I am Zadie Smith, another writer. I have two children. Dickens had ten - I think Tolstoy did, too. Did anyone for one moment worry that those men were becoming too father-ish to be writer-esque? Does the fact that Heidi Julavitz, Nikita Lalwani, Nicole Krauss, Jhumpa Lahiri, Vendela Vida, Curtis Sittenfeld, Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison and so on and so forth (i could really go on all day with that list) have multiple children make them lesser writers? Are four children a problem for the writer Michael Chabon - or just for his wife the writer Ayelet Waldman? The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd. What IS a threat to all women’s freedoms is the issue of time, which is the same problem whether you are a writer, factory worker or nurse. We need decent public daycare services, partners who do their share, affordable childcare and/or a supportive community of friends and family. As for the issue of singles versus multiples verses none at all, each to their own! But as the parent of multiples I can assure Ms Sandler that two kids entertaining each other in one room gives their mother in another room a surprising amount of free time she would not have otherwise.

Zadie Smith comment below The Atlantic’s piece about (female) writers careers and motherhood. (via zadiehipster)

This reminds me of something I read awhile ago about how women are the only ones who are ever asked about how they manage a work life balance. Men are not asked this question because there is a built in expectation that there is someone (presumably a woman) at home managing the “life” part of it for them.

(via killsmedead)

(via killsmedead)

Source: zadiehipster

Suppose a man makes unwanted social advances to a woman in, let’s say, a restaurant or theatre, and she eventually has to tell him loudly or angrily to get lost. She is the one who will be perceived as rude, hostile, aggressive, and obnoxious. His verbal aggression and invasiveness are accepted and expected; her rudeness (or mere curtness) in getting rid of him is noticed and condemned. One of our great myths is that a “real lady” can and should handle any difficulty, defuse any assault, without ever raising her voice or losing her manners. Female rudeness or violence in resistance to male aggression has often been taken to prove that the woman was not a lady in the first place, and therefore deserved no respect from the aggressor or sympathy from others.
D.A. Clarke, “A Woman With a Sword” (via foodbeersexwhatever)

(via seananmcguire)

Source: wretchedoftheearth

When a man says no in this culture, it’s the end of the discussion. When a woman says no, it’s the beginning of a negotiation.

Gavin De Becker (via dandyions)

I have noticed every time, EVERY TIME, I state a strong opinion about something on Facebook - a bunch of men will come forward to try to talk me out of it or convince me of something else. Every time. Only the men do this.

(via mousesinger)

Some men really don’t like to be disagreed with by women. And when it comes to consent in sex-positivism, it is a tool for negotiation.

(via swordssoarewords)

See also, when a woman states that she is strongly opposed to MRA (or, you know, insert whatever ideology or viewpoint) because it is anti-woman, and men try to negotiate her boundaries with her.

(via catandkitty)

Oh my god THIS. Recently I made a Facebook status telling rape apologist MRAs to unfriend me, two cis men privately messaged me, after I unfriended them no less, to try to convince me I was wrong. 

99% of men are just disgusting, and it makes me sad and angry.

(via sanityscraps)

Wow I’ve never really heard it put this way before but it’s so fucking true.

(via sexxxisbeautiful)

(via agirlcalledchris)

