Thoughts on Atwood's The Testaments

One of the books I've read so far this new decade is Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments.

It was interesting to revisit this universe, and its characters, 10 years after I initially read The Handmaid's Tale (and wrote about it here, at this very web-log), and I understand (or think I do) why Atwood herself would want to publish a sequel in this particular political moment, 34 years after she published the original.

[Note: this discussion contains plot spoilers]

The events in the sequel occur 15 or so years after the events in the original and lead up to the fall of Gilead. Two of the main characters are the two daughters of June (aka, "Offred"), one of whom was raised in Canada and one of whom, Agnes, was raised in Gilead. Another main character, whose account we read in the first person, is Aunt Lydia, a villain character in the original, which I'll discuss shortly.

My first thought about the sequel pertains to Agnes. With her, and her young female peers in Gilead, we saw how it took just one generation for previous cultural knowledge and female empowerment to be virtually eliminated. Consistent with fundamentalist Christian doctrine in Gilead, young girls were not taught to read, were taught to be subservient, and were taught that their prime duty in life was to become wives and mothers.

Cut off from wider knowledge and other cultures, that was their normal. They had no other ways of living to compare their own to.

To me that speaks to the reality, as I've said before, that liberation is something that every generation will have to contend with and fight for. We can help light the way, just as others before us have done for us, but it really is a constant struggle. Progress can absolutely be wiped out and reversed.

My second thought is about Aunt Lydia. In The Handmaid's Tale, we saw that the role of the Aunts was instrumental in maintaining order among, and indoctrinating, young girls and women into their proper roles in Gilead. I saw the Aunts, upon my first reading of the original, as unambiguous villains. They were, to me, obvious conservative gender traitors who were politically aligned with the male supremacists running the show.

In The Testaments, Atwood provides flashbacks into the Gilead "revolution" from the perspective of Aunt Lydia. In short, before the revolution, she had been a family law judge, and afterwards, was broken down through violence, imprisonment, solitary confinement, torture, and threats of death. Her options were to either become an Aunt in this new society, or to be killed. So, she cast her lot with the oppressors.

Yet, in a twist, we learn that Aunt Lydia is instrumental in the plot to take down Gilead. When recounting her conversion to Aunt, and the objective detachment she felt when she was being beaten by the Gileadeans, she writes:

"This kicking and tasing procedure was repeated two more times. Three is a magic number. Did I weep? Yes: tears came out of my two visible eyes, my moist weeping human eyes. But I had a third eye, in the middle of my forehead. I could feel it: it was cold, like a stone. It did not weep: it saw. And behind it someone was thinking: I will get you back for this. I don't care how long it takes or how much shit I have to eat in the meantime, but I will do it."

Aunt Lydia did terrible things to women and girls as an Aunt, after the Gilead revolution. She was also playing a long game, born from her lived experience of her own oppression.

A truly putrid thing about patriarchal rape culture is how it stains everyone who lives in it by virtue of it, simply, being our all-pervasive environment. Aunt Lydia's is an extreme example, sure, but many of the choices we make in such a society are bad ones because, for any given problem, all of the choices we have available to us are bad ones.

The other lesson with respect to Aunt Lydia is that forcing people to "bend the knee" for one's political revolution is rarely a viable political strategy for the long-term, given that it mostly leads to a long-festering rage that will ultimately lead to vengeance.

Lastly, and on a more minor note, whenever I read Atwood, I remember how much I appreciate her sardonic wit, even in the smaller details of the worlds she builds. For instance, Gilead places the responsibility for executing various "criminals" onto the Handmaids, order which they carry out as a group. Atwood calls these events "Particicutions."

It seems like a word that could be repurposed to describe what often happens on Twitter nowadays, when hiveminds of bots and bad faith actors pile on users in the most dehumanizing ways imaginable.

"From this moment forward, as in days past"

I've read five books so far this (new) decade and I've been pretty pleased with them all.

