I'm a Feminist and I (sometimes) Shave My Legs!

 Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. ~Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler

I follow a number of feminist blogs/websites, particularly focusing on women in the media

 (Miss Representation being one of my favorite!) and thus, I feel like it is my duty, 

as a sometimes blogger and always feminist, to make this post.

Also, I will probably at some point write about my disgust about how women are portrayed in movies/video games, how chick-lit and chick-flicks are silly, etc etc.

And knowing what feminism means will just get us all on the same page. 

The above quotes say it all, really. 

Do you think women should vote?

 Should they be able to work outside the home?

Should they control their own money? 

Then you are a feminist.   

Feminism does NOT mean you think women are better than men. That would not be equality. 

I am feminist not only because, duh, I want to control my meager bank account and have a chance for a career, but because women are still abused, raped, harassed and molested every day. 

Statistically speaking, the odds are good you know someone who was raped. I do. 

 And I would bet money that you know a woman (or are a woman) that has been harassed in some way just for being a woman, whether it was unwanted touching or verbal harassment or some other form. 

Of course, a lot of women I know would still never claim they are a feminist, for many reasons.

They feel it goes against their religious beliefs, or will make people suspect they don't shave their legs, 

or maybe they will never get a boyfriend.

Hey, it's a risk you gotta take with the boyfriend 

- men always look at me askance when I say I'm a feminist.

Probably because I say it while wearing a pink sundress and they, 

bred on media's image of the manly or cold-hearted business woman feminist, 

are very confused.

(also, do you really want to date a man that doesn't want equality for women,

or is that easily confused/brain-washed by media? 

Probably not.) 

Some people say that we should just stop using the word, it has become so tainted.

 Others say we should reclaim it.

I use it because it is easier than saying equal-rights-for-everyone-no-matter-their-gender.

(but of course then I have to explain what feminism means, 

so maybe it would just be quicker so say that.) 

And honestly, I probably use it because I like to see the shock on people's faces 

and revel in their uncomfortable silence. 

You would think I said I was a member of The Ax Murderers Club. 

There are a million articles that can explain what being a feminist means a lot better than I can, 

but perhaps where we differ is that I am also a pro-life feminist.

(Yes! We exist!)

Check out more about that here at the awesome

Feminists for Life organization.

Anyway, I hope we understand each other now, 

you and I, dear reader (all three of you) who stumbled across this blog somehow.

And that is all!

The Internet: It Can Be Pretty Dumb, Bless Its Heart

I like the internet.  Most people do, but the majority like it just for Wikipedia and Facebook and Pandora and e-mail.

I like it for that, but also to read a million blogs and spend too much time on imgfave and imgur and humor websites and alternative news sources and looking at memes etc etc.... I don't like the internet enough to spend time on reddit and 9gag but I like it enough to have a vague idea of what they are. (And not want to visit.)

So I'm above a regular internet user but not quite at the-internet-is-my-life user.

But as much as I like the internet, let's please remember it can be really dumb. 

As in, intellectually challenged. 

Sometimes, I get blinded by my love for it and forget that. Like that crazy friend you have who says all the hilarious snarky comments, so you try to brush under the rug the fact that they might actually believe that marijuana will cure all diseases.  

Of course, there are tons of smart people using the internet, but as a mechanism, as a medium of communication, the internet seems to maximize opportunity for stupidity. (I mean, have you seen the nastiness that starts in a youtube comment conversation? About something as lighthearted as a video of a cat? Carnage.)  The anonymity and distance let people say hateful things and air angry, reactionary opinions. (Like the reactions to Olympic losses that bring out the worst....) But even the clever, kind people that love the internet can sometimes be suckered in by adorable puppies and forget to think deeply about biased news articles they read. (Like, well, me.) 

I love sassy websites, and most of them aren't meant to have much substance, just hilarious-ness. But I realized today that a lot of the humor websites I visit had gotten so into laughing at other people that they had completely lost any self-awareness or logic they ever had.

