Posts tagged feminism.

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and preactice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.

bell hooks (via aonaran)

(via aonaran)

#feminism  

ryking:

unknowablewoman:

I don’t particularly care to rehash all of the garbage he spewed on Twitter yesterday, but I wanted to briefly showcase some of the most disturbing messages that Tumblr politics tag editor Alexander Ryking posted on a public forum last night. I just have one question: is this mature, professional behavior? Is this the type of person you want curating your tag content, Tumblr? Reblog if your answer is a resounding NO.

In order, here’s just what we’ve got in the screencap—he says similar things on his personal Tumblr all the time, but I thought it was important to point out that his troubled behavior is now spilling over to other media:

  • calling women morons, feminazis and cunts
  • equating the denial of “misandry” (a concept that is overwhelmingly rejected by everyone who understands gender politics) to denying scientific consensus
  • stating that women who dislike him must have “daddy issues” 
  • again with the “daddy issues” thing, which IMO is the most grossly sexist part of this entire tirade
  • equating women to dogs
  • telling feminists to go die

This isn’t about removing him from the position of editor because of political disagreements; after all, Ryking isn’t a conservative! This is about baseless personal attacks against women specifically (although non-women who disagree with him about “feminazis” have incurred his wrath as well) and for no reason other than they identify as feminists. I cannot stress enough that these attacks take place in an internet culture where being an outspoken, visible woman online will routinely earn you death threats, sexual harassment, and acts of intimidation. Here we have someone completely oblivious to the way his words contribute to that atmosphere, and yet we’re supposed to trust him to edit the official politics tag? How can we believe that this man’s raging misogyny doesn’t spill over into that? It’s absolutely unacceptable.

Now let me explain something to you. Everyone can go to my Twitter stream and see what kind of garbage I was replying to, so let’s not pretend you and your three friends are beyond reproach. Further, for the most part I have never provoked any of the fights I’ve been in on Tumblr or anywhere else. I have merely stated my opinions and was then attacked and bullied by a segment of so-called “feminist progressives” who are anything but feminists or progressives.

So-called feminists have subjected me to white-bashing comments (even though I’m Hispanic) and sexist attacks impugning my manhood (slash-fiction scenes featuring me and heterosexual men; being called faggot; being told to man-up; insults about my body;) by people who don’t realize I’m gay. After nearly two decades online, I learned early on that when you’re attacked, you defend yourself by attacking right back and just as viciously, if not more so. And that’s what exactly what I’ve done.

You of all people have no room to whine about me being mean to you when you’ve been flaming me for days and started doing so without provocation. And what did you do when I stopped insulting you last night on Twitter and instead started pointing out flaws in your arguments as well as your hypocrisy? You decided you were going to walk away from the discussion. Very privileged of you. Then you went back to Tumblr to start flaming me again.

What’s really at issue here is not my rude behavior but that you and others like you want to punish any man who refuses to conform to your rancid, misandrist orthodoxy by discounting everything he says and using his gender and race as the excuse for doing so. I’ve been a target for some time of such radical “feminists” and seen this done time and again since I had the audacity to argue in favor of the 19th Amendment against a so-called feminist who called the amendment giving women the right to vote a crock of shit. (And if that doesn’t show the sorry state of feminism these days, I don’t know what does.)

You don’t want me stripped of my editorial privilege based on my behavior but because I reject your sick, bigoted, misandrist (per)version of feminism. Well here’s a news flash for you: When Tumblr asked me to be an editor, I was told to find ten posts a day in #Politics that were good posts, and no one said that I had to follow some code of conduct or conform to anyone’s ideology but my own while doing so.