These include:

• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Atul Gawande)
• The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai)
• A Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir (Edie Windsor)
• The Testaments (Margaret Atwood)
• Blowout (Rachel Maddow). 

Today, I want to talk about Windsor's memoir, primarily because I cried about a million times during it, but also because parts of it were pretty hilarious. Also, if the name sounds familiar, Edie is the Windsor from the US Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor, which overturned part of the anti-equality Defense of Marriage Act.

In the book, Windsor recounts a lot of anecdotes about her life as a young lesbian in the pre-Stonewall era, like the following from circa 1950, about being attracted to a woman named Renee and somehow "intuiting" that Renee felt the same way during their flirty tennis matches, where they had a habit of  repeatedly and "accidentally" bumping into each other on the court.

"...[O]ne afternoon when Renee knocked me particularly hard on the elbow and flashed her customary apologetic-yet-flirty grin, I leaned in and said under my breath, 'Do that again, and I'll kiss you on the mouth.'

She looked a little startled and a little shocked, but after class, she came up to me and asked, 'Did you mean it?'

'Yes,' I said, feeling impossibly bold.

'Where can we do that?'"

Windsor then proceeded to clock two Women's Army Corp vets as being a couple and immediately began renting apartment space from them from her hookups with Renee.

Circa 1950! 

Anyway, after 40+ years of being together, Windsor was finally able to legally marry her partner Thea Spyer in Canada in 2007, when Spyer had advanced multiple sclerosis. During their ceremony, their vows included the lines, "With this ring, I thee wed.... from this moment forward, as in days past," acknowledging that they had spent virtually a lifetime together before their relationship and commitment were acknowledgement by a government (even if not their own, yet).

Spyer died in 2009, and shortly thereafter Windsor was hospitalized for stress cardiomyopathy, or what is sometimes called "broken heart syndrome."  Windsor later became more active in the LGBT rights movement and eventually passed away in 2017. I'm glad she lived long enough to experience the win in US v. Windsor, which was a highlight in her life, as it was for so many of us, as well.

Woman: Feminists Care Too Much About Misogyny

I won't link to it but on Monday, The New Republic ran a horrendo anti-feminist piece (entitled "Moving Beyond Misogyny," if you want to look it up) in which a leftist woman critiqued "liberal feminists" for focusing too much on misogyny and not giving progressive men rape passes.

If you think I kid, here's a sample:

Here, the writer disingenuously acts like progressive men mostly do inconsequential, trivial things that feminists hysterically overreact to, and don't really engage in bigger things like rape, harassment, or predation. And yet, as a grown adult woman, this writer in all likelihood knows that progressive men, in reality, are as fully capable of heinous acts as conservative men are, and thus seems to instead be indirectly suggesting that feminists should ease up and give these men a pass because they're on "our" side.

Leftists today often claim the mantle of society's most enlightened political thinkers, so it might seem confounding to see them write and publish such retrograde "think pieces" that, with a few select edits, could just as easily be posted at rightwing forums like The American Conservative or Townhall. 

Things begin to make more sense once you understand that, in their hatred of "liberals," feminists, and identity politics, a lot of today's vocal leftists, far from being enlightened, are just sexually-liberal socialists who have internalized the conservative right's ideologies around race and gender. The end goal is more akin to redistributing wealth while keeping white supremacist rape culture intact, with the promise that things might be a bit better if it's progressive men at the top, rather than conservative.

The more general argument from this person's "thinkpiece" is that feminism today is a big depressing, victim-mentality downer because "misogyny feminists" (her term, sure) focus too much on, you guessed it, misogyny. 

If that doesn't want to make you guzzle vodka from a beer bong, I don't know what will.

Nevermind that that "argument" has been a standard rightwing "critique" of feminism for literal decades, emanating from such "socially-enlightened" sources as Phyllis Schlafly, but criticizing feminists for focusing too much on the hatred of women is as absurd as criticizing Black Lives Matter for focusing too much on racism, the LGBT rights movement for focusing too much on bigotry against LGBT people, or PETA for focusing too much on the ethical treatment animals.

