Fat: Masculinity & Sexist Put-Downs
I probably should have prefaced this post with an earlier one containing a more detailed explanation of where this post originated, but just bear with me for a bit here. Over the past few days I have been marinating on a series of complicated, highly-stressful, mind-boggling, eye-roll-inducing, leave-you-utterly-exacerbated events. I have been compelled more-so now than ever before to get all of these feelings that have stemmed from this series of events out of me but have been hitting a great amount of roadblocks every time I come here to get everything out because sure, day-to-day observations and questions we have that stem from our daily lives in a particular society or culture are often put on public display for open discussion, but when you truly need your blog and need the comfort that comes with blogging, which before I started running Menstrual Poetry more like a news aggregator plus my particular views and input on current events is what I used this website for, well that’s when it’s the hardest to get all of your mental ducks in a row, for lack of a better term. For me, and for I’m sure a lot of other bloggers out there, my personal life has often come up on my blog which is what we agree to when we start blogging in the first place. Personal views on society and politics are often a direct result of our personal lives. Many bloggers refuse to put their family life on display, which until now I have always respected because while I have a blog and while I will write about my own life, my family did not sign on for their personal lives to be on display just because I have a blog. But when does the time come where we simply must nudge that ‘rule of blogging’ aside? For me, that time is now.
I have always had a very unique relationship with my younger sister. Due to our childhood I had been forced to look out for her well-being before my own; I made sure she had enough food to eat even if I did not, I made sure she had clean clothes to wear and that she had a bath as often as possible. That in itself is the life of abused and neglected children. Given this upbringing at the hands of our mother, we grew up relying on each other very much, so when she was 16 years old and had started acting completely erratically and not making the best life choices, I chalked it up to teenage rebellion; hell, me and teenage rebellion had a very strong, one-sided relationship. To say the least, I know it well. But this behavior came to a head when she wound up in a mental hospital for a week after divulging self-harming tendencies and a transfer to a much smaller school that incorporates therapy into their daily curriculum. She was put on medication after being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and for a little while, she was doing perhaps even better than she had been years earlier. My family thought that they had finally seen the end of behavior that wasn’t just hurting her, but also the entire family. They thought this because anyone would and finally she was on the right track. She was getting straight A’s in school, had goals to graduate and then go to college to become a nurse and she had big plans for her impending future, until maybe two months ago when it all picked up again and this time, it was worse.
To make an incredibly long and painful story short, she’s a runaway and all of the services and people who are put into place to help children have stopped trying to help. She has been staying with her boyfriend (of a month and a few days) in a hotel/halfway house where convicted felons and sex offenders reside. Not the best housing arrangement in the least. So I spoke to her on the phone earlier this week and I went to this place she has been staying to pick her up because staying with her sister in an apartment in a place that I can only think to compare to Pleasantville is a lot better than the previous. Me and my partner were greeted by her “boyfriend” who is not a minor and who I had initially suspected was making her stay with him against her will due to the fact that he had met me at the door, the inside door of which locks and needs a key to get past due to the fact that once word gets out to a community about sex offenders cohabiting their space are never too thrilled with the arrangement. So this kid (who is not a minor, but is younger than I am and has no idea what the word ‘respect’ means, which makes him a kid) refused to let me pick my sister up and who thought the best and most logical way of going about getting rid of me was to call me a cunt and crazy.
I did get my sister home to our family with the help of the police and after she adamantly refused to come to my apartment for a few days because it would put her a reasonable distance away from her boyfriend. As it turns out, she was staying there of her own free will, she is just not functioning with a sane mental capacity and is the utter definition of an out of control teen, which is why a day later she was back with her boyfriend and she had signed online with the sole intention of letting her boyfriend harass me via instant message.
