An Essay
Intro.
There are rumours circulating that radical feminists have picked on individual women for wearing make-up, having ‘enhancement’ surgery, wearing pink, painting their toenails, shopping a lot, having their genitals mutilated, liking sparkly things, wearing heels, having their feet bound, wearing thong underwear, being thin, wearing the burqa, shaving and/or waxing body hair and generally being ‘girly’.
These rumours seem to be eminating from the “well I do that and I’m a feminist so the radfems are picking on me – the fucking witches!” school of thought.
Exam.
Radical feminists are generally (but not always) women. Women who’ve been socialised into the same john-pleasing mentality as every other woman with the difference that, because of their radical feminist integrity, they ask questions. Radical feminists acknowledge that for women (and men) to be who they truly are patriarchial capitalism has to cease to exist because it is oppressive in the extreme. One of the minor bastions of patriarchal capitalism is ‘feminine’ beauty standards.
Patriarchial capitalism creates these standards on a whim. It’s almost as though they say “ok, what can we get them worrying about in order to buy our next product?” One day it’s fashionable to have no breasts: the next day breasts are all the rage. One day it’s fasionable to have your face hidden behind curtains of blonde hair: the next day bobs are in fashion and brunettes are ‘it’. One day it’s fashionable to have body hair: the next day everyone thinks that’s kinda disgusting (on women).
Radical feminists point this out. Radical feminists don’t flame and blame women/girls who are caught up in this rat-trap – we simply point out the politics behind it all. We’re radical feminists ffs! Lots of us are ‘pretty’ too. Lots of us have “figures to die for” and men/women in our lives who love us for who we are not what we look like.
Conclusion.
Be who you are. Wear make-up, have tattoos, get your tit-job/vaginoplasty, wax yourself into oblivion and bind your feet so’s you can’t walk anywhere (let alone run) but don’t ever get so sour about it all that you blame radical feminism for pointing out the obvious. Radical feminism points out the politics – the rest is up to you.
24 responses so far ↓
CoolAunt // August 26, 2007 at 5:35 am |
“Radical feminists don’t flame and blame women/girls who are caught up in this rat-trap…”
To be more accurate, I would have worded it like this: Ideally, Radical feminists don’t flame and blame women/girls who are caught up in this rat-trap…”
Or, maybe this way, Radical feminists who mold their behaviors to model true radical feminism, don’t flame and blame women/girls who are caught up in this rat-trap…”
Or, possibly even this way: Radical feminism doesn’t condone the practice of flaming and blaming women/girls who are caught up in this rat-trap…”
I’ve two reasons for the rewording.
1) Like everyone else, radical feminists have been socialized in and by the patriarchy to which we were born and live. Like everyone else, we were taught the same sister-hating, fault-finding, nit-picking, class-discriminating, divisive shit. Deprogramming doesn’t occur instantly upon enlightenment. No matter how hard any radfem has worked and for how long she’s been working it, she still lives in a world that encourages and even rewards women to hate one another, she still feels the pull of those old habits. I don’t believe that any truly honest radfem would insist that she never ever ever catches herself at least thinking those old thoughts, again, if not actually saying those old, mean words, again.
2) Not every woman who identies herself as a radfem is a radfem. In fact, some of the self-identified radfems that I’ve read online probably don’t have an inkling of what feminism is, much less what radical feminism is. Moreso, not every woman who posts or comments at radfem forums or blogs, IBTP not excluded, is a radfemn, knows what radical feminism means, much less speaks and behaves in a way that complements, rather than conflicts, with radical feminism. (In other words, a comment to a post at IBTP that is insulting to some, any or all women is NOT proof of even one radfem having insulted another woman.)
Sarah (Ethically Speaking) // August 26, 2007 at 10:57 am |
**Standing Ovation**
There are times, my lovely Witchy, that you leave me speechless but grinning.
sparklematrix // August 26, 2007 at 12:51 pm |
It was Shakespeare who first coined the phrase “don’t shoot the messenger” in Henry IV circa the fifteen hundreds. Some things never change, do they?