This sort of critique, rather, is a good example of the feminist, misogynistic backlash in which we find ourselves. For, when one argues that highlighting, analyzing, and critiquing misogyny is something bad and unworthy of devoting time to, one is essentially arguing that one of feminists' more important, if not the most important, contributions to social justice should be eradicated. And that, my friends, would only benefit misogynists.

More broadly, we see that it's not just rightwing women who espouse anti-feminism. I think many women across the political spectrum look around and see the breadth and depth of misogyny in this political climate and come to the conclusion that joining in is simply the better deal. Why not, as a leftist woman, join in and help mainstream anti-feminist opinions about "liberal feminists"?

I'm also realizing that so much of the anti-feminist work that women across the political spectrum do consists of "defending" men from "the evil feminists." 

It's not lost on me, as just one example, that as the 2020 election gears up, a number of leftist women - including the author of this piece - have been "defending" Bernie Sanders and his male supporters by going after specific progressive feminists who are known to not support Bernie, as well as "liberal feminism" in general for its cardinal sin of promoting the notion that a woman can and should be president.

I suppose that is one way - having women attack women - to deal with the "Bernie Bro" narrative that has persisted since 2016. 

Another strategy, of course, would be for leftist Bernie fans, as well as his campaign, to try to unify with progressive feminists. But that's a bridge too far, apparently.

Quote of the Day - Lithwick On Not Getting Over Kavanaugh

Dahlia Lithwick's piece in Slate about her refusal to get over Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the US Supreme Court is very, very good and worth reading in its entirety, first and foremost in my opinion because she is the rare mainstream journalist today who refuses to both normalize or be entertained by the Trump regime's atrocities.

She writes:

"The enduring memory, a year later [after Kavanaugh's rage-filled testimony], is that my 15-year-old son texted—he was watching it in school—to ask if I was 'perfectly safe' in the Senate chamber. He was afraid for the judge’s mental health and my physical health. I had to patiently explain that I was in no physical danger of any kind, that there were dozens of people in the room, and that I was at the very back, with the phalanx of reporters. My son’s visceral fears don’t really matter in one sense, beyond the fact that I was forced to explain to him that the man shouting about conspiracies and pledging revenge on his detractors would sit on the court for many decades; and in that one sense, none of us, as women, was ever going to be perfectly safe again."

It's a nuanced essay, acknowledging that the female members of the court, who all lean more liberal than Kavanaugh, have to at least perform "getting over it" if they ever hope to have even the slim possibility of the vengeful Kavanaugh siding with them on matters of national importance for potential decades to come.

That doesn't mean, however, that we all have to be okay with his presence on the Court, even though - like Lithwich - I despair that the general public largely is by now.

It's also not lost on me that George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote in the 2000 election, appointed two conservatives of his own to the Supreme Court. Trump, loser of the 2016 popular vote, has thus far appointed two.

Angry, sexually-predatory, and entitled man-babies on the Court notwithstanding, that 4 out of 9 members of the nation's high court have been appointed by deeply-unpopular men who lost the national popular vote will one day be more widely acknowledged as a significant erosion of the legitimacy of the court, particularly in terms of public opinion.

If that's not depressing enough, Trump is very soon set to have appointed a full quarter of the nation's federal appeals court judges, the level just below the Supreme Court. These courts and judges generally get far less attention than the Supreme Court, but this statistic is incredibly alarming for many reasons, a key one of which is that the vast majority of federal court cases never actually reach the Supreme Court and Donald Trump is a misogynist white supremacist who lacks the judgment and temperament to be making  appointments of such importance.


Related: Gilead of Republicans Stand by Their Man, Kavanaugh

Wednesday Wisdom: Megan Rapinoe Edition

Have I told you lately, that I adore the US Women's National Team, and particularly Megan Rapinoe?

Q: “Are you excited about going to the White House?”

