Author: stavvers

Things I read recently that I found interesting

Well. It’s been rather a while since I’ve written one of these round-ups, because I’ve been doing work (if you hate our media, you should sign this petition to piss the rich white fuckers off) (also, if you love me, please sign up to this Thunderclap. It will help me times a billion.) I’ve also been busy getting trolled to ribbons by the sort of person who likes picketing lesbian pride parades, which hasn’t been much fun, but they’re spitting feathers I’m still going.

Anyway, there’s a corresponding huge fuckoff stack of things I read in the last few weeks that I found interesting. Maybe you will, too.

Will gay rights and feminist movements please return to your assumptions (Rewriting The Rules)- On binary assumptions which just won’t go away.

9 Visions of Utopia from Broadmarsh Shopping Centre (Judy Thorne)- All people want is communism and robots and I can get behind that 100%

Losing Pride (Huw Lemmey)- On how Pride in London has evolved to be miles away from its roots.

Gatekeepers get written about: how the media shuts out trans voices (J Mase III)- Excellent and useful piece, proved right again and again, sadly.

IT HAPPENED TO ME: I Went On A Date With An MRA (xoJane)- This is, sadly, the sort of thing I’d expected dating these men to be like. Trigger warning for misogyny and violence.

I Was Sexually Assaulted By Someone I Thought Was A Feminist And An Ally (Black Girl Dangerous)- …but don’t trust those nice, safe-seeming men any more. Same trigger warnings apply as above.

Cis Privilege (Cis Is Not A Dirty Word)- Some may find this privilege checklist a useful resource.

PurrVerse: The Mean Girls Of Lesbian Porn (Kitty Stryker)- On body policing in lesbian porn.

How sexist video game animators keep failing women (Aja Romano)- Take-down of the whine “women are too hard to animate” refrain.

“Game of Thrones” fails the female gaze: Why does prestige TV refuse to cater erotically to women? (Lili Loofbourow)- Why doesn’t Game of Thrones give women something to look at?

For The Billionth Time, Magneto Is Not Malcolm X (Muslim Reverie)- Brilliant post on the politics of X Men and appropriation and the handling of mutants of colour.

Jane Doe, Trans Women, and the Myth of the Perfect Victim (Katherine Cross)- On the demand for perfect victims in order for cis people to care.

Five Reasons why “If Modern Anarchists fought in Spain” isn’t Funny or Clever.  (Self Certified)- Taking down some manarcho-douchebag wankery.

Luis Suarez, the perfect mascot for this World Cup; or, “Aliens are Watching the World Cup”. (Musa Okwonga)- Lovely post about synecdoche.

And finally, I love Uzo Aduba, who plays Suzanne in Orange Is The New Black. Here she is doing all of the other characters. Her Alex is particularly good.

 

I was there when a lesbian pride march got picketed by bigots

Content note: this post discusses transmisogyny

Over the last few years, I’ve regularly attended London’s Dyke March. It’s important to me to be with my sisters who also love women, out in the streets showing our solidarity and strength. The march organisers are brilliant, ensuring maximum turnout by pursuing an inclusive policy: all dykes are welcome.

In the light of this inclusive policy, it was only a matter of time till bigots tried to disrupt this annual dyke demonstration. I’d heard rumours of some sort of presence from bigots online, who objected to the inclusive stance of the organisers and their proactive selection of diverse dykes outside of the traditional cis white lesbian speaker selection. At this point, some women, including my girlfriend, were put off from going on the march. I don’t blame these women at all: the last thing anyone wants at a day celebrating queer women’s identity is a confrontation with bigots. I imagine this is exactly why the bigots publicly threatened to show up, to put women off from coming. There’s a full summary of what they did before the march here, if you want to see their tactics.

On the day, my friends and I arrived late, running predictably on queer time. Luckily, the march, being run by queer women, was also running on queer time, so we hadn’t missed the speeches. We grabbed a spot near the stage. I looked around, unsure as to whether the bigots would have turned up.

