cinnabonbon

cinnabonbon's Journal

January 24, 2014

I Only Cut My Hair Because I hate You

This is a reply to one of those obnoxious blog-articles going around where dudes are lamenting the fact that women wear their hair in ways they don't like. I won't be linking to those, because they're misogynistic.

I’ve got my own anecdotes, and one thing I’d point out is that most of the women I know who wear makeup? Don’t do it for guys. They do it because they like how it looks and it makes them feel powerful. It’s like social war paint.

And me? My decision to have short hair has nothing to do with latent masculinity, psychological damage, or a desire to scare the shit out of insecure little boys on the internet. (Though god if I’d known short hair was going to make penises shrivel up and fall off with its mere existence, I would have shaved my head a decade ago.)

Maybe that’s why this is so existentially threatening to people who are inclined to pen articles complaining about women and our personal beauty decisions. I didn’t cut my hair because I hate men, or because I needed an outward expression of my deep psychological issues, or because I want to destroy western civilization and replace it with a dystopian gynocracy. This isn’t about them and never has been. No matter how much time I might choose to spend with someone else, when it’s the middle of the night and the monsters are howling on the doorstep, I’m the one who faces them wearing my own skin and in that moment it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

I cut my hair because it’s my hair, growing on my head, and I like it that way. And I really couldn’t give less of a shit about outside objections.

Just a small uplifting article about owning the body you're in. I recommend reading it to the end.

http://katsudon.net/?p=2727

January 23, 2014

Moving the Race Conversation Forward

Two-thirds of race-focused media coverage fails to consider how systemic racism factors into the story, instead typically focusing upon racial slurs and other types of personal prejudice and individual-level racism.

We can not have a real conversation on any of the biggest issues that affects us all as individuals if we are not also thinking about the systems involved.

January 22, 2014

A discussion about the b-word

Because after the clusterfuck that happened in GD, I think I need some help here. I think we all agree that it's a slur that is harmful. My predicament lies in the explanations I have to give to people. How do you refer to the slurs in question without asterisking them out? (Like this: b*tch) Is there a way that is more acceptable? I admit that it surprised me just a little, because the places I frequent simply asterix it out if they need to use it, and they consider that an acceptable compromise (although you're supposed to use it as little as possible, obviously.)

But is there a better way to refer to it? Do we just call it the b-word?

January 18, 2014

Burning Women - The European Witch Hunts, Enclosure, and the Rise of Capitalism

This short book was very informative, I think. It talks about both the economical and social impact of the witch hunts had on social equality in Europe, as well as the rise of capitalism.

Witch executions were used by sections of the ruling class around Europe to variously confiscate property, demonise beggars, control reproduction, enforce social control and gender roles, and exclude women from economic, political and social activity. The trials were used not only to break up old communal forms of life and condemn some traditional practices, but were also a weapon by which resistance to social and economic restructuring could be defeated. The phenomena was spread over so long a time period and such a huge area that there is no single explanation for the trials: there are various differing explanations, which, rather than contradicting each other, serve to show how widely the tool of the witch-hunts was used.

The witches were lower class. Most of the women accused were poor peasant women, and the accusers were either members of the clergy or wealthy members of that same community - often their employers or landlords.

and

As money, wage work, new professions and urbanisation grew, the witch-hunts were one of the mechanisms to control and subordinate women whose social and economic independence was a threat to then-emerging social order. Mary Daly claims that the witches were ‘women whose physical, intellectual, economic, moral and spiritual independence and activity profoundly threatened the male monopoly in every sphere’.

As women were excluded from economic and political life, ridicule and violence were used to enforce and justify the new gender
relations. Women who were too loud, too confident, or too angry were condemned. Reginald Scott declared in 1601, ‘The chief fault of witches is that they are scolds’. He is referring to women who speak back to their husbands or talk amongst themselves. A scold was defined as a woman who was ‘a troublesome and angry women who doth break the public peace... and increase public discord’. Part of a campaign to exclude women from the workplace and developing professions, these stereotypes made it easier to attack women who fought this tendency and asserted their economic and social independence.

I recommend all of it. You can really see how the positive roles women had in society (like wise women, healers, midwives..) were slowly eradicated.

(from this: http://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/pasttense/pdf/burningwomen.pdf )

January 11, 2014

What is gaslighting?

This is a term I've seen come up in some discussion I've had off-site, so I figured that having the info here might benefit us, too.

The term itself was popularized by the 1944 film Gaslight, an adaptation of the 1939 play Angel Street. In the film, starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, "Gregory," played by Boyer, maintains that a gaslight his wife "Paula" (Bergman) sees growing dim then brightening is in fact steady. This small deception is followed by countless others. Paula initially protests her husband's accusations about her "forgetfulness," but in time she questions her every action and memory. In reality, her husband Gregory is plotting to have her committed to an asylum so that he can take her inheritance.

Of course, more subtle and prosaic instances of gaslighting abound. In a typical example, one friend makes another friend wait for over an hour every time they meet for drinks. When the person waiting shows that he or she is upset, the tardy friend asks how someone can be so sensitive.

When gaslightees defend their own feelings or character they are dismissed by their gaslighters as crazy, irrational, or uptight. "It's like a magic trick, a sleight of hand. Let me focus your attention here rather than there," Stern told me. "Maybe you are sensitive, but what does that have to do with the other person being late?"

The first stage in gaslighting is disbelief. At this point, a gaslightee views any disagreement as minor, silly, or forgettable. In the second stage, defense, the gaslightee has begun to second-guess himself. The third stage is depression. The gaslightee actually wants to prove the gaslighter right. Then at least he or she can find a way to earn the approval of the gaslighter.

In Stern's experience, the gaslightees are more often women and the gaslighters are frequently, but not always, men. "The women rather than saying 'you can't talk to me like that' will try harder. 'Let me make that meatloaf again. Let me put my outfit together again.'"

(from: http://theweek.com/article/index/239659/what-is-gaslighting )
(more : http://counsellingresource.com/features/2011/11/08/gaslighting/ )
( http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/Content/The_Con/gaslighting.html )

January 9, 2014

The Gift Of Fear

“It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different--men and women live in different worlds...at core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”
― Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

This book is incredible and I recommend it. --Especially to women who has had "funny feelings" about certain men but felt guilty about it. This book defends your intuition and recommends that you listen to it. After all, your intuition is your best ally, and will always have your best interest at heart.

January 8, 2014

The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate

"The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. When we see Phil Robertson talking about how happy black people were in the South during a period of time that we all KNOW was politically ratchet for black people, we can all go, “Yeah, black people weren’t really happy about that, and it’s racist of you to suggest that discrimination wasn’t bad.”

Here’s the deal with racism:

Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world.

( from: http://scottwoodsmakeslists.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/5-things-no-one-is-actually-saying-about-ani-difranco-or-plantations/ )

In my opinion, explanations like these makes it easier to understand why certain things like "reverse racism" doesn't make sense.

January 8, 2014

Men don't get to decide

(from here: http://socialjusticefeminismandart.tumblr.com/post/70123918922/men-also-dont-get-to-decide-what-feminism-is)

What is your favourite feminist graphic?

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Member since: Sun Dec 22, 2013, 07:33 AM
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