Megan Rapinoe: “I’m not going to the fucking White House.”pic.twitter.com/OosAQMjYsh

— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) June 25, 2019

It's beginning to make a lot of sense, so to speak, as to why the press and pundits had to have a National Conversation about whether the US team members were acting in a manner unbecoming of lady sportswomen in the World Cup recently, when the team kept celebrating after scoring "too many" goals in a game in which the point is to score goals, in the sport's biggest tournament.

Male sportswriters scolding women for being good at sports is a worse look. https://t.co/jlU2i1ybSQ

— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) June 15, 2019

The performance of commentators expressing concern about women's behavior, it seems to me, is often rooted in a misogynistic desire to humiliate women just as they're reaching the height of their success and, perhaps the bigger sin, power.

Good for Megan Rapino.

I reckon if more people in mainstream punditry had her courage, our country would be in much better shape.

The L Word Sequel is Happening

The Hollywood Reporter has run an interview with Marja-Lewis Ryan, showrunner for Showtime's L Word sequel set to debut later this year.

(YESSSSSSSS!)

Ryan also wrote and starred in the movie The Four-Faced Liar. Even though it had an ambiguous ending, I liked that movie, as it resonated with my experience of being a young queer woman in the aughts, going out a lot, and making questionable relationship choices.

In the interview, Ryan talks of coming of age as a fan of the original show and how she pitched the sequel to be more representative of Los Angeles and the queer community.

I'm interested to see where the sequel goes in her hands and, honestly, it just feels like a big win these days that the series didn't go to Joss Whedon or some other Feminist (cough) Ally Man.

Of note, Jennifer Beals, Katherine Moennig, and Leisha Hailey, all of whom starred in the original series, are returning.

(YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!)

I'm excited.  

The L Word was an important cultural moment for many queer women during its run. It premiered in 2004. That same year, George W. Bush had become president, in part, as a result of directly stoking anti-gay bigotry. If you remember, voters passed bans on same-sex marriage in 11 out of 11 states on which they were on the ballot that year.

It truly felt like queers were under attack from conservatives and our own government. As many queer women huddled in bars and living rooms, shushing each other so we could hear the narrative on-screen, collectively watching The L Word felt like an act of resistance and a respite from the outside world.

I know not everyone within the queer community had that experience with the show, and I understand that.

I also think an artifact of pop culture can be both meaningful to some within a marginalized community while also not speaking to others. The current showrunner seems aware of the limitations of the original series and I hope she and the other decisionmakers address them in ways that are responsive to people's concerns.

In conclusion, I liked Jenny.

She 100% gave the best monologue in the entire series right here.


Related: L Word Revival Selects Showrunner

This Interview Though!

This actual, real-life Cate Blanchett interview is something else. And by something else, I mean that it reads like real person Mary Sue fanfic as written by a queer woman and I am incredibly envious of the interviewer:

"'I thought we’d have a picnic,' Blanchett suggests, leading the way out of the front door and across the sun-bleached lawn down towards a small lake. In the centre of it is a tiny island, about 20 feet across, accessed by a wooden bridge. A table covered in a white cloth has been set up here in the shade of a tall pine-tree twined with last Christmas’ fairy lights. We sit down to homemade quiches and plates of ham and cheese, while Doug snuffles greedily at our feet. 'I never drink wine at lunchtime,' jokes Blanchett, pouring out glasses of iced rosé."

In the interview, Blanchett also refers to her "rage" at the "lazy incompetence of the men" responsible for Brexit.

I mean. Queer woman catnip right there. All of it.

Friday Feeling

Brandi Carlile wearing a fedora, vest, and bandana.

Discuss this or anything!

For Women, Our "Peak" Isn't Determined By Men

I have a new piece up at Shakesville, regarding Netflix phenom Nanette and women's "peak." A snippet:

"Near the end of her comedy special, after recounting previous experiences of men assaulting her when she was younger, Gadsby declares, 'I am in my prime. Would you test your strength out on me?' She defines her peak and, consequently, it's determined by when she feels strong, not by the extent to which men are comfortable or turned on. Indeed, to the contrary, her entire routine as a comedian in her peak does, and should, make many men feel deeply uncomfortable."

