Diario de Tepintzin

This has been long in coming. My feminism comes from two concepts:

1. Margaret Atwood wrote in the 70s, and it's still true today, "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them." This shouldn't still be true 40 years later.

2. You, yes YOU, are responsible for yourself. Man, woman, trans, intersex, it doesn't matter. YOU are responsible for yourself. If you are an adult, you may be responsible for more than yourself. You may be responsible for your kids, your subordinates and in some cases, the youngsters you encounter on the internet.

In the 70s, feminism was radical because there was a lot to be radical about. Ads from the 50s and 60s cheerfully show narrow gender roles, and situations where women are turned into objects for laughs. Women fought for the radical concept that women are people. People deserve equal pay for equal work, the right to have children or not, the right to own property. And you know what? Women won. The big steps were made, so there was only some small cleanup of the vestiges to do, right?

In the 80s, that's what happened. We became aware of the vestiges and worked on them, largely in media presentation. The idea that gender roles weren't helpful to men or women started to raise its head.

In the 90s, feminism turned to re-examining sexuality. Now that preventing pregnancy or having a pregnancy without the traditional family structure was possible, the idea of female pleasure and sexuality without men became huge. Feminists started talking positively about pornography, S/M, and new forms of family, looking back to the 70s for ideas.

Now it's the 21st century and what the hell happened to my movement?

From a bulletin board entitled "A Quiverful of Snark". I know you already can't resist, DV.

You'll particularly like this topic, where the ladies get sarcastic on the "Rebelution Survey":

http://freejinger.yuku.com/topic/980/t/The-Rebelution-Modesty-Survey.html?page=1

In other news, americanstd and I are going to start a private wiki on refurnishing the house, so we can make joint decisions on furniture and its placement while I'm away. I found a *small* wooden table at Ikea that has drawers built into it. This makes too much sense.

We also had dinner at Khyber Pass. All four of us (we were joined by valdelane and zare_k) had lamb cooked in various ways, and americanstd fell in love with their pistachio pudding.

miafeliz commented in my last Christian Taliban entry that the modesty movement drives her up a wall. So this link is "A Week In Feminine Dress" from http://lily-maiden.blogspot.com

http://lily-maiden.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

Did you know that quasi-Edwardian clothes are required for salvation, and for keeping boys chaste? Inner burqa, ahoy.

But wait, it gets horribler. Look at the clothes these girls are wearing. At first I didn't think it was odd; they are practicing for a dance recital and those Little House on the Prairie get-ups are their costumes, right?

Wrong! Those are their EVERYDAY CLOTHES.

http://lily-maiden.blogspot.com/2007/05/where-have-i-been-lately.html

This blog is creepy because it's a self-imposed world where males and females are kept separate, females are shoved firmly into gender roles of being pretty and staying at home and doing feminine things like dancing and interacting with nature only as far as taking quiet walks in the rain with a male relative while saying the Rosary. It's worse that they are held responsible for the cleanliness of boys' thoughts, a scenario a friend of mine once called "being your penis's babysitter".

But at least Lily isn't at all cruel. That's my job, but Colleen Hammond has me beat in the mean-spiritedness department:

http://colleenhammond.blogspot.com

Colleen loves to be pious and holy, but she's a right bitch. I try feebly towards being a bitch, but I'm an admitted agnostic, so it's rather pathetic really.

Today I'm wearing an ankle length denim skirt. You know what? It's dang comfy. I can run for the bus in it and everything. You know what's the only thing I don't like about it?

It makes me look like one of those Christian modesty/femininity ladies.

I've been ranting on and off about how these ladies are crackpots, but never come up with a seamless explanation for why they drive me up a wall as much as they do. A large part of it of course is how THEY live this way and demand we must ALL live this way. Then they complain about straw-woman feminists who they allege want to practically make being a homemaker or wearing a dress illegal. They're too dumb and brainwashed to realize that they're doing the exact same thing, but on the right not on the left.

Next comes the "perpetual child" side of things. Even though I have renounced and denounced Candy of http://myblessedhome.blogspot.com, I cannot fault her when it comes to saying, "Look, we can't use our femininity to make excuses for being weak or ruled by emotion." She's a nut otherwise, but she does have it correct there. On the other hand we have Colleen Hammond at http://colleenhammond.blogspot.com saying things like, "It's sure complicated being a woman. It must be all those hormones." Then she goes on to say that women shouldn't play sports (muscles are not attractive), wear pants (those are male garments), work outside the home, or anything that would give a woman a place in the world as anything but a perpetual minor.