There are 40 million blogs on Tumblr; you and your tiny band of man-hating bigots are a drop in the bucket. But keep screeching, keep attacking. You prove my points about your “feminism” every time you do so. — Ryking

what an absolutely disgusting human being ryking is

So befell that this King Arthur
Had in his house a lusty bachelor,
And happened that, alone as he was born,
He saw a maid walking him beforn,
Of which maid anon, despite her heed,
By very force, he raft her maidenhead;
For which oppression was such clamour
And such pursuit unto the King Arthur
That damned was this knight for to be dead,
By course of law, and should have lost his head -
Paraventure such was the statue though -
But that the queene and other ladies more
So long prayed the king of grace
Til he his life him granted in the place,
And gave him to the queen, all at her will,
To choose wheither she would him save or spill.
The queen thanketh the king with all her might,
And after this thus spake she to the knight,
When that she saw her time, upon a day:
“Thou standest yet,” said she, “In such array
That of thy life yet hast thou no surety.
I grant thee life, if thou canst tell me
What thing is it that women most desiren.
Beware, and keep thy neck-boon from iron!
And if thou canst not tell it anon,
Yet will I give thee leave for to gone
A twelvemonth and a day, to seek and learn
An answer sufficient in this matter;
And surety will I have, ere that thou pace,
Thy body for to yield in this place.”


Woe was this knight, and sorrowfully he sigheth;
But what! He may not do all as him liketh.
And at the last he chose him for to wend
And come again, right at the year’s-end,
With such answer as God would him purvey;
And taketh his leave, and wendeth forth his way.

The Knight’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer

There Is Such a Thing as a Stupid Question

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

mentalflossr:

When Sally Ride made her first space flight in 1983, she was both the first American woman and the youngest American to make the journey to the final frontier. Both of those distinctions show just how qualified and devoted Ride was, but they also opened her up to a slew of absurd questions from the media.

Journalist Michael Ryan recounted some of the sillier questions that had been posed to Ride in a June 1983 profile for People. Among the highlights:

Q: “Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?”
A: “There’s no evidence of that.”

Q: “Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?”
A: “How come nobody ever asks (a male fellow astronaut) those questions?”

Forget going into space; Ride’s most impressive achievement might have been maintaining her composure in the face of such ridiculous questions.

[by Ethan Trex]

Slut” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “yes”. “Friendzone” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “no”.

female member of the PIRA holding an AR-15, 1970s

(via for-an-anarchist-hyrule)

“there’s no freedom without women’s freedom”.

(via tiocfaidharlulz)

lust-and-pixiedust:

when Hugh Hefner can call you out on your misogyny, it’s time to seriously reevaluate your life and the choices you’ve made. 

(via seriouslyamerica)

Feminists Against Hugo Schwyzer ›

stfusexists:

I know I said there would be no Facebook Friday today. But remember when we had a huge discussion about the general ickyness of Hugo Schwyzer? The unbelievably awesome Raven has started a Facebook group for feminists who are sick of this guy co-opting the term feminist for his own personal gain. So if you’re on Facebook, join today, show that you also don’t support “feminist” Hugo Schwyzer!

#feminism  

Gamers get hella uncomfortable over male sexuality too. Can you imagine a “good male character who just happens to be wearing sexually exploitative outfits because he’s ok with his masculinity?” Constantly has the camera pan lovingly over his asscrack and firm glutes, and big ole dangly ballsack that is totes sweaty from all this MMA and soldiering. Time to hit the showers, and do you, personally, think it’s ok to have a long slow pan up the dude’s package (indiscreetly hidden in a jock of course), to his chiseled physique and erect nipples (pierced). He’s not even a Bond-esque confident man, he’s basically a weird Bowie caricature that’s constantly having near-dickslips in every single cinematic as the completely nonsexualized female characters do their business of being gruff and shooting dudes and advancing the plot. Finally, at the end he falls in love (out of nowhere) and/or is killed by the big baddie.

a forum post I read recently, trying to give a solid example of what ‘male objectification in gaming ’ would actually look like if it was anything equivalent to current female objectification in gaming. (via nothingbutsurrender)

(via sparkamovement)