Check out the whole thing!

"Debate Me, Coward"

I swear I will at some point get back to writing recaps and fan vids, but here I am just randomly sitting here on a Friday night thinking about that time Bernie Sanders, after he lost the 2016 Democratic Primary to Hillary Clinton, offered to debate her opponent, Donald Trump. The subtext, of course, was that Hillary was a weakling cowardly girl and that a man was needed to do a man's job of standing up to another man.

(Nevermind that Donald Trump declined Bernie's challenge. A man can decline such things and, rather than being widely viewed as a coward, he's just authoritatively setting a boundary).

That is my prelude to the apparent bafflement I'm seeing by some on "the left" that many Hillary supporters, particularly those who are not Bernie superfans, support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

It shouldn't be baffling at all, really, but when have some segments of "the left" ever stooped so low as to try to understand a "Hillbot alt-centrist." GLEEP GLORP.

The first step to understanding this great mystery is to first and foremost understand that many Hillary supporters aren't, contrary to peculiar "leftist" definition, "centrists" at all. Many of us are progressive, intersectional feminists who support various incarnations of democratic socialism but find white-leftbro and cool girl Twitter "socialism" completely dysfunctional, toxic, and counter-productive.

"Centrist" has only come to mean "someone who doesn't believe Bernie Sanders is the one true lord and savior" in very recent years, and it would be great if we could revert back to a less idiosyncratic and more accurate definition of the word. The mainstream media, of course, is of little help in this regard, as they've widely and lazily ceded this definition.

The second step is to understand that many of us experienced Bernie Sanders, his campaign, and his supporters as playing into misogynistic tropes about female politicians for his own political campaign. That's not something I've see Ocasio-Cortez do. Rather, rightwingers and her opponents are actually going to use such tropes against her. And, they already are, in fact.

I hope that helps clarify the situation.

2018 Winter Olympics Roundup Friday

What kind of lesbian would I be if I didn't even mention the recent Winter Olympics in PyeongChang?

The truth is, I don't understand many of the Winter Games. As an athlete, how do you just get into skeleton, for instance? The name alone is horrifying, and then you go headfirst at (checks Google) 90 miles per hour? NOPE. I also think it might help people appreciate the difficulty of each sport if regular non-Olympians did a run-through before each event, just for context. Just spit-ballin'.

Welp, now that I've really built up my expertise, here are my esteemed thoughts on the Winter Games:

1. Figure Skating

Given the degree to which women are hated, it is inherently subversive to be a femme guy. This is especially true in the Trump-Pence era, which politically has a been a big win for toxic, macho "I have the biggest nuke" masculinity.

Enter Adam Rippon, openly-gay, feminine US Olympic figure skater.

Rippon first came to my attention when he criticized the White House's decision to let the anti-LGBT Mike Pence lead the US delegation at the Olympic opening ceremonies. He was then later reported to have denied Mike Pence's request to meet for conversation (which Mike Pence publicly denied). The son of the sitting US President then, via Twitter, attacked the US Olympian during the Olympic games.

Despite the distractions, Rippon went on to help the US team win a bronze medal. Here's a great clip, from 2017, of him singing and then doing a routine to "Diamonds." As one does:


2. Hockey

Congratulations to the US Women's Hockey team for winning the gold medal! They beat Canada in a 3-2 shootout. I don't regularly watch hockey, but go team! YAY!

3. Curling

I watched the South Korea vs. Japan curling game at a bar with friends. We* were all big fans of the Korean team and, in particular, their leader - who seems quite skilled and has cool glasses (and is cute, but that's tangential):

Meet Pancake, Yogurt, Steak, Cookie and Sunny, members of South Korea's hit curling team. 🥌 https://t.co/4Wh5hyPGzO

— Twitter Moments (@TwitterMoments) February 22, 2018

The South Korean team seemed to be underdogs at the Olympics as, in an interview, the coach alluded to difficulties in obtaining resources for curling in South Korea. However, they ended up winning the silver medal. Congratulations!

