there's our catastrophe

May 31

this is only partially connected to the discussion about rape culture and the tequila ad

so I’m making it a separate post—but—yeah, tequila made me think about how latinos are represented, especially in context to booze, and then all the “i don’t get it how is it rape” made me think about how people are iron clad fucking ANIMALS when it comes to knowing about what’s legal with immigrants—WHEN YOU COMMIT A CRIME, YOU DON’T GET REWARDED WITH CITIZENSHIP is the whole fucking argument. And everything from poverty to getting shot to being raped by your boss can be dismissed because IF YOU WOULDN’T HAVE COME HERE TO BEGIN WITH, NOTHING BAD WOULD’VE HAPPENED TO YOU—ie. you’re a criminal, it’s your own fault you were treated badly, you deserve what you get etc.

So it’s kind of astonishing to me to read how when it comes to *the borders around bodies* and how the body owner gets to decide who gets to cross the border and who doesn’t and under what circumstances—****SUDDENLY***** nobody can understand what the problem is with a man pretending to be another man in order to cross the sexual/body border of another human being. I mean—pretending to be a dead person so you can get their social security number is FUCKING ILLEGAL AND LOCK THEM UP THROW AWAY THE KEY EVIL EVIL CRIMINALS—pretending to be another human being entirely so you can *get laid* is….GETTING LAID!

Don’t think we don’t all notice the blatant hypocrisy. And don’t think we don’t all know that if it was an dark skinned Latino switching identities with his brother to fuck his white girlfriend/wife—there wouldn’t suddenly be a whole SLEW of mother fuckers who understand EXACTLY how that commercial was all about rape.

yes yes. women’s bodies as representatives of the nation-state’s boundaries, and only white nations/bodies as worthy of protection and maintaining their physical integrity. it’s the implicit analogy at work in patriarchal, colonial discourse about sexual violence. sexual violence is always racialised as well as gendered.

(via quixotess)

Apr 7

ahipstory:

“I read this passage from Butler’s essay “Violence, Mourning, Politics” a few days ago, and was undone by it:

… Perhaps one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly for ever…I do not think, for instance, that one can invoke the Protestant ethic when it comes to loss. One cannot say, “Oh, I’ll go through loss this way, and that will be the result, and I’ll apply myself to the task, and I’ll endeavor to achieve the resolution of grief that is before me.” I think one is hit by waves, and that one starts out the day with an aim, a project, a plan, and finds oneself foiled. One finds oneself fallen. One is exhausted but does not know why. Something is larger than one’s own deliberate plan, one’s own project, one’s own knowing and choosing…

When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. It is not as if an “I” exists independently over here and then simply loses a “you” over there, especially if the attachment to “you” is part of what composes who “I” am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who “am” I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost “you” only to discover that “I” have gone missing as well.

…What grief displays is the thrall in which our relations with others holds us, in ways that we cannot always recount or explain, in ways that often interrupt the self-conscious account of ourselves we might try to provide, in ways that challenge the very notion of ourselves as autonomous and in control. I might try to tell a story here, about what I am feeling, but it would have to be a story in which the very “I” who seeks to tell the story is stopped in the midst of the telling; the very “I” is called into question by its relation to the Other, a relation that does not precisely reduce me to speechlessness, but does nevertheless clutter my speech with signs of its undoing. I tell a story about the relations I choose, only to expose, somewhere along the way, the way I am gripped and undone by these very relations. My narrative falters, as it must.

Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. This seems so clearly the case with grief, but it can be so only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. One may want to, or manage to for a while, but despite one’s best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so, when we speak about “my sexuality” or “my gender,” as we do and as we must, we nevertheless mean something complicated that is partially concealed by our usage. As a mode of relation, neither gender nor sexuality is precisely a possession, but, rather, is a mode of being dispossessed, a way of being for another or by virtue of another.”

—

Judith Butler, on Mourning « zunguzungu

So good, i remember being similarly moved on first reading this passage.

that — that’s just sand in my eye

Mar 6

and another thing

people have got to stop thinking “performativity” means “performance” and then criticising “performance” theories of gender

the word doesn’t mean what you think it means, ok

it’s ok not to read or get butler et al but it’s not ok to make vicious criticisms of something you’ve never bothered to understand

Material Man

incommensurability:

Despite an interesting, and possibly suspect, correspondence between the new critique of masculinity and the recent uptick in consumption of cosmetics and makeup for men, there is no actual external threat to the male “ruling class,” aside from the sheer inertia of its own unresolved contradictions. The subordinate status of women is still a universal state of affairs, here and there concealed behind a facade of political correctness… Moreover, the so-called crisis of the male is not matched by any crisis in male aesthetic canons that serve as the template -in feminist terms as well - for the ways in which society imagines, desires, and shapes women.

