feministporn

They call it way too rowdy, we call it visibility.

I’ve wanted to write about the lesbian butch and femme dynamic for a really long time, but I’ve never really got around to it, or rather, I haven’t found the right way to go about it. I guess it turned into a tribute to butch women in the end.

I’ve always loved butch women, and not just in the way I find them attractive. I think it is the courage and the pride they portray. Because butch women get so much shit. People tend to forget the harassment and violence butch women get from men, but also straight/femme women. My ex-girlfriend once told me that she was attacked one time walking home from a night out and it ended with her having to call the police. Luckily, she was stronger than the five men that had surrounded her in the car park, and she got one of the guys in a head lock before anything happened. I think butch women represent a liberation, not just for lesbians, but for women in general. Many of the butch women I have come across are the most “womenly” (hate that word, but for the sake of argument) I have ever met. They extrude “femaleness” in the most amazing way. When I say “femaleness” I don’t mean the predisposed feminine way most of us portray. I mean it in the way that butch women often bear a strong confidence (perhaps shallow, but nevertheless radiant) and the assertiveness of “I am woman”. It’s like they’re the postergirls for female liberation in their own way, in the sense that butchness says to us that it doesn’t matter if your hair’s short, if you wear baggy trousers, no make-up and heavy boots, that you don’t have to sit with your legs crossed, or hide yourself in the way you communicate with your body. That you can, if you want to, take your own space, instead of asking for it, or think that you’re taking away somebody else’s if you do.

I am in no way suggesting that femme women are weak. I am one of the biggest advocates of feminine social qualities (care, thoughtfulness, humbleness etc), and in a way I think it’s a shame that some feminists or dykes adopt a male-cultured discourse because it’s harder to be strong and maintain stereotypically feminine values.

Personally, I’m just about a mix of everything. Until this year, I never dared to go out looking like a pure butch. I realised this recently, and started working on it because I wanted to be one of those women. Even if only for a day. Now, I do. I put on my man-cut shirt, my baggy trousers and resist the urge to cover up my face. And you know what? I feel so much more of a woman when I do. My back’s straighter, and I feel fiercer. Not because I’m in “men’s clothes”, but because I know I am a woman (I am probably the proudest queer cis-woman you will ever know), but I don’t have to abide by the malestream standards to prove it. Or, even better, I don’t have to prove it to anyone.

So, I guess the message is, you go butch girls, don’t ever hide. We need you, we need femmes, and we need people like me, who just can’t really decide on anything. We need us, in sisterhood.

Rihanna down.

Last night, my best friend and I went to see Rihanna at the O2 in London, and I don’t think either of us have ever been so disappointed and shocked by a show before. I felt so let down that I’m going to send her a letter on behalf of all the people who had expected more than a strip show in an arena that filled 20,000.

Dear Rihanna,

Last night me and my best friend went to your concert in the London O2 stadium. I had spent my last pounds of my student loan on these tickets for her birthday present. We were so excited and had been looking forward to it for months. Neither of us really listen much to mainstream music, and we’ve never been dedicated enough to spend money on seeing any chart music artist live. I love your music, Man down is my favourite song. I guess it’s because out of all the mainstream female artists out there, you dear to provoke and do your own thing. This is why, while I had read so many times in newspaper articles that your show was overly sexualised, that I’d laugh it off and think, oh, they’re exaggerating! Just because she’s different and occasionally goes around a pole, doesn’t mean she’s anything like those other sell-outs that perform sex tricks at their shows in stead of music, we said. Unfortunately for us, and my bank account, I was wrong.

I’ve never been at such a huge concert before, and that we were sat at the top left balcony didn’t make it slightly less intimidating. We were psyched, there were so many people, and they looked just as excited as we were. After Calvin Harris’s support performance, you let us wait for 1 1/2 hours. First people were doing “the wave”, I guess, to make you come out. Then they were booing. I was thinking to myself, oh, don’t boo, she could be having some kind of melt down for all we know. I began to feel a sense of something I guess you could call “live consumerism”. It was horrible to see that you were being reduced to a product, although we all know all too well that that’s what happens with big time artists.

Then you finally you came on. It was awesome, you were wearing a small dress, skipping up and down the stage and singing. After the first song, the dress came off, and you were only wearing a sequence bikini. Then, suddenly, you were all over the scene. Down on the floor, rolling around, strutting everything. It occurred to us that this was the most important thing in the show, not your singing, as most of it was play back.

Immediately I wanted to leave, but I though, maybe it’s just the beginning, to get people pumped up, you know. But it dragged on. You were in a bikini for most of the songs, and then there were poles, poles that weren’t the occasional show off, but the centre of the song/performance. When you performed S&M, another one of my favourite songs, you dragged a boy up on stage. You lay him down, sat on him and he started to touch you, like you were a piece of meat. His hands were on your thighs, you forced them onto your boobs. Then, you disappeared down below the stage with the boy.

Shortly after, we left.

I couldn’t put my finger on why I was so upset, neither could my friend. I don’t think I still can. But it was the most degrading thing I’ve seen in a while. I will never go to see you in concert again, even if you paid me. And I won’t be able to listen to your music for a really long time, either.