As a fun fact, the team members each gave themselves English nicknames that were breakfast foods. The more you know, folks!

(*n = me)

That's pretty much my rundown. I'm sure a lot of other meaningful and cool things happened.What else happened? What else are people watching, playing, reading, or doing?

CPAC Crowd Boos Woman For Telling Truth

At last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), conservative Mona Charen participated in a panel on the #MeToo movement. She wrote about the experience in a New York Times op-ed:

"...[T]his time, and particularly in front of this crowd, it felt far more urgent to point out of the hypocrisy of our side: How can conservative women hope to have any credibility on the subtext of sexual harassment or relations between the sexes when they excuse the behavior of President Trump? And how can we participate in any conversation about sexual ethics when the Republican president and the Republican Party backed a man credibly accused of child molestation for the United States Senate.

I watched my fellow panelists' eyes widen. And then the booing began."

Charen shares that uttering this truth was freeing, in a way, even though she was dreading the reaction. By her account, it seems as though the women on this CPAC #MeToo panel were perhaps supposed to be there to bash liberal feminist hypocrisy, rather than to truthfully acknowledge and critique the conservative men who have actually raped, harassed, and molested women and children.

What I want to note in relation to this event is that Trump ran on a message that he was a courageous truth-teller in a world gone mad with truth-repressing political correctness. Yet, at CPAC, when confronted with the reality that the Republican Party, evangelical Christians, and conservatives now openly aid and abet the political careers of sexual predators, possibly one of the most Trump-friendly crowds to assemble in the US couldn't handle it.

I remain convinced, as ever, that the real aim of modern-day conservatism is: "truth, unless it's inconvenient to white male domination."

As always, "deplorables"  and "half" was probably too kind.

Related, and regarding Donald's recent claim that he would've run into Stoneman Douglas High School unarmed to stop the shooting:

The only reason Donald Trump would run into a school building is if he thought there would be girls in various states of undress.

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) February 26, 2018

Quote of the Day: The Female Price of Male Pleasure

Lili Loufbourow at The Week has written a piece that masterfully taps into, I believe, the female anger that is revitalizing the women's movement.

In the piece, she posits that while critics of anti-rape advocates claim that we simply don't acknowledge male biology, predominate narratives about rape and male-female sex are actually driven by almost nothing but. Within this framework, women are trained to ignore our own pain and discomfort in service of male pleasure. Female pleasure and libido is rendered invisible, non-existent, and unimportant.

Loufbourow writes:

"Women have spent decades politely ignoring their own discomfort and pain to give men maximal pleasure. They've gamely pursued love and sexual fulfillment despite tearing and bleeding and other symptoms of "bad sex." They've worked in industries where their objectification and harassment was normalized, and chased love and sexual fulfillment despite painful conditions no one, especially not their doctors, took seriously. Meanwhile, the gender for whom bad sex sometimes means being a little bored during orgasm, the gender whose sexual needs the medical community rushes to fulfill, the gender that walks around in sartorial comfort, with an entire society ordered so as to maximize his aesthetic and sexual pleasure — that gender, reeling from the revelation that women don't always feel quite as good as they've been pressured to pretend they do, and would appreciate some checking in — is telling women they're hypersensitive and overreacting to discomfort? Men's biological realities are insufficiently appreciated?

I wish we lived in a world that encouraged women to attend to their bodies' pain signals instead of powering through like endurance champs. It would be grand if women (and men) were taught to consider a woman's pain abnormal; better still if we understood a woman's discomfort to be reason enough to cut a man's pleasure short."

Read the whole thing. Really.

Millions Protest Trump, Again

For the second straight year, millions of people in hundreds of cities around the world marched in protest of the Republican Trump Administration as part of the Women's March.

