FEMINIST LISA FRANK

dismantling the patriarchy one rainbow kitten at a time (this blog is not endorsed, run, or appreciated by Lisa Frank)

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Megan Rapinoe.

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Marsha P Johnson, a queer activist who played a large part in the Stonewall Riots.

[feministlisafrank]

Dear Strange Man on the Train,

At 11 o’clock at night, you moved across the train car to sit far too close to two girls about half your age so you could interrupt our conversation to tell us how pretty we are. We said thank you, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.

You interrupted us a second time to say that you didn’t want to bother us, but we needed to hear it, how pretty we are. We said cool, thanks, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.

You interrupted us a third time to say you wouldn’t say anything else, you didn’t want to bother us, you just had to let us know. We said have a good night, and went back to our conversation.

This seemed to perplex you. You came all that way across a train car to bestow upon us this life altering knowledge - the fact we were pretty - and all you got was a polite thank you? You grumbled about gratitude, about how you better not end up on facebook, were we putting you on facebook? Why was my friend looking at her phone? Was she putting you on facebook? All you’d done was tell us we were pretty.

At this point, my friend says, “Sir, we’re trying to have a conversation. Please don’t be disrespectful.”

This was when you got angry. Disrespectful? YOU? For taking the time out of your day to tell us we were pretty? Did we know we were pretty?

“Yes, we knew,” says my friend.

Well, that was the last straw. How dare we know we were pretty! Sure, you were allowed to tell us we were pretty, but we weren’t allowed to think it independently, without your permission! And if we had somehow already known - perhaps some other strange man had informed us earlier in the day - we certainly weren’t allowed to SAY it! Where did we get off, having confidence in ourselves? You wanted us to know we were pretty, sure, but only as a reward for good behavior. We were pretty when you gifted it upon us with your words, and not a moment before! You raged for a minute about how horrible we were for saying we thought we were pretty, how awful we turned out to be.

I took a page out of your book and interrupted you. “Sir, you said you wouldn’t say anything else, and then you kept talking,” I said. “You complimented us, we said thank you, and we don’t owe you anything else. It’s late, you’re a stranger, and I don’t want to talk to you. We’ve tried to disengage multiple times but you keep bothering us.”

At this point, our train pulled into the next stop. My friend suggested we leave, so we got up and went to the door.

Seeing your last chance, you lashed out with the killing blow. “I was wrong!” you shouted at us as we left, “You’re ugly! You’re both REALLY UGLY!”

Fortunately, since our worth as human beings is in no way dependent upon how physically attractive you find us, my friend and I were unharmed and continued on with our night. She walked home; I switched to the next train car and sat down.

So, strange man, I know you’re confused. I don’t know if you’ll think about anything I said to you, but I hope you do learn this: when you give someone something - a gift, a compliment, whatever - with stringent stipulations about how they respond to it, you are not giving anything. You are setting a trap. It is not as nice as you think it is.

But you’ll be happy to know that when I sat down in the next car, a strange man several seats over called, “Hey, pretty girl. Nice guitar. How was your concert?”

“Thanks. Good,” I said, then looked away and put on my headphones, the universal sign for ‘I’d like to be left alone.’

“Wow. Fine. Whatever. Fucking bitch,” he said.

[jacobross820-blog]

Fucking creepers. May I ask how feminism or anything similar would actually have prevented this from happening? This ya already socially unacceptable.

[feministlisafrank]

Men - because to be clear, I called them ‘strange men’ because they were strangers to me, not because there was anything abnormal about them - act this way because they are raised in a culture that lets them believe their time and opinions are more important than the time and opinions of women, and that as a consequence, they are owed women’s attention. They are socialized to believe women should be grateful to them for their attention, and that they are being denied something rightfully theirs when women are not.

Raising someone with feminism, the idea that all sexes/genders are equals and thus no party is beholden to or more important than another, would have prevented this by not allowing men to grow up expecting ‘rights’ that are not actually theirs. You say this is socially unacceptable, but there were 20+ people on that train who actively watched us being harassed and did not say a word. It is socially unacceptable, but this kind of thing happens to me and many other women multiple times a week, with often more traumatic results.

So, yes, I believe more feminism would prevent sexist moments like this. Also, water is wet, the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, and cheese is addictive.