Source: dandyions

ikenbot: chauvinistsushi: thumbcramps: hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my comics in literature class. we had to do a research paper on a topic we’d discussed in class and then accompany it with a comic with a relevant subject. my paper was about hyper-sexualization of women in comic books, but i decided to broaden it out here as well as personalize it and make myself the subject and discuss something i’ve been subjected to in the convention circuit and on the internet as well as thousands of other women, as well as give a cue to thought about how the comic book industry as well as the video game industry and even just media in general (all of which are male dominated) push such ridiculous pressures onto girls and women. also, it feels kind of silly to have to add this since i hope it’s obvious, but i am very aware that there are men that don’t subscribe to this attitude, and am incredibly grateful that these issues are brought to light to people other than the ones that are subjected to it.  anyway haha i have literally been staring at this for 9 hours i don’t even know which direction is up anymore. thanks for reading!!!
Zoom Info
ikenbot: chauvinistsushi: thumbcramps: hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my comics in literature class. we had to do a research paper on a topic we’d discussed in class and then accompany it with a comic with a relevant subject. my paper was about hyper-sexualization of women in comic books, but i decided to broaden it out here as well as personalize it and make myself the subject and discuss something i’ve been subjected to in the convention circuit and on the internet as well as thousands of other women, as well as give a cue to thought about how the comic book industry as well as the video game industry and even just media in general (all of which are male dominated) push such ridiculous pressures onto girls and women. also, it feels kind of silly to have to add this since i hope it’s obvious, but i am very aware that there are men that don’t subscribe to this attitude, and am incredibly grateful that these issues are brought to light to people other than the ones that are subjected to it.  anyway haha i have literally been staring at this for 9 hours i don’t even know which direction is up anymore. thanks for reading!!!
Zoom Info
ikenbot: chauvinistsushi: thumbcramps: hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my comics in literature class. we had to do a research paper on a topic we’d discussed in class and then accompany it with a comic with a relevant subject. my paper was about hyper-sexualization of women in comic books, but i decided to broaden it out here as well as personalize it and make myself the subject and discuss something i’ve been subjected to in the convention circuit and on the internet as well as thousands of other women, as well as give a cue to thought about how the comic book industry as well as the video game industry and even just media in general (all of which are male dominated) push such ridiculous pressures onto girls and women. also, it feels kind of silly to have to add this since i hope it’s obvious, but i am very aware that there are men that don’t subscribe to this attitude, and am incredibly grateful that these issues are brought to light to people other than the ones that are subjected to it.  anyway haha i have literally been staring at this for 9 hours i don’t even know which direction is up anymore. thanks for reading!!!
Zoom Info

ikenbot:

chauvinistsushi:

thumbcramps:

hi guys! this is a comic i made for a final in my comics in literature class. we had to do a research paper on a topic we’d discussed in class and then accompany it with a comic with a relevant subject. my paper was about hyper-sexualization of women in comic books, but i decided to broaden it out here as well as personalize it and make myself the subject and discuss something i’ve been subjected to in the convention circuit and on the internet as well as thousands of other women, as well as give a cue to thought about how the comic book industry as well as the video game industry and even just media in general (all of which are male dominated) push such ridiculous pressures onto girls and women.

also, it feels kind of silly to have to add this since i hope it’s obvious, but i am very aware that there are men that don’t subscribe to this attitude, and am incredibly grateful that these issues are brought to light to people other than the ones that are subjected to it. 

anyway haha i have literally been staring at this for 9 hours i don’t even know which direction is up anymore. thanks for reading!!!

(via think4yourself)

Source: thumbcramps

that time i had to explain societal benefits of being male to a bunch of dudes who wanted a cookie because they’ve never raped anyone

greenstate:

it started out with this article: 

‘Why I’m suing my gym over their sexist women-only hours’


my friend’s husband posted this article on facebook, asking if people agreed with the man who wrote the article. is it fair that a gym would offer women-only hours where men had no access? and furthermore, was it fair that men and women then paid the same amount for their gym membership even though it meant that for 442 hours per year, the men weren’t allowed to use the gym?

[the rest under a cut- image heavy]

Read More

(via rabbleprochoice)

Source: greenstate

Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions.

Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.

In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows:

The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.

In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts. This may sound outrageous, but think about how you react when precocious children dominate the talk at an adult party. As women begin to make inroads into formerly ‘male’ domains such as business and professional contexts, we should not be surprised to find that their contributions are not always perceived positively or even accurately.

[x] (via neighborly)

As a teacher, I give girls what I hope is a lot of attention.  I don’t know if I give girls their fair share, but I aspire to, especially after noticing that boys are willing to use their greater share of teachers’ attention to get girls who they feel aren’t being quiet and docile enough punished.  I have therefore acquired a reputation for “caring more about the girls.”  This has had two marked results: Some straight boys have gotten more hostile toward me, and most girls have gotten more confident around me.  This makes me think I’m doing something right.

