Why Feminism is Still Relevant: #1 - Street Harassment

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This is going to be a multi-part series about feminism. Because it's been awhile since I've talked about the wymynz, doncha think?

Hehe. Wymyn looks really silly. I like it.

Why is feminism still relevant? Because women are still catcalled and harassed in public, that's why.

Sometimes it's whistles as you walk past. "Nice [insert: tits/ legs/ ass], baby." One man asked me if I had any topless photos of myself I could give him (sure, I carry around a whole stack of those in my back pocket to give to perverts like you, here ya go). One man followed me for two blocks after I ignored something he said to me on the street, loudly telling me that I was too white and tall and blonde to be his type and that he wasn't attracted to me, so that thing he said was really just a compliment; and couldn't I take a compliment, or was I a bitch? I've been honked at and flashed and propositioned and gestured at and cussed out when I either don't respond or respond negatively.

And it isn't just me.

Even if you haven't personally been catcalled or harassed or otherwise heckled on the street, there is a 100% chance you know a woman who has.

And we need feminism because it give us a space to talk about it.

This is a handy reference sheet from the interwebs:

via the Washinton Post

To all the harassers out there:
Women do not belong to you. I do not belong to you, or to society, or to anything outside of myself. If I look good, it's not for you. It's not for anybody. It's for me. And if I don't look good to you that's for me too, and you have absolutely no right to comment on it. I'll smile if I want to smile, laugh if I want to laugh, engage in conversation if I want and when and with whom I want. And the same goes for every single woman on this planet.

What you can do if you're harassed on the street:
What I used to do: Ignore it. Continue walking to your destination. Be creeped out for the rest of the day. Let feelings of creepiness influence what you wear and what times of day/parts of town you frequent. Feel it weigh down on your soul.

source

What I now do most of the time: Go batshit crazy. Stop in your tracks and turn around. Flip him/them off. Big hand gestures. "Did I FUCKING ask you?" Get as loud and profane as possible; draw a crowd. Crowds are usually scary, but in this instance they're safe--you want people to look, you want an audience, because this reaction can escalate to quickly if you're alone with a violence-prone creeper but is the most effective method to get rid of them if there are people around. Continue to your destination filled with healthy anger that will dissipate quickly. Potentially have cool story to tell at coffee or on blog.
What I do not have the patience to do: Gently educate harassers on why their unwarranted attention is offensive. I don't know if this is effective, as I've never tried it.

Remember that street harassment is not a compliment. Ever. No matter what they say, creepers are not even misguidedly trying to compliment you. Harassment is about power. You give up the power, you let them win.
Don't let the creepers win.

How a proper compliment looks:
Me (having gauged that she is not deeply involved in her own thoughts/problems/reading material/music selections): That's a lovely sweater.
Her: Thanks.
or
Me (having gauged that she is not deeply involved in her own thoughts/problems/reading material/music selections): I just wanted to say that you look lovely today. Have a great afternoon. (Walks away)
Her: (I don't know, I've walked away)
maybe even in a great imaginary fantasy world that hasn't happened
Me (having gauged that she is not deeply involved in her own thoughts/problems/reading material/music selections): I see you're carrying a Ray Bradbury novel; I just wanted to compliment you on your great taste in literature. Have a lovely day.
Her (flattered and taken by my charm and good looks): Thanks. You've got pretty good taste yourself. Want to get coffee sometime? Here's my number.

What do these all have in common? I didn't talk to her if she seemed otherwise engaged. I didn't pressure her for a response. I felt the need to compliment a lady, I did, end of story. That's why it's called a compliment, because it's complimentary.


Love always,
Irene

For more resources on Street Harassment check out:
Hollaback
"Can I Buy You a Coffee?"
Stop Street Harassment

who says dancing in your underwear ain't classy? nobody, that's who.

This is my burn box. It's not done yet, but it's what I have so far.

I'm a burner. A year ago I was burning love letters and photos and four years worth of journaling. Three years before that it was another journal and all the shitty poetry I wrote when I was twelve and thirteen (Don't lie. You know you wrote some too.).

Whenever I feel the need to permanently close a door on something, I burn it.

This box is school stuff I've accumulated over the past two years I've been here at the U. One more part time semester and it all goes up in flames. My dad said that if I put it all in a box we could drive out to the desert come August, shoot it full of holes, douse it in lighter fluid and spit on it while it burns its way to hell. I embellished what he said a little, but it's gonna happen.

April was really busy.

I tried to pretend it was going like this:

 But in reality it went much more like this: 

Can I just say that blogging is a lot more fun now that I have a webcam?