[rc-hawkeye]

This was not sexist, this was an awkward man, possibly trying to get a positive reaction versus a neutral or negative one that was displayed, based off of the context you showed. Awful that he interrupted your conversation, and wanted to be engaging socially, whatever his reasons that motivated him. Generalizations of a certain biological sex does not help society as a whole, and the ideal of feminism does not help. The people who “actively watched” you be verbally harassed possibly believed you were perfectly capable in handle yourselves. You’d probably be more upset if there was another man that told the strange man to back off, due to him possibly being “chivalrous”. I find the whole event to be amusing for the awkwardness of the conversation and would only had stepped in had he’d been physical. I really don’t see how this event was “sexist”, and only say that you’re really reaching.

[featherplucking-deactivated2016]

Well I wouldn’t see any part of this amusing, more times then I can count on my hands I’ve been"complemented" and met with really awful responses when I don’t praise someone endlessly… Yes some guys are awkward which is unfortunately bundled up it these kind of interaction. But the problem is when people are instantly hostile when you don’t drop everything and pretend it’s the first time someone’s every noticed you let alone called you pretty! Imagine it’s so women saying this to a guy, if she reacted the same way she’d get called out on being a bitch or what have you… I’m in a shit mood some my writing is terrible but here are two examples;

At the shops waiting for people doing my own thing and someone calls me pretty. I’m preoccupied but I look up and say oh thank you and go back to what I was doing only to have them mutter that they did me a favour and it’d pay to not be so emo. Like sorry I’m on the phone and didn’t drop everything… Perhaps I could say “I was at fault for not engaging in further conversation”

And more recently on a train had a dude compliment my bow to which I replied the same way “oh thanks” and he wished me a good day as I did to him. That was it. Same response from me but boy it’s nice to not feel like I’m a bad person for not saying how amazing and nice they are for complementing me??

Ugh I doubt any of this makes sense or helps but I really can’t look at the situations I’ve been put into and find them funny…..

[rc-hawkeye]

Thanks for the response and the perspective, and yes they are two different incidents that happened. I find that these compliment baiters to be funny, because they just want attention too, but aren’t observant of the environment they’re in. The situation is uncomfortable, sure, especially when they resort to negative attention seeking behaviors, but for her to contort it to a sexist deposition is something that I’m confused about and don’t agree with at all. These people were probably not taught the art of communication and observation. They don’t need feminism for that. They need to experience a social life.

[elegantmess-southernbelle]

It’s got nothing to do with sex. There is a pervasive psychological thread where men chase and women are chased. It’s not always in a sexual way. It’s a power thing. These awkward men don’t seem to approach other men. Why? Because those men might chase back. A person could get hurt that way. But, women, our subconscious tells us, do not fight or chase.

Might a social life help? Depends on the crowd. A crowd of people who object to such behavior and socially reward the opposite might nip those shenanigans in the bud. But, those shenanigans might never start if a child of any gender is taught, starting at a young age, that nobody owes you any reaction.

I’m awkward myself. Right now, I’m out of my comfort zone for the next three days and I don’t know what to do. But my first instinct after years of being told to be nice and stay passive and quiet is to hold back and remain silent. Why? Because girls don’t approach. They do not engage. They are engaged. I live in terror that someone will take offense to my trying to stick up for my personal freedom and space and attack me. It happens everyday and in every country. Would a social life help? Maybe. But that assumes I’m socializing with people who won’t push or get aggressive.

And there is where feminism comes in. It doesn’t start as sex, it might not end as sex. It begins with how we’re taught power and behavior. It ends with either what happened above or the opposite.

[feministlisafrank]

^ Yep, this.

Also, an interesting intellectual disconnect: a guy can experience this situation and “find the compliment baiters amusing,” whereas most women in this situation have been raised to be careful and behave so they won’t get raped or murdered by a stranger, told all the ways to not make themselves a potential victim, consumed media that is just a repetition of stories of women being hurt for essentially existing. It’s not particularly funny or amusing to me since every time it happens, I have to wonder, is this the man who’s going to snap and end my life?

But, fine, whatever, let’s say for a minute that these are just a couple of awkward guys who don’t know how to interact with women and are handling it badly. Let’s say they’re men who have been brought up consuming that same media, where the man has to be in charge, rugged, emotionally controlled, suave, and the initiator of all potential romantic interactions. Let’s say that they fall short in some way and can’t emulate the ideal male image perpetuated by society, so they can’t figure out how to interact in social situations, so they just begin to experience a deep level of frustration and despair that they can’t express to anyone, since men are supposed to be tough and unemotional. Let’s say this emotional cycle continues until it results in them lashing out at strange women because they can’t figure out how to get their attention, even though it is the one thing they want and feel they deserve.