Call me a naive child of the 90s, but I had no idea that artist performances these days are supposed to simulate a sex show, and that the live music comes secondary. I join the multiple critics I’ve previously waved off and I question your integrity. There were teens, children in the audience. Three were sitting right in front of us. They didn’t look excited, or scared, but completely blank. I want you to know that the rest of the people around us weren’t dancing, or even really singing along to the lyrics. They were looking at you, with fascination or perhaps just empty lust.

That’s all I wanted to tell you. I know you won’t change, and I know most of this is probably stringed by your managers or others that contribute into making you a pop-icon consumer product. But you’ve lost a hardcore feminist as a fan, and I think that should at least tell you something.

Today, I’m doing a talk on feminism and what being a feminist means.

To me being a feminist is about defying ignorance. It is about recognising the society that we live in, trying to overcome personal challenges of the gender I am categorised as, but also embracing it and being proud. For me, feminism isn’t just about gender, it is about social class, ‘race’ and sexuality. As a feminist I feel the need to constantly remind myself of my own privileges. Feminism is a way of looking at social equality all together, because I believe that women will not get equal rights until society is just – this also relates to how social gender is ambiguous and we cannot provide equality without recognising difference.

I’m so sorry but…

… if you buy this t-shirt you probably have issues that qualify to lock you up for a really, really long time.

What is it with the glorification/silencing the seriousness of domestic violence now a days?

Of course, you could say that these companies probably take into account the benefits from angry feminists who, when discovering such abominations, sets off a fire of debates about such ads/products and in the end provides free public space for the company and its products.

But still, WTF?! is my only answer to this approaching trend creepy, misogynistic and inappropriate SHIT that burn my eyes every time without a fail. And no, I will not buy your product. In fact, I’ll probably join the black bloc and smash in your windows.

Crush that ‘pseudo straight movement’!

The Western gay movement have fought for equality since the Stonewall riots, and by doing so achieved considerable rights for lesbian and gay people on the Northern side of the globe. Equality, rather than liberation, has been the way forward. But why is it that equality seems to be easier than liberation? Equality, can be explained by looking at how the so-called civilised society is put together. The social aspect of Western society, is founded on categorising. Categorising people, by gender, ‘race’, economic and social class, nationality, ableism, and finally, sexual orientation. The basis of these categories, and what makes them work is that they are constant. In real life, they may not be, but within the law, they definitely are. Equality, or, inequality, is then created by the rights given to people of such groups. The rights vary, and not in a good way. Where I am a strong believer in positive and affirmative action, this is not what is going on here. It is rather what you’re not getting by refusing or not being able to fit within the categories. This is where the queer political movement is essential.

The queer political movement, or liberation movement, is not the gay movement. The gay movement, as I see it, is perpetuating these social categories. Let me illustrate; Imagine that each category is a cell in a prison (very happy, I know). What the liberation movement would do is of course to blow the whole thing up (but you already saw that coming, didn’t you). What the gay “equality” movement is doing, is building another floor. Don’t get me wrong; I am able to openly be a lesbian because of the gay equality movement. You are too. I am grateful, and so should you be. But what happens when the prison reaches the sky? And the air is so thin that you can’t put any living being on the top floor. This is why we need a liberation movement, not a Pseudo Straight one.

I want to take marriage as an example, because it seems like it’s come to a point where it’s only EDL and hardcore homophobes who truly, ideologically oppose it these days. That marriage is the only human property law still justified in the global community is a given here, however, people keep arguing that “it’s not at all like that anymore” and “people marry because they love each other and want legal rights”. Yes, they do marry because it privileges them within the law. However, so far, it only privileges straight couples (in the UK, at least). What I love about the queer movement is that it isn’t just that we’re gay or trans. We’re gender-playing, polygamous and fucking different. Queers have opened up for alternative relationships, sexual habits and the right to define ourselves but more importantly to redefine ourselves as we wish. The institution of marriage holds a pair of people together, and considers sex with others a break of that bond, no matter what the individual couple’s preferences are. Because queering out is about redefining and liberating, it does not make sense to me that we want to be a part of something that only legitimises one way of intimate relationships. We should be using the opportunity of equality to ask everyone, straight, gay, lesbian, queer, trans etc what marriage really gives us. Or rather, what alternative to this ‘pseudo straight wave’, we could create.  We are queer for a reason, we are angry for a reason. And that reason isn’t the wish to conform. And that, is the real queer liberation for y’all.

“As long as the label “dyke” can be used to frighten women into a less militant stand, keep her separate from her sisters, keep her from giving primacy to anything other than men and family-then to that extent she is controlled by the male culture.”

FROM “WOMAN-IDENTIFIED WOMAN” BY RADICALESBIANS, 1970.

Please go to the link to read the whole essay. It is utterly brilliant. Although I am aware that the text may seem outdated and can reminisce of fascist homophobia, I think it is an often misunderstood theory of lesbian feminism. Radical lesbian feminism is relevant move in terms of radical social constructivism. Yet it is not a mainstream idea, which is understandable considering it would scare every male-cultured person off allying with gays and lesbians. I read it for the first time last night, and although I have to admit to being slightly under the influence, I could strongly identify and it made me a bit more at ease with related issues that I’ve been struggling with lately.

Whether you agree or not, it is definitely a constructive read, albeit just for historic recording purposes.