I kept my sanity by making this also a reality every day:

Panic! At the Disco - 'There's a Good Reason These Tables are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought of it Yet'

That little dance number was early Friday morning between writing a term paper and spending thirteen hours at work. Turns out the advantage to having zero coordination is that you can't dance wrong because all your dancing is wrong. All the dancing is equally awkward and so therefore permissible and fabulous.

So fabulous.


I need to remember to take my library books back tomorrow. Overdue fines are a bitch.

Later bros,
Irene

First comes love, then comes marriage...

Hi.

Do you know what this week is?

A good one.

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard the oral arguments in the California Prop 8 Case. Today are the arguments in the Defense of Marriage Act case.

In case you didn't know already, here is my opinion:

 

 

 

 So there.

I believe that any individual, regardless of gender or orientation, should have the option to marry any other individual. 

Period. None of this 'civil union' bullshit. Just two people, getting married, without anybody throwing rocks at them--no matter their genitalia. Love is love, and family is family. You don't need to be married to know love, and you don't need to be married to be a family (you don't even have to be legally married to be married); but if you want to get legally married you should be able to.

Personally, if my FLP (future life partner) is a man, I don't really care about marriage. I can take it or leave it, whatever. Maybe for taxes. Maybe if it matters to him. But if my FLP is a woman, I will marry. the. CRAP. out. of. her., with a big horrible obnoxious wedding that will take at least a year to plan, with flowers and dresses and cakes and favors and bridesmaids and bridesmen and a flower boy or girl. And if it's not legal in our state, we'll go somewhere it is legal and do it even bigger. And I'll invite every bigot I've ever met, just to make them squirm when they open the invitations and throw them away. So there.

And they say every girl has her wedding planned since childhood . . . Can I just say now that eloping is a much more attractive option?

Granted, it's easy for me to talk the big talk.

I am a chicken when it comes to romance. A big awkward chicken who can't read social ques. I'm always like She's really cute, or I like him a lot, but then I use a bazillion excuses to basically justify my cowardice and not do anything about it ever. And sometimes I start to do something about it and then talk myself out of it before it turns into anything.

I realize I've got all the time in the world, and I'm the president of it's-good-to-take-things-slow world; and maybe it's because I'm the only single person in my group of friends (again and still), or maybe it's because it's officially springtime now and everyone gets twitterpated in the springtime; but dammit I am tired of being single. So I'm giving myself a goal: I don't have to find myself a relationship, and nothing at all has to be successful or work out, but I have to stop being a chicken. ASAP.

Have a fabulous day.

Irene

Education!

We're here today with the educational feature for the week: Name That Thing!

Three brownie points if you can tell me the technical name for this device:

No, it's not a thingmabob. Or a stretchy crowd controller.

It's called a stanchion. Cool, yeah? Yeah.

You're welcome.

(I keep almost calling them sturgeons every time, and every time I have to be all No, Irene. That's a fish.)

Hehe.

:)

Love,
Irene

Pigeons.

It started at about six this morning. The cooing. The pigeons.

I hate pigeons.

I'm not super enthusiastic about birds in general, but other types aren't so bad. Chirping is annoying, but easy to tone out. Honking geese are actually pretty cool to see flying around, with their giant wings flapping. Crows are creepy, but harmless.

Not so pigeons.

It's the eyes. They're terrifying. And the cooing.

Coo. Coo. Coo.

There's a reason the passenger pigeons went extinct. They cooed early in the morning, and tired people everywhere threw things out their windows and killed them to shut them up.

I really just wanted to sleep this morning. I have a bazillionty bruises from yesterday's adventure, and sore muscles, and the endorphins that make you want to keep living and doing crazy things wear off once you go to sleep.

But the pigeons. There is only one solution: heavy metal. Really loud heavy metal.

Yes, at six in the morning. My walls are thick, the neighbors can't hear anything.

So I turned the music up really loud and was able to get another hour and a half of sleep.

Take that, you stupid birds. Civilization 1, Pigeons 0.

Awesome.

Today I want to introduce you to one of my favorite webcomics.

I am a webcomic purveyor, I'll admit. I like them. A bunch. But I only have three or four favorites, and this is one of them:

Sinfest.

2013-03-04: Feminist Utopia Fantasy Story

2012-11-23: Sassy Jesus

2008-11-27: Under Pressure

Not very many webcomics are updated daily. It's awesome. Sinfest is also one of the oldest webcomics out there, which means there are a bazillion hours of archives. A bazillion.

Yep.

Irene

the random turns political

What did you do this weekend?