Major cities in the US reported six-figure crowd sizes, possibly eclipsing the turnout from last year's historic protests. I'm not surprised. As I wrote on the year anniversary of the 2016 election, Trump is both cruel and historically unpopular.

True to his delusional, gaslighting, and lying form, Trump himself got on Twitter and pretended that the marches were a celebration of him and his "successes":

Folks, if I ever found myself with nothing to live for, I would find it in me to live only so that when this piece of shit kills masses of people, there will at least be someone other than him to write history.

Donald knows full well that the #WomensMarch2018 isn't a celebration of him or his "successes." Like all misogynists, he thinks he can speak fabrications about women's experiences into reality just by uttering them.

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) January 20, 2018

The anti-Trump resistance is real, and it's being led by women, just as it should be. Today, I want to share two related observations about the revitalized women's movement:

One, much like the mainstream media largely missed the Trump-Russia story when it was happening in real time during the 2016 election, their coverage of the women's movement is largely inadequate. For instance, on the day after this year's Women's March, Nina Mast at Media Matters noted that "the major Sunday political talk shows were nearly silent on the historic protests, only briefly mentioning the topic across all five shows."

I posit that the mainstream media is largely overlooking this women-led movement in real time, precisely because it's led by women. Men still rule in the media world and they primarily view only other men as leaders of political movements. See also, their endless fascination with Trump voters and the assumption some have that Bernie Sanders is the leader of the resistance.

As I tweeted over the weekend (excuse the typo, ugh):

Of course it is, because it's led by women, while the media is ruled by men who look primarily only view men as leaders of movements. https://t.co/j4nSM8ayWS

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) January 21, 2018

Secondly, Louisa, on Twitter, had a very good thread about the embedded misogyny that some activists show when mocking women protestors as suffering from a lack of coolness. From time to time, I see people sneering at "soccer moms in pink pussy hats." Like Louisa, I think that while some newer activists might have a lot to learn, we should be embracing the people who show up, are operating in good faith, and who are enthusiastic, rather than ridiculing them and tearing them down.

As a related point, I've seen some commentators say that it's "easy" to show up for a march and that anyone can do it. And, like I said on Twitter, I think that assumption should be interrogated. Protesting is political labor, and it's actually not easy for everyone.

I'll add that we should also interrogate the assumption that showing up to a March is "easy." For many, it's not - eg, if you have a small child, lack transportation, are sick, are disabled, work on weekends, and/or fear police presence.

— Fannie Wolfe (@fanniesroom) January 21, 2018

All in all, I'm pleased that the Women's Marches had another huge turnout, even as it remains a tragedy that the marches are necessary at all. Onward, we continue resisting.

And don't forget to register to vote, if you haven't already.

Related: 
Me, at Shakesville last year: Women's Marches Prove Historic

Right Wing Women, Revisited

In light of the reality that 53% of white women voted for a sexual predator for president in the 2016 election and the spate of revelations that many men across the political spectrum are also predators, I'm giving Andrea Dworkin's Right Wing Women another read.

I read the book initially in 2010, as I wrote about here. Given the passage of time, my own development, and political experiences that have transpired since 2010, I also want to see the extent to which I find that both the book and my thoughts on it stand up.

Feel free to join me, if you want. I'll write a post in 2018 and you can share any thoughts you have, as well.

Friday Feeling - Not Ready To Make Nice

Remember back in 2003, when conservatives, country music fans, and pundits fell ass-over-heels onto their fainting couches when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks said in public that she was ashamed that the George W. Bush was from Texas and criticized him for leading the nation to war?

"Not Ready to Make Nice," which the Dixie Chicks wrote about the incident, is one of my favorite Dixie Chicks songs.*

In subsequent interviews, Maines referenced her anger, which is evident in the lyrics:

I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell and
I don't have time to go 'round and 'round and 'round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is you think I should

We are living in a moment of profound feminist backlash and resurgence. The Republican Administration launches every conceivable attack on women's autonomy and dignity, while many women are mobilizing around our too-often overlooked pain, fear, and rage.

