maggamaggamagga: zombiegraycat: monniemoo: scouts-honor: rufhaus: don’t add to your own oppres
maggamaggamagga:zombiegraycat:monniemoo:scouts-honor:rufhaus:don’t add to your own oppression, ladies.my sister what are you doinggirldid you knowthat yellow text cannot be seen against skin and floor colorsseriously I can barely read your textgreat message but please make it legibleokay, here’s the thing. actions speak louder than words. so if you dress with your boobs hanging out, what are most people going to think? “cool, she’s really advancing women’s rights and challenging important things in society that should be challenged?” or, “wow, she looks like a skank” (mostly girls) or “i’d totally do her” (mostly guys)?and don’t kid yourself - the answer is the second.we can do better for women. we can do better for achieving respect and equality for women from people of all genders in all aspects of society. we can do better than reverse-objectifying ourselves under the illusion that everyone else is going to think we’re such strong, smart people for having the audacity to show our breasts in public. come on.i can’t believe sometimes that this is what the younger generation thinks feminism is about, when roe v. wade is being challenged and severely restricted in multiple states right now, romney would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions if they didn’t want to, the republicans just recently blocked the equal pay bill and many bills about domestic violence protection, the military refuses to investigate rape claims by labeling female soldiers with psychiatric disorders instead, and every day there’s a new sexist comment from some pundit or politician who thinks women should basically get back in the kitchen and be pregnant every nine months so that they can continue working in positions of power.educate yourselves, and then get back to me on how baring your chest will solve these problems.and if you want to advocate for women, maybe use your tumblr to blog about issues like this instead of first-world, trivial, made-up problems like “slut shaming” that exist only for teenagers who want to whine, be self-righteous, and act pseudo-rebellious before they have to face the real world. oh, and check your consistency as well, because somehow i imagine that if the text in yellow were said about a man’s butt or penis, everyone supporting this when applied to boobs would throw a fit. I would have to passionately disagree with you there! I get where you’re coming from, but what you’re suggesting would, ultimately, amount to is complacency with a kind of oppression that is dangerous, threatens the likes of you and I, and like all forms of gender oppression, hurts everyone. (Since I’m a cisgendered female with boobs and I’m speaking a lot from my own knowledge, experience, and reasoning, I can only speak from my own experience and hope I’m not isolating any other identities. But my hope is that the general concepts I discuss in this post can apply to other identities, as well, and please, by all means, chime in and contribute!) First, have you even done any reading or research on slut-shaming, considered how it affects people — real human beings, like you and I and your girlfriend and your fellow MoHos and human beings the world over — and that you are, in that post, actually committing some serious slut-shaming? Do a google search for ‘slut-shaming’ and just peruse those articles — educate yourself, if you will. Here’s also some important things that you need to keep in mind: Slut-shaming is about attacking, shaming, etc. someone based on their sexual expression. This applies quite visibly to women — concepts we see so frequently discussed (particularly on tumblr) of rape culture, victim blaming, and how a woman’s style of dress, no matter how scanty or conservative, does not and will never equal permission for sex— but I believe it can apply to all genders and identities, albeit in different ways. ‘Sexual expression’ can extend to everything from how one dresses, how someone discusses their sexuality, how they conduct their sex life, or dealing with one’s own sexual appetite or lack therereof, among other things I’m sure I haven’t thought of. As you can see, it covers quite a bit — everything from putting on a plain shirt and jeans or a dress with a plunging neckline, to accepting whether or not you want to have sex, and that if you do want to have sex, with whom, where, why, and how you can make it happen, and it functions under one extremely important assumption that I don’t think you’re considering: your sexual expression, whether it’s as a promiscuous person, someone with no sexual appetite, or anything else, holds no bearing on your morality. Being sexual and wanting to express being sexual does not make you a lesser or better person. The same goes for not having sexual feelings or wanting to be conservative— it doesn’t put you on any sort of different moral ground from everyone else. Just like our tastes in food, clothing, romance, aesthetics, personalities, academic subjects, et cetera, we’ve all got different libidos, ways of expressing and acting on those libidos, and they have absolutely nothing to do with how moral, educated, or sensible we are. People ought to do what’s right for them. Personally, I’m a very sexually liberal person. I enjoy some smutty comics, have drawn some