is a bunch of different movements all carrying the same banner and ranging from the average person on the street to the most diehard radfem. And yes, you get infighting...oh...

Big, important notice: I am a white, cis, privileged woman. So if I do something stupid, call me out on it. Please. I would sincerely rather get flamed the fuck out of a couple of times for being an oppressive dick than ignore all criticism and keep hurting people and things. I almost stopped calling myself a feminist. Not because I'm sick of man-hating, hairy-legged, strident, tyrannical termagants - if you haven't worked it out yet, feminists are the ordinary people you pass on the street - but because I'm sick of something else; quite a lot of this something else, actually. I'm sick of transphobia , cis sexism , the throwing about of white privilege like a bouncy ball, the denial of intersectionality , white femi nists comparing everything to slut shaming , the marginalisation of people of colour , the marginalisation of working-class women , that go back decades and are still around today despite claims that we live in an equal society. I'm sick of them ...

There! That got your attention, didn't it? It might be worth pointing out now that I'm a raging feminist and totally disagree with the title. Unfortunately, most of Western society agrees - including a rotten core of hostile misogynists, one of whom gave me the title for this post. Misogyny is one of my triggers for righteous anger, as is pretty much anything which assumes it's acceptable or ethical to oppress another group of people for no good reason (actually, is there ever a good reason for oppression? No). Hence this blog post. Today, I learnt to laugh at it. No, that doesn't mean I think misogynists are trivial. I don't think that rape jokes are funny or a thing of no consequence. I don't think that being regarded as a man's property, for him to do with me what he will, is at all unimportant. I do, however, think misogynists are some of the most incredibly stupid people on the planet - and stupidity is really quite funny. It's depressing ...

A big, BIG disclaimer here: I am an upper-middle-class white cis female. I am quite aware of my privilege. I want the same privilege for everyone else. I've been reading a lot of feminist material lately and following a lot of feminists on Twitter - one more reason to love it. Now, I'm not strictly speaking a True Feminist - I have not yet been involved, for example, in some infighting. Neither have I taken any classes on it. I haven't even read the seminal works of feminism, poor ignorant thing that I am - for I was never aware of them. I used to think that all the major struggles for women's equality were over and that feminists were just strident science-haters. I was an idiot when I was younger, OK?! My views changed right about when I started connecting with actual feminists  and found that no, they didn't hate history, science or men - they hated being objectified. I started to warm up to them. I can't remember the exact day when it hit me. But it ...