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21 year old boricua grrrl looking for the Marceline to my Princess Bubblegum. My name is Melanie.
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“Do not assume that gender politics or feminist concerns come in neat and familiar packages. Instead, allow your research to expand your view of what a “feminist politics” may be. It could be, for example, that protests against neoliberal market restructuring in Egypt are understood within a broad political framework that includes notions of gender justice. As Saba Mahmood and Lila Abu Lughod have taught us, liberal feminism’s assumptions as to what constitute “feminist politics” or “feminist causes” are at best flawed. At worst they are exercises in epistemological hegemony and the violent remaking of the world according to secular and neoliberal rights frameworks. Furthermore, do not assume that what we call the “feminist canon” is exhaustive or that it is not constituted through a series of exclusions, hierarchies, and imperial histories. After all Simone de Beauvoir, who taught us all that a woman is not born but made, also wrote in terms we now recognize as “Islamophobic” about women “under” Islam in Algeria at the time when Algeria was a French settler colony. This does not mean we should dismiss de Beauvoir, just as it would be too easy to condemn Hegel or Marx for their “views” on Africa. Rather, it is crucial to critically inhabit and navigate the reality that the western canon was, and is constituted through producing a series of “selves” and “others.”
– How Not to Study Gender in the Middle East by Maya Mikdashi  (via bad-dominicana)

(via so-treu)


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#feminism  


“Many women of color, like their Anglo counterparts, eschew the term ‘feminism’ while agreeing with it’s goals (the right to an abortion, equality in job hiring, girls’ soccer teams). But women of color also dismiss the label because the feminist movement has largely focused on the concerns of middle-class women… . Attempts to address the racism of the feminist movement have largely been token efforts without lasting effects. Many young women of color still feel alienated from a mainstream feminism that doesn’t explicitly address race… . Feminism in the United States has stagnated in part because it has largely neglected a class and race analysis.”
– “Feminism’s Future Young Feminists of Color Take the Mic” Daisy Hernández  (via brazenbitch)

(Source: blck-grrl)


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#feminism  #womanism  #feminists of color  #Daisy Hernández  #intersectionality  #woc  #poc  


gender trouble

expatriat:

chajiko:

expatriat:

Honestly, I went through the same kind of gender shock, but WOW—sounds like you’re in a really extreme situation.  My female friends are all educated and independent—including the married ones!  Most of us enjoy make-up and high heels as WELL as our varied academic degree fields.

Gender—it’s an interesting thing.  I’m a science teacher, and so I can say with some authority that there ARE certain behavior patterns which each gender is GENERALLY born with.  It’s NOT a bad thing.  It’s not something we need to smother and strip out of people who embrace it.  That being said, I don’t believe that biology should define us.  If my natural physiology defined me, I’d be an OCD paranoid fruitcake with an excess of 100 extra pounds of bodyfat.

I dunno.  This is such a complex issue, and as I said—it sounds like you’re weathering the worst of it. 

yesterday I went with my mother to the wellcome collection to check out their brain exhibit. there I saw the brain of one feminist helen gardener (1853-1925) who had donated hers because she held the controversial opinion that under the same conditions (meaning how they were raised, treated, etc) the female brain was indistinguishable from the male brain. alongside her brain were exhibits on phrenology, which we all know is bunk science but back then was taken seriously. there was a diagram of a woman’s skull, a woman who was a prostitute who followed the british army and who was known for being “cruel and dishonest”. so some asshole gets the idea that if a woman who has spent her reproductive years following the army as a prostitute, she MUST be cruel and dishonest because of, excuse me I’m laughing, the shape of her head? well my mother and I had a good laugh about that one. 

I’m not saying that science is bunk, or that brains can’t be different among people, but we should very critically consider how science is used in service of an agenda, who scientists are, etc. science used to think that people of different races were inferior. science used to euthanize people. science launches V2 rockets on london and drops bombs on japan. we should consider if a female brain is different from a man brain because, well, maybe the female is fed on average less calories than a man for her whole life. maybe she has undergone trauma. we don’t know. brains are different. I think it’s dangerous first of all to say that all brains are one way based on X (race, gender, religion, etc) and second of all we shouldn’t equate gender with sex in any way. gender differs worldwide. there are no quantifiable set innate gender characteristics among females or males anymore than this lump on my head makes me more likely to succeed in business.


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#feminism  #science  


→ List of Responses to Mona Eltahawy’s piece “Why Do They Hate Us?”

muslimwomeninhistory:

In case you are not sure why Mona Eltahawy has been regularly subject to criticism, here is a good introductory article. Most of the articles I found via sharquaouia’s tumblr.