You know what would prevent men feeling like this? Feminism. Because our society puts just as much pressure on men to fill sometimes unachievable roles as it does women, and a society where we were equally allowed to fill a variety of roles regardless of race/gender/sexuality/etc would not hold that same pressure.

[feministlisafrank]

If this had been a woman near our age, this never would have happened because womxn generally don’t do this shit to each other. 

I think the thing that amazes me the most about the people still complaining about this three years after I posted it is that they have this idea that every time a man is within fifteen feet of a woman, that woman starts screaming harassment at them. I don’t assume every man that talks to me is hitting on me, which is why this blog is not bloated with every conversation I have ever had with a man; I assume the ones who are actively hitting on me and also not taking social cues or outright “no”s as an answer are hitting on me, and I call them out when they feel genuinely threatening, like above. It’s truly amazing (in the most sarcastic tone you can read that in) that people can read a written recounting of a situation and be completely confident that they know significantly more than anyone present how the situation went down and should have been handled.

If you compliment someone, you are not owed any response more than “thank you.” You are not EVEN owed a “thank you.”

You are not entitled to anyone’s attention.

[feministlisafrank]

that last ask sounded like "if a porn falls in the forest and it was a woman that cut it down, am I sexist then?"

“If a tree falls in a forest and a man isn’t around to hear it, does it fall poorly or WELL, ACTUALLY?”

[feministlisafrank]

If a women who I know starts showing me porn of herself do I not watch it as it would objectify her or watch it to not disrespect her womanhood?

If a man who I do not know makes a fake tumblr for the specific purpose of asking me a stupid question because he is desperate for attention but too terrified of consequences to own up to his actions, do I not answer it privately because it’s better to let him stew in a childish rage over being ignored, or do I not answer it publicly so others can join me in a collective eye roll over the way (presumably) grown ass man go to such lengths to anonymously annoy women?

I think the real answer is “Stop acting like garbage on the internet.”

[feministlisafrank]

How does it feel knowing that you'll never be as respected as me because you have one less X chromosome?

How does it feel being a grown adult and still having no idea how biology works?

[feministlisafrank]

[feministlisafrank]

EXIT POLL, noun - a poll of people leaving a polling place, asking how they voted. Used in many different nations after elections, appearing back in history as far as the 1940′s. If you’d like to know more about the general concept, it has its own wikipedia page right here.

If you’re curious about how the United States conducts exit polls specifically, there’s some more information in this article here.

If you’re interested in just learning the specific demographics from the 2016 election exit polls, because you have inexplicably managed to not once come across them by the middle of 2018, there’s a thorough break down here.

I found all of this information in a google search that probably took me less time to complete than it took you to type your very important and not at all tedious comments.

[ziggyplayedd]

hi! i saw your post about men being exhausting and like yes? but not all men. I'm male and i like to help out at local shelters, the community garden, im an advocate and supporter for the lgbt community. im a feminist and against people who think trump is doing good things, and much more. dont let men set a precedent for what masculinity is. there are good guys out there, i promise. im sorry if this was rude in any way, i didn't intend for it to be like that.

so. i think there’s a good chance this was a joke. i lost my mind laughing when i first got it. but also? this is exactly how men talk, so i’m gonna break it down seriously. 

i made that post after dinner with my friend’s family. his dad, let’s call him john, was belittling his wife so she wasn’t talking much and he’d made a few jabs about his son’s painted nails so his son was kind of wilting. john’s a nice guy, smart guy, really likes me & thinks i’m smart. i was pretty much carrying all the emotional labor at that dinner–trying to make my friend and his mom feel comfortable while also engaging with john. we were making conversation about lots of things, it wasn’t a particularly controversial or heated discussion at really any point in time. again, john’s a cool guy–he’s liberal and progressive and knows that i’m a lesbian and all sorts of nice things. he works for a bigggg banking company–i don’t wanna say which one, but you’d know the name. we were talking about #metoo and he starts talking about how sexual harassment isn’t really an issue where he works. 

three hours before he said this, a man in times square had grabbed my boob. at a restaurant i worked at, a rapist who worked there got my number off the scheduling app and would text me vile things while we were both working to make me uncomfortable. he’d also touch my ass every shift but always managed to pretend like it was an accident. it wasn’t. my best friend, who was also at dinner with us, worked at her moms law firm when she was 17, and the man across from her had a countdown on his whiteboard to the day she turned 18 and every day he would look at her as he changed the number. i’ve been sexually assaulted multiple times outside of these instances, and so has she. 

but other men don’t see these things. 