Longer thoughts on how this phenomenon relates to sexual harassment in classrooms, if you’re interested: The girls figured out I won’t report them if they hit boys who are sexually harassing them, I’ll only report the boys.  This led to an increase in how often girls got the last word and boys got smacked in my classes, and, also, to a DECREASE IN HOW OFTEN GIRLS GOT SEXUALLY HARASSED.  The sexual harassers seem to have been depending on the sort of “equal blame” and “retaliation is never warranted” and “don’t hurt others’ feelings” perspectives so many schools try to instill in kids; the sexual harassers were usually the ones bringing me into the situation by saying, “Miss, she hit me!  You should write her up!”  Once they figured out I was only ever going to respond, “If you don’t treat girls like that, they won’t hit you,” the girls got more confident and the sexual harassers largely shut the fuck up.

In schools, fighting against sexual harassment is often punished exactly the same as, or more severely than, sexual harassment — a lot of discipline codes make no distinction between violence and violence in self-defence, and violence is ALWAYS the highest level of disciplinary infraction, whereas verbal sexual harassment rarely is.  Sexual harassers, at least in the schools I’ve been in, rely heavily on GETTING GIRLS IN TROUBLE WITH HIGHER AUTHORITIES as a strategy of harassment — creating an external punishment that penalises girls for and therefore discourages girls from fighting back.  Sexual harassers are willing to use their greater share of floorspace to ask to get girls who won’t date them punished.  By and large, teachers do punish those girls when they swear or hit.  Schools condition girls to ignore sexual harassment by punishing them when they speak up or fight back instead.

Once the sexual harassers in my classes understood that girls wouldn’t be punished for rejecting them, they backed off around me.  And there started to be a flip in what conversations I get called into — girls are telling me when boys are being nasty (too loud and dominant), instead of boys telling me when girls are being uncooperative (louder and more dominant than boys think they should be).

(via torrentofbabies)

reblogging again for the wonderful commentary.

(via partysoft)

(via moelskerdeg)

Source: colinfirthhasmoved

pitifulrain:

and-it-made-me-complete:

“Indeed, the idea of ‘winning the girl’ – of overcoming female objections or resistance through repeated and frequently escalating efforts – is central to most of our modern romantic narratives. (Female persistence, by contrast, is viewed as pathetic.) And the more I think about instances of creepiness, harassment and stalking that culminate in either the threat or actuality of sexual assault, the more I’m convinced that a massive part of the problem is this socially sanctioned idea that men are fundamentally entitled to persist. Because if men are meant to persist, then women who say no must only be rejecting the attempt, not the man himself, so that every separate attempt becomes one of a potentially infinite number of keys which might just fit the lock of the woman’s approval. She’s not the one who’s allowed to say no, not really; she should be silent and passive as a locked door, waiting patiently while the man runs through however many keys he can be bothered trying. And if he gets sick of this lengthy process and just breaks in? Well, frustration under those circumstances is only natural. Either the door shouldn’t have been there to impede him, or it shouldn’t have been locked.”

— The Creepiness Question (via notemily)

This is something that I am dealing with at the moment and many times before.

This one guy starts talking to me and it was like a week before Valentine’s day. We only spoke two or three times and he was just another of many college acquaintances. He caught me after my night class one day and asks me if I know what day it is, so obviously I say Thursday and he’s “it’s Valentine’s Day”

I tell him I don’t celebrate that holiday, if one can call it as such, and try to leave. He goes with me, and when we’re outside the building he pulls out a freaking gift bag. My brain stops right there and I don’t know what to do. He hands it to me and I am so confused, and freaked out, not in a good way, I take it without thinking.

I don’t know how to be rude to strangers or anyone I am not very close with in particular. I don’t know how to say “Hey dude I just said five minutes before that I don’t want to celebrate Valentines and yet you are pushing this gift bag on me. Instead I say “Thanks, but it was really not necessary.” This was my fault, I know.

However, what I truly found creepy about him, was how clingy he got after having  around four or five 10 minute conversations. He asked me for a phone number way before all that Valentine’s day crap so I could help him with class, and well I gave it to him not knowing how I would later regret it. I guess that should have been my fault number one and then accepting the valentine’s gift fault number two. 

Anyway, he dropped one of the classes we were taking together but he still showed up to that class. He caught me as I was walking out and after a short convo in between classes I thought it was over and started for the exit. He was right at my heels, I only noticed when he tried to resume the conversation. He followed me to the school store, I bought myself roasted peanuts, a thing he reminded me of a month after when he asked if I like peanuts because he remembered me buying them. 

