Girls thread cont.

FT - get your stuff done and go home. Don't feel the need to respond to that post of mine now btw. I just wanted to put that out there but I understand needing to think about it. I thought it just deserved and needed to be mentioned and not in a malicious way either. I would have felt too fake not at least acknowledging it in some way.

seriously, do not let this get in the way of your awesome holiday! you having a gloriously beautiful break is way more important to the world than pandering to someone's argument-delaying tactic.

er xpost, i meant the explain 30 years of study stuff to me, we're all clear on that, right

This is so exhausting. Need to close the window before this happens:

http://www.gabbysplayhouse.com/?p=1444

Talk Show Host just came on Spodify so I'll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches, I'm READY.

(Yeah, I was talking about the "explain 30 years of feminist lingustics to me at 6pm on your last day" topic, not the unresolved stuff with E - just making that clear too!)

I prefer to use "condescension" as a catch-all for people explaining things to me that I already know, or acting like I'm stupid, or don't know what a churro is, or whatever. I am also the sort of person who will hold back like 498 of the 500 things I actually know because I like to have an arsenal of secret weapons at my disposal.

Anyway, my $0.02 is this: the ws thread has never really seemed as malevolent to my eyes as "women's magazines" in general -- ws says "this is attractive" whereas SELF/Cosmo suggests "this not-real picture of a humanoid is attractive and here are some lies to achieve that look, which btw you will never EVER achieve"

objectification vs focused self-esteem squashing, basically

LOLing a little at the idea of someone explaining a churro to you. Has that happened?

a mere two days ago!

There's a scene in Sheriff where the sheriff goes hunting with his daughter, and he sees some turkey shit in the path, and he says, "Jessica. You see that? That's turkey droppins. A turkey left that." The camera later pans to Jessica, and you know she is still pissed about the turkey droppins incident. She doesn't say a word, but you can tell. I love that part!

I mean lots of times I really don't know shit -- and at those times I like to have people explain things to me. But I know turkey droppins. Most of us do.

I sure as hell don't! Turkey droppings? Never seen 'em!

It looks like goose shit.

Oh I know what that looks like. DAMN YOU CANADIAN GEESE!

"A turkey left that" is what gets me.

Yeah. That's amazing.

"A turkey left that...for YOU."

when a male turkey loves a female turkey ...

A turkey left that precious gift...for you.

...(whispers) turkey droppins

but on the serious side -- i've spent a lot of my life being "one of the guys" -- and half the time I didn't really think about my gender at all. In moments of insecurity (that are too frequent tbh), I feel/felt that that status wasn't a privilege, but consolation for being fat and ugly.

When something is designed to exclude you, there's no end of ways it can make you feel bad abt yourself, sometimes with a lot of your own help.

AND BY "YOU" AND "YOUR", I MEAN "ME" AND "MY."

I feel/felt that that status wasn't a privilege, but consolation

i decided at quite a young age that since i was never going to be pretty i would have to be 'one of the guys' in order to be accepted

and, you know, it worked all right.

I was going to say "haha me too", but I was one of the boys before it ever occurred to me that pretty was a thing that might be expected of me and was unattainable.

I was one of the boys throughout primary school to such an extent that puberty was a big shock to me - I think I'd been assuming that somehow I would grow up to be Man, or at least Not Woman*, and there I was, suddenly facing this whole being a woman thing, and realising that I wasn't very good at it

(* like all the protagonists in all my favourite books were boys without it ever needing to be pointed out, and any girls were spelt out at great length as Girls and were all a bit rubbish too.

I had one treasured exception, a book where the protagonist is cool and funny and hard as nails, ringleader of a gang of boys, and you don't even find out until the last chapter that it's a girl, when a teacher is talking about her in the third person - I'd name the book, but I've just spoilt it! but I still think of that book often, 24 years after first reading it. Thank you, Gene Kemp. And ironically it took me 20 of those years to realise that Gene Kemp was a woman too...)

xp Ime it works out okay as long as the guys you're placing yrself among are polite and fair-minded and sensible/educated about gender (or just too well brought up to say anything offensive in the first place). But when dudes you trusted start being batshit about feminism or "pussy power" or language or w/e, you have to be the police all of a sudden and it can totally suck for you.

