robbiethewabbit:

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wow look at how dutiful and loyal to her faith she is, she must have chosen what she felt was right for her and her devotion

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oh my god look at this poor oppressed woman why would anyone ever wear their hair covered like that on their own free will it’s our duty to point out how wrong this is

The second point here is spot on.  That’s the first thing I want to say.  The West just loves to try to “save” Muslim women from any kind of head or hair covering.

But I’ve seen this post a few times and I can no longer let it go without pointing out that the woman in the top photo is Megan Fox.  To my knowledge, Megan Fox has not become a real nun.  

As well as that, very few nuns wear the full wimple anymore.  For example, in the 1980s the Presentation Sisters who taught me in school no longer even had to wear the simple veil.  The photos at that link give you a general idea of how most nuns dress today, in Ireland at least.  I think in the US, too, from things I’ve seen on the Daily Show.  And I’m sure elsewhere.

I am adding this comment because I feel that far from representing religious devotion and free choice, the nun today is a site of anxiety in Western culture.  That anxiety is usually dealt with either through mockery or in the reproduction of an image of the nun as a naive woman who lacks the common sense of the real world.  In most media today there is a ridiculous image of nuns as still being wimpled and possessing a naive kind of faith.  An episode of House in which the patient of the week was a nun really drove that point home to me - the nuns in the episode easily believed one of the sisters had the stigmata and looked for no alternative explanation for the woman’s hand wounds.  Only someone who had never known any nuns could write them like that.  Among the nuns who taught me were some very smart, strong women who would absolutely insist on every medical check possible in a scenario like that.  They are far from the mindlessly devoted nuns you mostly see on television today who insist on Catholic dogma without a shred of reflection or pragmatism.

And this image of Megan Fox dressed up as a nun reproduces this kind of otherworldly, demure, wimpled image of nuns, with the subversive element that this is Megan Fox.  Nuns are so often characterised as dried up, unsexed old women, and this photo works ironically by saying “tee hee, this is Megan Fox, she’s young, she’s sexy, and here she is as a nun, and we all know they never have sex.  Look, she’s so covered up!”

That’s the joke.  Sexy Megan Fox is dressed up like a nun.  Ha ha ha.

So in the lower picture, you have a woman the West wants to save, and on the upper picture, you have a woman who would figure as a site of anxiety in Western culture—anxiety managed by mockery and othering—were it not for the fact that it’s a picture of Megan Fox.  In fact, I would argue that this picture functions to mock and Other nuns.

So yes, the West definitely has a patronising, belittling and oppressive attitude towards the wearing of any kind of headscarf by Muslim women. But I don’t think the nun is the Western counterpoint to that attitude.  Nuns are also patronised and belittled in the West.  In the end, they are both groups of women who reject Western patriarchal ideas of sex and sexuality, and as such they they are both Othered.

(via andinthemeantimeconsultabook)

Source: robbiethewabbit

What if all women were bigger and stronger than you? And thought they were smarter? What if women were the ones who started wars? What if too many of your friends had been raped by women wielding giant dildos and no K-Y Jelly? What if the state trooper who pulled you over on the New Jersey Turnpike was a woman and carried a gun? What if the ability to menstruate was the prerequisite for most high-paying jobs? What if your attractiveness to women depended on the size of your penis? What if every time women saw you they’d hoot and make jerking motions with their hands? What if women were always making jokes about how ugly penises are and how bad sperm tastes? What if you had to explain what’s wrong with your car to big sweaty women with greasy hands who stared at your crotch in a garage where you are surrounded by posters of naked men with hard-ons? What if men’s magazines featured cover photos of 14-year-old boys with socks tucked into the front of their jeans and articles like: “How to tell if your wife is unfaithful” or “What your doctor won’t tell you about your prostate” or “The truth about impotence”? What if the doctor who examined your prostate was a woman and called you “Honey”? What if you had to inhale your boss’ stale cigar breath as she insisted that sleeping with her was part of the job? What if you couldn’t get away because the company dress code required you wear shoes designed to keep you from running? And what if after all that women still wanted you to love them?
For The Men Who Still Don’t Get It, Carol Diehl (via willyweasley)

(via notcanonyet)

Source: sassysluteverforever

mattrenez:

igotaloveshekeepsmewaiting:

melodiesintheair:

jarpadd:

I suggest all females watch this. 