THIS comic is an example of the dumb part of the internet: some good points, mostly illogical, and almost too clever and funny to argue with. It's the "hey, take a stereotype of people we dislike and laugh at it until we forget that anything else exists about their beliefs/culture/humanity".  And THIS is a great reply to the comic! A reply that actually understands the medium of the internet. 

It would be fine if the same people that read these comics and other websites making fun of people with different beliefs also read say, the blogs of people with different beliefs. Or the New York Times article about their beliefs or the National Geographic article about their culture.  But they don't. So these stereotypes are all they know. And the fact that the stereotypes are funny make it real to them. And the internet perpetuates and perpetuates until a bunch of people laughingly hate another bunch of people for no deeper reason except for some comics they saw and that time that dude cut them off in the street or said he didn't like memes. 

Research doesn't go deeper than wikipedia, but unfortunately hate does.

One comic isn't a big deal. One disparaging photo ain't no thang. But thousands and millions of them stick in your head. The internet is not always deep (as in, profound) but it is wide. A hundred major Hollywood films and internet images portraying women as hyper-sexualized and what do we do to our female politicians first thing? Put their heads on bikini bodies. 

Put then we put it on the internet and laugh at it, so it's ok right?

PS Check out Cracked for humor that is hilarious, clever and surprisingly educational!

I'm a WINNER!

I won a prize!

"What for? Your wit and winning smile? The fact that you finally cleaned the kitchen today? Your stellar dance moves?"

None of the above, my good people, although those are all true facts about myself. I won for some of my poetry!

You can find the blog from my school about how I won here (so you know I'm not making it up!). (What excited me most about the prize was that apparently Sylvia Plath won the same prize when she was in college. This could mean many things for my future, but I'm gonna go with the famous poet route.)

So here's two of the more pop culture pieces included in my winning portfolio.

Fiend Hunter from Ninja Gaiden (Xbox)

I would prefer to fight in cotton – it breathes

and it would be nice to not worry 

about shaving every bit or having a boob pop out

after I’ve killed some fiend using my viper clutch

and it’s still  really hard to get dates

most guys are too busy seeking life-giving orbs

to revive dead lovers

or caught up in the monotony of demon killing

some of them, you never see their face

behind their armor

my battle axe is taller than me

and incredibly hard to get storage for

and insurance? Insane.

but at least  I’m not those other women

non-player characters

who live to be accosted and killed

at least my iron bikini stops bullets 

I don't know much about video games (though there is a super cool Art of Games exhibit in the American Art Museum here in DC right now!) but I've always hated how scantily clad the female warriors are. I mean, seriously? You can't even see the man's eyes, but the lady leaves nothing to the imagination but her actual reproductive organs. Which is exactly how I would dress to fight my battles. All the pubescent gamer boys are being fed yet another sexist lie of entitlement...

A Burgundy Van Alone on the Highway

We had lived in the zombie-filled land so long

that we grew nostalgic for the early days,

when there would be only a zombie or two in the yard,

and crossing it was fine, a jaunt.

Now zombies crawled over everything,

they knew we were there, we had to move on.

But we were stalwart, wearing our combat boots

and laughing through their moans.

Even my mother, so high strung,

was cheery as we packed.

Those humans who didn’t become zombies

 turned gray and stiff and died

but never decayed.

We adopted ancient practices

of talking to the gray dead ones,

keeping them in corners

and bringing them scraps of food.

We wrapped them in blue cloths

and added to our liturgy that the color was sacred.

My gray-skinned stiff sister was put

 in the back of our minivan

 for our journey to find a quieter farmhouse.

My father threw his fishing rod on the top of the van,

relieved to be going:

“We just need to get away for awhile, really, crowds are not for us.” 

This was from a poetry assignment to write our dreams. This was an exact dream I had, a strange conglomeration of my anthropology assignments about religious rituals and my intense plans about how to survive a zombie apocalypse. (Have you made your emergency plan yet? Better get on that.) It started as a prose poem, a form I love, but which general audiences don't know what to do with, so I modified it for the contest. Yup, never even published and already a sell out. 

So there you go! Some culture for your day. If you want to read much better poets, I'm currently all about Max Jacob and Sylvia Plath, as mentioned.