So, to the actual point of this entire post (yes, 1200+ words in…) is the word ‘fat.’ Sure, feminists all across the blogosphere as well as anyone who knows the name Kate Harding knows that we are very accepting to body image and also of the word ‘fat’ itself. So why is it in the mass populace of boys and men alike, do they immediately start to hurl the word fat at women who they are trying to piss off? My sister’s boyfriend IM-harassed me for over a half hour, at least, about me being fat and when I stopped typing back (and didn’t block the screen name in case my sister did actually need to get a hold of me at some point when the shades of grey and clouds that Bipolar Disorder infects people’s minds with faded away) actually said that I wasn’t typing back because my 3am pizza had arrived and I was eating since I’m so fat. Now of course this is so ridiculous that all you can do is laugh and brush off your shoulder as an ignorant boy’s banter but it does have something with the initial reason why the word ‘fat’ is used as a slap in the face to women by men who feel they are the epitome of masculinity. It is socially acceptable for women to fear that they are too fat, that their ankles are too big, that their asses are too wide, that they have cellulite and stretch marks and it’s all repulsive because we live in the land of ‘you can never be too thin.’ The more we push back against this social normality, the less we will hear the word fat being used as a put down that is supposed to make women run to their treadmills and starve themselves so they can look like the women on the airbrushed and photoshopped covers of magazines. Masculinity should never be about how bad you can make a woman feel about themselves.
And hey, if he thinks my size 12 figure is fat, what exactly does he think my sister will look like in a few months, since she is now a pregnant, unstable, runaway teen?
Another lesson in why immature teens and young adults who are unable to take care of themselves should be educated in the importance of responsibilities, birth control, condoms and respecting women.
The Comments We Face
By starting a blog you automatically open yourself and your space up to people who may disagree with you. In some cases you may experience several comments from people who are not so nice in telling you why they disagree with a particular viewpoint you express on your blog. While most blogs will undoubtedly encounter the occasional irate comment, the feminist blogosphere is open to a completely different breed of troll infestations and Menstrual Poetry is no exception.
Most of the trolls that attack feminist spaces have a tendency to attack the people behind the blog using rash generalizations. Most of the trolls that attack feminist spaces are also men, although that is just a coincidence, right?
I received a comment on a post I wrote, about Glenn Sacks protesting domestic violence ads created by The Family Place back in December. The comment was deleted, but I think it is the best example of the type of comments to expect when simply speaking your mind and raising awareness about issues that affect women.
you fucking stupid cunt. how about you address the real cause of domestic violence– stupid cunts like you trying to run the country. you dumb cunt feminists always love to TALK about equality. but we both know you fucking morons are full of shit when the rubber meets the road.
women love to talk about how “strong and independent they are”.. yeah why don’t these fucking idiots pay their own way when they date then? exactly. because they CAN’T. they simply like to have their cake and eat it too.
why don’t these women pay for their own child support since they have special veto power over anything the man says regarding her pregnancy. women can defraud men and have them pay for someone else’s baby. women can have a baby even if a man doesn’t want her to have it. with power comes responsibility .but women are just power-hungry cunts who refuse to accept responsibility.
i look forward to more cunts like you getting beat the fuck up until you learn the message the hard way. you can only rob men of so many freedoms before they will start fighting back. and the female face looks like a good starting place.
you make men into criminals on your billboards before they are even born and then you have the fucking audacity to complain when men fulfill your requirements of them. comical.
Every feminist/womanist/humanist blogger I have ever spoken to about blogging has talked about the amount of obnoxious, sexist, and ridiculous comments they have received for simply speaking out about issues that need to be spoken out about and the comment above is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the comments we have to deal with go.
The first lesson you must learn when starting a blog where you point out the mass hypocrisy of patriarchal society and speak about the fundamental rights people, including people with a vagina, should have is develop a thick skin because there will undoubtedly be people, especially those who happen to be men, who disagree with you and in fact think that the patriarch should continue to rule over our lives.
Slut Shaming From Sextexting Leads To Suicide
Her name was Jesse Logan and she is dead. This young woman hanged herself after repeated verbal abuse from her classmates regarding nude photos of herself that she sent to a former boyfriend.
Walking down the hallways she reported being called a slut, whore and having things thrown at her. Imagine having to face that kind of treatment everyday just to get an education.
Before she committed suicide she had an interview with the media where she detailed the horrible treatment that she was receiving. Just two weeks after taking her story public she was dead.
Much of the reports on her death have focused on the issue of sextexting i.e sending sexually explicit images over the internet. Law makers are concerned that this is a form of child pornography. The real issue should be what happens to these images once they are released and how they are interpreted by society.
If Jesse had been male, would these kids have thought to use the taunt of slut and whore? These words are specifically targeted at women to make them feel shame for daring to be sexual. We live in a society where female bodies are often sexualized for the benefit of the male gaze and yet if a woman chooses to be an active body and reveal her body for her own gratification she is shamed publicly. Sex is something that we are told that we may only submit to unwillingly.
