Oh, so the worst thing you will read all day.

Posted today on Shakesville was this, which is a link to an article about a "controversial" new book that postulates that feminism has ruined male-female relations and that women need to stop "acting like men" at home and give up on this whole "equal" thing because "men don't fall in love with equals."

If you've got enough sanity points, it's worth reading the article, if only because I cannot make this shit up, y'all.

Feminism does in fact tell women that we do not have to act demure, "sexually available", "complimentary", etc. and so on. 

But feminism does not tell us that we MUST not act that way.  The beauty of feminism is that we have the ability to be individual people, and decide what femininity means to us on our own terms - so far as any of us can have our own terms, growing up and living in the miasma of patriarchy.

Likewise, feminism does not proscribe narrow roles for men and say all men like THIS and think THIS and do THIS and are capable of THIS.  Which is what the authors are saying.  And yet, feminists are man-haters?

Additionally, you know, I am all for clear communication in relationships.  Part of that is because I try to do it myself and I really like the results, part of it is because I think communicating respectfully with people is just part of being a decent person and I have this thing about not being an asshole.  And it chaps my ass that these authors can advocate a healthy relationship skill like communication in the same mothafuckin BREATH as they advocate that women should tone their personalities and accomplishments down so they don't hurt the menz' precious fee-fees.

And while we're at it, could this book get any more hetero-normative?  The entire QUILTBAG community, where are they in all this?  Oh right, patriarchy tells us that only straight relationships matter.  And only those where the woman is properly "sexually available" and "complimentary" (no, the misspelling is not mine).

Oh also, what about relationships that aren't dyads?  Wait wait wait, those don't exist either; sorry my silly ladybrane forgot.

This is the same old WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ LADIES YOU BETTER STAY DEMURE ON THE GROUND WITH THAT BOOT ON YOUR NECK OR ELSE bullshit.  And it is absolutely galling that they mixed in a little bit of actual relationship advice to, what, make it more palatable?  Make it more mainstream?  I don't even know.

Is it possible someone will read this and chime to the "communication" part and it'll change their lives for the better?  Sure.  But why should they have to swallow all of that other shit to get there?

Woo equality!

So in case you haven't heard, Proposition 8 in California was overturned today and ruled to be unconstitutional.

Which is fucking awesome.

The ruling itself is a thing of beauty - and of course I'm biased; I have this pesky belief that gender, sex, and sexual orientation shouldn't be reasons to discriminate against anyone - and names opposition to same-sex marriage for what it is:  an emotional or religious belief that same-sex couples are inferior to "opposite-sex" couples.

Now granted, I'm privileged.  I'm a white straight cis-woman; the only ways I could get more privileged would be to be a cis-man and skinny.  So yes, I'm doing a happy dance about this.  This means a lot of my friends who couldn't get married before can.  This means that they get something I do, that I get to share, that the eyes of the law can't look on them differently than they do me in one very significant and visible way.

Does this mean that everyone's equal?  Nope.  Does it mean that gay and lesbian people are equal to everyone else?  Nope.  It doesn't even remotely touch on anything else in "LGBTQQI" besides the "L" and the "G", and even then, only on one specific issue, the recognition of marriage.

There is still so, so much to do.  I am not in any way denying that.  I'd love to see transpeople included in ENDA.  I'd love to see DOMA and DADT repealed.  I'd love to see marriage redefined and poly relationships recognized.  I'd love to see actual equality, for fucking everyone.  This ruling, this ruling about one specific thing, is not even enshrined in law yet and could very well be overturned.

And maybe because I am so privileged, it's easier for me, even with all of that, to do a happy dance about this.  Maybe it's easier for me to be overjoyed that a symbol - a symbol - is step-by-step becoming more accessible for everyone, should they choose it. 

But you know what?  Fuck it.  This is another course of bricks in the big ol' house called Equality, and fuck it, I'm celebrating.

See also: On the Notion of Consent and Personal Responsibility

If you haven't already heard about this story, you're lucky.

Basically, a woman sued Girls Gone Wild for taping her without her consent when she was in a bar a number of years ago.  A jury ruled that since she was in the bar, she consented to being filmed.

It gets worse.  One, she only found out that she was in the film after an acquaintance told her, a number of years after the fact.  Two, what was filmed was her being sexually assaulted.  In the video, another woman pulls down her shirt while she can clearly be heard to be saying "no no no".

How fucked up is our culture when not even NO means no?

