Tag Archives: feminism

Such a Girl

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A while ago, I was thrashing a willing gent with a flogger. He was flinching, moaning and making rather irritating squeaky noises.

“You’re such a pussy.”

I said it without thinking.

“No,” I said then, quickly correcting myself. “Pussies are strong. You’re weak. You’re a testicle.”

It’s easy to use macho language as it’s so common. Everyone does it. Our culture is saturated in it. Yet it doesn’t make sense when scrutinised. Why should anything female be seen as an insult to either gender, and why does society tolerate this being the norm?

Below is a snippet from Charles Clymer’s blog on exactly that:

‘…Simply put, I never understood why it’s wrong to do “feminine” things, especially when I saw girls and young women my age, throughout childhood, do “masculine” things without any sort of backlash.

A woman who “acts like a man” may across as a “bitch” (one of the more indicative terms of ignorance in society), but she can still often be portrayed as strong and confident and effective. We wouldn’t exactly say a girl who wants to be like her daddy is in the wrong.

A man, on the other hand, can never “act like a woman,” which is thinly-veiled code for being weak, emotional, and ineffective. We would never encourage a boy who says he “wants to be like mommy” when he grows up.

This sentiment easily seeps into male culture from a young age. The go-to insults for any man (and often, many women) against another man is to slam him for being feminine.

“Stop being such a little bitch.”

“Pussy.”

“Fag.”

“You’re such a girl” or “You fight like a girl” or “You throw like a girl”, etc.

On the other side of the coin, it can be implied you’re not being “man enough.” There are “man laws” and “man cards” to describe guys who aren’t living up to another man’s expectation of what it means to be a man.

Some really do think of this as just a humorous outlet and nothing to take seriously.

Others take it incredibly seriously and indicate their own insecurity behind a habit of being macho and describing other men in feminine terms…’

Read the full blog post here.

Charmion-strongwoman

Secret History

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Here’s a bit from an inspiring article in the New Yorker about the recent third edition of Margot Mifflin’s 1997 book, “Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo”:

‘…The book is a cultural history, with photographs of tattooed women and female tattoo artists through the ages, beginning with a white Native American captive with a chin tattoo, from 1851. The third edition of the book, released yesterday, includes a hundred new photographs that examine how tattoo culture has evolved over the past fifteen years. As Mifflin writes in the introduction, “Tattoos appeal to contemporary women both as emblems of empowerment in an era of feminist gains and as badges of self-determination at a time when controversies about abortion rights, date rape, and sexual harassment have made them think hard about who controls their bodies—and why.” As we approach the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, this observation is especially resonant.
Though tattoos are an increasingly common, and visible, element of personal style these days, some of the more hidden and historic examples—from Victorian women to circus attractions—are the most surprising…’

Read the full article and see a slideshow of photographs (and backstories) of women featured in the book here.

Goods Undamaged

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Another Angry Woman (aka Stavvers) has written yet another brilliant and well-researched blog entry on women and sexuality. This one addresses a recent Journal of Sex Research study of porn performers, self-esteem and an “assessment of the damaged goods hypothesis”. Here’s a bit of it:

“…The paper aimed to test the veracity of a set of beliefs surrounding women in porn. These attitudes were gleaned from a studies into attitudes towards porngraphy, finding that those with a negative attitude towards porn tended to believe that porn performers had low self-esteem, were drug addicts and had experienced sexual abuse in childhood. These attitudes, the authors point out, are also apparent in anti-porn feminist writing, which is backed up with little evidence. The authors also point out the distinct lack of quantitative research into the women in porn themselves, drawing attention to the fact that while there’s a couple of qualitative studies about why women get into acting in porn, there’s nothing quantitative.

So they decided to examine quality of life, self-esteem, attitudes towards sex, sexual behaviour and drug use in a sample of porn actresses. The headline findings were rather interesting: it turns out that the stereotypes aren’t true. Comparing porn actresses to a sample of women matched by age, marital status and ethnicity, they found that the porn actresses actually had higher self-esteem than comparable women, were more likely to feel positive, felt they had better social support and were more spiritual. There was no difference in current drug use, apart from marijuana (porn actresses were more likely to get high), although the porn actresses reported more drug use in the past. There was also no difference in incidence of sexual abuse in childhood. And finally, the porn actresses reported greater levels of sexual satisfaction, were more likely to identify as bisexual, enjoyed sex more, were having more sex than the women who weren’t in porn (sex as part of their work was not counted: this was entirely extracurricular sex), were more likely to be concerned about catching an STI, and had started having sex a little earlier.

Does this mean that the stereotypes about women in porn coming from some feminists and the general population can finally be put to bed? I’ll get back to that after we’ve had a little look through a few criticisms of the paper…”

Read the whole post here.