  1. Al Jazeera’s Roundup of praise and criticism
  2. Samia Errazzouki, “Dear Mona Eltahawy, You Do Not Represent “Us”
  3. Mehreen Kasana (Quote from her Tumblr)
  4. The Frustrated Arab, “Us and Them: On Helpless Women and Orientalist Imagery”
  5. Foreign Policy, “Debating the War on Women” - Includes responses from Leila Ahmed, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Hanin Ghaddar, Naheed Mustafa, and Sondos Asem
  6. Tahrir Spirit, “I don’t really think they hate us”
  7. Dima Kathib, “Love, Not Hatred, Dear Mona”
  8. Omid Safi, “The hypocrisy of the “Why They Hate Us” rhetoric of Muslim Native Informants”
  9. Mona Kareem, “‘Why Do They Hate Us?’ A Blogger’s Response”
  10. Ayesha Kazmi, “Oh Mona!”
  11. Tahrir and Beyond, “Mona: Why do you hate us?”
  12. Tom Dale, Open Democracy, “Hatred and misogyny in the Middle East, a response to Mona el Tahawy”
  13. The Atlantic, “The Real Roots of Sexism in the Middle East (It’s Not Islam, Race, or ‘Hate’)”
  14. Global Voices Online, “Do Arab Men Hate Women? Mona Eltahawy Faces Firestorm”
  15. Sherene Seikaly and Maya Mikdashi, Jadaliyya, “Let’s Talk About Sex”
  16. Egypt Initiative for Personal Rights, “Get an Arab Woman to Say it For You”
  17. AltMuslimah, “Everybody ‘Hates’ Mona”
  18. Colonial Feminism, “Dear Mona Eltahawy”
  19. LoonWatch, “Why Do They Hate Us? They Don’t”

If you know of any more articles to contribute to this list please send me a message (You can send links through fanmail)

(via haralambros)


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#mona eltahawy  #why do they hate us?  #feminism  #islam  #arab  #middle east  


[general tw: discussion on cissexism and racism] I would really fucking love it if we stopped idolizing cis-feminists who think being trans-inclusive is bad for cis women.

fromonesurvivortoanother:

youarenotyou:

inflateablefilth:

I really fucking would. The latest in this line of cis-feminists I’ve noticed is Raven, aka unknowable woman. By asking for trans-inclusive language we’re being mean to women.

This is her response to people being upset with a poster that had a uterus on it and a slogan about women:

God fucking forbid women have one thing of their own in this world. We can’t write about ourselves, we can’t speak about ourselves, we can’t advocate for ourselves even within our own so-called “social justice” spheres without someone telling us to shut up about our own experiences.

That’s right folks, us mean ol’ trans folk are silencing women. How bout that! Even though trans folks like me are active and vocal in the pro-choice movement, which benefits cis women, we really should just shut up.

But, no, we have to love her because she got into a battle on twitter with Ryking. And I mentioned this to someone once, that I distrust cis-women in social justice, feminist, and pro-choice environments more than cis-men sometimes, because when cis women pull the ‘we’re being marginalized by you!’ card a lot more people listen. And I got called a misogynist. Which, incidentally, is apparently what we automatically are because we don’t want people telling us that a uterus makes you a woman.

This stuff, this is why Die Cis Scum is a phrase that exists. Because if we dare to talk, we’re silencing women. And when they say ‘women’, you bet your ass they only mean cis women.

Fuck cis people man, I am fucking done with your shit.

I love (and by love, I mean hate) how these cis feminists are always implying that anyone who isn’t a woman is oppressing them, because non-woman always equals male, apparently. 

And the justification of this cissexist erasing shit is that cis-woman-specific language is “needed” to point out that these anti-choicers are motivated by their hatred of cis women. Or in other words, “They aren’t thinking about anyone else, so why should we?” Like because cis women are the targets, we shouldn’t acknowledge who else is affected. Their needs are more important.

The funny thing is, the vast majority of anti choice legislation is actually specifically targeting and affecting women of color. But these white cis feminists completely ignore that fact. The face of the pro choice movement is white, white, white. So their whole “it’s about hating and killing WOMEN, not just PEOPLE” logic falls fucking flat. They cling to that language not because it most accurately describes the target demographic, but because it makes the debate all about them and their white cis needs. 