I was one of the boys throughout primary school to such an extent that puberty was a big shock to me - I think I'd been assuming that somehow I would grow up to be Man, or at least Not Woman*, and there I was, suddenly facing this whole being a woman thing, and realising that I wasn't very good at it

omg yes! like getting boobs and having to wear a bra was kinda traumatic -- and i've probably posted about when i first got my period -- but i was crying and asked my mom, "You mean, I have to go through this every month, for how long?"

spudette, there is a charming book called Keeper of the Bees that is probably really racist in a 1930s way and sexist too but actually not for its time? And there's a rabble-rousing character in it of about age 9 or so who wins all the fights and shoots all the pretend Indians and tends the bee hives and catches the bugs and makes the campfires and is called "the Scout" and doesn't turn out to be a girl until the very end.

omg yes! like getting boobs and having to wear a bra was kinda traumatic -- and i've probably posted about when i first got my period -- but i was crying and asked my mom, "You mean, I have to go through this every month, for how long?"

― sarahel, Friday, December 16, 2011 2:39 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Permalink

Were you really young?! I was 16 so by that point I was downright thrilled because at least it didn't mean I had secret testicles like the girl I saw on some true life medical story show.

xp At which point of course a big deal is made of the fact that her male cohort is going to outgrow and out-strengthen her and she has to stop taxing herself trying to stay ahead of them. Sigh Gene Stratton-Porter, sigh.

xp - i was 9! it was the day before my 10th birthday and I was omg having a slumber party!

there's a line in some Xiu Xiu song from years back, where Jamie says/sings "This is the worst birthday ever!" and it always reminds me of that incident.

OMG nine! Yeah, that would have been really scary even though I think by that point I knew about all that stuff in at least a very basic sense.

I was not a tomboy and didn't have any boy friends through about 8th grade. In fact I was ridiculed mercilessly to the point of having to change schools and said bullying was done mostly by boys. It was awful. Went to an all-girls HS so no male friends then. Went to college and getting a lot of male attention for the fist time in my life was completely overwhelming. I think maybe that's when I sort of started being one of the guys mostly to deflect that attention and make it more bearable somehow. Like, "I'm not gonna fuck you but we can totally hang out!" only that didn't always work and I wound up in some pretty awful situations along the way and made some really bad decisions. I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess I talked a bit about this the other day too - the mostly having more male friends thing. As an adult I have found that for the most part it's worked out and specifically for the reasons Larrel stated in terms of the guys I consider my friends.

I'm on a bus on a diversion through Clapham(?) so I just wanted to add to Cis & Sarahel - I know that feeling. Like, I did that, too and I wish I knew when it changed and it stopped being OK?

Was it when I went from being a session bassist (the old joke of "what you call a girl who hangs out with musicians") to being in mine own band and discovering I no longer played music but "women's music"? Maybe it was developing disordered eating (drunkorexia?) and found myself suddenly at the age of 31 actually conforming to the stereotype of "hot girl" for the first time in my life? Maybe it was the constant wearing down on the Internet (not just stuff on ILX but a host of other sites after I got sick of being misgendered bcuz of my interests? Maybe it was ageing and seeing exactly how I transformed from "one of the guys" to ugly old hag as I watched my prospects narrow while dudes' stayed the same or widened? Maybe it was just reading on the endless Internet that my experiences were not just isolated incidents easily explained but part of a wider system that was too regular to be coincidence and I was sick of making bargains about it?

It's complicated. It's complicated for all of us but I think the only way to deal with it is to talk about it to one another instead of pretending it doesn't matter if - if, because everyone's mileage varies - it bothers us?

xposts to Keeper of Bees: Awesome. I would very much have loved that book as a kid! Too bad about the ending, but I might still track it down. I've been harbouring some thoughts of going on a massive kids'/YA fiction kick, not least because I never seem to make it to the end of adult books these days.

fewer xposts: Urgh, 9! That sounds horrible. Mine was the summer between primary school and secondary school, adding to the sense of a whole new terrible chapter in a way, though not completely accurately.

Was this the thread with the girls-kissing-for-practice thing on? I'd been in a group of three best friends aged 8-10, but age 11 the other 2 were pairing up for "exploring" (as they called it) while I was the gooseberry. Went to a different secondary school and never saw them again, but that feeling of being left out hung around.