…

In the field of fashion, the primary requirement is to create goods and images that incorporate the greatest concentration of sign value and that are, for exactly this reason, easily replaceable and interchangeable. Nothing should be definitive and final in fashion. In order for fashions to be the “very latest,” the “last thing,” none actually can be. Under the effect of fashion, the figure of the body, its movements, and its poses are continually being modified by the dynamic of signs.

…

The rigidity and strict codification that were once characteristic of male identity, are which were “depicted’ in men’s fashion, have been outmoded, discarded to make way for the possibility of a far more nuanced, complex, and diversified range of variants on possible identities. This, in turn, translates into a far greater array of possible forms of consumption, that is, a greater circulation of goods. In other words, when a unified male identity was replaced by a manifold identity, wardrobes multiplied to match each of the possible new identities.

…

If, however, the weight of the masculine world seems to press down on the male, we should also remember that the type of “though guy” male, who “scorns everything that doesn’t reek of smoke, leather, and shaving cream” is not absolute and immutable datum, but a cultural construct that coincided with the phase of the full and flourishing development of modernity. The type of the man’s man, personified on a popular level in the faces of the actors of suspense, detective and Western movies from the Thirties to the Fifties, flowed off the silver screen into the alloy used to cast a visual image of masculinity that was manipulated by an organised system of production that, on the one hand, enormously increased the possibility of control over the economy, while on the other was widely experienced as a shared reduction of the power of individuals over their own lives.

…

Reference to the crisis of males and masculinity operates as a background metaphor for the countless discourses, vignettes, and references that constitute the narrative of the present day in the everyday spectacle. There, for example, there [sic] is always a perplexed, muddled male behind, and mirroring, every “successful” woman. Again, the “successful” woman is just as much an imaginary construction of commercial culture. Or, for another example, in the worldwide advertising spot, once a secondary theater fir the deeds of the man’s man, we new increasingly see “ominicchi,” to use a term coined by the late Italian author, Leonardo Sciascia: pathetic little men, dazed, turned to jelly in the face of a prefect woman; at least, prefect in terms of compatibility with the imaginary world of merchandise.

Both of their dialectical situations juxtaposing a man and a woman, in any case, happily find a new equilibrium, a resolution, in a shared faith in new models of consumption. The troubled picture of gender confusion and the relations between the sexes is calmed and brightened, according the the metaphors of fashion, by a new automobile, a new electric appliance, or a new set of clothing.

-Giannino Malossi in Material Man; Masculinity Sexuality Style

As a somewhat tangential and waffling addendum; I’m trying to shy away from thinking for capital as a great evil conspiracy that can effortlessly co-opt any new ways of being and outmaneuver and resistance. It is a depressing way of thinking that has defeated itself before any action is even attempted. But as soon as i peek my head out of my tiny activisty-counter-culturey-anarchisty-queerish-greeny-uniy-innercity-cliquey foxhole and see the ways of attempting being radical, of re-imagining identities, economies, societies are just little scraps of tinsel festooning capital as it roles around laughing, I do worry somewhat. We can’t live outside of capitalism while struggling against it, so I see no point in getting hung up about a pure non-capitalist lifestyle. A separatist mentality can lead one away from an analysis of the historical cultural and material conditions in which we live, love, eat, dress, study and work and into a fruitless, solipsistic attempt to purify the individual. Anyway, my point it’s impossible to out compete capital in the manufacture of images on a mass scale and we should think about where we focus of political energy. Or something.

so my friend A just got a tumblr? & it’s already one of my favourite tumblrs. you should follow it if you like nuanced analysis, witty run-on sentences, and an acerbic (without being aggressive or cruel or cynical) vibe. I dunno if he actually wants new followers or not, I’m just doing you a favour here, gentle reader.

anyway I am interested in this! bolded the bits of particular interest to me. it’s kind of depressing to think about how the proliferation of recognised identities and gender expressions is recouped by capitalism — but I’ve read some Marxists saying shit like “queer lib is a farce, it’s just about creating new markets” — which is obviously just heterosexist/cissexist rubbish — like the “mainstream” isn’t a capitalist construct, like it’s just the default state, and like capitalism’s adaptation to a new state of affairs means it caused it? — BUT even though crap marxists are crap it’s still important to be aware of the extent to which our self-expression is shaped and validated by processes of consumption. not because we can ever be pure, but because we need to understand the lie of the land to fight against capitalism and cissexist heteropatriarchy, plus generally just to live the examined life.