He followed me like a dog, I tried really hard not to look interested because that is the only way I know how to get rid of guys that bother me. I am not good with people, I have social anxiety and someone following me from one of my classes to the other, I find that as overstepping my personal space. 

That day I finally told him that I thought his Valentine’s gift was inappropriate, not the content but the fact that I don’t know him. He dropped the bomb on me by telling me that we know each other. Apparently he asked me a question once two years ago in my chemistry class and he has been watching me from afar and finally gathered a courage to talk to me. He also began the topic of how he wants to be friends for now and we can’t know what might come in the future implying that he would want us to be a thing.

I gave him the usual talk how I am not interested in forming any sort of relationships and that I need to focus on school. I thought he understood but boy I was wrong. 

Over the time I mentioned many times that all I can be is a friend and nothing more, I was clear and specific and he just chose to ignore whatever he wanted to ignore. He did not want to face the reality that I don’t want to be with him. 

Some things he understood and some he didn’t. As I mentioned before he was coming to the class he dropped and at first he told me that was because the class was interesting. An idiot that I am I believed him, but then when he would skip that class he would send me a text that he is not coming, and I would text him back clearly annoyed that “I don’t need to know that and why would he be telling me that?”  His response “Idk, I just want you to know.” Later on I asked him why is he coming to that class, clearly I began suspecting that it was not for the lecture because he would come forty minutes late. “U go I go.” was what I got and that just creeped me out so much that I was actually scared of him. 

I tried to get him off my case by showing him that clearly I am not the perfect pink loving girl he has imagined that I am. He told me that I must like pink, because I had pink highlights once, for a week, two years ago. Back to the topic I try to explain, and tell him that I am not that girl that he just described over the texts and he just thanks me for the info and he will remember that. I tried explaining that to him that I didn’t tell him that so he could add it to the rest creepy things he knows about me, but he didn’t get it.

Being nice or subtle to try to spare poor guy’s feelings is not worth it. It just gives him an incentive for further pursuit.

This week I’ve had enough of his constant talking on how he want to settle down and needs someone. So I told him that it’s his life and he should get himself a girl. Now just a reminder I’ve told him that I didn’t want a boyfriend many many many times. When he wrote me to wait until he finishes school and not to be jealous because he had never kissed a girl in school, I realized that saying that I don’t want a boyfriend just goes unnoticed. I told him straight I did not want to be his girlfriend nor have any sort of relationship with him.

His response you might wonder? “but I want to try, just wait until I finish school” Apparently no was not good enough.

I told him I had no feelings towards him, he said feelings can change and that we should try going out.

I said no, yet again, I explained it to him like I would to a five year old that mine would not change and he’s better of forgetting about me and moving on.

He texted me today. Again. He wants to be friends. No thank you. I am not going to give you a chance to be my friend because you would be terrible at it. Friend is a person who listens and understands, those two qualities that you are clearly not good at. 

Whew, rant over. I apologize for my grammar and spelling. I wanted to comment the quote from above but I thought describing the situation I am in mirrors situations many other girls finds themselves in. 

From the bottom of my heart, to the guys who keep on pursuing the girls who are not interested in them, and are too shy, or too nice to say enough, please be the good guy and leave them alone.

I just want to reblog this as a perfect example of the kind of shit that happens as a direct result of the “persistence works” myth. Please, don’t be this guy.

Source: fozmeadows.wordpress.com

Guy Talk: What Dudes Need To Know About The “Friendzone”

dansolomon:

It’s easy to understand why guys are frustrated when they find themselves in the situation that “friendzone” describes, though. Nothing about watching while someone you’d like to be dating goes out with other people is pleasant, and it’s even harder when you share enough emotional intimacy with that person for them to talk about their other relationships with you. Lots of people have been there — I certainly have — and it sucks. It’s really no way to live.

The way you end up in that situation, though, is by building that intimacy under false pretenses, which is where the “nice guys” go wrong. It’s understandable why they do it: From a distance, being direct looks a lot like being rude, and being confident looks a lot like being cocky and self-obsessed. Rudeness and self-involvement are not traits that nice guys (or “nice guys”) want to possess, so maintaining a self-image as a “nice guy” involves being indirect and not displaying confidence outwardly.