*i suggest all humans watch this.

THIS SHOULD BE REQUIRED WATCHING FOR ALL HUMANS

I’m a 17 year old white guy living in middle class America. I’ve never exactly been a supporter of feminism because that kind of thing has never really affected me personally. I don’t notice it and I don’t care about it. But in nine minutes this video has made what is truly a serious problem extremely apparent. Those “why I need feminism” posts or those slut-shaming or rape culture campaigns never convince me of anything. But this video actually did I think.

tl;dr This video kicks ass, just watch it.

(via ramesesthesecond)

Source: dave-bowman

The modern ‘epidemics’ of teen pregnancy and obesity can be understood as a modern manifestation of these sorts of anxieties about the ‘contagion’ of working class and poor communities, about “unregulated” female sexuality. Many sociologists have used the idea of “moral panic” to describe how society’s wider anxieties (about criminals, communities of color, the poor, immigrants, etc.) are framed as threatening to the social order, and transformed into hostility and volatility.

I don’t mean to imply that teen pregnancy is necessarily good for young women, or that there aren’t health outcomes of obesity (although the data has been surprising – with a recent analysis suggesting that being overweight might be actually associated with a lower risk of death). What I would like to argue is that since these “epidemics” – and these campaigns – disproportionately break down across class and race lines, these ‘shame and blame’ posters in fact serve to throw a cloak of moral legitimacy upon race and class panic.

The panic here is clear: marginalized bodies are out of control, unable to care for themselves or their children. Self-control (regarding sexuality, regarding food), so valued a Puritanical American ideal, is disintegrating, and a disintegration of the social fabric is sure to follow.

Public health campaigns which rely on shame rather than empowerment, which cast individual blame rather than crafting collective solutions, which target marginalized bodies rather than corporate entities like the food production and distribution industry, can be seen as symptoms of wider social ills: racist and classist public control disguised as public health.

This is why Sayantani DasGupta remains one of my favorite thinkers/writers. This post on the New York City’s “shame-and-blame” teen pregnancy and anti-obesity campaigns dig deep into the racism and classism of the city’s efforts. Check out the rest of the post on the R today! (via racialicious)

(via cockleshells)

Source: racialicious

The withholding of authoritative epistemic status from the knowledge women have traditionally constructed out of their designated areas of experience affords a peculiarly salient illustration of gender politics at work. ‘Gossip’, ‘old wives’ tales’, ‘women’s lore’, ‘witchcraft’ are just some of the labels patriarchal societies attach to women’s accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Yet the knowledge in question stands up to the most stringent tests that even the objectivists require. It is testable in practice across a wide variety of circumstances. (Think, for example, of midwifery or cookery.) Its theoretical soundness is evident in its practical applications. Its objectivity is apparent from the fact that its creators and practitioners have to cope with the intractability of the people they know and the objects they know and use. Children improperly cared for will not thrive; plants will not grow in just any soil or location; water will not boil in the refrigerator. This knowledge is valid across a wide historical and geographical range when specific local variations are taken into account. I cite examples from practices commonly classified as trivial, women’s work to show that the knowledge derived even out of such denigrated practices is wholly worthy of the name. Its subjugation and trivialization can be explained only in terms of the structures of power and differential authority encoded in the purity demanded by ideal objectivity. This knowledge cannot attain that standard, the supposition is, because it grows out of experiences, out of continued contact with the particularities of material, sensory objects—and it is strongly shaped by the subjectivity of its knowers: women. Hence, for a system that enshrines male subjectivity in the name of objectivity, while suppressing the products of female subjectivity with the accusation that they lacked objectivity, knowledge of these kinds can count only as women’s lore.

Lorraine Code, What Can She Know? (via matryushka)

Yeh cheez.

(via mehreenkasana)

(via queerliteraphile)

Source: matryushka

When Someone Says Their Ship Would Be Canon If It Were Two Women

waitwheredidigo:

I want to live in a world like The Matrix where I can download entire novels into them about how lesbianism is fetishized by cishet men and because they are dehumanized and objectified it is easier for them to be seen on screen because cishet men see women as sex objects (because it’s “hot” to cishet men.) As some examples, we’re totally normalized to seeing women in prone positions, submissive, etc.

