Girls thread cont.

Hang on, brb. Will write more. That was just - pretty obnoxious imo.

ENBB, the friend of mine that he's dating is sort of like you, in that respect: She never thought about it, because she never noticed anyone abridging her rights, because she just did what she wanted, cheerfully, anyway, and thought, aww wasn't it nice of that person to look out for me? Meanwhile hypothetical possibly-lechy older guy or whomever is left in her wake feeling lucky that she smiled at him so glowingly and asked for his help.

O_o

i can't speak for Laurel or Jenny but 1) i get mad like 20 times a day and 2) i like to have some big-picture framing for my experiences; patriarchy or whatever you want to call it works beautifully for this purpose. (don't want to overstep but i think Jenny has this overarching systems thinking habit of mind going on, too.) both of those are basically personality traits, and i wouldn't wish either of them on others, particularly the rageball one. they're not right or wrong they're just the way i am. i know it can be alienating to people and i am sorry about that in this thread because i love this thread and all the contributors to it!

xxxp!

Not insinuating anything. Just clarifying bc it sounded out of character.

I mean luckily for my agreeable friend because she's thin and pretty and capable of glowing at people. I love her but I could roll my eyes out of my head when this comes up.

well, i mean, feminism is right, but i think both macro and micro approaches to it are valuable and neither is better.

ENBB The question marks were supposed to soften my post so it read as inquisitive and not accusatory - I shouldn't take shortcuts in such discussions and I'm really sorry for not being more clear.

ENBB, the friend of mine that he's dating is sort of like you, in that respect: She never thought about it, because she never noticed anyone abridging her rights, because she just did what she wanted, cheerfully, anyway, and thought, aww wasn't it nice of that person to look out for me? Meanwhile hypothetical possibly-lechy older guy or whomever is left in her wake feeling lucky that she smiled at him so glowingly and asked for his help.

O_o

― Making like Melusine (Pyth), Monday, December 5, 2011 1:49 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Permalink

Laurel - can you elaborate on this a little more? Like what kind of situation are we talking about here? I'm just trying to understand your example/mindset.

a lot of smart men i have known have been dumb about gender.

otm. the wooing thread was making my head all splodey last wk. i hang back when talking about relatively safe topics. when there's Men Telling Women About Sexism (or why women are misunderstanding womens' common experiences in this culture) i get really agitated and have to disengage. this happens a lot.

i really admire jenny and others who can speak up to others' privilege and ignorance. i wish i had that confidence.

xp--it's completely understandable to distance yrself from some of this stuff. i've been reading more feminist blogs and such lately, and awareness of this stuff is draining. it's like anything--you keep informed on what you can handle. i don't read much current events stuff because it's just too draining. i go thru phases where i tune out the feminist writings for the same reason.

xp again oh hai i take a long time to type. back to read more carefully.

sometimes i feel like women feel a lot of pressure to respond to things in similar ways but we needn't!

horseshoe go ahead and speak for me bc you're smart and that 20x per day rage sounds about right.

Although I do wish this on everybody, if I'm being honest, since I think we'd get more done about the 10000000s of social injustices (firm believer in intersectionality here) with more angry people.

i guess it can be hard to disentangle agreeableness as an innate (and perfectly lovely) personality trait and agreeableness as obligatory social conditioning for women. i am not sure who i am responding to now nor whether that's relevant.

can you elaborate on this a little more? Like what kind of situation are we talking about here?

Well, for one instance: You know the way men say, "Smile, beautiful" and in that and other ways try to make you interact with them as a happier/more agreeable person than you feel like? When that happens to her, she thinks, "That was nice of that strange man, he wants me to have a better day. I guess now I *do* feel like smiling!"

Also she just doesn't realize people are flirting/hitting on her, because she's that way to everyone all the time. So she gets passes made at her even though she was married AND WEARING A RING, but she never never stops anyone from being over-friendly or familiar with her before it gets that far. So she lets herself be OOOZED over and hugged and have her hand clasped for long periods and doesn't notice that it might be GROSS until someone LICKS HER HAND in public. True story.

also to clarify, i wish feminist consciousness on everyone because it is just the truth, but i don't wish my personal intensity on others; i am like that about everything, guys. it can be exhausting.

Re: filtering - I'm fixing to mute a whole bunch of repro justice ppl on Twitter because I knowwwwwwww and it just grinds me down and bums me out to read about the nonstop assault on women's bodily autonomy and sometimes I need my internal fortitude to stare down another dipshit lawyer who treats me like a secretary because he needs something done and I'm the closest person with boobs.

And re the Romants thread, after my last post I gave up, removed the bookmark, and haven't looked back so don't go giving me too many props there.

it can be hard to disentangle agreeableness as an innate (and perfectly lovely) personality trait and agreeableness as obligatory social conditioning for women.

She is 100% the former and stands her ground for her own rights and desires like 5x better than I do!!! But I get the impresh that men who interact w her see it as the latter quality.

OK - really interesting and will post more. I'm regretting starting this discussion now though because I'm trying to eat and have a mtg in 20 mins. If I disappear - I'll be back in a bit.