(sorry I'm on iPhone so I couldn't edit that and it didn't show x-posts from Cis on)

Also I don't think that being "one of the boys" or having mostly male friends precludes having an awareness of feminist issues in any way shape or form and don't see why one can't do both. Of course I'm not really sure what we exactly mean by being "one of the boys" here and assume it's different in each person's case. I realize I didn't address that part of FT's post to me earlier because I don't really think that's what I was doing on the WS thread - at least not intentionally so. I think it was more the other stuff about inserting myself.

Is it time to go home yet? Early birthday dinner tonight!

yeah - and one of the things that made it (the being one of the boys thing) better was knowing that other women had also been there/done that, and that i had role models or at least partners in commiseration. Like when my life fell apart 2 years ago, I had a female acquaintance (friend-of-a-friend) that I almost immediately contacted, "Hey L****, i know you've had the experience of starting and running an arts space with your husband, who then cheated on you. Guess what I just found out! Ugh!!!"

i was really proud of being mistaken for a boy by adult strangers while i was a kid, for as long as i could be - and then i moved to a school with uniform, so i was marked as a girl. boys weren't particularly better friends to me or anything (in fact i really suffered trying to make myself fit in with a gang of boys, trying to impress them, trying to get them to let me in), maybe it was because i idolised my big brother, I dunno. and then puberty happened, and girls' school, and so i was a girl but the people i wanted to be were always male. and so "being a girl who is one of the boys" seemed to be my one option for being a person, since it was clear i would never be "a girl" the way other girls were doing it.

looking back i'm sad that i could only see it as a binary choice. and how much bullshit i internalised and invented myself that made femininity 'bad' (especially given that i was brought up by feminists, and tbh most of my friends were female). but... i don't know, it really could have been worse, i guess? and i spent enough time doing all that bullshit as an adolescent that i don't have to do it as an adult.

I think there is a difference between "one of the boys" meaning just has lots of male friends and "male" interests - and that "one of the boys" meaning the loophole woman (as per Ariel Levy) in tolerating and validating male bad behaviour and going along with the whole supposition that women themselves (as opposed to notions of Femininity) are, well, *shit* and that thing going even further and actively putting down "women" that you were discussing when talking to Tera

But I don't know where that line is. It's a slippery slope not an exact demarkation. And I don't know exactly how far along that line *I* even meant so I apologise if I implied you were in the wrong place, E, because I don't actually know and it's wrong and bad of me to assume I get to say where.

And if it's your birthday dinner tonight, early happy birthday!

I think is definitely a slippery slope in a lot of cases and something to think about for sure. I'd like to think that not one of those "loophole women" for the most part. I definitely don't "go along with the whole supposition that women themselves (as opposed to notions of Femininity) are, well, *shit* and that thing going even further and actively putting down "women". I do sometimes tolerate and validate male bad behavior but unfortunately that's something I do with a lot of people and not just men. It's also something I'm actively working on stopping so we'll see.

Thanks! Actual birthday isn't for another 12 days but am joint celebrating with a friend whose was last week so we're meeting in the middle. :) Have a nice time in Cornwall.

I was one of the boys throughout primary school to such an extent that puberty was a big shock to me - I think I'd been assuming that somehow I would grow up to be Man, or at least Not Woman*, and there I was, suddenly facing this whole being a woman thing, and realising that I wasn't very good at it

ME TOO. Also: I was nine or ten (I actually can't remember).

I have done a lot of thinking on why this was for me, and it was a combo of boys always getting to do the cool things I wanted to do (I was a sci-fi/fantasy fan seemingly since birth and the protagonists were ALWAYS boys. I wanted to go out and have adventures, a la Bastian, not sit around nameless in my crumbling crystal castle, crying and waiting for some random kid to rescue me by giving me an identity, plus I wanted to play drums in a heavy metal band (and my elementary school band had a rule (lifted the year after I started, but by then I'd already committed to an instrument and we couldn't afford another one) that you had to be a sixth grade boy to play the drums), etc.) and of my family (particularly my father) actively and overtly valuing boys over girls. Being a girl really seemed to suck and I wanted no part of it.

