Radical Vulvas Redux - Part One

So last night was, by and large, awesome.

I wouldn't say that the performances were polarized between "The beauty myth is evil, therefore if you play with overtly feminine/sexual body presentation you are servicing the patriarchy and are a total dupe" and "Sex positive! Go porn! Woohoo!" (Guess which side of that debate I was on. ;-) but the performances did tend to fall into one of those two categories.
Not all of them. There was a short film that focused on roundness and female bodies, and one gal read a totally awesome poem about how she felt about her ex-boyfriend's now-ex-girlfriend -- I plugged VoV and I REALLY hope she comes out to our next show! -- but *most* of them were done along those lines. Which was interesting.

I mean, it's no surprise that young women feel ambivalent about their sexuality, their sexual agency, their femininity.
I've ranted on this subject numerous times before, but really.

Grow a gal up in a culture that says "be sexually tittilating and sexually available, 'cause that's where your value in the eyes of The Man comes from" AND "be virginal because sluts deserve to die[1]" AND "be sexually available to NONE or to ALL because anything in between implies you have some sort of desire of your own, and we all know *that's* not true"... and of course you're going to get gals wondering how the hell to reconcile their wanting to be desired/desireable (titilating for men and, as such, playing up to The Patriarchy) with their desire to only fuck who THEY want to fuck, not all-comers and NOT nobody (agency = not being the compliant little fuck-bunny The Patriarchy wants you to be).

Grow a gal up in a culture that says "feminine is how you're Supposed to Be, just naturally" AND "femininity is a constructed falacy meant to dupe men into thinking you're beautiful" AND "feminity is defined in a specific way and you'll be judged on how well you conform to that norm" AND "we totally don't take femininity/feminine!people seriously" AND "femininity/feminine!wiles are women's only source of power"... and of course you're going to get gals wondering how the hell to reconcile their desire to manifest their femininity (or, for that matter, their masculinity) with how their culture treats them for being (and/or not being) feminine.

Y'know?


So it's no surprise that this is weighing on a lot of young[2] (and not so young) minds.


Some of it made me grit my teeth. The satyrical piece by a gal named Jen, in particular, pisses me right the hell off.
See, it was inspired by Ariel Levy's Female Chauvenist Pigs which, once upon a time, I loved to death even though it made me cry and feel just totally futile.

Which brings us to: ( Rant Number One! )

And that's my rant on *that* subject.


More rants to follow! Woohoo! :-D


[1] No, really. Watch any horror movie. Or attend to stupid tropes like "she shouldn't have gotten into the car". Jaknow?
[2] I'm surprised some of them were able to get into the bar. Seriously. They are *babies*. It boggles the mind. (When did I get old???)
[3] Cosmo? Anyone? Anyone?

Linktastic!

Carleton U. Lands on Feministing.

Somehow "go you" really doesn't seem to apply here. :-P


Note: Comments are eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenteresting.


Go have a look.

Radical Vulvas Redux - Part Two OR The Rant That Ate The World

H'okay.

So, we continue.

Just prior to the intermissions (just after the open mic, I think?) there was a discussion about women's space.

Except that it very, VERY rapidly went from "Women's Space and Oppressive Men" to "Uh... Intersectionality? What?" -- which, itself, is not a bad thing -- to (all together now) "What about the menz".

There is this extremely enraging thing where "we want equality" somehow got twisted around to mean "Well, feminist women, you're not *really* looking for *equality* unless you're devoting at least 50% of feminist time, energy and resources to looking at how patriarchy fucks over the guys".

Someone (a gal a few rows back) asked "Where are the men's feminist resources? Why aren't there any events like this [Radical Vulvas] for men?"

And the short version of my thought on this is:

"Where is their agency? Why aren't they making their own events and organizations?"

(To-which the response, from one of the guys, was: "Well, it's really hard to get funding. I mean, if you want to start a men's engineering association, people are just going to say "Yeah... Good luck with that").


I did not snap and yell: "Funding??? You think you need funding???" although it's emphatically what I was thinking.



( With That in Mind, I Bring You This Rant (It's More Than Slightly Long) )

Right.
So, with all that in mind, I'll say Vive La Revolution! and leave you with this final, only tangentially related, link:

On Silence and Silencing, Rape, and the Space to Tell Our Stories.



- TTFN,
- Amazon.


[1] Or privileged!people come into opressed!people-focused space in general. Fill in the blanks.

[2] Now you know why I post so much. ;-)

[3] Witness: Last night, one very awesome, very smart, young MA student (who's a friend of Sara's as it turns out) reluctantly offering up fucking Men's Rights Activists[a] as an example of a men's movement for equality. Oh, honey, no. You're fantastic and amazing and brilliant, but no, you don't have to do that.

[a] Who, going by their blogs - particularly the one Idioglossia linked me to a while back - are actually all about wondering why women aren't barefoot, in the kitchen, on birth-control (unless *they* want to be daddies) and twenty years younger than them, and blaming Feminism for their inability to get laid[b].