As the speeches started, I realised with a sinking feeling that they had. A silver-haired woman handed me a leaflet. Through the block of text, I could see that it was transmisogynistic conspiracy theorising about Sarah Brown, one of the speakers. I ripped it in half. They held up placards, revealing their obsession with genitals. They yelled misogynistic and transmisogynistic slogans over a speaker, as the rest of the crowd shuffled away and told them to shut up. In all, I think there were five or six of them, and one of them was literally wearing a fedora.

I’d seen all this before. I have seen this sort of thing outside abortion clinics, where Catholics try to harass women seeking access to abortion. I have seen it at Pride, where every year bigots show up to picket queer people gathering together and being themselves.

A lot of TERfs claim to be political lesbians, but if that’s the case, why are they picketing London’s only lesbian pride parade? Why are they attempting to disrupt a gathering of queer women? Why did they try and stop dykes from joining with their sisters in solidarity?

It was clear that they were not here as fellow lesbians, which was evidenced by the fact that they did not participate in the march itself. They just showed up to try and wreck the event. I consider their intervention an act of lesbophobic violence.

I cannot say I’m surprised that this happened. In women’s circles, transmisogyny is too often treated as a kind of abstract intellectual difference. Let it be known that it is not: it is a belief system which directly leads to attempting to disrupt lesbian pride and solidarity.

Some musings on love (and gender)

If asked to, how would you define love? Would you rattle off the ways you express it? A touch of a hand, a kiss, wiping a snotty nose and brushing their hair? Would you maybe try and explain how it feels to you? A kind of rising feeling from the bottom of your stomach that crashes all over you, a sense of gladly doing anything for that person, an overwhelming closeness? Would you think about the different kinds, and how different it is between comrades, parents, lovers?

It’s difficult, isn’t it, and that’s because ultimately it’s something of a silly question because every single one of these answers is a correct and valid answer. We know that it’s something so beautifully complex and so completely personal that no definition would ever be sufficient. We know that there’s no real universal answers, as much as some would like there to be. Science thinks it can answer this question by reducing the matter down to hormones and evolutionary purposes, and we can see that this isn’t the full picture. The state tries to define it for us, and the best of us react with disgust, because this is simply co-opting something to serve their own purposes.

It’s only the worst sort of bigot who makes up a definition of love and rigidly enforces it on others. The rest of us are kind of content to let others make up their own meaning, knowing and celebrating the diversity of feeling. It’s almost intuitive, thinking about love that way, so why do we have so much trouble thinking about gender on similar terms?

When it comes to gender, there’s also no right or wrong answers, no definition that can ever be universally applicable. This is not a problem: far from it. It’s exciting. It’s mysterious. It’s deeply personal, just like love is. And I for one think that’s brilliant.

Things I read this week that I found interesting

Or rather, this fortnight. Getting a little lax on these. Been working a new job, in case you missed it. Definitely worth signing this petition. Anyway, here’s some things I’ve been reading.

On Whether You Have A Right To Sex (girlonthenet)- This really shouldn’t need to be said, but it’s said well.

On Continuing to Live In the Same World that Made Elliot Rodger (and Many Like Him) (Rachel)- Beautiful piece about living under misogyny.

Maya Angelou: a phenomenal woman (Reni Eddo-Lodge)- A touching obituary for a remarkable woman.

5 Reflections on the European Election Results (Novara)- Useful analysis of what happened.

Trigger warnings and toothpicks. (sometimes, it’s just a cigar)- On the importance of trigger warnings.

An open letter to privileged people who play devil’s advocate (Juliana)- Are you this dick? Don’t be this dick.

Brown beauty: from TV to the high st the beauty industry is still racist (Reni Eddo-Lodge)- Reni explores the racism in the beauty industry.

No country for young women: Honour crimes and infanticide in Ireland (Stephanie Lord)- Disturbing and upsetting, important to know.

Not All Men, Redux. (That Pesky Feminist)- I wish we didn’t need to keep saying this, but Tilly says it so goddamn well.