Never mind the fact that I have issues with the entire "no means no" structure of consent anyway.  As you've noticed in previous entries - and probably by my blogroll - I'm a fan of the enthusiastic consent structure.  Unless there's a clear "yes", there is no consent.  But I recognize that for many people, the only education they receive on matters of consent is in fact "no means no", and so I'm willing to at least work with that.  It is, after all, better than nothing.

But in this case, there was not only a lack of enthusiastic, clear consent - the GGW company did not produce a written consent, nor could they produce verbal consent captured on video - but there was a definite presence of the revoking of consent.  She was asked to flash the camera.  She said no.  Someone else assaulted her - and make no mistake, that was assault - and pulled down her shirt, exposing her breasts.  There was no consent, and this should have never been put in to the video.

Moreover, I'd say that the camera person has a responsibility to say "HEY THAT ISN'T COOL" and stop the tapes from rolling.  Never mind everyone else the bar having a responsibility to say the same thing, at a bare fucking minimum.

The message that this verdict sends is just a reaffirmation of the one rape culture gives us every day.  That women are public property.  That if we aren't good little girls we deserve whatever happens to us.  That going out and having a good time means that anything and everything is on the table.

And that is just fucking bullshit.

Head a 'splode

So the new job, right?

It's extremely strange to me to be in the corporate world. The last time I didn't work for a non-profit organization was also the last time I had a dress code, which was in high school. I worked for a department store. That was a completely different experience than this.

I have my own desk, and it is huge. I have a brand-new computer, and flat-screen monitor, and my own printer, and a work cell phone (I could have gotten a Razr, but I don't like them). Tomorrow I will ship out approximately $15,000 worth of computer parts for an RMA, and in turn, order about $20k more. And no one will bat an eye. I, I, have power. I make things happen. I make things happen quickly.

The budget is a concern, and everyone wants to make sure that the company stays in a good place, but money, really, is not an object. We need it for the business? Great, order it. No months of justifying even minor expenses. No wrangling for non-existent funds. No dealing with half-broken, jimmied equipment that's worse than the stuff I buy for personal use - no more working from home because my laptop is better and more reliable than any computer in the organization.

It's craziness. I still walk around a little bit dazed sometimes at work, when I realize that I'm doing half the work (if that) for twice as much money. That's what kills me the most. The easy, easy crap I'm doing right now is worth, in this society, twice as much as the vital and brutal work I was doing with kids just a few weeks ago. How fucked up is that?

I'd say that I don't know what to do about it, but I do. I, of course, am the Woman with a Plan. I am going to work that bitch for every fucking dime that I can, and sock away money like there's no tomorrow, to finance my next foray into the undervalued and overworked field of social work, so that maybe people who actually do important stuff get paid for it.

And save some children too, you know.

On kink

In my racism class, for grad school, part of our "getting to know you!" introductory exercises had us think about labels and what we identify as, individually.

The list of usual suspects was on there - sex, age, race, ethnicity, economic class, etc. I added gender identity and sexual orientation, because I think about those a lot in the course of my work. I got to add them because there was an "other" category, for anything we wanted.

I got home tonight and was thinking about all the things I could put there, but didn't, and first on the list was my identity as kinky, sexually speaking. I would have completely forgotten about the exercise, except for the fact that we were talking about deviance this week, and how it's very easy to classify someone as deviant, and what that means.

The important thing I gleaned was that deviance is all in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, if the beholder is "American society as a whole", I, as a kinky person, am deviant. Highly deviant, if you want to get particular.

But anywhere else, I'm not so deviant. I'm an independent, mid-twenties, white, well-educated woman. I'm not dependent on anyone, or the government for that matter (except for student loans, but those are socially acceptable forms of dependence). In fact, I work to help make other people less deviant, in my field.

It also got me thinking about socially acceptable forms of deviance. It's okay to be gay (more or less), okay to be a working woman, okay to be anti-Bush, okay to be on Medicare or Medicaid (as an elderly or disabled person). In fact, we applaud people who are honest about these things - at least in the circles I run in; I realize that the "red states" might feel differently about them. But while I wouldn't have a problem describing myself as bi or lesbian or even trans in that "other" category, I still wouldn't feel comfortable coming out as kinky. Society as a whole would still classify me as deviant, and would try to stigmatize me for that deviance.

Hell, some days I do it to myself, for all of my liberal and sex-positive attitudes.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it sucks that kinkiness is still so largely stigmatized (as is sex as a whole, really), and that it's really hard to like yourself when the messages you get tell you not to, even over something as minor as one aspect of your identity. Not that identity is minor, but there are so many other things that I am that I don't think I should be condemned on one of them - one of them that really is quite fulfilling, thank you very much.