Fifteen Minutes To Fame

verybusyandimportant:

Dear (male) Vendor who offered my (male) boss Bulls tickets to sweeten to pot of the contract I am negotiating,

Yes. I noticed that you respond to my (male) colleague’s e-mails same-day and it often takes me weeks for a response, even though I manage the relationship directly and he, while not a direct report, is a subordinate. Yes. I noticed that you waited 4 days to get me a revised quote, but turned it around and hand delivered it in less than 45 minutes when my (male) colleague requested it. Yes. I noticed that you hand delivered it to me, without providing me notice, interrupting one of my meetings and expected me to deliver it to my boss. Yes. I noticed that you assumed that I was my boss’ admin, and not the department’s director. Yes. I noticed that you shook everyone’s hands but mine at our last meeting. Yes. We are going with another vendor.

Misogyny: it is a thing. Congratulations on losing a $300,000.00/year contract and probably your job. I am going with the company that brought us donuts.

Die in a Fire.

Love,

Rachel

(via jadelyn)

telegantmess:

(Content notice: description of racist, anti-trans violence)

alexandraerin:

lesley213:

I really don’t understand all these people supporting Ce-Ce. Ce-Ce was verbally abused for being trans, and yes that should never have happened. But Ce-Ce KILLED a man for that verbal abuse. And of course that should lead to a prison sentence.

Or do you think just because someone is trans you should defend everything they do?

I really don’t understand how anybody could look at that and not consider it a matter of self-defense. CeCe was running away from a life-or-death fight that she didn’t start. The man she killed was chasing her down. 

Or do you think just because someone is trans you should attack everything they do?

Not only was she being chased, she had just been smashed in the face with a glass by one of the people who had been insulting her.

It should amaze me that some assholes are utterly glossing over the fact that there was more than just a verbal altercation in this case. They just absolutely have to hold on to the idea of a violent black trans women in spite of publicly available evidence. Wonder why that might be.

genderpunk:

thiscuntsays:

“pegging” does not need to be a thing

it’s anal sex

hetero men can’t handle just calling it “anal sex” because we associate butt sex with gay men (homophobia!) and straight women (sexism!)

so instead we need a “special term” for it because straight dudes getting it up the ass are “different” than the gay men and straight women that culturally are supposed to LOVE it up the butt

it’s anal sex, straight men are on the receiving end of anal sex, and that’s okay. and you don’t need a special word for it.

This!

Yeah, let’s drop the homophobia and misogyny.  Anal sex is anal sex.

(via glitterunicorntitties-deactivat)

thambos:

lucypaw:

aquavitaecollective:

hey you know why afab trans people are said to benefit from misogyny

it’s not some covert way of saying that the gender binary should be upheld forever!!!!

it’s saying that society sees “not a lady” as “a dude” and you benefit from that

this is an issue and you should all try and stop it too because it misgenders a large portion of you??

Except not all cafab trans people are seen as either “not a lady” or “a dude”.  For that matter, the same applies when talking about camab trans people.  Which is why there’s so much pushback against this binarist idea that all cafab trans people benefit from misogyny.

Yeah pretty sure society often sees “not a lady” as “not good enough at being a lady” and other such things where people then get punished for not fitting into gender conforming boxes. Among many, many, MANY other things that factor into privilege and oppression of internal, external, and perceived experiences and identities of gender.

Things are way more complicated than Tumblr makes them out to be.

Yes, in fact, it is because of misogyny that “not a lady” tends to be treated as “not good enough at being a lady”.  This treatment is a large part of why apparent trans women tend to get shit on so much with misogyny.  Because they’re being simultaneously punished for (supposedly) ‘failing’ at being men while ‘not being good enough’ at being a lady.

Her Body Is Not Your Playground: Why the Photoshopped Frida Nudes Are Not Okay

blackgirldangerous:

by Mia McKenzie

October 25, 2012

A couple of months ago, I started seeing these images going around on Facebook, of Frida Kahlo in various stages of nudity. They were being posted and re-posted by several people I like, awesome POCs whose admiration of Frida Kahlo I definitely share. But something about the images seemed off to me. I mean, where had all these new images come from, all of a sudden? I decided to click on the link, to actually follow it to a web page. And there I discovered the awful truth: that these were all photoshopped images of Frida Kahlo’s face on someone else’s body.