(via incommensurability-deactivated2)

Radical Hott Off Notes: You are more likely to get throat cancer from oral sex than you are from smoking.

transartorialism:

marcelproust:

radicallyhottoff:

grrspit:

radicallyhottoff:

adailyriot:

ohyeahfacts:

Submitted by caplan

this can’t be right.

what the fuck? **throat slams shut**

I always knew that sperm shit was poison.

Interesting. I’m guessing this is because of viral…

some of the hpv viruses cause benign wart-like growth. others are more insidious and don’t have as noticeable an infection, but cause cells to go rogue over time.

but yeah, this is another instance of where sexual health education can be a little fuzzy. this study is just now coming out, but it makes a lot of sense to me—after all, you can also get anal cancer from hpv.

with that in mind i want to quote two bullet points from one of mewmewfoucault’s recent posts:

-how, in a lot of gay male safer-sex discussions and resources, the overwhelming focus on HIV can actually make it a lot harder / sometimes borderline impossible to find information about other sexual health concerns, in addition to making it difficult to talk openly about barebacking and the choices one can make around that
-how there can be super intense differences in norms around the ways that safe / safer sex gets talked about and done in trans-specific queer/gay male spaces versus less explicitly trans-inclusive queer/gay male spaces - in the later, safe(r) sex generally just means using a condom for anal (and front-hole sex if dudes with such anatomy are considered at all), where as safe(r) sex in a whole lot of queer-trans spaces means a whole lot more (i.e. almost total fluid non-exchange, barriers for everything all the time, etc) - i’d really like to have space to talk about / through those differences

i think those are both really relevant here. preventing HIV infections are of course no less important, but i think discourse around preventing HPV infections are incredibly gendered and put the onus of prevention on the receiving partner. often that partner is assumed female, assumed to be a woman, and assumed to be doing it with a cisgender man. of course that’s not the only sex dyad that causes HPV transmission.

we rarely think about HPV causing cancers other than cervical cancer, even though it can cause cancer pretty much anywhere it ends up.

and that’s why i wrap it [eta: well, things] up pretty consistently, for all acts. not that that has to be everyone’s choice.

I’m pretty grumpy about safer sex norms in my communities

everyone (not just gay men) is all like “oh, we know alllll about HIV, not like the dumb hets” and then consistently failing to use barriers for most activities. I think it’s grounded in the mentality that only penis-in-vagina or penis-in-anus is “real” sex needing protection, and that only cis flesh cocks are real cocks, although most people I know will swear up-and-down-blind that they don’t believe either of those things

and I mean it’s hard to go against community norms, god knows I find it hard enough, I don’t wanna put this on individuals too much, and also not everybody really needs to use barriers in all circumstances, but I just can’t deal with the level of self-congratulation going on

anyway thanks for this mewmew and transartorialism

Feb 15

glittergeek: ode to mystery chests

glittergeek:

there is a special little phenomenon in kpop that i like to call the mystery chest.

actually, i’m sure it occurs in other places as well. but the frequency in kpop, as well as the virtuoso-level at which it is practiced, is rather unique to my experience.

what, might you ask, is a mystery chest?

it is exactly that. in kpop, it’s seen on male-identified people, although i don’t think it necessarily has to be that way. but basically, take a nice set of collarbones & the tops of what could be well-developed pecs or shapely breasts, combine with a plunging neckline, shake until things are draped just so (keeping nipples covered) & voila! you have a mystery chest.

click through for pictures and commentary!

Feb 9

“How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” by Sherman Alexie

libraryland:

All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.

If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man

then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white

that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps

at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water.

If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed.

Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. The should destroy the lives

of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust

at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures.

Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian man
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.

There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.

Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian

then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed

and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.

If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside
a white woman. Sometimes there are complications.

An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,

everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.

For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.

In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.

Jan 31

femme femme a film

femmefemmefilm:

WHAT IS IT?

Femme Femme a Film (provisional title!) is a documentary about femmes. Featuring interviews, footage from femme events and footage of femmes performing, existing & collaborating.