Grace // August 26, 2007 at 4:08 pm |
“We’re radical feminists ffs! Lots of us are ‘pretty’ too. Lots of us have “figures to die for” and men/women in our lives who love us for who we are not what we look like.”
This post has come on day on which I have needed just this kind of statement to read Witchy, thank you.
Now, if you’ll excuse me i’m late to get in the kitchen and resume my post as a ’stuck up whore’.
L.M. // August 26, 2007 at 5:23 pm |
Yesssss.
“Radical feminists don’t flame and blame women/girls who are caught up in this rat-trap”
This is just me personally – but sometimes I find it really hard not to speak harshly to women who spew misogynist anti-radfem BS on this topic or scapegoat ugly women.
But no, I wouldn’t go around attacking or insulting women just for what they look like.
“Lots of us are ‘pretty’ too.”
I think that being on the “pretty” side of the fence can help expose “beauty” for what it is.
Again, personal story follows -
I’m East Asian and I happened to be born with more “Western” looking eyes. Lots of other people in my family don’t have them, though several of us do.
But some, mostly Asian people, think that I’m pretty because of that accident of birth. I’ve read about other Asian people who get eye surgery to *get* the type of eyes that I have. The racial self hatred is pretty depressing – that people undergo surgery to erase their ethnic features.
And sometimes I just want to scream that even with these eyes, I don’t get a free pass from racism, my life isn’t wonderful and perfect and I’m not even considered beautiful after all that.
I mean it’s really just a vicious cycle and the people who end up with our money get to laugh at the end.
Michelle // August 26, 2007 at 6:42 pm |
Top marks for how succinctly you put this!
I’m always careful when writing on this topic myself to ensure I don’t come across as taking issue with women who participate in beauty rituals, and instead place the focus on the patriarchal politics. Because that’s where the problem lies, not with individual women.
Mr. Morgan // August 27, 2007 at 10:18 am |
*flings*
Add me to the list of people who needed that. Thanks hugely.
Sis // August 27, 2007 at 3:44 pm |
Why do these proud, happy, empowered people keep looking for validation from us?
L.M. // August 27, 2007 at 11:09 pm |
Sis – the same reason that pro-porn antifeminists regularly troll radfem blogs when there’s a whole internet of porn and misogyny out there.
Laurelin // August 28, 2007 at 12:52 am |
Thank you Witchy! As always, nail on head! This is a badly needed piece of truth and sanity.
Hairy Harpie // August 28, 2007 at 11:33 am |
Instead of blaming the fashionable women (like I used to before my radfem days), these days I find myself feeling deeply sorry for the ‘pretty’ girls.
Looking back on things, on my ‘ugly’ high-school friends and the ‘pretty’ ones, i think the ‘pretty’ ones got it pretty tough after all.
While the ‘ugly’ girls get teased, bullied, and victimised, the ‘pretty’ girls get pressured to live up to their image and follow all the beauty myths, act how a girl is supposed to act, have boyfriends, get drunk, say yes, fake that orgasm.
I don’t mean that the ‘ugly’ girls get it better off. I spose i just mean that instead of envying the ‘pretty’ ones, i don’t know whether they got a better deal after all.
I know that I would never have been raped if I hadn’t of been a ‘pretty’ girl. I probably wouldn’t have been stared at, perved on, bottom pinched, propositioned, and commented on by male family members as much either.
delphyne // August 29, 2007 at 1:50 pm |
Great post, witchy. I also agree with Cool Aunt, there has been a tiny amount of criticism in radical feminist circles towards women who take part in patriarchy-approved beauty practices, even though it isn’t feminist to make those criticisms against women.
What’s interesting is that people have completely ignored the vast amounts of non-woman-blaming feminist analysis in favour of focusing on a handful of remarks that may have been made in the heat of the moment. Also like Cool Aunt says, remarks made by non-radicals are immediately attributed to radicals in order to make us look bad.
I’ve read so-called feminists saying that radicals call women “sl*ts” which is just so far from the truth it’s unbelievable. You’d almost think people had some kind of an agenda against us.
