Apostate and I have had our disagreements, and I imagine we’ll continue to do so. Some of what she’s written (especially wrt sex workers’ rights) has made me downright livid. But I am nodding my head in 100% agreement with this:
It’s very easy to trivialize discriminatory attitudes against women’s sexuality, because who cares about your right to screw around while people are dying!
You know, someone’s always dying. It’s not our job as feminists to make women feel bad for focusing on what matters to them and what makes it harder for them to live in this male-dominated world on a day to day basis. Anti-feminists are doing a terrific job on that without our help.
Black civil rights workers are not going to take a break from their earth-shakingly important work and tell us about sexist condom commercials and sexist media in general. They’re not going to point out all the videos out there that our young women’s male peers make about how screamingly funny rape is. But someone needs to.
We’re well-aware that our concerns always come last. It’s why women are self-conscious about calling themselves feminists. It’s very trivial to worry about your body and your safety while other people are dying. After all, you’re a privileged white woman. And black men get raped in prison too! Who cares what your concerns are, and never mind that you’re still a second class citizen even if higher on the totem pole than the people who are dying.
This is another sneaky technique to put women last. This is yet another way to confuse women about themselves, about their place in the world, about their importance.
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6 Responses to "Right on!"
Thanks, Amber. :)
I’m sorry I’ve made you livid — I doubt we disagree all that much but I tend to be over-the-top sometimes in how I express myself. There are thing about the sex industry that tick me off, but I never want to see women get hurt or not have rights, and that includes sex workers.
Well isn’t that what blogs are for? ;)
Seriously, though… I’ve really appreciated your recent writing about why feminism needs to center women (ALL women). I’m baffled that this is something that would even need to be said, but apparently it does. You’ve been doing a good job of it.
I am, however, really baffled by your defense of Sam Berg…
you’re not the only one. however, that said, the Apostate has had some really powerful and thought provoking posts up here lately.
Sam’s statement made sense to me. I later read other takes on it and well, I’m not sure I can even take a side, but it did seem to me she had some legit complaints and a good reason to pull out that didn’t involve being afraid of Ren’s debating skills. Plus, she seemed like the underdog in that fight and I was feeling pissed at Ren. (I’m not pissed any more, in case Ren’s reading. Got it out of my system.)
That said, I am not familiar with Sam’s work so any history there is lost on me.
Apostate- I’m not pissed (at you) at this point either. And I guess if Sam had flat out been like “I’m not coming because of reason X” (I think the organizers were unprofessional, Ren makes me uncomfortable, Ren & Jill make me uncomfortable, I don’t feel like it, whatever) I don’t think there would be half the insanity that there was. But she didn’t do that, and then turned around and made accusations with no proof, attacked some random woman, and is taking zero responsibility for anything…and either she or stormy is flat out lying at this point…not to mention a very racist comment stormy made which none of her allies called her on- which surprises me not in the least- I guess I feel like as far as threats go, the person who was staring at actual threats was me, yet I went anyway, and did not blame my bad previous behavior on everyone else…I took responsibility for it.
People disagree, I get that…it’s part of what makes life interesting, but I’m sick of double standards with everything, including rules of conduct and what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior or a threat.
I don’t think Sam had legit reasons. Leaving aside for a minute the mountain of batshit crazy behavior wrt Ren, she basically acted like a spoiled brat and threw a fit. It showed that she has absolutely no clue about how these sorts of events work, and she really showed her ass.
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