[b] That last bit, at least, is true. If it weren't for feminists, we'd all be stuck without the legal right to vote or own property (would, in fact, still *be* property) and the asshat misogyny of these fuckers would actually constitute The Norm. So, yes, strictly speaking, it *is* feminism's fault that women have waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more options for survival than just shacking up with an asshole like one of them. Boo hoo. No dates for them. :-P

[4] Notwithstanding the earlier discussion of intersectionality.

[5] Though they may not feel like it at first. In women's groups, you get a lot of passive agression[a] and triangulation. In men's groups, 'cause you all are socialized to interact with each other differently than women are socialized to interact with other women, you're going to have a different set of Culturally Indoctrinated Bad Habits to recognize, break down, and eventually break. This takes time, practice, commitment, patience, and a willingness to forgive yourselves and each other and to keep on trying. You can do it. But it won't necessarily be easy. Just FYI.

[a] HA! Witness me posting this instead of just saying it out loud. ;-)

[6] I think this one might be going on my wish-list, actually. :-)

[7] Everyone wants to hang onto their privilege. The trick is getting Everyone to realize that this isn't a zero-sum game and extending those privileges to everyone else doesn't mean losing them yourself. You won't get treated like crap just because you stop treating other people like crap. At least that's the short version. The long version takes a lot more work.

[8] Yes, I actually do mean you, specifically. I know who reads this thing. ;-)

[9] Trust me. I have hella trouble with the catching my own Stupid part, AND the calling my friends on theirs part. It's hard. It's scary to risk alienating someone you like over something you believe in. Pick your battles. But do *pick* them.

Radical Vulvas Redux - Part Three (This is Where Things Get Possitive)

And this is where things get a little more possitive.


In addition to the awesome gal who read the poem about love triangles and her ex-boyfriend's now-ex-girlfriend (ten tonnes of awesome, I really, really liked it), another highlight of the night for me was the monologue done during the open mic by a guy from Montreal. It was gorgeous. Buckets of emotion.
The first lines are: "Yes, I am a drag queen, and yes, I am dying of AIDS. But[...]"
And it was all about having the guts to be yourself despite the weight of every rule you ever learned telling you not to be.
I just about cried.
It was fantastic.
I kind of hope someone got it video-taped and is posting it to you-tube or something because WOW.
Phenomenal.

Let's see...

The amazing Fait Dormi (the cool chickie who's friends with Sara) did a song she'd written about the first stages of exploring promiscuity and polyamoury and trying to deal with reconciling what she wanted to do with all the stuff she'd been taught about being slutty and what the said about her.
Good conversations with that gal, too. I want to continue them. (May or may not start inviting her to the WW parties. But I think coffee is definitely in the future. At least I hope it is). Also: She has cool hair and was one of the few other gals there wearing dramatic makeup. (Three cheers for punk chicks! Woohoo! ;-)


Oh. Yes.
:-D

Getting called upon to stall.

See, the final act of the night (right after mine) was a performance art piece about makeup, and this idea that friendships between women are "always" slightly competitive.
At least that's a big chunk of what I got out of it.
Though that may just be my trust issues showing or something. ;-)

But it took them a while to get ready and do set-up. So, while everyone was waiting, on of the MCs asked me to explain the difference between legalization and decriminalization in terms of how that applies to sex-work.


[EDIT: Randomly: This bug that's been crawling around on my ceiling? Just totally did a suicide dive into my lamp. Bugs are weird. Seriously. /EDIT]


So I got up and talked off-the-cuff (and coherently, and articulately, and accurately and in ways that were easy to understand!) about the differences between the two forms of de-illegalization, as they apply in Canada.
I didn't touch on the "controlled substance" aspect of legalization (see: Nevada and, IIRC, New Zealand, among other places) which is too bad, 'cause I would have liked to add that.
But I think I covered most of the salient points, and people got it and asked questions and I was able to answer them, and I'm really, really happy about how well that went. :-)


I am *also* really happy about how well my piece went!
Fait Dormi video-taped it (including my into, which involved my plugging VoV -- which a few people asked me about afterwords, so YAY), though she ran out of batteries about half-way through. (So it's a teaser. ;-)
I'll have to find another venue to perform it at.
It went over really well. People paid attention. I had a couple of people come up afterwards and tell me that I'm a good story-teller and that, the way I read it and the expresiveness I bring to it, made my story so visible that it was almost like a movie.

Now that? That is high praise for this long-trained singer, let me tell you!

So I'm totally thrilled with how well it went over. More's the pity more people weren't there, but still. It was a full house, and it went well.


Also: There were samosas, brownies, and vegan chocolate cake. :-)

And: I had a white (chocolate) russian (vodka, khalua, Godiva white chocolate liqueur, and milk), which the gal at the bar cooked up for me when I said "I want something that is not comprised of 100% alcohol, and that also involves chocolate in some capacity".
She rocks.


Anyway. So, yes. Rant-induction aside, the evening was awesome, I made a new friend, I got to do a little bit of teachery activism, and I got to show off my unexpected story-telling chops.

So YAY. :-D


I totally want to do this again next year. :-D