Even when we apply the words slut to men we routinely ad the word male in front of it to denote a change in referring gender i.e. male slut, male whore. Instead of dealing with this as an issue of restricting pornography, we should be concerning ourselves with the warped message that the young are receiving as it relates to gender and sexuality.
We are sexual creatures and the fact that we deny this essential part of our nature is ridiculous. The same behaviour that we promote and encourage in males, we stigmatize and discipline women for. A man that has various sexual partner is a stud, a hero of sorts and yet a young woman engaging in the same behaviour is slut shamed. We claim that we have reached a post feminist time and yet we regularly punish women and attempt to control their behaviour.
The demands of purity are very much a part of how we raise our daughters. Each day they are inundated with sexualized images of women and are then taught not to engage in sex unless it occurs within the context of a patriarchal marriage. We teach them to leverage their bodies for the brass ring as though marriage will somehow guarantee them a form of security. For women in particular, gender becomes a performance with few rewards. The basis of female life is submission to male desires, needs, and wants, and it is this point that needs to be understood by all. Yes there is a need for feminism. Young girls need a haven that they can turn to which will teach a positive affirmation of their bodies and their lives.
Sending a nude picture of yourself should not lead to this kind of treatment and schools need to take the issue of harassment seriously. It is not a simple matter of hurt feelings; for some it is a life and death issue. Any action that diminishes another should not be allowed on any school property. They are responsible for creating a hostile free learning environment and by not taking corrective measures all they did was teach Jesse’s assailants that they were right to taunt her in the manner that they did.
When incidents like this happen we need to pay close attention to how they are spoken about. This is not about sextexting, this is about gender based harassment and slut shaming. No young woman should be made to feel desperate enough to kill herself because we refuse to believe that women should have the right to display their bodies or be sexual outside of male control.
Cross Posted from Womanist Musings
It is NOT Okay to Harass Women–And Here’s Why
Many women are all too familiar with being harassed on the street. For some reason, when men get together they exude so much testosterone that they tend to believe that not only is the world their personal playground, but the women living in the world are also purely placed there for their amusement and enjoyment.
While men may think that they are just having fun at the time, their ignorance can go terribly wrong and in some cases, can cause a deadly situation. Of course these men can’t comprehend that such things can happen through their just having fun, trying to pick up some hot chicks, or any other excuse they use trying to cover up that they are blatantly harassing women.
Mildred Beaubrun is an 18 year old woman living in Florida. On the night of May 23, she and two of her girlfriends had stopped at a 7-Eleven. Then, a car full of men pulled up and decided that it was a great night to have some fun.
“Hey, baby, what’s your phone number?” they called out as the cars traveled west through Orlando.
Then the banter grew more aggressive. The men threw a T-shirt, then an AA battery, at the Nissan. One of the women threw a broken cell-phone charger back. At one point, the HHR swerved into the Nissan’s lane and tried to run the car off the road.
When the Nissan turned north on John Young Parkway, the HHR followed. Then, at Princeton Street, a shot rang out. Shrapnel flew as the bullet pierced the door and struck 18-year-old Beaubrun, who was sitting in the back seat.
You can see coverage of the event that appeared on the news here.
This is a tragic story, especially since something like this shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The world and the women in it are not for there simply for your enjoyment and it is never okay to harass women, especially since it turned into something that could be deadly, since it is unknown if Beaubrun will live at all.
A Lovely Example of Anti-Abortion Extremism
While reading some kick ass feminist news over at Feministing, a picture on their Flickr widget caught my attention.
The picture to your left is yet another lovely example of anti-abortion extremism. This picture was taken at the 2004 March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC. By holding a sign that says something so incredibly hateful and ignorant you are doing nothing but putting more hate back into the world around you. By holding a sign that says “You killed the next president” first of all is grouping all women who walk in the March for Women’s Lives as women who have had an abortion, which is not true at all; it also goes to show you that anti-abortion extremists do not care what they have to say to you to make you think like they do.
When you look at this technically, a woman who has had an abortion less than 35 years ago certainly did not kill the next president, which was mentioned in the comments for this picture on Flickr. In all likelihood women probably just aborted fetuses that would have grown up to be the kind of people that pro-lifers hate anyway–You know, liberal, homosexual, atheists; the list can go on. Logically speaking in response to this sign, a woman may have also killed the next Hitler or the next Charles Manson; but no, pro-lifers can’t see it from that standpoint, they see it as “You killed an innocent baaaaaaaaaabyyyyyy!” and then whatever happens after that “innocent baby” is born is the mother’s problem…And welfare’s problem, because we can’t forget about welfare, another thing that pro-life people complain about.
