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“I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent. After a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up. I then asked the same gay men to raise their hand if in the past week they offered a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or her fashion. Once again, after a moment of hesitation, all of the hands in the room went up.
These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign.” - Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies by Yolo Akili (via plightofthepretty) (via stafeminists) 
I’m really happy I live in a world where this picture exists. (via professorcockblock)
This was so wholly fascinating and important than I’m now forced to go look up Chimamanda Adichie’s books and buy them with money I don’t have.
I’m only reblogging this so that can continue watching it on repeat, as I have been doing for the past three days. It’s exam season, can you tell? (via matildaimperatrix) 
life:
That caption is a masterpiece and this whole thing is fucking fascinating.
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Stop telling women that we should find ourselves beautiful and that we should love ourselves when you are standing right there, judging us on how our knees look in short skirts and how prominent our boobs are in a sweater and how much makeup we are or are not wearing. Instead of us working harder on “love your body” and “find your inner beauty”, the rest of the world should be working harder on “stop telling women their bodies are a shameful place to live but that if they’re strong enough, they will learn to embrace that shame.” This is my body. It’s not “beautiful”. I don’t “love it”. I don’t have to. I don’t have to have any strong feelings about my body. And whatever feelings I do have are not somehow invalid if they’re not glowing reviews. ”- Elyse Mofo, “Don’t Tell Me to Love My Body” (via nightrevelations) (via stafeminists)
Celebrating the successes of my morning by buying Allison Weiss’ new album.
These successes include being up before 8am, showering, going to the library, buying a new travel cup, attending a dissertation lecture and handing in my last piece of coursework of the semester - and then returning home to find my super-organised, super-early-rising flatmate is still not up (because she was on shift until 2am last night BUT STILL). If you too have minor successes to celebrate, Say What You Mean comes highly recommended as a method. I hope Sarah gets up soon though, otherwise it rather puts a damper on my actually listening to the celebratory purchase. #Allison Weiss #Say What You Mean
“And my primary problem with this Dove ad is that it’s not really challenging the message like it makes us feel like it is. It doesn’t really tell us that the definition of beauty is broader than we have been trained to think it is, and it doesn’t really tell us that fitting inside that definition isn’t the most important thing. It doesn’t really push back against the constant objectification of women. All it’s really saying is that you’re actually not quite as far off from the narrow definition as you might think that you are (if you look like the featured women, I guess).”
- I couldn’t agree more with this post about that Dove advert. Jazz makes some really excellent points about the representation of women of colour and other troubling aspects of this campaign. (From “Why Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” Video Makes Me Uncomfortable… and Kind of Makes Me Angry”)
“You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.”
- You don’t have to be pretty. (via colporteur) (Source: fuckyeahfeminists, via colporteur) |