Anyhow in my view the point about analysing beauty practices is to liberate us from them. I’m certainly a lot more free since I chucked out my make-up and stopped shaving my legs. I still feel the lookist pressures, but it isn’t half as bad as it used to be.
Sis // August 29, 2007 at 5:48 pm |
Oh now Delphyne !
“You’d almost think people had some kind of an agenda against us.”
Let’s just get over the idea what they are doing is choice, or anything to do with any culture’s idea of beauty. It’s mawkish, health-destroying and carcinogenic in some instances. When the fan short-circuits, we’re all going to be paying for their “improvements”.
Sis // August 29, 2007 at 6:03 pm |
Here’s an interesting little side-effect of just one cosmetic plastic surgery. Real life and death breast disease surgeries are becoming harder to book because plastic surgeons perfer to do the cosmetic surgeries. There’s only so much time in a plastic surgeon’s day, those that do anything but cosmetic that is. And there are increasingly many who won’t and many more who keep non-cosmetic to a small percentage of their patient load. Mastectomies and reconstruction after breast cancer are time consuming compared to dropping in an implant. The surgeon can do perhaps three implants in the time it takes to do a mammoplasty. Mammoplasties can also be emotionally draining for the surgeon because the surgeon knows that the patient is going to die of breast cancer pretty much no matter what the surgeon does. So it does you know, go a little beyond the individual.
And again, we’re all going to be paying, one way or another. By not being able to get disease related surgeries as soon as we should because of less surgeon time, and because there is going to be a disease epidemic caused by “choice.”
E.K. "Kitty" Glendower // August 29, 2007 at 9:06 pm |
Perhaps I have told this story before, somewhere around the blogosphere, when I get started I can ramble a bit you know. A few years ago I lived across the street from a woman who asked my opinion about selling her eggs to finance breast implants. What could I say really, well after I got my speech back? She, the very woman who cried to me that her husband would not clean up his spilled whiskey that he spilled when he was caught up in the middle of trying to win a computer game he was entangled in with other people around the world. She did eventually get the breast implants but I think she did so after the husband received a military reenlistment bonus. I should call the old girl and see what she is up too but I am not in the mood. I think she is around 35 now so I will probably hear about the price of botox.
dreamy5 // August 29, 2007 at 9:07 pm |
Well, hell. Maybe I’m one of those described? I don’t claim “pretty,” by any means, but I’m a fashionista, I wear makeup, and I shave more body parts than I don’t perhaps.
Am I caught in a trap? I say no. Perhaps you say yes. That’s cool. Maybe we’re both a little right.
I say no for several reasons. I do these things because, for right now, I find it fun. I have the sort of frame designers make clothes for (tall and boyish — yep, that’s a problem all on its own, isn’t it?). I wear makeup because I find it fun. I am not talented. I have no artistic ability. Right now, I’m creating my own “body art,” if you will, by dressing in a certain way and wearing makeup. Note that I said “right now.” In the past (for at least 10 years prior), I wore plain clothes and no makeup. I still have a “dykey-do.” I have no plans to change it, either. Combined with the makeup and the clothes it challenges popular stereotypes. It’s also associated with lesbian women (hence, “dykey-do). People wonder about my orientation for several reasons (hair has been listed as one…go figure!). I leave ‘em wondering. Piss on ‘em.
I do this because at the moment, I enjoy it. When I don’t, I’ll stop. So, am I doing something I’m “forced” to do? Not to my way of thinking.
Now, the flip side is whether or not I judge/disapprove of/or whatever women who don’t do the clothes, the makeup, the massive hair removal. If I do/did, that would be a problem, you betcha sweet bippy. Fact is, I don’t. Been there, done that. Probably will be there again in a year, maybe two, maybe ten.
So…do I feel picked on by “rad fems?” Nope. I figure if anyone — rad fem to Rush Limbaugh — has an issue with my appearance, as long as I’m minimally appropriate to the situation and clean, it’s their problem. I don’t worry about it. If it’s there, I don’t notice it.