Another point that must be brought up is that anti-abortion extremists must stop comparing abortion to the Holocaust. It is demeaning and frankly holds no weight at all in a debate. Are women having unwanted children and then sending them off to torture chambers and gassing them to death by the hundreds? Uhh, no. Aborting a cluster of cells is by no means comparable to millions of men, women and children being starved, overworked, tortured and gassed to death, sorry.
The Frightening Truth About Crisis Pregnancy Centers
Sadly, very few women know what the term “crisis pregnancy center” really means and that is exactly what crisis pregnancy centers prey upon.
There is a personal story from Allyson Kirk published on AlterNet of a woman who got caught in the trap of these centers, thinking it was a regular reproductive rights clinic, as these centers have tried their best to look like to lure women in and intimidate them into carrying their pregnancies to term.
After calling the National Abortion Federation Hotline seeking an abortion, she got a number for a health care clinic, but a crisis pregnancy center located themselves a mere two doors down from the clinic, where the woman ended up walking into thinking it was the clinic she was in search for. What these people put her through is sick, twisted and no woman should have to be put through this when making a personal decision regarding her body.
“She asked me about my religious beliefs. I was immediately defensive at this point. I asked her why this was a relevant question to ask in a medical facility. “Because I can’t properly counsel you on the issue of abortion unless I know your moral standing,” she said. I decided that this was not the kind of place I felt comfortable seeking medical care so I asked her to complete the free pregnancy test and then I would be on my way. I gave her a urine sample and she agreed to run the test, but only if I watched an educational video while the results were processing.”
First of all, the woman felt the need to ask about the religious beliefs of the patient just to feel around and see if she had to intimidate her to stay there so she could “counsel” (ie: push her moral standing onto her patient and make her believe what she wanted) and the woman of this clinic, after seeing the hesitancy, started bartering with the woman over getting a pregnancy test done at their clinic. “You can have your pregnancy test if you watch this video.” That is not the way to treat the women who walk into your clinic, but they knew that this woman was hesitant and was starting to realize what was going on and knew that she should not be there, so I guess bartering is the only other viable option since these people are completely unprofessional and exist only to terminate a woman’s right to choose.
“The video I was forced to watch made false claims including: doctors who provide abortions graduate at the bottom of their classes and can’t get real jobs; abortion is dangerous and often results in serious injury, even death, to women, and abortion causes severe psychological and emotional damage to women. The woman on the video said many women who have abortions have nightmares of babies crying and have guilt about their decision so intense that it sends them into depression.
The second portion of the video showed an illustrated enactment of a surgical abortion procedure. A picture of a uterus with a fully formed fetus inside filled the TV screen as illustrated metal instruments appeared. The instruments were shown probing inside the uterus and dismembering the fetus. Then a suction device entered the screen, pulling the fetus out of the illustrated uterus for disposal.”
These centers should not be able to give women completely fabricated information. “Abortion providers can’t get real jobs?” Sorry, I believe that abortion providers have one of the most important jobs–Giving a woman power over her own body and giving her the respect to know that she can make her own decision. I would think that the people who “can’t get real jobs” would be the ones who make a living off of scaring the hell out of women who walk into their trumped up office. I would think that these people can only get jobs in which they must lie to scared and impressionable women in order to push their personal beliefs onto other people–whether they’re willing to listen or not because if they don’t, they’ll just barter with them–”We’ll let you out of this room as long as you agree to pray with us.” This makes me sick.
I am willing to bet that their claim that abortion results in serious injury and even death are taken from statistics published before the early 70’s, since they would be right–Back alley and illegal abortions that women are going to have to resort back to if abortion is ever outlawed, do cause serious injury and in a lot of cases, even death.
That, my friends, is why the option of a safe and legal abortion is a hell of a lot better than an abortion done with a wire coat hanger either in your home or in unsanitary surroundings because I, for one, would rather an already living and breathing woman be able to continue with her life before I would put the life of a cluster of cells before her.
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The OUT Campaign allows individuals to let others know they are not alone. It can also be a nice way of opening a conversation and help to demolish the negative stereotypes of atheists. Let the world know that we are not about to go away and that we are not going to allow those that would condemn us to push us into the shadows.
