Ode to Feminism

by Matilda Branson

PMS, abortions, UTIs, thrush,

Cramps and the pill, don’t forget the hot flush.

None of it’s sexy, none of it’s hot,

Most of it’s taboo – alrighty – the lot.

“You’re a feminist, then?”

“Why do you hate men?”

“You’re armpits, under there,

do you leave all the hair?”

She’s a slut and a bitch and a whore and a skank,

“She’s been with ‘em all, and down there she stank.”

She’s easy and peasy, promiscuous and loose,

Stark contrast with “players”, “studs” (the modern-day Zeus).

I’m just so damn sick of having to justify,

To the ignorant and complacent- to explain why, why, why-

I’m a feminist – and no! It just ain’t a dirty old word,

It’s such a sweet concept, or haven’t you heard?

I believe that all children, boys and girls of all stations,

Deserve opportunities, health, safety, educations.

To wear what they want, to speak what they may,

To have a voice, a conscience! To eat, love and pray.

“She walked down a dark alley,

And then nothing happened.”

This is equality! When it occurs

I’ll be gladdened.

Child marriage, FGM, dowry deaths, honour killings,

Maternal deaths, son preference, girls not worth a shilling.

Domestic violence, wage gaps, torture and rape,

Don’t tell me women’s rights aren’t cool or make some foul jape!

Empowered women are freakin’ awesome!

Empowered women are cute!

Feminism’s just so amazing – in Aussie slang:

It’s just beaut.

Posted on May 22, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 1 Comment

How Gay Clubs Made Me an Awesome Straight Woman

by Alicia Costa

Earlier this week xoJane ran a story about straight people in gay clubs and how disliked their presence is. And truthfully the examples the author used as a gay woman reflecting on how straight women act and treat gay space are pretty appalling.

As someone who has spent many many nights in gay clubs I can attest to seeing all these things: bachelorette parties gone wild, straight men and women confident all the gay people at the bar want to jump their bones, straight women grabbing and touching the gay guys because they think it’s “okay because they are gay!” Truthfully, more than once I’ve felt like throwing my drink on the straight couple making out in the gay bar.

However, as a straight woman who has gone through life with white and straight privilege I am forever grateful to the way the gay community allowed me into their world and helped to has shape me as a decent human.

I spent the first 18 years of my life skirting around the norm of society and I was desperate to find somewhere to fit in. As the only fat kid in my small elementary school in my small town I grew up with the constant feeling that I just wasn’t the same as all the other kids. This was long before the days of Michelle Obama fighting for fat kids and long before there were trendy husky kid clothes in the Justin Bieber line at Walmart. I looked different, had to dress differently than the other kids (and my average-sized sister), and had a weird and awkward body to drag around. I was conditioned from a very young age to feel there was something wrong with me.

Needless to say this all sets you up for angst-filled teenage years littered with body hatred and self-harm. By the time I was nearing the end of high school I no longer thought I was a weird kid – I knew it. My first ‘love’ was a girl but I also liked boys, which was confusing and scary. I got into fights with the Christian kids about abortion. I had no desire to graduate and get married to my high school boyfriend and have babies. Fuck that. I was getting out of dodge and was going to do something substantial with my life. Read more

Posted on January 12, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, LGBT 3 Comments

Did Quentin Tarantino’s Feminism Take a Step Backwards in Django Unchained?

From A Bride with a Hanzo Sword to a Damsel in Distress: Did Quentin Tarantino’s Feminism Take a Step Backwards in Django Unchained?

by Tracy Bealer

One of the pleasures of being a Quentin Tarantino fan for the last (gulp) twenty years has been enjoying his development as a writer-director, especially in terms of his ever more complicated representations of women. To move from Reservoir Dogs, the female characters of which are limited to “shocked woman” and “shot woman,” to Kill Bill volumes 1 & 2, a film (Tarantino insists they be considered a single work) that masterfully investigates the multiplicity of feminine identity, is a dizzying and exhilarating evolution.

However, Django Unchained, Tarantino’s eighth feature, seems to further expand his interest in exploring the intersection of cinema, history and violence, but is rather regressive in terms of female characterization.

-Spoilers follow- Read more

Posted on January 7, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture, Racism 5 Comments

The Mythical Dearth of Marriageable Men

by Jasmine Peterson

You know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of being told that, because I’m a feminist, I am the reason that men are oppressed, women are lonely, men won’t marry women, or vice versa, and that the end of men is nigh.