Finally there's http://lily-maiden.blogspot.com who earned my ire in her next-to-latest post by saying that my rough language compromised her g-rated blog. (For the record I said "boob".) She's 20, home-schooled, still lives with mom and dad, doesn't have a paying job beyond giving violin lessons, and dresses in this weird Little House on the Prairie style--except that Ma Ingalls and the girls dressed to be able to work outside. Claire and her sisters go on camping trips with their family and sit patiently at the campsite while "the boys" do all the hiking and rock climbing. Mustn't be unfeminine, you know! Her whole blog is a freak show; no self-respecting dude is going to show any interest once it's clear she's not allowed to date. She won't meet a husband in college because college "isn't in the Lord's plans for her". I do wonder what will happen when her parents die and she's left with no skills, experience, or idea on how to function in the real world. And I thought *I* was raised like a veal!

Claire's clothes (she does a series of photos of how she dresses) brings me to my last point which is on how all these ladies idealize a past that never was. Notice how many of them feature pictures of Victorian or Edwardian ladies doing leisurely things like reading, gardening and sewing. They think this illustrates how things used to be in a more genteel time.

What are they smoking? Only a miniscule number of women ever lived like that! The rest were working on farms or in factories, owning perhaps two dresses, labouring away 12 hour days, six days a week! Sitting around being a pretty lady was a distant fantasy, since few would actually own a book or a garden.

They say they feel sorry for women like me. I say to them, grow up.

Femininity is a ROLE. It's a role that some play more comfortably than others; I am not very comfortable with it but I'll put it on for fun once in a while. I think the world would be boring if all women were clones of me--something I wish the Christian Ladies would learn to be able to say.

This is driving me up a wall.

It is SEX discrimination, not GENDER discrimination. That ridiculous 18th-sonogram-for-your-pregnancy determined your baby's SEX not your baby's GENDER. Having the surgery that turns your innie into an outie or vice versa is SEX reassignment, not GENDER reassignment.

Your SEX is what you have in your pants. Your GENDER is the societal role you play, which usually, but does not always or necessarily, coincide.

I admit, it'd be kinda cool to have true gender discrimination. Imagine being able to get the raises that the hot chicks are getting simply by putting on a dress, wearing makeup, and taking your social cues from "Cathy". It'd make much life easier for trannies too, because Becky wouldn't need expensive surgery to become Brian; all she'd have to do is put on a suit and play out the male role. Bingo! Relatively instant change of gender!

If I ever played out my threat to dress my girl baby entirely in blue or my boy baby entirely in pink, would I be arrested for changing my baby's sex without its consent?

I am starting to realize that sex/gender is the social studies equivalent of the hacker/cracker word pair in the computer geek culture. We all know that hackers are not necessarily crackers, and that most aren't, but how many people know or care about that distinction? I still back up those who do, because I like calling things by their properly descriptive names. For instance, if you are one of the aboriginal people of the Americas, I will never call you an Indian unless you've somehow obtained citizenship in a certain Asian sub-continent.

I can tell you why this distinction bothers me so much, and it's because I'm accutely aware that gender is for many people, sometimes my good self included, something you put on, that you wear. To define people entirely by a role that they may only play for a certain number of hours a day is to lack any sort of grasp on who that person actually is.

Of course, this would be easier if we could tear interests, activities, and emotional reactions away from their being assigned to gender roles. I wrote earlier about the Dangerous Book for Boys and Hilary Clinton acting like the worst female stereotype. It wasn't Hilary acting like a "girlfriend" to win votes--that was a drag show.

I really need to wrap all this up; I started thinking about how drag is dependent on clear gender markers and all of a sudden imagined a gang of angry drag queens at my door, fearing extinction. Got to go.

If you put in their URL, the front page comes up. If you click "enter" you get a 404.

I imagine they get hacked often. I assume that when this happens they run around screaming hysterically waiting for their husbands to come home and fix the problem, even though they are fully capable of doing it themselves. Of course, Hubby is at the bar saying, "I'm not going home till I know that crazy bitch is asleep."

That's my summary of women who take an extreme position against feminism: they just don't want responsibility. Feminism demands they (gasp!) GROW THE HELL UP and stop being perpetual minors whose only function is to make babies.

Gonna take that argument over to the feminist discussion in catholicism later on today.

http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=324

The blogger asks the question on everybody's mind, "Why do these crazy women want to take over the country just because they want to be [BDSM] bottoms?"

And I still think their men should run screaming. How many jobs do they need to take on to pay for as many babies as will drop out of their wives' worn-out panochas? And you know those panochas are the only ones they're gonna get because they're too strapped to hire prostitutes.