 

 

Shit I cannot believe needs to be said: I don’t dwell on your genitals

Content note: This post discusses transmisogyny

At the age of about three, I used to go around asking every person I met the same question: “Do you have a willy or a vagina?” This, I learned very quickly, was not a polite thing to say to people, so I stopped. In an ideal world, everyone would have grown out of wondering what other people’s genitals look like at around that age. We do not live in an ideal world.

See, there’s two broad groups of people who are still fascinated with what other people have under their clothes: misogynists and transmisogynists. Among misogynists, it’s a classic male entitlement to sex: they believe our bodies to be public property and they are therefore allowed access to every inch of them. Among transmisogynists, it can be a bit more complicated, as many of them happen to be women. They make a litany of excuses, conveniently forgetting that rape isn’t just about penis to attempt to excuse their obsession with other people’s genitals. However, ultimately, it’s all about entitlement nonetheless. They genuinely feel entitled to know the precise configuration of everyone else’s private parts.

It seems so alien to me. When I’m out and about, I’m generally not dwelling on what sort of genitals everyone around me might have. When I spend time with women, I’m not sitting there constructing a mental map of what their genitals might look like. When I shower or swim with women, I’m not gawping at their genitals, because frankly, that’s just rude.

I’ve known for a long time that men are often thinking about my cunt, and that’s why I don’t really enjoy the company of men that much. Knowing that there are women who do this too makes me feel less safe in women’s spaces, like they might just suddenly ask me about my cunt or grab at my crotch to make sure I have correctly-shaped equipment.

This feeling that I have pales into insignificance compared to what trans women go through. If you think trans women don’t get sexually assaulted in order to verify what their genitals look like, you’re wrong. This is a very real threat that women face due to societal fascination with something which should be completely private and up to the owner of said genitals to share or not.

There are precisely two times in live when someone else’s genitals are really relevant. The first is if you are a medical professional and someone needs some medical assistance with their genitals, something which, for the vast majority of us, is never going to be the case. The other is during sex, and even then it really doesn’t matter exactly which way they point. People say “oh, but I just don’t like penises/vulvas”, but that, too, is rooted in cissexism and general poor sex education. You can have sex–great sex–with someone with a penis without any penetration whatsoever. You can have brilliant sex with someone with a vulva with plenty of penetration. I instinctively distrust anyone who professes a dislike for a certain type of genitals: it usually means they’re either cissexist, or completely lack imagination in bed, or both of those things.

I cannot believe I’ve just had to write a blog about how generally disinterested I am in what your genitals look like, but I feel it’s necessary to punch through what risks becoming a dominant discourse. Returning to dwelling on what someone’s genitals look like does not help feminism one little bit: in fact, it sets us way, way back. It can be hard, unlearning the fascination with genitals in a generally genital-fascinated society, but for the sake of a feminism which does not equate women to walking vaginas, it’s utterly essential.

An open letter to all men

Content note: this post discusses violence against women and misogyny

Dear men,

I’m addressing every single one of you. If you think this isn’t for you, it probably is. If you’re itching to complain that I’m making generalisations, this is definitely for you. Sit down, shut up, and maybe try not to prove me right.

It’s been in the news that Elliot Rodger murdered six people because women weren’t giving him the time of day. I’ve seen you struggling to make sense of this, putting what he did down to mental illness, or neurodiversity, or being mixed race, or even being a repressed gay man. You’ve been twisting the truth to make it seem like he’s not like you, that he’s a deviant.

You’re wrong. Elliot Rodger murdered six people because of a feeling that all men are taught to feel. Elliot Rodger murdered six people because he felt entitled to sex and emotional labour from women. Elliot Rodger murdered six people because, like all men, he was taught he had every right to feel angry at not getting his own way.

We were all born and raised under patriarchy. These beliefs about men and women are prevalent. You can trace a direct line between that sense of entitlement and Elliot Rodger murdering six people. You can also trace this direct line between that sense of entitlement and much of the other violence men inflict upon women: the rapes, the beatings, the random acts of street harassment.