No! Feminism and feminists have not caused some catastrophic imbalance in the dating universe. We are not the reason that people marry later in life, or not at all (or, if we are, it’s only in that people have been afforded greater choice in whether or not they DO marry, when they do it, and why they do it). In fact, what feminism has done is provide both men and women with options – you can marry, if you so choose, not out of economic necessity, not out of some patriarchal ownership of your lady love, but because you genuinely want to.

There is nothing about Suzanne Venker’s piece “The War on Men” that is not highly offensive – to women, to men, to feminists, to anybody or anything that is a living, breathing organism.

Maya over at Feministing does a great job of highlighting ten of the major ways in which Venker’s article is entirely ridiculous. For example, it’s discriminatory (e.g., ignoring the existence of anyone who is not cisgender and heterosexual), ignores more recent and accurate data on trends in marriage, and makes sweeping generalizations about men and women.

Let’s just address some of the major flaws in Venker’s argument:

“Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.”

Except that that’s not true. That’s a dated, played out stereotype that taps into discourses of a woman needing to bag a man before she’s old and unmarriageable and the myth of the emotionally distal male. It plays upon women’s fears of ending up alone, and reinforces that perhaps there’s something fundamentally wrong with those women who aren’t or don’t want to get married. Read more

Posted on December 5, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism 5 Comments

The Ups and Downs of Being a Feminist on Pinterest

by Jarrah Hodge

Confession: I’m a feminist and I’m on Pinterest.

I thought it was time for me to weigh in on the discussion that’s been going on about Pinterest and feminism. A BuzzFeed article that was making the rounds back in October argued that Pinterest was “killing feminism”, saying:

“Pinterest’s user-generated content, which overwhelmingly emphasizes recipes, home decor, and fitness and fashion tips, feels like a reminder that women still seek out the retrograde, materialistic content that women’s magazines have been hawking for decades — and that the internet was supposed to help overcome.”

Amelia McDonell-Parry at The Frisky was one of several feminists who called the BuzzFeed post an overreaction:

“How users experience Pinterest varies from person to person. I, for one, rarely see a diet recipe or a fitness tip come across my dashboard, because I don’t pin that type of content and I don’t seem to follow users that do. But I don’t knock users that do; what’s wrong with wanting to get in shape, lose weight, and eat healthy? Is there something explicitly anti-feminist about that and thus anti-feminist about a platform that allows users to link to that type of content? Give me a break.”

I think it’s fair to recognize, as Terri Ciccone at the Jane Dough does, that there is problematic content on Pinterest, but that “Pinterest didn’t put it there; it’s not a monolith. Women did.”

It’s important to look at what’s on Pinterest because it can tell us something about what its users (60% women, although some estimates go as high as 79%) are looking at and sharing online. We can talk about the potentially problematic messages being shared just like we do with Facebook pages, Twitter hashtags, and Tumblr posts, by looking at what it means that so many people participate in spreading those messages. But we also need the perspective of recognizing that Pinterest is only part of many users’ social media engagement, so looking at it probably doesn’t give us quite the whole story.

So I’ve been on Pinterest now for 8 months and I wanted to talk about what I see as the potential ups and downs are for feminists on Pinterest. When you add my craft and recipe boards to the tens of millions of other Pinterest users out there, does it start to seem to an average user that women are more interested in traditionally feminine pursuits than, say, politics or the pursuit of equality? It might, and that’s something worth discussing. Are there ways to make Pinterest more of a feminist tool? I want to talk about that, too. If you’re a feminist already on Pinterest, let me know if you agree, disagree, or have anything to add. Read more

Posted on December 3, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture 13 Comments

#1ReasonWhy: Truths from Women in the Gaming World

by E. Cain

#1reasonwhy exploded on twitter late last month in response to a question tweeted by videogame designer, Luke Crane, who asked: “Why are there so few lady game creators?” Using the hashtag, female game developers, writers, critics, and journalists have been sharing their stories of sexism and exclusion in and by the video game industry.

I was put onto this by a friend who promised it would blow my mind. And yes, mind blown.