Why would anyone do this? I mean, okay, there are all kinds of photoshopped pics of celebrity heads attached to naked bodies that don’t belong to them. Apparently, the desire to see a woman with her clothes off is so powerful to some people that seeing her with someone else’s clothes off will suffice. I won’t lie. I don’t get it. But I guess some people are into that. Okay. But, right or wrong, I guess I don’t personally associate this phenomenon with the kind of folks who actually know who Frida Kahlo is. Further, I guess I expect that people who do know who she is, and who care enough to click and share a link about her, would respect her enough to not want to see her objectified, and in such extreme ways. But then I realized that the person behind all of this was a white man. And I was like, “Oh. Yeah. Figures.” When did the idea of respecting the image, body, or identity of women of color ever trump the need for white men (or any men, really) to do whatever they please? Brown and black women have been treated as beasts of the sexual burden of white men for hundreds of years. White men have regarded the bodies of dark women as plantation playgrounds, where they can rape and abuse and use as they please, for centuries. This is yet another way to do that. Without any rightful claim to it, this person has taken the idea of Frida Kahlo’s body, staked a claim to it, used it for what he desires, and called it art.

Is this art? Really? Is this “genius” the way it is described here? Or is it just the same old racist, misogynist bullshit?

Don’t answer. It’s a rhetorical question.

There is more at play here, too, than just racism and misogyny (as if those aren’t enough). The fact of the matter is that Frida Kahlo did not likely have a body that looked like any of the bodies being used for these photoshopped images. The real, authentic nude photographs of Frida that exist only show her naked from the front, and from the waist up. What we know about her life is that she was a victim in a terrible bus crash in her youth, and that the results of that crash included years of surgeries, full-body casts, and the inability to have children.

From Bio.com:

Kahlo was impaled by a steel handrail, which went into her hip and came out the other side. She suffered several serious injuries as a result, including fractures in her spine and pelvis.

Following the accident, Frida would go on to have more than thirty surgeries.

We’d have to be in some serious denial to think that these things did not affect the way Frida’s body looked. There were surely scars, surely much evidence of decades of pain and surgery and brokenness. To replace that broken, scarred body with smooth, un-flawed flesh, as in these photoshopped pics, is plainly able-ist. Further, it dishonors the life Frida Kahlo lived and the experiences she survived. Here was a woman, an artist, whose artistic expression had everything to do with her physical pain, everything to do with existing inside a body that was twisted and gnarled, a body that hurt every day. To erase that is to attempt to erase Frida herself.

At the rate these pics are being shared, if this keeps up, these images of Frida Kahlo, which are not images of Frida Kahlo at all, will replace the authentic images that we have of her in our hearts and minds. People who don’t know her story, who don’t realize how fake these images are, will take them as the truth when there is no truth in them, when they are blatant lies. Lies created by someone who shares neither her color, nor her gender, nor her pain.

Whenever I see one of these photos posted in my Facebook news feed, I write a comment to let the person who posted it know that it’s fake and why that’s fucked-up. Maybe if others join me in this practice, we can help save the real image of Frida from erasure.

Mia McKenzie is a writer and a smart, scrappy Philadelphian with a deep love of vegan pomegranate ice cream and fake fur collars. She is a black feminist and a freaking queer, facts that are often reflected in her writings, which have won her some awards and grants, such as the Astraea Foundation’s Writers Fund Award and the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award. She has a novel debuting in the fall and has a short story forthcoming in The Kenyon Review. Her work has been published at Jezebel.com, and recommended by The Root, Colorlines, Feministing, Angry Asian Man, and Crunk Feminist Collective. She is a nerd, and the creator of Black Girl Dangerous, a revolutionary blog.

See Mia in Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead

Follow @BlackGirlDanger

LIKE us on Facebook

(via karnythia)

Consent is not sexy and I hate men less than Hugo Schwyzer hates men

everythingbutharleyquinn:

Since the criticism of this post was met largely with total disregard, dismissal and sneers of how stupid it was, I’m just going to insert my perspective real basic.

galesofnovember:

I really do assume that almost all men who have sex with women are looking for a sexual relationship based on mutual affection and mutual pleasure.

This is not true of my experience. This is not true of many women that I know.

I believe most men are invested enough in the happiness of their romantic partner and have spent enough of their life genuinely concerned with the well-being of people around them,  that they would never find themselves in a situation where a romantic partner tells them one day that they have been raping her.  

This is not true of my experience. This is not true of many women I know. This ignores many of the ways rape happens and the way people rape. 

Almost all men are perfectly capable of reading non-verbal communication.  And most men don’t cavalierly ignore non-verbal communication to continue with the fucking they wanted.  

This is profoundly not true of my experience. This is not true of many women that I know.