I'm quite pleased with how things turned out, however.

Of interest: Sady Doyle posted five long essays she liked from 2011 on longreads.tumblr.com. I'm reading the one about "Kiki Kannibal" and it's pretty devastating.

not sit around nameless in my crumbling crystal castle, crying and waiting for some random kid to rescue me by giving me an identity

Oh God even as kid I knew she was unbelievably irritating. Gah. Hated her - still do.

nd of my family (particularly my father) actively and overtly valuing boys over girls

I feel really lucky that I never ever experienced this growing up. At least not on the home front. Granted I am an only child so there weren't any boys around to actively be favored on a daily basis but neither of my parents ever made me feel like there wasn't anything I couldn't do because of my gender or that boys were better than girls. Not once.

I think having gone to an all-girls school and then an all-women's college (in a co-ed environment) for a couple years also helped in some ways.

Re the gender stuff at home - it's pretty amazing that this was my experience too because my dad is one of the least progressive people I've ever met and can be downright misogynistic at times. I don't really know how or why I was spared but I was.

I have packed as much as I'm going to be able to do tonight, but this is still banging around in my head, and I kinda want to say this before I disappear off to Cornwall because interweb reception in Mousehole is *terrible* (which is kinda why I like the place, TBH) but there are some things that I do need to address before I disappear and the sandbox disappears and we lose the plot. Like, about this stuff:

Also, I need to say this because I was really upset at the time but you were really horrible to me and all of the other women in this thread not that long ago. I know it was in reaction to the situation you’re describing above but I don’t really think that makes it OK. I was hurt and extremely upset when you completely dismissed my academic/work experience in a post that can only be described as a personal attack. I needed to mention this because it seems strange to me to be having these discussions without at least acknowledging that whole thing happened. I mean, you also took it outside ILX which just wasn’t on. I also realize that I responded in a pretty cruel and perhaps harsher way than was necessary but I was really upset (and understandably so imo) at the time.

OK, there's like 3 different threads tangled up in this which I need to get at, and it is going to result in 1) an unconditional apology 2) a semi-apology explanation which is merely that - an explanation, but not a justification or an excuse and 3) a non-apology

It is hard coming back to this because it was a really painful thing - for both of us, obviously, but also, you're right. I said some shit that got everyone involved by association, which wasn't fair. Which is why I'm saying this, on the thread, and not via private email. Because it became so public. But it's also hard because I don't actually *remember* a lot of the stuff that went down, because, like I kinda said on another thread, that experience of being bullied under the weight of such a huge clusterfuck actually triggered a mental health episode that was so bad it put me in hospital. I'm not trying to make this excuse of "oh, I have MH issues, I don't have to justify my behaviour" - I am trying to explain that when I get into a paranoia-depression spiral like that, I am sometimes not entirely cognizant of what I'm doing or saying. Which is a pretty scary place for me to be. So sometimes it's like having to explain the behaviour of this weird party guest who crashes my head that *I* don't even understand when I'm not in the grips of that kind of episode.

1) The shit about your academic degree/experience. This is inexcusable, and I utterly and unreservedly apologise for that. This is stuff that I *know* is hurtful, because I hate it when people do it to me - that whole "oh god, womensstudiessplaining" thing that I got on the WS thread - dismissing this stuff as some academic exercise rather than the actual lived experience of our lives - this is invalid, unfair and uncalledfor. It is maybe something we could talk about on this thread - is there a difference between academic study and lived experience (because I'm pretty heavy on the lived experience but have 0 academic expertise on this outside 8th grade women's studies - I am a total auto-didact on the subject.) But as a basis for an insult, it was completely out of line and I will never knowingly pull that shit again.

2) Widening the scree of my anger to other women on the Girl Thread. This is a tough one. Because yes, a lot of it was depression-paranoia spiral, that thing when, one or two people are actually bullying me (whether or not you thought a 500 post clusterfuck is bullying or not is immaterial - it felt like bullying to me, being the focus of it) everyone and anyone becomes suspect, I think the world is out to get me. As individuals, the women who post on this thread (and ILX in general) who I have a HUGE amount of respect for, who have opened my mind, shown me new things, given support, just generally been A+++ human beings. I'm not going to pretend it's always cuddlestein mountain and there aren't people that I feel friction with. But on the whole, I have no malice and a whole lot of admiration for the women here.

