sunday, january 7th
fe-muh-nist soapbox
people ask me why i'm a feminist, and sometimes they ask me whether i hate all men or not, stupid questions. i remember one time at brower some boy was asking after my roommate, and when i told him she was at a feminist meeting in en why see, he said 'well, i wouldn't know anything about that...', and got all bashful like i'd told him she was taking part in an orgy or something.
lots of men can't identify themselves as feminists. or, as the boy at brower showed me, many don't even see it as anything they should be getting involved with. thurston moore identifies himself as a feminist, as does ian mackaye from fugazi, as does sean lennon, as does r. eirik ott to name but a few. wussy boy himself said, 'i see feminism as being not only a fight for women's rights, but also for the rights of any human being who wants to live his or her life outside of the narrow-minded patriarchal gender norms foisted upon them by this jacked up society.' he also says, 'until all men get involved in this fight and help create masculine identities for our male children that allows them to express themselves in a tender and passionate manner rather than resorting to hyper-masculinity and misogyny and homophobia to prove themselves 'real men'.' even if there is a whole world of womyn ready to fight the good fight, without men there with us, nothing can really change.
i am not mortally offended by porn. i don't think that all prostitutes are victims. i don't think being a housewife makes a person a failure.
the one thing that really upset me was when i found out that women at woodstock were sexually assaulted and raped, one during limp bizkit's set in the moshpit. i read about it in spin magazine (no other magazines covered this), and i swear i wanted to die. i was terrified. as a grrl who lives for seeing live bands and going to festivals, being swamped in the crowd, rocking out...i was scared. i was fucking scared. what if it had happened to me, or to one of my buddies? what would i do then? i heard the old bs that it wouldn't have happened if the women at the festival had covered themselves up more. i don't think showing tits is an invitation for rape. rape isn't a sexual crime, the kind of thing where a man is so overcome with lust he has to fuck her, it's a crime of power.
i saw limp bizkit at reading festival last year, just before i left for america, to make sure everything would be ok. i don't know what my presence was going to do for anyone, but i went along anyway. fred durst made all the women get on top of the men's shoulders. 'you women made our lives shit!' he screamed. 'fuck all of you!' the crowd cheered. it was a weird place to be.
i don't see how i couldn't be a feminist without even one incident like this going on in my world. some people in my life claim that it's not important to be a feminist, that there are more important things going on in the world. they say that i shouldn't concentrate on women's issues, as by doing that i am ignoring the other half of the population. well, many define feminism as 'the belief in the full social, economic and political equality of women and men, and doing something about it.' kathleen hanna, from le tigre says 'i see feminism as a broad-based political movement that's bent on challenging hierarchies of all kinds in our society, including racism and classism and able-body-ism, etc.' touche.
people put me up on some kind of pedestal because i'm a feminist. one boy asked me why i liked austin powers, because he believed it to be sexist. some of my friends asked why i bought the ...and you will know us by the trail of dead album because it had a picture of a naked woman on it. i don't judge my friend's opinions so harshly. i don't tell my gay friends to act in a stereotypical way. i don't expect people to act in certain ways anyhow. i hate having to defend myself all the time. just because i don't like the idea of bands like blink 182 and the bloodhound gang telling female members of the crowd at their gigs to show tits, does not mean i can't listen to a band who have female nudity in their artwork. does being a feminist mean that when i went to the tate modern gallery with meriel that i couldn't look at any of the naked portraits of men/women/both?
it feels weird, right now, to be defending myself for what i believe in. ever since i was ten, i have been interested in feminism. i read about it for fun. being a feminist isn't all i am, it's another part of me. it means i don't take any shit, but the kind of people i hang around with don't either. i think it's all about self respect.
suds at