Flashback Friday
Cinnamon Gurl sparked this off. Thanks. Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.
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Fake Breasts
Anna Nicole Smith just died and the documentary about her devoted several minutes to telling us all about the infections she had after the plastic surgery, and the time she had to have her one silicone sack out for a while. She stayed at home so no one could see she was lop-sided.
The woman on Doctor 90210 that pitched to have her anus peroxided, one of many procedures she had had done. The woman who phoned into 702 crying because she was about to go for her eleventh operation to fix a botched boob job. Who doesn’t see any hope for herself to ever look normal.
Put concisely, thankfully by my girlfriend: “I would feel like I was touching props.” Who said that boys don’t play with dolls, Barbies gone bananas. Soon they will be able to buy a woman on eBay, ‘comes with five outfits and a vacuum cleaner’.
Flashback Friday
Cinnamon Gurl sparked this off. Thanks. Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.
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Hairy consequence
Ooh they hate the hair. I think that must be the single biggest objection. Most ‘soft’ feminists think it is an abdication of feminity to not shave. Well, duh. And ‘hard’ feminists wouldn’t take you seriously if you were hairless. I know I have to work extra hard myself in that situation to overcome my own susceptibility to the stereotypes. And rest assured, I have found a space in my mind for accepting shaven radicallesbianseparatists.
Although, generally, I would fight in the streets for women’s right to shave – if I can just stress that the decision to shave would have to be an informed decision. I cannot fight in the streets so that women can make uninformed decisions. I would fight in the streets for the right of women to spit at the notion that shaving their hair takes them into a pre-pubescent, pre-sexual, pre-self-controlled-sexuality state.
At least pornography has introduced ubiquitously large, firm breasts into the heterosexual situation. Previous to these ageless protrusions, men wanted small-breasted model types – who looked like boys. So then men’s ‘heterosexuality’ meant ‘desire to bonk young, hairless, powerless, boys’.
Next: Fake breasts
Next: Women-only communities
Flashback Friday
Cinnamon Gurl sparked this off. Thanks. Each week the Flashback Friday: Feminist Edition will feature a story that has something to do with being or becoming a woman or feminist. This series will continue until I run out of stories. I love having guest bloggers. If you have a story you want to tell and you want to be a guest blogger here, please email me; or feel free to link to your own story in the comments.
…
Broad thoughts
One of the things that really astounds me is the Awakening. You know that feeling of lying in bed and suddenly realising that you have been awake for some time. You realise that you have been lying there thinking and time has passed. Catching those last few thoughts before the Awakening lasts as long as the memory of a dream – not long. My waking into feminism was exactly like that. I never thought I ‘needed’ feminism. I knew myself, my mind, my capabilities. I could act and react. I believed that the only difference between men and women was biological, genital, surmountable.
How wrong I was. I became aware that my previous stance and my current stance is a choice. The world brainwashes you, as does any system, feminism included. The difference is, that if you have become aware of an alternative reality, it undermines the ubiquitousness of reality number one. Alternative realities give the possibility of choosing, of making an informed decision. Of saying, ‘These bits suit me better.’
Books by Mary Daly, Cheris Kramerae, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, and Germaine Greer got the ball rolling. Now I cannot separate my feminist eyes from my what-would-you-call-it eyes. And there is no going back, no unreading, no untelling, no unpeeling feminism from my life. I wouldn’t even be able to scratch loose an edge. Nor would I want to.
I believe that there is a feminist continuum. At one point is a radical lady and the point right next to her is the radicallesbian. Both are fanatic, both actively defend their position. Between these two positions lie myriad other positions that fill up every millipoint on the continuum, including women who say, “I am not a feminist, but…” and women who say, “I know that you think I should leave him because he hits me, but…” All these women are on and belong on the continuum.
I am a radicallesbian. I approach men warily, and women with no guise or guile. I have not been raped, or molested. I am not running away. I am running toward.
Next: An immersion in feminism has a consequence.