Plus, as I said to electorprince, since exercise is unfeminine, and hard to do in layers and layers of fabric, what kind of beauty must one of these women have after kid #4? If you recall my whole "lotus birth" kick a while back, there was a photo essay about it. The Prairie Muffin in that was a Mormon living the lifestyle. Take a look at her. That's what these guys have to look forward to.

About 7 years ago, there was a woman who started a small movement called the Surrendered Wife movement. It wasn't religious per se, but it was based on the idea of the wife being submissive to her husband in the name of peace in the home. There were two fundamental flaws with it.

1. It assumed there was no middle ground between being a doormat and being a shrew.

2. It was heavily based on deceit. The classic example of good surrendered behaviour was letting your husband take the wrong exit off the freeway even though you know it's wrong because you must not make him feel stupid by telling him so. Apparently it's better to keep silent and let him get lost and frustrated.

All of this is based on refusing to see middle ground. I make cracks about being dressed like a whore because according to the PM lifestyle I am, when I'm wearing knee-length shorts and a t-shirt because it's 90 degrees outside. In their demented minds, there is no middle ground between being a college girl walking around in her underwear (no kidding, I actually read that) and wearing one of their big denim Taliban-approved jumper dresses.

So, who do I think is a good Christian wife?

http://www.abcgallery.com/C/cranach/cranach44.html

This lovely lady is Katarina von Bora, wife of Martin Luther. Isn't she formidable? She'd have taken a whip to these PMs. Sure, she adored Martin and had a lot of kids, but at the same time, she was his business manager (she handled publication of all his books), ran a brewery, took care of the finances (she would hide money from him because otherwise he'd give it to the poor at times when they WERE the poor) and still found time to theologize with him when he was stuck on a problem.

Their courtship was funny too. She was a former nun, a noblewoman obviously, who was set to marry Martin's friend Phillip Melancthon. Still, she'd set her sights on Luther himself, and once she did that, get the hell out of the way. He didn't stand a chance.

Oy vey...I need a job, and not just for money. I am bored and my brain is on overdrive. I'm stopping now before I go into my rant against Womens' Studies programs and an essay on "Man As Head of Household As Dangerous Path to the Gnostic Heresy."

You may all de-friendlist me now. :P

I realize that while I'm at medium risk for breast cancer (no kids, moderate drinker) I could never, EVER participate in breast cancer activism.

The short answer is that there's too much damned PINK. I do not do PINK.

This is shorthand for "to participate in activism against a disease that attacks women no matter what their lifestyle, only women who fit a certain stereotyped femininity need apply." If you're white, married, preferably with kids, and you are conventionally feminine and like pink, come on by. If you're butch or androgynous or queer (the three do not necessarily all go together) please go away.

I tried to picture ommkarja, vzd, prushrush and myself as part of this event. I couldn't do it.

I'm tempted towards a long dissertation about the subtle death wish against those who don't fit the stereotype of a "good" woman, but I won't.

So, I just finished reading "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. I don't want to give away too much, but it's largely about the Priory of Sion, revival of the goddess, and Mary Magdalene, the same subject matter as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail". As everybody knows ad infinitum, I'm a feminist theologian and Virgin Mary expert. (This is why I work a crappy non-related job.)

As I was reading, something started to annoy me. It took me a while to figure out what it was. Finally, it hit me. Consider this paragraph:

"The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit--male and female--through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God...The Hieros Gamos ritual is not a perversion. It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony."

The idea is that Mary Magdalene, mother of Jesus's children, is in a way unclear to me a prophet of the goddess.

Okay, now am I the only one who is bothered by "divine feminine as fertility"? Cause I am bothered by it a LOT. I have no children, probably never will. This concept of the divine feminine doesn't speak to me at all. Also, I know a lot of you reading are queer in some description. This whole thing smacks of divinely-mandated heterosexuality as well. Finally, how nice to know that women are the means to a MAN'S enlightenment. All we have to do is fuck them and they see God. Yay.

Sister Elizabeth Johnson in her book "She Who Is" proposes a good theory for the "divine feminine" by the way. She says that since all mens' patriarchal experience is assimilated to God (fatherhood, soldiering, rulership, to name a few) that womens' experiences need to be assimilated to God as well. Motherhood is part of that, but she proposes that if it is part of womens' experience, it needs to be studied to see how it can be shown to reveal God. She suggests that images and language about the Virgin Mary, who is queen, healer, mother, virgin, widow, and prophet, be mined for images of God. Johson points out that that's only the tip of the iceberg, as such images as sister and friend are not applied to God much yet, and I observe that lesbians have their work cut out for them.

Just say no to dualism! (Rosemary Radford Ruether is a source for the evils of that.)