In 2003, Maines was right to criticize George W. Bush. I had participated in multiple protests of the Iraq War and remember feeling immensely frustrated that the American public had rallied around this man, particularly after he lost the popular vote. We have the benefit of hindsight now, and more of a consensus has developed that the Iraq War was immoral and unjustified.

Being in my early 20s at the time, 9/11 and the Iraq War are two of the major political touchstones of my life that had enormous influences on my political thinking. My journey to make sense of these events led me down a lot of paths, including skepticism, progressivism, leftism/liberalism, and feminism. (I also read a bunch of Ayn Rand books one summer but quickly rejected objectivism after finding the Aynsplaining in Atlas Shrugged to be overstated and tedious).

I suspect for many people, perhaps younger generations or those not previously politically-active, Trump's electoral college win will be a similar touchstone.

I, for one, am not ready to make nice. Have a watch/listen:

*Once while drinking, a friend convinced me to karaoke "Sin Wagon" with her. Whyyyyyyyyyy. It was a disaster of epic proportions.

Maxine Waters' Speech at the Women's Convention

Maxine Waters is a national treasure and I'm so glad she's a leader of the resistance.

In her speech at this past weekend's Women's Convention in Detroit, she called Donald Trump "the most dishonorable and despicable human being to ever serve in the office of the presidency."

I'm here for it and her speech is 100% worth watching in full.


Related:
Women's Marches Prove Historic 
We Walk Together: Thoughts on the Women's Convention 
Bernie Backs Out Of Women's Convention

Wayback Wednesday: Quiet

Joss Whedon. Harvey Weinstein. The Republican Administration's ongoing assaults on women's rights. Millions of Americans and a Republican Congress supporting and condoning an admitted sexual predator as head of state. The ongoing demands that Hillary Clinton shut up and/or say only precisely what other people want her to say. The dirtbag left mocking a rape survivor without apology (to her).

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about this song, "Quiet," which went viral during the Women's March the day after Trump's inauguration.

These women never met till today and practiced this song online. Show them some love. #Icantkeepquiet #WomensMarch #WomensMarchOnWashington pic.twitter.com/rPA4dDTIYz

— Alma Har'el (@Almaharel) January 21, 2017

It's not a shocking revelation to say that times are tough.

People across the political spectrum often treat women's rights, and specifically violence against women, as a game in which they can make some larger "gotcha" against a political opponent.

What becomes frustrating is when the voices of progressive feminists who have long condemned rape culture in its varied manifestations - left, right, and center - continue to be ignored in these mainstream point-scoring narratives. Many men who do get it (or at least appear to publicly), often self-promote their own performances of "getting it," rather than promoting the women who have been making these observations for a very long time.

Yet, one of the most important things men can do as progressive allies is to refuse to participate in rape culture with other men. This refusal is often done in quiet, everyday acts: calling out shitty behavior of other men, not bonding with men over the subordination and abuse of women, and not participating in "locker room talk."

Also, listen to women. Rape culture places a lot of pressure on women to be quiet about our experiences within this system. If we're talking about our experiences with rape and gendered-abuse, be aware that doing so usually results in more negative consequences than positive for us.

What Happened Book Club at Shakesville

Hey everyone, if you're reading What Happened, by Hillary Clinton, Melissa is running a chapter-by-chapter book club.

Check it out! 


Related: Why I Listen to Hillary

Have a Seat, Gentlemen

It's apparently not enough to see multitudes of dude-authored pieces in the mainstream media that are various iterations of how History's Greatest Monster Hillary Clinton Has Some Nerve, Writing a Book. doesn't She Know She Needs To Sit Down, Shut Up, and Let The Men Make the Narratives.

The other day, I logged into my Goodreads to update my status to currently reading That Book. To find it, I ran this search: "What Happened, Hillary Clinton." These were the results:



Misogyny is when any random jagoff can publish his take on "what happened," but it's deemed horribly out of line when the person with perhaps the most insight into what actually happened does so.