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 World is Now Dominated by Women, Where Have I Been?
After hundreds of thousands of years of men ruling the world and everything in it, especially women and government, men are now saying that they feel emasculated. Boohoo.
Via Broadsheet, I read about a study done by the Telegraph surveying the feelings of modern men living in the 21st century. About 2,000 men and women were polled for this study online and the outcome is quite shocking, in a “You got to be kidding me” kind of way.
“Many men believe the world is now dominated by women and that they have lost their role in society, fueling feelings of depression and being undervalued.”
Wow, you know, this sounds eerily familiar. Say, aren’t men guilty of dominating the world and making women feel as if not only they don’t have a role in society, but they shouldn’t have a role in society? In fact, aren’t men continuing to make women feel this way today? Why yes, I believe they are! I would love to be informed as to where all of these women are dominating the world because I am sure as hell failing to see this.
This “study” also has the nerve to include:
“Asked what it meant to be a man in the 21st century, more than half thought society was turning them into “waxed and coiffed metrosexuals”
So what men are trying to say is that they feel it is unfair for them to be judged based on their physical appearance? Wow, that also sounds like more of the same. It is common sense that no one likes to be told or believe that they must live up to a stereotypical norm when it comes to appearance, but come on now, get serious. Men feel as if they are being forced into looking like something they’re not? Take a look at every Maxim, Stuff, Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler magazine; in fact, take a look at any magazine or turn your television on to any channel or watch any movie–And then look at the statistics for eating disorders and tell me that they don’t have the least bit to do with each other. Women have been conditioned to hate their bodies, which is the product of the media telling women what men want.
And lastly…
“Men said they “felt handcuffed” by political correctness – only 33 percent felt they could speak freely and say what they thought, whereas two thirds found it safer and to conceal their opinions.”
I know many women who find it safer to conceal their opinions, since women have also been conditioned to be seen and not heard and to be the pretty face next to the strong and powerful husband, which can clearly be seen in any story where a male politician or sports star is discovered in a sex scandal; of course, the woman is always standing by her man with her mouth shut, smiling politely like she is told to. A woman who chooses to speak her mind freely and openly is mostly ridiculed for her blunt honesty by the majority of people who care not to listen based purely on her possession of a vagina.
It seems as if once women set their footprints in the wet concrete of history and start making own choices without having to consult a man before doing so, the men start to get all uppity. You would think that with men feeling the way they apparently do, they would begin to see what women have gone through to get where they stand today and that they would understand and appreciate the activism and determination in which we have fought for our rights and have a better understanding of equal rights. However, men believe that they are deserving of all power in all aspects of life and in society based purely on their possession of a penis.
While you feel completely emasculated, confused and rejected from society, welcome to the lives of women.
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Out Campaign
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.