Now, in saying all of this is not true of my experience or that of many women that I know, I’m not claiming that it’s never happened and never happened to me! I have had positive sexual experiences with men where mutual affection and mutual pleasure and care and concern and attention has been shown. But it hasn’t made up the bulk of my experience! Several other women have flagged that it has not been the bulk of their experience either, only to be met with ridicule and derision. Why? In favour of coddling men’s egotistic need to believe they could never be rapists, that only bad bogeymen like Schwyzer do that??

This is our problem with the post. Because in the way the discussion has been set up, what’s left then is that it’s our fault this is the way it’s been for us. Because actually the vast majority of men are sensitive attentive lovers really invested in their partner in a genuine and authentic way and we’re just the nitwits who keep choosing the rapists.  

Look, I don’t tolerate any accidental rape bullshit and I agree that’s what Schwyzer is trying to do and it’s completely fucked up and wrong and apologist. 

But when we push back against this idea that most men don’t want to rape, would never find themselves in a place where a partner says they’ve been raping them, don’t ignore cues to continue doing what they want - we don’t think they’re doing any of that shit accidentally! Even if they get all confused and wide eyed and perplexed about it later on, no it’s not ignorance. They just chose to ignore the cues in favour of their orgasm because it’s a murky area to define and social power is on their side. Or they just don’t care until it seems like it might have repercussions, like them being made to confront it.  These are not narcissists or sociopaths! They’re just men! Normal, every day, average men. Splitting them into two camps is bullshit!

Also, suggesting we shouldn’t be cynical based on our experiences seems way fucked up and anti-feminist to me.

(via alexandraerin)

Consent is not sexy and I hate men less than Hugo Schwyzer hates men

pastimperfection:

galesofnovember:

I genuinely believe that most men do not rape women.  Despite generally agreeing with Andrea Dworkin’s overall theory about the way that dominance and oppression taint all of our relationships,  I really do assume that almost all men who have sex with women are looking for a sexual relationship based on mutual affection and mutual pleasure.

I believe most men are invested enough in the happiness of their romantic partner and have spent enough of their life genuinely concerned with the well-being of people around them,  that they would never find themselves in a situation where a romantic partner tells them one day that they have been raping her.  

Almost all men are perfectly capable of reading non-verbal communication.  And most men don’t cavalierly ignore non-verbal communication to continue with the fucking they wanted.   Narcissistic rapists do this.    

Narcissistic rapists like to pretend that their behavior is normal.  And apparently, one of the ways they do this is by setting themselves up as experts who patiently explain to men how easy it is to “accidentally” rape or abuse someone.   Because I, maybe naively and optimistically, don’t hate men,  I assume that there’s a whole, broad, chunk of dudes in Hugo Schwyzer’s intended audience who are just so fucking confused by his message.

But then there’s also probably this narrow, self-perpetuating chunk of Hugo Schwyzer’s audience who find the whole thing soooo validating.  ”See,” they say to themselves,  ”I am a victim of the patriarchy, and of those women who refused to give me a straight answer.  Now I will spread this gospel!”

And women, and men who aren’t sociopaths, believe it too.  So we start endlessly talking about consent and looking to bdsm subcultures are our model for healthy sexual relationships…which is so fucked up.   And we do this because we think that surely, if only we could find the right magic words we could stop rape.   But the Hugo Schwyzer’s of the world don’t give a shit about ~consent~. 

I agree with this, mostly.  Except for the confused part. 

Remember that time that Hugo Schwyzer wrote a rather detailed essay about why facials are actually loving, and why men who ejaculate on your face are themselves vulnerable, aching to be desired?  Remember that?  I still have to remind myself that it happened. 

And I know that a lot of people were like LOLNO but everyone did not immediately go, “Hang on!  That’s not feminist!  In fact, if you were to write a SNL parody of feminism, maybe starring Will Ferrell as the pseudo-feminist who wants to sleaze on women, you might end up with an essay like that!  Because that is not feminist at all!” 

It’s not.  This is the feminist equivalent of Herman Cain quoting the Pokemon movie theme song in a speech about values.  Like if Mitt Romney unveiled “A Modest Proposal for America.”  It is such sublime gonzo ineptitude that it seems intentional.  It’s not a lapse into parody.  It’s a three-hour tour. 

I don’t think he’s confusing men.  I think he’s exploiting general weakness on the subject of women’s humanity—and trying, in his own willful-yet-unconscious narcissistic way, to do his part to increase that ignorance.  I think he’s training these men to think of these profoundly misogynist (once again: FACIALS) attitudes and modes as feminist.  I think he’s doing that to make himself seem/feel (with narcissists, it’s the same thing) right.  And who knows what the effect will be—like you, I doubt very much that most of his students are bad men—but I think he could teach some young guys to think less critically about “feminism,” and about people who purport to respect women.