[Redacted] just said something to me in chat that I think it's probably 100% otm and colors my experience a lot wrt to my everyday interaction with men. I've thought about this a lot but didn't really know how to express it without sounding like, well, an asshole.

"I think you do present like my friend (redacted) in many ways on this topic
and frankly she has benefited from men's sexism and used it in her best interests again and again and again for many years and doesn't really "notice" it becuase it works TO HER ADVANTAGE."

That said the "Smile, honey!" command is one of my biggest pet peeves and if anything usually makes me scowl even more.

I get the impresh that men who interact w her see it as the latter quality.

No, wait, sorry, that wasn't quite accurate: I don't think those men even NOTICE that it's a "quality." I think it just reinforces THEIR belief that pretty, talented younger women will glow and sparkle at them as part of the natural order of things.

It's even more interesting/aggravating because after her, I'm the next person they have to interact with.

XP Oh shit can we take that person's first name out of that post, please?!?

Oh man, I'm so sorry - I didn't even realize her name was in there. :(

that makes sense. the awareness of how/the degree to which one benefits from male sexism is a huge thing in itself...my own acknowledgement of that is a big difference between my young enthusiastic feminism and my old lady jaded feminism.

Who are the sandbox mods?

x-post - No, I know it is. I think I may be making myself seem more ignorant about some of this than I really am. :/

holy god @ "pussy power." it's kind of inconceivable to me that that's a real thing someone thinks.

I'll just stick to recommending you guys some sparkly shit as is my place in life.

(OBVIOUSLY I AM KIDDING JUST IN CASE THAT WASN'T CLEAR)

;)

i used to be a lot less aware of sexism in general, and have ignored misogyny in friends/people i've dated and even participated myself in misogynistic thinking. over the last few years i've educated myself a lot more about feminism, been a part of many online discussions about feminism and gender, and even participated in activist events, which i never would have seen myself doing 5 years ago.

in a way, being aware does make me angrier about things. but before that i was internalizing the anger and directing it at myself, which was not healthy for me in any way.

XP Oh shit can we take that person's first name out of that post, please?!?

got it

oh i didn't mean to say that you had to think about it/hadn't already thought about it. it's just been something i've been talking about a lot with irl friends lately. because we're getting older and more jaded lol.

xxxp to erica

before that i was internalizing the anger and directing it at myself, which was not healthy for me in any way

Yeah, I totally do that.

Oh man so much I want to say but I am at work & on an iPod .

shit, meant to post as anonymous mod, sorry

Hahah thank you!

oh also . . .

"benefited from men's sexism and used it in her best interests again and again and again for many years and doesn't really "notice" it becuase it works TO HER ADVANTAGE."

This is something that I'm sure I've done many many times both consciously and unconsciously and it's something I carry around a lot of guilt about. Like, I feel bad because I know that most times this works to my advantage while for other women that's obv not the case.

OK - badly timed meeting. Back later.

consciously and unconsciously

errr subconsciously

feeling guilty about that is just another way of internalizing anger and directing it at yourself imo. acknowledging that that's a reality of an unequal society in which women are objectified should ideally free you from feeling like it's your fault when it happens.

lol go to your meeting!

like, there's a privilege involved in benefiting from male sexism but it's pretty limited and it seems like you're aware of it, which is what's important.

i feel like i get treated as an "honorary dude" a lot - for better or for worse

This weekend I spent way too much time reading reviews of classic YA novels & now I feel nostalgic and horrible.

I know the feeling. Sometimes I feel like I could spend the rest of my life just reading old YA novels and be happy.

This guy was asking me if I could make a list of "chick" and "dude" traits, like just rhetorically, not that everyone has them but as they are stereotyped, and I said, "I like to drink beer, watch soccer, and work on bikes, so you might be asking the wrong person."

On that subject there's some really good stuff about "patriarchal bargains" out on the Internet that is really OTM. Also I've benefitted plenty from sexism, on purpose and unconsciously, I think probably everybody has. I can't judge other women for doing the same - I blame the patriarchy.

In retrospect if I even made him think just a little bit, it was probably worth it. He kept describing dumb dudes who get butthurt easily as "girls" and I corrected him to "babies" a couple of times, and my friend said, "You should appreciate how gentle she's being with you right now" and I was like "I'm just offering him an alternative to his regrettable word choice, so when he realizes he regrets it, he'll have another option." So mad.

when you say "benefited from sexism" what kinds of things are you talking about? I'm trying to think of how I've benefited from it -- apart from like, not always having to carry heavy objects, or not getting punched when i tell off some crazy dude.

occasionally i will let a man pay for me on a date, which is not very feminist of me and brings up all kinds of weird issues (does this person now feel like they are owed sex?) but i feel like it's justifiable to based on the wage gap and the fact that i foot the sexual health bill 99% of the time (birth control, visits to obgyn, treatment for the many things that can go wrong that aren't a problem for people with genitals on the outside of the body, etc.) so it's kind of a draw, i guess (i still offer to pay always).