(And it really sickens me that people finally did something about Ryking when he went after a really well known white cis feminist blogger, despite all of his past harassment of women, especially women of color. But they deny, deny, deny this cuz whiteness has nothing to do with it, oh no.)

like i said yesterday, there’s a reason why “feminists” these days know Jessica Valenti more than Audre Lorde. it’s shit like this that caters to middle class white women. Andrea Smith calls this out in Conquest (which seriously has like, a laser eye on so many feminist issues). WoC didn’t get abortion rights after Roe v Wade, they were still too poor to afford it; the medicalization of abortion only exacerbated that problem. WoC care about contraception, being not-poor enough to feed their kids, and basic health care that is affordable. White woman feminism is about a capitalistic career track, not having to have kids, and getting into the white man’s world. Meanwhile, Women of Color are just trying to survive.

(via fivelettered)


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#cis people  #die cis scum  #anti choice  #abortion  #feminism  #why i'm not a feminist  #white feminists  #unknowablewoman  #transphobia  #cissexism  #race  #racism  #white privilege  #2nd wave bullshit  


“Patriarchy has always seen love as women’s work, degraded and devalued labor. And it has not cared when women failed to learn how to love, for patriarchal men have been the most willing to substitute care for love, submission for respect. We did not need a feminist movement to let us know that females are more likely to be concerned with relationships, connection, and community than are males. Patriarchy trains us for this role. We do not need feminist movement to remind us again and again that love cannot exist in a context of domination, that the love we seek cannot be found as long as we are bound and not free.”
– bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love (via femmenoire)
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#bell hooks  #Communion: the female search for love  #love  #feminism  #care  #dissertation related  


Shit I’m Too Black For: Audre Lorde Quotes

shitimtooblackfor:

There’s this big ass word called INTERSECTIONALITY.

I know y’all heard it. It’s definitely a buzz in the academe. Get into it, tho.

Think of that shit like the cross stitch to a good weave. Not that cheap shit. Hella interwoven.

So then understand that traditional systems of oppression are interlocking and do not act independently of one another, don’t get it twisted.

Therefore, my white people, I’ma need y’all to officially retire your reblogging of this Audre Lorde quote, if you’re not going to understand the context of her entire speech/essay:

For the master's tools will
never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat
him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine
change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define
the master's house as their only source of support.

Or the statement above it (yeah, we know, Lorde was on that genius shit):

Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable
and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But
community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic
pretense that these differences do not exist.

Because you know, you have to ask, what was the following paragraph though?

If white American feminist theory need not
deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our
oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean
your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist
theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the
theory behind racist feminism?

What was Audre commenting on, we wonder? Oh, perhaps the racism that is deeply embedded within feminism, which itself often goes unchecked in its dependence on patriarchy. Don’t think for a moment that white women stood idly by during slavery. No ma’am. The Idyllic Plantation Mistress is a myth. Do read Thavolia Glymph. Do read Darlene Hine. Do read Jennifer Morgan. Lorde was trying to let you know that by saying, “Let’s stop the divisiveness, we’re all women,” you are denying that women of color are suffering under other systems of oppression that include not just sexism. Yes, white womyn, it hurts to know that you, too, can be agents of oppression.

Now if Audre said this in the 1970s, what makes you think that the bullshit you spitting now is any more relevant or any more new? Don’t attempt to whitewash the power of Lorde’s words because they don’t sit pretty with your feminist utopian vision of women’s equality. What Audre Lorde was asking for was equity.

Now have a seat.

*george washington’s rising sun chair. it’s cute, riiight?

(via youarenotyou-deactivated2012022)


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#audre lorde  #intersectionality  #TRUTH  #feminism  


“We need to acknowledge that we cannot know what it’s like to be an oppressed racial minority. Cannot. The end. Period. We don’t know because we’re queer, because we’re disabled, because we’re Jewish, because we were the nerdy kid in school. These things may have hurt us severely, but we need to stop playing Oppression Olympics and acknowledge that when we’re talking about race we Do. Not. Know. No more metaphors.

We need to accept that when a person of color tells us we’ve fucked up, the answer is not to get defensive. When we get that instinct to say “geez, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way at all,” it’s time to stop right now. It doesn’t matter how you meant it. It really doesn’t. Someone doesn’t have to have racism in their heart to do something racist. And doing something racist doesn’t make you an evil person who can never do good again, should never be an activist, should run off and hide in a hole somewhere. It means you did something hurtful, you made a big mistake, and you need to own that mistake. You need to say “I’m sorry.” Full stop. I’m sorry. And if the person who called you out is generous enough to take time to explain what you did wrong, you need to have a seat and listen.”
– White Feminists: It’s Time to Put Up or Shut Up on Race (via fromonesurvivortoanother)
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#race  #racism  #white privilege  #feminism  #feminist  #privilege  #intersectionality  #resources