1. 2 Jan



    [Parents should] recommend some books with female leads that your son would enjoy reading. If your next question is “Why?,” then ask your daughter why she liked Harry Potter. She might say it was a good story, great characters, and a fantastic world. Who cares if the main character was a boy? In fact, girls will pick up a book with a hero or heroine equally. According to my excellent librarian resources, boys will actively avoid books with a girl as the main character. What’s the problem? I have no idea. Why should you encourage your son to read books with heroines? That’s easy. You want your son to grow up knowing that a strong female for a friend, wife or boss is normal and good.
    — Rebecca Angel (via divinehours)

    (Source: msandrogynous, via yesmeansyes)

     

  2. 20 Dec


    fuckyeahethnicwomen: Whitney (by Neu Era |Photography.)

    fuckyeahethnicwomen:

    Whitney (by Neu Era |Photography.)

     

  3. 3 Mar



    no one is scrutinized more than women

    so i’ve been thinking about how heavily women or female-bodied people are always so harshly judged in everything they do. 

    especially by people who supposedly oppose misogyny, sexism, objectification of women, etc.

    if you’re a woman, everything you do has to have some grand motivation behind it. if you take a topless picture of yourself and post it on your blog, you’re either “omgzz subjecting to the sexist patriarchal standards that objectify your body!!” or you’re being a feminist hero and are empowering yourself! or, as much of society, would put it, you’re a shameless whore for putting your body on display. 

    it can’t just be because you felt like it, or had a whim. there has to be an agenda, or your tiny little mind was influenced by the evil man and caused you to post a topless picture. 

    i’m not saying it can’t be ~empowering~ for a female-bodied person to put their goods out there, since society tends to shame women who do so and enjoy doing it. but. it doesn’t have to be about being a feminist superhero. it could just be because you felt like it.

    there have been a couple instances where right here, on tumblr, a photo of a woman posing provocatively caused tumblr feminists great distress. that doesn’t sound logical, right? feminist are supposed to respect the choices one makes with their body, right?

    i remember there was this gorgeous glamour shot of a young blonde woman wearing heavy make-up and a cute sequin-y tube top going around on tumblr. half of the people reblogging it were tumblr ~feminists~ saying “THIS POOR WOMAN. SHE HAS BEEN INFLUENCED BY THE EVIL PATRIARCHY TO THINK THAT LOOKING THIS WAY IS BEAUTIFUL.” half of the reblogs went on this way until someone pointed out the she also had large, visible tattoos and that tattoos certainly aren’t for the most part acceptable for women to display, so how can she be subjecting to the patriarchy? 

    another time there was a simple photo of a thin white woman with long brown hair. she was apparently nude from the waist up and posed so that her hair covered her chest. a couple of the reblogs were (from tumblr feminists, mind you) like “OMG. I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS GIRL WOULD WANT TO TAKE A PICTURE LIKE THAT. PROBABLY TO PLEASE A BOYFRIEND OR SOMETHING. POOR GIRL.”

    it doesn’t make any sense to me. obviously, there is lots of dialogue to be had about the objectification of women, especially in advertising and whatnot. but i think it’s important to remember that you can’t know every woman’s intentions by a photograph. you can’t know what’s going through her head. 

    i expect the majority of society to make all sorts of gross assumptions about judgement about what women choose to do with their bodies, but i’m kind of sick of seeing it come from the side that’s supposed to be down with female empowerment. i don’t know even know if i’m making any sense here. 

     

  4. 6 Oct



    On Zooey Deschanel

    aaabbbbbbiiieee:

    “Who is the black Zooey Deschanel?” by Tami at What Tami Said.

    The cult of domesticity defined idealized womanhood centuries ago—and that definition included both perpetual childhood and whiteness. The wide-eyed, girlish, take-care-of-me characters that Deschanel inhabits on film are not open to many women of color, particularly black women. We can be strong women, aggressive women, promiscuous women…we can do Bonet bohemian and Earth Mother (as Andrea pointed out), but never carefree and childish. Even black girls are too often viewed as worldly women and not innocents.

    Also, the affectations of the manic pixie are read differently on black women. A streak of pink in the hair goes from quirky and youthful to “ghetto” on a black body. Thrift store clothing leads to a host of class assumptions.

    Am I wrong about this? Is there a black Zooey? A manic pixie Latina? Is this a persona that women of color can inhabit?

    I am not interested in women of color going out of their way to adopt any trendy persona or fit in, personally. And I have to disagree with the original author that the girly-ness thing is an actual trend. But it is important to talk about race aspect of it. Very rarely of women of color portrayed as the harmless, cute, ~*~*~*~dream girl~*~*~*~~ love interest in films.