By now, your fingers are probably twitching with the urge to scream NOT ALL MEN ARE LIKE THIS. I can almost feel your agitation, and your desire to say this. Guess what? That desire to burst in and announce NOT ALL MEN is tied in to that self-same sense of entitlement. You say it because you feel entitled to my time and attention. You say it because it horrifies you that I might feel negatively to you and you want to show off what a nice guy you really are.

Last night, I talked about this on Twitter, and was deluged with men screaming NOT ALL MEN. Take a look at your brothers. Take a look at the level of misogyny seeping from all men who screech NOT ALL MEN.

It’s easier to say that not all men think like Elliot Rodger, because that stops you having to worry about structural misogyny. You can pretend to yourself that you’re a special snowflake who is above all of that. The truth is frightening: sure, you probably haven’t murdered anyone, but that doesn’t mean that you have a hell of a lot in common with that mass murderer. Instead of trying to distance yourself from Elliot Rodger, you need to take a long and hard inventory of the things that make you alike. Only then can you kill the Elliot Rodger inside your head.

I’m sick of you men whinging that you’re not all like this. Every time you do, it makes you seem all the more similar to me, a writhing mass of entitled misogyny. You need to accept this problem that you have and solve it rather than continuing along this path. End your complicity now.

NOTE ON COMMENTS: I’ve not been moderating comments like I usually do, because they all kind of prove me right. Content note for misogyny, racism and disablism because men are pigs.

Things I read this fortnight that I found interesting

So, I didn’t do a round-up last week, because it was my birthday. This is hardly a bumper issue of round-up either, because I have some good life news: I have a job for the next few months. And as part of my job, I’m going to encourage you all to get angry about who owns the media: the power is horribly concentrated among a few very rich people, which is why it all sucks so hard. You can read about the full extent of the problem here, and if it pisses you off, sign and share this petition to get the issue on the agenda in Europe.

Back to your regularly scheduled link round-up of some things I read.

I was arrested 75 times: how violent policing destroys mental health (Emily Apple)- Must-read article on a sadly all-too-common policing tactic.

Why Ed Miliband (and almost everyone else) defended Nigel Farage as “not-racist” (justinthelibsoc)- A reminder of the general structural racism of politics.

Anti-Fascism One Year On From The Lee Rigby Murder (South London Anti Fascists)- A short examination of the current state of affairs, and what we need to respond to.

Not All Men, a Villanelle (Ideology)- Basically says what we’re all thinking, jauntily.

Strategic misogyny– Initiative collating stories of sexism in academia.

Please don’t describe my work as ‘eloquent’ (Reni Eddo-Lodge)- Reni explains the racism and classism underlying the word “eloquent”.

The Dangers of a Single Book Cover: The Acacia Tree Meme and “African literature” (Africa is a Country)- I hadn’t noticed this racist trope until this article put it across really neatly.

On bell, Beyonce’, and Bullshit (Crunk Feminist Collective)- This post nails it and you should read it.

Why we can’t have nice things: A Gender Week post-mortem (Roz Kaveney)- Roz looks at what went wrong.

Breaking Barriers: Why I’m Just Not Angry at HIV+ Porn (Kitty Stryker)- An excellent post on porn and stigma and STIs.

My speech for the Manchester IDAHOBIT vigil (Jen Tumblring)- Always worth remembering biphobia exists.

While Writing for ‘Orange Is the New Black,’ I Realized I Am Gay (Lauren Morelli)- Rather touching coming-out story.

Brain studies find that concern for justice and equality is linked to logic, not emotion. (Lisa Wade)- Short overview of the science. Worth noting that even if it had turned out this was driven by emotion it wouldn’t make it any less valid.

And finally, a livestream of some kittens named after Douglas Adams characters. Look at their tiny noses!

Not that bollocks about trigger warnings again

That argument about trigger warnings has popped up again, and I feel compelled to write about it again.

This time, the nexus of nonsense seems to be around putting trigger warnings on classic books, with university students asking for this concession to be made. It seems like a reasonable and trivial request, but this hasn’t stopped the commentariat nonsensically screaming censorship.