BUT - things sometimes appear differently in group dynamics. There was something that emil.y posted a while back, about how when this thread disappears into lipstick and dresses and I forget exactly what she said, but it was something like here is that kick in the teeth realisation that I totally fail at Being A Girl and I'm excluded from the party. I get that too. And that experience felt like - here was a perfect situation where women should have Got My Back because here was a situation where a woman was being disproportionately maltreated for something men did *all the time* (and some admittedly did get my back, there was honestly a point where I stopped reading and just started counting the posts) - and instead of Getting My Back it felt like some women just threw up their hands and said "what did you expect, talking about your vagina" which was just "well what did you expect, getting raped, when you went out drinking in a skimpy outfit!" style victim blaming in new and exciting clothes. I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. I don't remember exactly what happened or in what order. (And I really do not want to get into another fight about what display names are appropriate for men but not for women.) But that is how it felt, to me, at the time. Like I'd been kicked out of the Girl Club. And I lashed out. Blindly. And hit some people I really really respect. So I would like to apologise to anyone that I hit while I was in that state, without having to apologise for being in that state in the first place, if that makes any sense at all.

3. The "outside ILX" stuff - this is one of those grey areas. Because are you honestly trying to tell me that no one on this thread has ever *gone home and talked to their partner about someone on ILX *gossiped about ILX people in the pub *emailed or texted people to discuss stuff ILX0rs do *talked about another ILX0r while in a chat *posted ILX-related stuff on Facebook and yes *posted "grr argh!" stuff about ILX on twitter

Because there's like this sliding greyscale of public/private interactions involving the internet and social media. I am still working out what's OK and what's not.

There is shit that happens on ILX that you *have to* scream about NOT on ILX for whatever reason: because you don't want to get in a big public fight, because you don't want to start a clusterfuck, because you don't want to get the SBs for saying something ~controversial!~, because it's not appropriate to say it to someone's face, because you're just blowing off steam and you will calm down in a day or two and come back and be reasonable.

I am sorry that you saw it. I am sorry you were hurt by it, and that other people on this thread were hurt by it. I am sorry that it became dragged back into yet another huge public ILX meltdown. (Because that was not pleasant for me, when I had set my twitter to private, and I suddenly had all these follow requests from cretins like Chaki wanting to rubberneck on the carnage.) But I am *not* sorry that I took my steam-blowing off ILX to somewhere I thought was more private or safe or acceptable to blow my steam. Because I do recognise that when one is in a ARRGGGH RRRRRAGE mode, that shit does not belong on ILX and people should be allowed to have private or semi-private ways of discussing ILX-induced rage without being penalised for it on ILX. Maybe twitter was not the right place for it, and I should have saved it for 750words or for emails or LiveJournal, but that rage was something I needed to express OFF ILX or that clusterfuck would have been much, much worse. In fact, I feel kinda betrayed that someone on ILX was copy/pasting or linking my twitter here, because I try not to link my social media on here due to, well, not wanting ::insert ILX bully here:: to know where I live, go on holiday and have access to my stream of consciousness thoughts.

But I don't think we will ever resolve the public / social media / private communication issue, we will have to agree to disagree on that one.

If you have made it to the end of this, congratulations. I am sorry this is so long, but this is stuff that I thought needed a proper, thorough explanation, and proper apologies where due.

Respect for that.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/12/16/baby-lips-thanks-for-the-infantilization-maybelline/

Sigh. I have like three of these because I am a giant sucker with a thing for tinted lip balm.

Hmmm. I agree with everything the essay said except that I'm not sure that those lip balms are actually "a straightforward example of the infantilization of adult women".

I hadn't thought about it before but I would have just taken it to mean that they would give you baby soft lips instead of chapped. People of all genders use phrases about skin being "as soft as a baby's butt", right? I think there are examples of the infantalization of women everywhere and it drives me up a wall. Ctrl F posts I made last spring/summer about the jumpers being made for adult women. I just think this example is sort of reaching too far.

BTW Kate - I did read you post btw and it was pretty great in a lot of ways. I just haven't had a chance to write the response it deserves yet. I didn't want you to think I was ignoring it/you.