I want it to be about femme as both a performative and gender identity. I want to find out what femme means to different people, how it works for them, how they think about it politically and personally, why and how they identify as femme. I want to find out the different ways people perform as femme. I want to make visible and heard all the different types of femmes and show all the different ways femme identity can be presented, performed and lived. I want to look at femme collaboration and break down how people perceive that working to see how it actually happens. I want to celebrate femmes and femme identity.

HOW CAN I BE INVOLVED?

This is going to be a documentary made up of your voices talking about your experiences and identities. If you’re interested in contributing please get in contact! From there we can work out a time to do an interview.

If you are organising or attending a femme-centered event sometime soon, let me know the details of what it is as I’d love to come and film it.

If you’re feeling camera shy but still want to be a part of the film there are heaps of other ways this can happen! Let me know what your worries are and we’ll talk about ways around them.

If you think this project is a neat idea but don’t identify as femme but do know heaps of other amazing femmes you think will be interested please feel free to pass this on.

I really, really, really want to represent the diversity of femme identity in this film. This is not about showing just one type of femme or one type of femme presentation/representation. If you identify as a femme some of the time, most of the time or all of the time then I want to talk to you. If you are a flamboyant femme I want to talk to you. If you are a secret femme I want to talk to you. If femme is only one fraction of your identity I want to talk to you. If femme is your life I want to talk to you. I’m not interested in policing femme identities, I’m interested in finding out what femme means to femmes.

WHERE IS THIS AMAZING THING HAPPENING?

Melbourne, Australia! Unfortunately I don’t think I can currently travel interstate to interview or film people there. But if you are interested in the project and in being interviewed or having your femme-centered event filmed then please do get in touch. I’m sure that later on/pretty soon it’ll be totally possible for me to film outside Melbourne and include femmes from all over Australia.

check it out and get in contact! caitlin [dot] ate [at] gmail [dot] com.

please reblog even if you’re not from Australia, it’ll be interesting to watch regardless and you most likely have followers who are.

Jan 29

On The Argument That Trans Women Are Triggering

thepeacockangel:

This was written by someone I really respect, and I think it’s a fantastic fucking article on the importance of the inclusion of trans women in women’s only spaces:

When people use the old “trans women can’t be in women’s space because they are triggering” argument I just want to stab myself, or possibly someone else, in the eye with a rusty fork.

You know the one: “we can’t have trans women in our domestic violence shelter because they look like men” or “trans women can come to our play party, we guess, but they have to keep their panties on because their genitals are evil phallic symbols of oppression which trigger us (never mind all the CAFAB butches and bois rocking out with their cocks out at all our events).”

There is just so much wrong with this I can hardly even begin to unpack it—

There’s the assumption that all trans women look a certain way. There’s cissexist ideals of what a woman looks like. There’s the idea that what a trans woman looks like is more important than her right to access services for women (and therefore more important than the fact that she IS a woman at all). There’s all the cissexist junk around genitals. There’s the non-consensual projecting of ‘male power’ and oppression onto somebody who is not male and is in fact oppressed by the patriarchy… on and on and on…

There’s all that, and then there’s also the REALLY slimy trick of trying to frame trans exclusion as a freaking DISABILITY ACCESS ISSUE.

RANT ABOUT POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER AHEAD

I have PTSD. I actually get triggered. And this argument makes me want to scream: You keep saying that word ‘trigger.’ I do not think it means what you think it means.

I can get triggered by ANYTHING. Some of my personal triggers include: yuppie guys with pony tails, motel rooms, tie dye (I am not freaking kidding!), certain songs, any loud or sudden noise at all, and people coming up from behind me. I have known other people with PTSD whose triggers included slightly browned bananas, balloons, and all kinds of other random things you can’t possible anticipate would trigger anyone.

Basically, everyone’s trauma is different, so everyone’s triggers are different.

You cannot co-opt our triggers neatly into one political position— specifically, cissexist pseudofeminism. They will not fit. Some of us may indeed be triggered by that trans woman over there, but some of us are equally likely to be triggered by that mega entitled butch over there, or by the shirt that you are wearing. And guess what? Most of us have realized that our triggers actually have nothing to do with the people and things who bring them on.

Making a space “accessible” for people with PTSD by eliminating all conceivable triggers is not POSSIBLE. ANYTHING can be a trigger.

This is EXTRA SPECIALLY HOLY FUCK TRUE when the space in question is a big old kinky play party with people screaming, fucking, bleeding, getting hit, tied up, held down, etc. all over the place!