Let’s start with the obvious: warning that a book contains content likely to cause trauma is not the same as censorship. Do these hacks sit in the cinema, harrumphing about Big Brother when the BBFC certificate pops up and announces that the film will contain scenes of violence? Do they switch off their TV in a rage and write a column about censorship when the announcer points out that there will be an abuse storyline in the next episode of Hollyoaks? How does one even live like this? The only way one can make an argument that content warnings are akin to censorship is if one doesn’t know what censorship is.

And of course, every time this argument rears its head, we see the same ridicule thrown around by privileged journalists. They are mocking people who have survived trauma. They are mocking people who live with mental illness. They are mocking a strategy which helps people to stay alive. That’s the crux of it: putting a trigger warning on something takes only ten seconds of your time, and can mean the world to other people.

I have yet to see a compelling argument against trigger warnings/content warnings that isn’t nonsensical and, at its heart, completely and utterly disablist. It’s selfish and puerile to kick against them, and largely makes you look like a complete bellend. I applaud the widening of the application of trigger warnings: it’s about time they hit the mainstream.

In which I write something for Mental Health Awareness Week

I suppose it’s a great irony that I’ve been having trouble writing something for Mental Health Awareness Week because I’ve been a bit too mental. For most of the week I’ve been bumming around, oscillating between numbness and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist which helped significantly. Now I’m trying to write something around the theme of anxiety–this year’s theme–and I am niggled by gnawing worries that what I have to say is probably somewhat fraudulent, that I’m hardly an authority to talk on this, that I’m probably just pretending and and and and

I think it’s safe to say that I get anxiety, and it’s fucking awful. It used to manifest as a collection of largely somatic symptoms in combination with the odd fleeting sensation of “Oh fuck, I’m doomed”. This was particularly bad around the time I quit my PhD. I’d puke. A lot. Even when I wasn’t puking, I could always feel it there, in my guts, twisting them about. I’d also get weirder stuff. Once, every memorable mosquito bite I’d ever had decided to rise back up on my body. It was itchy as all fuck. I remember someone being annoyed by it and handing me an antihistamine. The things went back down before the tablet had even hit my stomach. That was good, I suppose, though it kind of proved to me just how powerful my mind was.

This stopped after I had some mindfulness therapy. I learned, through meditation, to climb into my guts and untie them. Since I had that treatment, the somatic problems mostly went away. Unfortunately, things got worse in other places, because six sessions is nowhere near enough to fix everything.

The symptoms shifted to my mind. Quitting my PhD alleviated some of the problem, because I didn’t have that big horrible insurmountable thing hanging over me any more, but I still have a lot of things to validly feel “oh fuck, I’m doomed” about. And my god, I do. I sometimes wake up far too early, worrying about how I know waking up far too early is really bad for my epilepsy. A lot of the time, a reminder of how economically fucked I am will pop into my head and I’ll end up having every negative thought it’s possible to have all at once. There’s little things people will do that remind me of other things nasty people who did bad things to me did that can ruin my day. I find myself making sure I do things in even numbers because odd numbers make me feel funny and bad.

All in all, I’m not convinced mindfulness worked very well for me, and certainly not in the paltry six sessions I was given.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending. This is all ongoing as I manage the best I can to keep on living. My friends know to offer me two biscuits rather than one. I’m able to do certain things that distract myself: things that require lots of concentration, or things that are fun, or, ideally both. I like to be around people I know as much as I can: if not physically, then digitally. Talking to people about any old rubbish is significantly better than listening to the chattering within my brain.

I suppose if there’s any sort of take-home message, it’s this: anxiety really fucking sucks. It blows. It’s kind of a thing which a lot of people get, often in tandem with other problems too, and the way it affected me is the way it affects some others. The way we talk about mental health often has a requirement to end with the “and then I did this and it got better”, except for a lot of people it doesn’t. It gets tolerable. You find ways to function. You choreograph a dance with your own problems and counter its steps with your own things that work. And I have found mine, sort of.