Once you weed through the trolls (and there are many, unfortunately) you will find stories of senior female game developers being paid less than their male colleagues and passed over for key positions; women at game conferences/conventions being mistaken for a “real” developer’s girlfriend; and no shortage of women who are tired of making games about war, cars, and football. For highlights, see this link here.

And, if you find yourself needing a pick-me-up after perusing these posts, check out a complimentary tag created by author Rhianna Pratchett: #1reasontobe. It collects reasons women have for working in the games industry. For highlights, please see this link.

This isn’t the first time misogyny in the video gaming industry has been making headlines, just google the name Anita Sarkeesian. A feminist journalist originally from Toronto and an avid video gamer, Anita launched a fundraising campaign last year to produce a series of free online videos on female stereotypes in video games. In response, she faced horrific cyber-bullying from gamers online, including the creation of a disgusting game called – if you can believe it – “Beat up Anita Sarkeesian.” At the time, much attention was focused on misogyny as a troubling theme within gaming culture, and Anita did raise the money from her videos (can view here), but otherwise little changed.

According to Mother Jones, 88% of employees in the gaming industry are men and that the perceived core audience is young men aged 18-25. But here’s what some may find surprising – according to a study by the Entertainment Software Association, young men make up only 18% of actual game players. In reality, 47% of game players are adult women and they represent industry’s fastest-growing demographic.

In this light, not only is it unjust that there are so few “lady game creators” – as Luke Crane put it. But it’s also bad from a business perspective given that women are the actual target audience. Now that we have thousands of women coming forward and sharing their experiences, it’s time for the industry to take steps to rectify the problem.

(photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Posted on December 2, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture Leave a comment

BC Federation of Labour Women’s Rights Forum

Linda McQuaig, Veronica Strong-Boag and Me

by Jarrah Hodge

On Monday night I was honoured to be part of a panel at the BC Federation of Labour’s women’s rights forum during their biennial convention. The panel included Kelly Megyesi, Women’s Coordinator for the Public Service Alliance of Canada; UBC Historian Veronica Strong-Boag; and journalist/author Linda McQuaig. The topic was how women have fared economically under our current federal and provincial governments, as well as what the decline in union density means for women.

In addition to being on stage with these amazing women in front of a packed room, earlier in the day during the Women’s Rights Committee report (part of regular convention business), I’d seen so many women come forward to the microphone to share heartfelt and often heartbreaking personal stories on how they, their families, and friends have been affected by BC Liberal policies in particular. I was so moved by their honesty and courage so I went into the panel feeling excited and of course a bit nervous.

I took some notes on the panel, and I’ve also posted the text of the speech I delivered if you wanted to read that entire part.

So we started off with Veronica Strong-Boag, who gave some historical perspective to the situation we’re in today, using some of her own information and others’ research from a site called Women Suffrage and Beyond.

Strong-Boag said that she wanted to address the despair she often sees among feminist activist by telling stories of past women who have reached across boundaries and across difference to form coalitions:

“There are histories of resistance and partnerships and coalitions which I think are needed, in very dark days, to inspire us.”

She highlighted several remarkable Canadian women who have forged those histories, including Mary Ann Shadd Cary, a black woman born free in the United States who came to Canada to support the underground railroad. She also highlighted Agnes Maule Machar, a Christian socialist who wrote novels like “Roland Graeme: Knight” that tackled pressing social and political issues of the 1890s. Pauline Johnson, Flora Macdonald denison, and labour leader Grace Hartman also made Strong-Boag’s list of women reaching across boundaries. Finally, Strong-Boag cited Judy Rebick as an example of a contemporary feminist working “in this strong tradition of collaboration.”

Next, Kelly Megyesi talked about how federal government cuts are hurting women, drawing on her own experience working at an unemployment office. Megyesi pointed out that more than half of the federal government workers are women, mostly working in admin. With huge layoffs already starting, Megyesi said: “Women are losing good jobs, women are losing pensions and benefits.”

“They have decided to relocate thousands of other jobs – jobs they promised wouldn’t be affected.”

Sadly, Megyesi is one of the workers who’s been hit by that move, told that she could relocate or lose her job, even though most of her work is virtual. She said she doesn’t buy for a minute that the relocations will really save money. Megyesi made the difficult choice to refuse:

“It would have meant breaking up my family and leaving my elderly mother without any support.”

Posted on November 27, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Politics 1 Comment

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