Witchy…you know I’m “girly” that way. Have you ever disapproved of me because of it? If you have, it went right over my head.
And, by the way, Witchy, you qualify for the gorgeous group. Guess you know what you’re talking about, huh?
Smoochies….feminine fluttering of fingers and eyelashes. Oops, excuse me, time to get my power drill and do some home repair. Hooo-yah!
witchywoo // August 29, 2007 at 9:21 pm |
You know, I could actually hear your voice saying all that, Dreamy. And it made me smile
“Witchy…you know I’m “girly” that way. Have you ever disapproved of me because of it?
‘ave I ‘eck-as-like! You know I haven’t – because I don’t and nor would I. I’d just point out the politics
Smoochies right backatcha you wonderful woman, you.
xxx
dreamy5 // August 29, 2007 at 9:33 pm |
I miss your voice, luv. Let’s talk soon? I’ve a new hobby.
And I know you’ve never disapproved of my girly crap. Sisters….always.
CoolAunt // August 30, 2007 at 4:48 pm |
“I’d just point out the politics .”
And have you? I ask because “I do it because I enjoy it,” and stating that one isn’t forced to do it doesn’t sound any different to me than, “I wear makeup because I like it and that has nothing to do with expectations placed upon me and all women by the patriarchy.”
witchywoo // August 30, 2007 at 5:38 pm |
“And have you?”
Yes, Cool Aunt. Dreamy and I are rl friends and we discuss both our feminist ideas and our ideas about feminism and, while we listen to what we each have to say about things, we often think differently.
dreamy5 // August 30, 2007 at 7:22 pm |
“I wear makeup because I like it and that has nothing to do with expectations placed upon me and all women by the patriarchy.”
Maybe it’s true for some women? Is this possible?
Cool Aunt, I admire the hell out of passionate conviction. But….I’d suggest that maybe some women actually mean what they say and possibly, just possibly, are not “victims.”
We often point out that men don’t listen to us. I think there are times when we don’t “listen to us” either.
allecto // September 6, 2007 at 6:45 am |
I don’t have any radical feminist friends who are ‘pretty’ or have ‘figures to die for’. I don’t even know what that means. Why would any Self-loving woman want to die for a figure? Why would I look at my friends as figures? They are women, they are sisters, they are not figures. If I called a woman pretty, quite frankly, it would be an insult. I am not ashamed of analysing ‘beauty’ rituals as being patriarchal and I do believe women who conform to male ‘beauty’ standards are victims of oppression. My radical feminist friends do not shaved their legs and pluck their eyebrows, wear make up, high heels, starve themselves ect. And as that is what being ‘pretty’ and having a ‘figure to die for’ means then I personally don’t believe that ‘pretty’ radical feminists exist.
L.M. // September 10, 2007 at 1:48 am |
allecto – Ok, I’m not trying to speak for Witchy Woo so sorry in advance if I misinterpret anything.*
I think that she means “figures to die for” as a figure that patriarchy exalts as beautiful and encourages women to hurt themselves (through fad diets, lipo, etc.) to get it and hate themselves if they cannot.
There are also some radical feminists who criticize beauty culture even if we may take part in it ourselves for varying reasons – for example, shave our legs if we want to keep our jobs or because we can’t bear being harassed for it.
It’s also different to 1.) adhere to traditional, patriarchal beauty norms (as you mentioned, remove body hair, diet, wear “feminine clothing”) and 2.) be physically beautiful through genetics or chance. Regarding 2.), it’s possible for a radfem to opt out of 1.) but still be considered “pretty” because she was born with blonde hair, blue eyes, big breasts, a thin figure, a small nose or very little body hair, etc. I mentioned upthread that I have one feature (eye shape and eyelid structure) that’s considered beautiful, I’ve had it since I was a baby, and I’d still have it no matter how much I opted out of beauty culture.
* You can delete this comment if it’s really off-target.
Liz // October 9, 2007 at 4:00 pm |
I just read this even though you posted it some time ago. My response: YES!!!!!!!
Loved it.