     

  5. 12 Sep


    (Source: menspeakout)

     

  6. 7 Sep



    Women are taught so many messages about how we need to behave in order to “prevent” sexual assault and sexual harassment in public spaces. How we need to look, how we need to dress, how we need to walk, how we need to make ourselves small and unremarkable, how we need to anticipate the behavior of others, how we must not “attract” the wrong kind of attention. Even though I resent that these messages fundamentally imply that women bear responsibility for insuring sexual assault does not occur, I still, almost in spite of myself, take all of these things into account when I get dressed and when I go out in public. To have already engineered your behavior to meet the threat of assault and then to still face criminal harassment just feels like an added injustice.
    — Jenna Sauers, “A Guy Jerked Off To Me In The Subway, And NYPD Didn’t Do A Thing”, Jezebel. (via aaabbbbbbiiieee)
     

  7. 20 Aug


    watanafghanistan: Afghan women rally, turning men red-faced with anger  In any other country, the sight of a group of women holding colorful placards, marching and protesting is commonplace. But not in Afghanistan. In fact, a women’s protest on the streets of Kabul on Thursday was the first of its kind. On a hot, muggy day, about 30 women of all ages mustered up the courage to speak up against the age-old indignity of sexual harassment by men. With banners that read “This street also belongs to me” and “We won’t stand insults anymore,” they marched with a confident stride from Kabul University to the Afghan Human Rights Institute. Women in Afghanistan face intimidation and sexual assault on a daily basis. In the most extreme cases, schoolgirls have been terrorized by men throwing acid at them as they walked to school. The United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA) says that about 31 percent of Afghan women suffer physical violence and another 30 percent suffer from psychological trauma.

    watanafghanistan:

    Afghan women rally, turning men red-faced with anger

     In any other country, the sight of a group of women holding colorful placards, marching and protesting is commonplace.

    But not in Afghanistan.

    In fact, a women’s protest on the streets of Kabul on Thursday was the first of its kind.

    On a hot, muggy day, about 30 women of all ages mustered up the courage to speak up against the age-old indignity of sexual harassment by men.

    With banners that read “This street also belongs to me” and “We won’t stand insults anymore,” they marched with a confident stride from Kabul University to the Afghan Human Rights Institute.

    Women in Afghanistan face intimidation and sexual assault on a daily basis. In the most extreme cases, schoolgirls have been terrorized by men throwing acid at them as they walked to school.

    The United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA) says that about 31 percent of Afghan women suffer physical violence and another 30 percent suffer from psychological trauma.

    (via kadalkavithaigal)

     

  8. 30 Jun



    abortion.

    feministblackboard:

    A young lady once asked me if I thought an abortion was the right choice for her. I told her I could not and should not make that decision for her.

    We feminists are not here to decide who chooses what. We simply are here to keep that door open for women in need. It is them who have to decide whether or not to walk through.

    (Source: feminist-blackboard)

     

  9. 17 Jun



    It is a scientific fact that every exta X chromosome in a human lowers the IQ of that human by 15 points.

    great-truth:

    Women have two X chromosomes. Therefore science has proven women are less intelligent than men by default.

    Sources:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_X_syndrome
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXXX_syndrome
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXXXX_syndrome

    Is it the year 1912 all over again? 

     

  10. 16 May



    Unpopular opinion: Feminism annoys the fuck out of me.

    dreambeneaththedesertsky:

    I’m sorry but I love men. Men are wonderful. Whiny women who complain about how men suck and are the root of all problems are just jaded and delusional, not to mention obnoxious.

    Women are catty bitches! And some men are jerks. Some people just suck, it really has nothing to do with gender.

    Besides, women don’t look as good as men ;P

    Like or reblog if you love men!

    It’s rather unfortunate how there are so many people who have bought into the lie that feminism = hating men.

    Look, it’s alright if you don’t identify with the feminist movement or call yourself one but it would do you some good to understand what you’re talking about. I get the feeling you’ve never spoken to an actual feminist, because I know of no feminists who hate men. Identifying male privilege and calling those who have male privilege out on their oppressive bullshit isn’t “complaining”, it’s challenging a sexist culture in which women who challenge things are dismissed as whiny, man-hating, complainers. 

    There are feminist mothers, feminist men, feminist non-binaries, tons of feminist writers, and there are the feminist activists of the past and the now who have fought to make a better future for all of those people. Again, try understanding a movement or a theory and the people involved in it before you go summing it up as “complaining” to further prevent yourself from looking like an ignorant dolt, which you pretty much just did.