I worked 27 hours in two days, which included over two hours of floor scrubbing, driving a commercial van with failing breaks through rush hour traffic downtown, boiling my fingerprints off, and getting completely covered in dishwater. I don't really mind being covered in dishwater, especially when I'm being paid overtime for it, but it wasn't exactly what I had in mind for my evening when I woke up on Saturday.

[I blew the dishwashing socks off some sad college dude who thinks he's worth more than minimum wage for minimum work. Boo-yah.]

And then this morning I gave some frat boy the university-sized version of my anarchy speech: Voting in school elections would be school spirit. Participation is endorsement. I really don't care where my student fees are going because I somehow conned the state into paying for 75% of my unnecessary diploma-seeking.

I do vote in real elections, because last year the government siphoned 16% of my income out of my paycheck, mostly into a social security system that'll be long bankrupt before I have the chance to get it back, and so far this year they're edging up on 19%. You know what I could do with that extra $50-$100 a paycheck? Afford health insurance, that's what. Probably with vision and dental. Take that, Democrats. And birth control. Take that, Republicans. And a cat. Take that, people who enjoy the loneliness of others.

I am anti-social security, because I am pro-insurance and birth control and pet ownership.

So there.

Irene

I MADE THIS FOR YOU! I DID IT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!

 

 

 

Yeah, the apple and I had a pretty rad party. You should've been there.

:)

"You don't make a pot of Kool Aid."

"Well, I did."

Love.

Irene

YOLO, biatches.

^ I did just go there. You're welcome.

Hello.

I've been up all night and I'll be working a twelve-hour shift today, so . . . yeah.

Why?

Credit goes to Mr. JJ of QC

Because I've been writing the world's most boring paper on the world's most boring subject for the world's most boring class. When it's finished it's going to be 1300-1400 words about Economic Interdependence: Other Factors That May Influence International Conflict. 

"Domestic economics are tied to domestic politics, as who trades with whom is often tied to political constituencies (p. 375), and the economic and political policies that those constituencies have a hand in creating in turn create the military policies of the state."

I wrote that. Yes I did. Gag.

I should have written it last week. Or Tuesday. But, dammit, Tuesday is my day off and I really really hate to do homework on my day off. So I don't. I sit around after school and soak my abused feet and revel in my bible collection and watch episodes of The L Word or Game of Thrones and read all the memes on the internet. I do dishes and laundry too, sometimes. And I watch it get dark outside. It's been really quite rare for me in the past nine months to be able to watch it get dark outside. Like I'm going to spoil all that by annotating an article titled "The Achilles’ Heel of Liberal IR Theory? Globalization and Conflict in the Pre-World War I Era"? Yeah, no.

But I am young and made of elastic that is impervious to drowsiness (that's a lie, but whatever), and so I stay up all night to write things instead. Because I'm an adult, and I do what I want.

(That's the thing I said to myself when I decided to try to cook bacon naked once at two in the morning. It was a bad idea.)

Actually it's because simply showing up to class has become an achievement for me recently. The only class I have a perfect attendance record in this semester is Ethics. After spending the first three years of college maybe missing four classes total--maybe--the only class I can consistently drag myself out of my nice warm fuzzy socks to walk uphill for a mile in the snow to school for is ethics. When ethics is your most interesting class, you have a really crappy school schedule.

And I actually take the bus to school when it's snowing, but that didn't seem to have the same gravitas. 

Other than that, life is nice. I eat too much canned ravioli and canned pears and oatmeal (in bizarre combinations, DO NOT ASK) because I keep forgetting that variety in diet is an important concept, but I recently introduced a 5lb bag of carrots to my fridge so it's all good.

Irene

P.S. I had to fight against the urge to write "TL;DR" instead of "In summation" at the beginning of my conclusion to my paper. God, what is wrong with me?

Reddit. Reddit is what is wrong with me. Damn Reddit.

Monday

Howdy.

What did you do with your Monday morning? I studied for a Hebrew exam and sauteed apples and potatoes and onions with chicken. I got distracted with different forms of gendered construction in future tense while cooking the chicken so it turned out a little on the dry side, but everything was still delicious. 
 
אכתוב
תכתוב
תכתובי
יכתוב
תכתוב
נכתוב
תכתובו
יכתובו
^ these are all really the same word.

I've got future tense down. I just hope this exam doesn't ask about past tense. I'm very bad at past tense. And everyone telling me it's easier than future isn't helping any either. So as long as the exam is about future tense, wintertime, and clothing I'm all set. She said chapter seven. I'm gonna hold her to it.

So, yeah, that was my morning. That and wondering if singing along to 'Fat Bottomed Girls' at the top of my voice will help keep me from going insane.

Irene