I wrote another thing for The Frisky, this time about the “friendzone” and all of the loaded baggage that comes with that (really rather gross) word. A few notes: 

  • I remembered the term from that Chris Rock bit years ago, but I hadn’t realized that it had taken on a memetic life until the Nice Guys Of OKCupid Tumblr launched and all of these dudes used the word in their angry rants. (I’m well familiar with the “nice guy” angry rant, though.) It never stops surprising me how people can take something said in jest and make it a very serious matter of INJUSTICE, which is how this all comes across.
  • There are a lot of very legitimate critiques of the entitlement that goes into even viewing the “friendzone” as a punishment, but I mostly didn’t make them here. 
  • I am very cautious not to go into woman-centric spaces like The Frisky, xoJane, etc, and attempt to explain feminism or gender relations to women. When you have a piece or two that goes viral, though, you get those opportunities. I’m working with The Frisky because they were recommended to me by a friend that I trust, and because my editor there was really interested in having me contribute the sort of thing that a woman wouldn’t have had the experiences to write about effectively. 
  • I have opinions about the gender roles in Django Unchained, for example, but there are obviously countless women who are better equipped to write about them than I am. (If I want to write about that stuff, that’s what this blog is for.) 
  • So with this piece, I wanted to write something directly to the dudes who think of themselves as Nice Guys, and I wanted to have some empathy for the fear of vulnerability that dudes are socialized to feel. Because that’s a product of the same oppressive culture that treats women like shit. Basically, I have the luxury of not having an extremely personal stake in this sort of thing, so I wanted to approach the issue with a generosity that my privilege affords me. I’m really curious if that’s a place where a dude writing about feminism-based topics can be effective. 
  • It might not be! In the meantime, I’m really glad that The Frisky is giving me the chance to find out like this, and we’ll see how it all ends up. Give it a read, if you’re so inclined. 
We Saw Your Boobs” was as a song-and-dance routine in which MacFarlane and some grinning guys named actresses in the audience and the movies in which their breasts were visible. That’s about it. What made it worse was that most of the movies mentioned, if not all (“Gia”), were pretty great—“Silkwood,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Monster’s Ball,” “Monster,” “The Accused,” “Iris”—and not exactly teen-exploitation pictures. The women were not showing their bodies to amuse Seth MacFarlane but, rather, to do their job. Or did they just think they were doing serious work? You girls think you’re making art, the Academy, through MacFarlane, seemed to say, but all we—and the “we” was resolutely male—really see is that we got you to undress. The joke’s on you.
Seth MacFarlane and the Oscars’ Hostile, Ugly, Sexist Night : The New Yorker

Source: newyorker.com

The Bike Test

ellyblue:

The all-time most popular post on the Taking the Lane blog is the Bike Test. It provides an handy analytical checklist for deciding whether or not something is sexist.

As the influence of women grows across all types of bicycling, there has been quite a bit of debate about the representation of gender in everything from ads to advocacy campaigns, race tracks to board meetings. Is that photo of a sexy woman on a bike sexist, or is it empowering? Objectifying, or compelling? Tokenizing, or inclusive? Is it different if the photo was taken by a woman? What if the woman depicted is an avowed feminist? Does this mean we are never allowed to depict women wearing skirts and heels? These discussions tend to get frustrating, in part, I think, because we don’t always have a shared idea of what these terms mean.

I saw the need for an analytical tool that could be used by both media creators and consumers to evaluate images of women in bicycling. So, inspired by the Bechdel Test for women in movies (still as relevant today as it was in 1985), I created… The Bike Test.

This test also serves as the minimum standard for making sure what I write, edit, and eventually produce fulfills my mission of being a feminist publisher. 

(via fandomsandfeminism)

Source: ellyblue

saltbender:

let’s think about how men never have to settle for the “geeky” and “nerdy girl” and how there are dozens of movies where the ugly little duckling is transformed to this gorgeous woman so that the male character can be with her

and how there are dozens of movies where women are taught to look past looks and see that those “nerdy” guys are actually really great

(via killsmedead)

Source: captainsulus