smut, and I most certainly have a raging libido that sometimes tells me to throw all caution to the wind and go out and land some tail, but I’ve also remained a virgin because I would rather have sex with someone I feel a certain kind of romantic chemistry with, and that hasn’t happened yet. That’s fine. I have friends who have elected to practice abstinence, friends who go out and land tail every other day, friends who have no interest in sex and find it kind of gross, friends who flaunt their assets proudly, friends who think showing their shoulders is scandalous — in short, friends who are all over the sexual spectrum in terms of what they want, how they express it, and how they choose to conduct themselves. Not a single one of them is somehow on higher or lower moral ground for their expression or choices. If you think otherwise, the fact of the matter is that…well. Let’s let Stern George Takei tell it to you like it is. In short — participating in the huge base of behaviours that is ‘slut-shaming’ is bigotry, end of story. Let’s consider some situations:The other day, I happened to wear a dress that showed cleavage, because I am a busty busty girl, it’s hard finding anything that doesn’t show cleavage, and I am much more confident and happy in clothes that make me as me look and feel good, not treat my body as something I ought to hide me away. Would it have been appropriate for someone to have come up to me, groped me, demanded I have sex with them, and referred to me only by names like “tits” or “cock pocket” or “cunt”? A girl is very much in love with her romantic partner wants to have sex. After taking all the appropriate actions to ensure safe sex, establish what’s okay and what’s not, and having healthy, open dialogue about sex with her partner, she has sex, which is a very emotional experience for her, and she’d like to talk some of her feelings over with her best friend, whom she trusts and values the opinion of. Is it appropriate for the friend to disregard her friend’s emotions, deride and harass her, or spread rumours of how ‘easy’ her friend is because she had sex? (If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these situations, slap yourself in the face, douse yourself in cold water, and try the fuck again.)These are situations that would come about by denying the existence of slut-shaming, which would therefore mean that we can’t fight against the repercussions of attacking someone based on any interpretation of sexual expression. Here’s another important point: feminism is about choice. The fact of the matter is that ladies, trans folk, non-binary, or any identification that isn’t cisgendered male are not enabled the same freedoms that a cisgendered male is, whether by law, cultural/societal bias, or otherwise. By extension, feminism is about making it possible for anyone to make that choice without being victimized by society, whether it be by bullying, sexual harassment and/or assault, workplace discrimination, and other things that haven’t come immediately to mind but I’m sure plenty of you have thought of. It doesn’t matter whether you don’t believe it’s the “proper” thing to do that falls in the lines of “common sense,” just as someone with pro-life or anti-contraception beliefs has no right deciding what anyone with a uterus does with that uterus, puts in that uterus, or takes out of those uteruses. It doesn’t matter if some teens misunderstand slut-shaming and misappropriate it into an excuse for rebellion, as you so claim — it’s their choice to act that way, not yours, and it’s our job as fellow decent human beings to ensure that they can make those choices without having to fear repercussions like being raped or any nonconsentual sexual behaviour. And even with your assumptions and stance on the matter, do you really want to designate a concept that accounts for so much and aims to protect you, protects me, initiate a change we both need, want, and are fighting for as being a “pretend” concept? Now we can return to the concept of how your post essentially amounts to compliance with oppression. The same system of oppression that’s enabled pro-lifers to make life-ruining choices that aren’t theirs and rape culture to be as prevalent as it is is telling us, as women, that we have to do something with our bodies, because otherwise, we are not moral or ought not to be treated with equal respect or deserve — which is a complete crock of horseshit! The concepts at the heart of this debate, as I hope my post has thoroughly shown, is tightly connected to the same topics of feminism you mention. It is the same cause — all genders should be considered and treated equal — and it just doesn’t make sense to so passionately crusade against your own cause that you yourself feel passionate about, too.Not to mention — if you impose your reasoning and beliefs on boobs and showing boobs on the entire female population, then you would be forced to subscribe to the same logic that prioritizes fetal life over a mother’s life because pro-lifers exist. You’re suggesting that someone is being told what to do with their bodies, and they have an obligation to obey else they are considered “lesser” by some arbitrary, patriarchal abstraction. Anyways, there’s my piece. It’s a big piece, and I’m armed with a fuckton more if you continue to disagree. -- source link
#slut shaming#feminism#choice