People with PTSD who choose to enter those spaces have probably worked through their issues enough to feel ready.

In the case of a rape crises center or domestic violence shelter, the situation is even more disgusting— it privileges the hypothetical triggers of cis women over trans women’s actually safety.

Always, always, cis women’s tirggers are more important than trans women’s.

I hear a lot of people throwing the word “triggering” around who don’t seem to understand what it means. Being “triggered” does not mean “feeling kind of freaked out” or “being squicked” or “being reminded of something unpleasant or painful.” When I say I am triggered I mean I am in a physical state of panic when the adrenaline really gets going, my heart is racing, and my reptile brain genuinely thinks I AM GOING TO DIE.

Is that REALLY what you mean?

Or do you actually mean people will start recoiling in transphobic disgust and fear from the trans woman quietly standing in a corner feeling uncomfortable and wishing somebody would talk to her at your (fucking awful) party? Do you mean people will feel weirded out, grossed out, and phobic? Do you mean they will feel “unsafe” because they’ve absorbed a cissexist idea of what a woman is and have been taught that trans women are dangerous perverts?

Say what you mean, transphobes— and keep my fucking disability out of it.

Nov 28

Feminist Coming Out day - March 11th 2011

radicallyhottoff:

leonineclaire:

When I saw this, the red flag of appropriating the queer experience of coming out came up in my head. However! Before I got my back up, I decided to do some research. A queer organisation and a feminist organisation have collaborated to create this day. It’s great that a queer org. backs this but I still think a claim of appropriation can be made.

A woman who is an ally to LGBTQ folks was inspired to come up with this day through her allyship. And even as queer org. is a bit part of this, I still feel unsettled with the lost nuances in this clear appropriation of queers and coming out. Even if there are queer feminists who will come out as feminists.

OK! While I know being a young woman (or any woman really) who discovers she is a feminist and qualifying she is a feminist is pretty powerful in a misogynist world. In coming out as a feminist, you may feel a buzz, it may be important to the self and you get to meet other feminists and feel less alone.

But my first question still lingers: What the heck does coming out as a feminist achieve? As feminists, we can still work on our projects and kick arse without having to have a day dedicated to coming out. There is so much animosity and sometimes downright hatred between us feminists that a ‘this is what a feminist looks like t-shirt’ is probably more meaningfully worn by the feminists who are excluded, diminished and appropriated in places where feminists who easily enter spaces can see it.

So yes feminism can be important to identity and lived experiences, but do we as a group have to appropriate the queer coming out in which there are EXPLICIT DANGERS, THREAT TO LIFE and EXCLUSIONS which stem from this coming out? (After the red flag was raised, I noticed that someone else also expressed this concern but after the co-ordinator used analogies between what queers and feminists face, she then dismissed it with a basic let’s not argue over who is more oppressed.)

Yes naming yourself as a feminist can have bad consequences (been there), but feminists are not oppressed on the basis of being feminists unlike (QUILTBAG)/queers who are oppressed because of societies that are structured according to really rigid gender binaries, cis supremacy, transphobia, queerphobia!!! Feminists are oppressed according to a number of axes that coincide with the -isms but not really because feminism is a marginalised identity. (There is also a problem when feminism is reducible to identity and how one lives one life.) In terms of surviving, there are lots of jobs — especially in some sectors of the public service, some NGOs and unions where feminism is at least respected. While feminism is often pilloried in the public sphere, there are also a lot of opportunities for discussion about gender issues in very liberal feminist ways.

I am a little tired of this ‘everyone hates feminism’ meme that goes around. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. The problem isn’t that misogynists hate feminism, the most pressing problem for us feminists is how we organise and specific feminisms that exist on the basis of exclusions and that are based on problematic notions of equality which involve the state and uncritically engaging with institutions.

One could also argue that there is something wrong not only with the appropriation itself but what is being appropriated.

I know a hell of a lot of my fellow queers think coming out is important, I support that for them but I don’t believe in coming out personally. Queer pride is VERY important. I will support anyone who describes the experience as coming out — but it doesn’t suit everyone. You can still be proud to be who and what you are and not have everyone know that you are queer. I think the idea that the truth will set you free if everyone knows this or that about you is plain crap in certain respects.

However my problem is not with coming out per se but with the idea that coming out is the best way and even the only way to achieve change. All this ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ malarkey (and I’m sure that Gandhi meant it in the exact way it has been appropriated, forget society: focus on changing the self and get a t-shirt or bag to show it!)