Versus seeing gay men which are not fetishized normally by cishet men and are not seen as sexual objects. (Although dehumanized? Definitely.)Seeing men in prone or submissive positions, for instance, are often considered no-no. So the reaction is to try to stay far away from it as possible so as to avoid putting their own heterosexuality in question, erase it, make it taboo.

I mean there are multiple forms of dehumanization and fetishization versus making taboo of a thing are just parts of it, but that doesn’t mean lesbianism is just all fine and dandy.

Intersectionality and realities such as the straight male gaze how does it work?

Incidentally this was also why when Charlie Bradbury was introduced and everyone was like “OMG TESTING THE WATERS FOR DESTIEL” I laughed. Although Charlie is my second-favorite on the show.

(via queerliteraphile)

Source: wagwias

We only fetishize violence in relation to gender. It isn’t a glorification of violence per say, but a glorification of authentic masculinity BY WAY OF VIOLENCE. So this really becomes an issue SOLELY ABOUT THE HATRED OF FEMININITY.

Our lives are dictated by a cult and aesthetic which believes the ultimate manifestation of pure masculinity is the unbridled, unrestrained, self-actualized masculine self. Conversely, this (and accompanying) cults treat the ultimate manifestation of pure femininity as the restrained, plastic, and compliant female body which exists to extend and make legitimate that pure masculinity.

Violence, then, becomes glorified when AND ONLY WHEN it is in relation to that unbridled, unrestrained, self-actualized masculinity—and the successful realization and consumption of the objects of masculine desire. Violence as an ethic of this pure masculinity, seeks to exist hegemonically—to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond; to defend, coerce, cajole, obligate, obliterate and retard the self-actualization of other bodies.

To perform this ethic is to be understood as masculine, and rewarded as such: “The Tough Guy,” “The Rebel,” “The Soldier” and our cultural fetishization of this ethic, manifested in the sexualized gansta, the Mandingo warrior, the powerful white actor (Fitzgerald Grant, Prince Charming, Neo [of Matrix fame], etc.). Failure to perform this ethic is to be understood and denigrated as illegitimately masculine—faggot, sissy, sweet, etc.

If our conversation principally involves gun control and mental health (these are largely chimeras), but doesn’t involve our deep-seated lust of hegemonic masculinity, then we fail to understand the true culprit. We fail to inspire cultural and systematic change related to violence.

We fail ourselves.

Darryl the Griot, Giving You EPIC Academic-Analysis Realness (via sonofbaldwin)

(via queerliteraphile)

Source: sonofbaldwin

What’s most profoundly wrong is the terrible, mean-spirited scripts that are getting made, that are making people feel justified in using “rom-com” as an eye-rolling insult, and we’ve got to stop that first. Stop saying “chick flick” like it’s “pile of rotten meat,” and stop saying “chick lit” and “chick book” and “chick movie” and anything else that suggests that love stories are less than war stories, or that stories that end with kissing are inherently inferior to stories that end with people getting shot. Or, if you believe they are and you want to continue believing that they are, stop pretending you’re open to romantic comedies getting better.
Are Romantic Comedies Dead? | NPR (via lamamama)

(via cockleshells)

Source: lamamama

If a young woman in middle school or high school hangs up a poster of Barack Obama in her room, this is seen as acceptable. It’s fine for women to admire men and want to be like them.

If a young man (the same age) hangs up a poster of Hillary Clinton in his room, this is seen as odd (maybe even troubling, is he gay? Oh no!).

Society tells us young men can’t think of women as role models, unless they’re a family member, whereas young women can admire and seek to emulate anyone, regardless of gender.

If you’re a young man, and if you have a poster on your wall with a woman, she had better be half-naked in a bikini, even if the Ronald Reagan or Gen. Patton poster next to it obviously features the man fully-clothed.

Young men are not to taught to think of women as role models. They are taught to think of them as either family members or sexual objects. There is no other category presented.

http://charlesclymer.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-are-we-so-ashamed-of-our-women.html (via there-was-a-girl)

(via bakasara)

Source: there-was-a-girl

Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions.

Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.

In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows:

The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.

In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts. This may sound outrageous, but think about how you react when precocious children dominate the talk at an adult party. As women begin to make inroads into formerly ‘male’ domains such as business and professional contexts, we should not be surprised to find that their contributions are not always perceived positively or even accurately.
[x] (via neighborly)

(via allsingalong)

Source: colinfirthhasmoved