Coming out (and I exclude queer coming out from this, although if you know of other arenas please tell me) is not going to revolutionise our activist practices, our thinking, how we engage with institutions and each other, and how we work to change the local. I don’t care if you’re a feminist if you still believe in rampant individualism, capitalism and hierarchies—which manifests in particular ways of organising, competitiveness and using others for one’s own ends or the cause.

This project is also marketed around the idea of feminist leaders. Besides the idea of one-to-one inspiration which I have no problem with, feminist leadership is enabled through certain talented people having access to opportunities that other talented people do not have. Although Naomi Wolf is part of the project, I’m generally not sure why this type of model is still being promoted. We don’t need these formal hierarchies. We can organise in collectives, support each other and as one of my comrades Warren said: “We need to invest in each other’s dreams.”

Even though there is encouragement to organise a group and commit to some type of project for the day itself, just because one is part of a group—it doesn’t mean that hierarchies will not exist—we need to keep on critiquing how organising unfolds.

Hierarchies are also not necessarily broken down through a turn to individualism and a rejection of collectivism. Being well organised and getting shit done are not processes and a possible outcome that are predicated on hierarchies.

We also don’t need THE NEW FEMINISTS as a kind of marketing exercise linked to individuals and feminist leadership. Why does something have to be marketed as new and young for it to be seen as invigorating or exciting or attractive? Feminism belongs to people of all ages, and while I find many younger people SO inspirational, marketing a new feminism as belonging to young women is a little circumspect. People of all ages can be open to feminist ideas and can work toward an anti-sexist world.

Instead our consciousnesses around all the -isms need to be challenged, renewed etc. and while knowledges change and experiences accumulate all the time—in terms of how we think, well a lot of that knowledge is already available on blogs and in books.

There are big differences between ‘coming out’ as a feminist and coming out as queer which need to be acknowledged and not dismissed in a utopian and uncritical manner. Moreover Coming Out as a Feminist Day looks to be repeating the same old mistakes that current and past feminists have critiqued: individualism and hierarchies, promising a type of newness instead of understanding a more inclusive feminist history and most of all, reinforcing the hierarchies which feminists should be breaking down.

100%.

added to this, i would ask—is the goal of feminism really to get everybody to call themselves a feminist? or is to end gendered violence as it plays out in all its forms? what does getting everybody to call themselves feminist do to advance the changes necessary to end gendered violence? (EDITED OUT—i erased my entire lecture about organizing and grassroots and how people decide what a movement is not leaders and that’s why *F*eminism will always fail—because goddamn i’m sick of my own lecture. Just shut up Ms. Radically Hott Off. Shut the ever loving Jesus UP.)

I agree with pretty much all of this. I’ve also heard people talk about “coming out” in relation to other activist identities like being an anarchist or a vegan. it’s such an inappropriate analogy.

like — depending on your circumstances it can be incredibly powerful to name yourself as a feminist. I found it really useful as a teenager that there was a loose term describing the things I was thinking, it helped me find people with similar interests and track down information and theory. labels are important and useful.

the weird “new feminisms” thing you mention is such a missed opportunity claire, because it seems to me that the chief value of terms like “feminist” is that they plug you into the history of movements. which might be good or bad history, but is at least something to look at so that maybe you’re not constantly reinventing the wheel and having the same problems. also it can break down intergenerational barriers — which is a huge problem in feminism (I blame older people and younger people both).

but in general I don’t care if people call themselves a feminist or not, I care about what they do and say. and I have honestly heard just as many people say “I’m a feminist, but [incredibly sexist thing]” as “I’m not a feminist, but [statement indicative of pro-feminist leanings]”.

and I was having big, friendship-wrecking fights over sexism long before I called myself a feminist, you know? it wasn’t like my political views weren’t clear. actually the reason I never called myself a feminist wasn’t because I was anti-feminist or afraid of being called a feminist but because I wasn’t involved in feminist activism. I mean, you don’t call yourself an environmentalist just because you think deforestation is a problem, do you? this definition of a feminist seems overly strict (and overly narrow about its definition of “activism”) to me now, but I still think there is some merit in it.

so I wasn’t scared of being called a feminist, I just found it an ill-fitting label. on the other hand I was totally fucking terrified of my potentially not-totally-straight sexuality, of acknowledging it to myself or anyone else. I’m not saying that there can’t be negative consequences to openly holding a controversial political view, but it’s just… really different. being queer is analogous not to being a feminist but to being a woman.