and this man looks at me, and tells me sexual harassment doesn’t happen, because he doesn’t see it. and here’s the thing: that’s not why i’m mad. i’m not mad because he didn’t know. 

i’m mad because i know this man. he is my friend’s father, he is my father, he is my uncles, he is my professors, he is my cousins, and my bosses, and my colleagues. i know how you have to talk to these men. it’s a game. and you have to play along whether you want to or not, because they won’t hear a word you say if you don’t. 

here’s how the game works: john talks about everything like he’s the authority on the matter, because he can’t get it through his brain that someone, especially someone who is not a man, could possibly know something he doesn’t. so john starts talking about things very confidently. and because nobody knows everything, he gets a lot of things wrong. things that i refuse to let him be wrong about. so if i want to change john’s mind, if i want him to hear my point of view, i have to speak to him in the only way he will listen. i have to be, above all, pleasant. john has been taught for years to laugh at a woman’s anger, so if any hint of indignation sneaks into my voice, he won’t take me seriously any more and i’ll lose him entirely.  i have to smile and laugh a little and be charming. but i also have to be articulate. i have to make sure i sound intelligent or else he’ll dismiss me as a stupid teenage girl who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. but i also can’t sound too intelligent because if he starts feeling threatened by my intelligence he’ll get defensive. (sidenote! he has a tiny dick.) so it’s quite a complicated game but i’m good at it. in fact, i’m one of the best. so here i am, carefully navigating the best way to hold this man’s hand and babysit him as i give him a kindergarten level course on sexual assault in the workplace, while also not letting him realize that i’m having to condescend to him because his brain is as tiny as his dick, and can only handful little bits of new information spoonfed to him like applesauce. i have to make it sound like i think he is not only smart, but smarter than me. i have to scatter in little phrases like, “in my experience” or “i could be wrong” and constantly undermine myself, even when speaking on a topic i am incredibly well-versed in, because i have to suggest that i think he is smarter than me or else he won’t deem me worthy of his attention. 

i’m good at it. i play the little fucking game and before i know it, i’ve got john here nodding along and acting like he agreed with what i’m saying all along, acting like he came up with it, acting like he DIDN’T totally contradict what i just told him minutes before. but since he didn’t come up with it, he’ll likely interrupt me before i even get to the end of my point and say something totally misinformed and now i’m trying to educate him on both of the things he got wrong but before i can even do that he’s interrupting me again and now there’s THREE things i’ve gotta teach this guy without him catching on to the fact that i’m teaching him. 

now. here’s the best part about the game. it’s soul-shatteringly dehumanizing. to disregard your own trauma, your own emotion, your own incredibly valid anger that you have fought and fought and fought to believe you have a right to feel, to tone down your beliefs in order to make them more palatable to someone who is this deeply ignorant, to force yourself to giggle and be charming as you discuss the thing that has ripped you into shreds, to ignore how triggering it is to even breach this topic in conversation, to be complicit in making yourself small in order to get your point across, to look into the eyes of a man who has, unwittingly, because of his ignorance, enabled other men to engage in this same behavior–it turns a dinner conversation into a thing that is traumatizing in it’s own right. 

and i feel obligated to put myself through this because of my privilege, because as an attractive, white twenty year old, i can hold this man’s attention better than a massive portion of the population, who he likely wouldn’t give the time of  day to. i refuse to let him live his life unchallenged, so i do what i have to do to make myself heard. 

and i feel the repercussions of this so strongly i dissociate more viciously than i have in weeks and lose all memory of a solid 3 hours of my life after this conversation. 

and i come on here, and post: men are useless and exhausting. because i am angry at what men have done to me. at what they continue to do to me. at what i must do to myself in order to force them to wake up and realize what other men are doing to me and to please, for the love of god, MAKE IT STOP. 

and i get this message from you, a dumbass who’s got his head shoved so far up his own asshole that it’s about to come back up through his esophagus, assuming you know what i’m talking about. assuming you know more than me about men and about my experiences with them, about why i made this post. assuming that because you’re not the scum of the fucking earth and because you do three good things, it somehow balances out the treatment i have received for years from men, and makes my anger towards them, and my hatred of them: unjust. and my post wasn’t even me being angry! it was me being exhausted!!!!! if i’m tired of men, why the fuck would you, “a male” deem it at all appropriate to come near me, to send me a message, to engage with me at all? leave me alone! you know nothing! 

and as much as i thought this was a joke at first, the more i read the message the more i’m convinced that it was written by a man, because even a girl pretending to be a man as a joke wouldn’t manage to sound this fucking stupid. i have dozens of stories exactly like this over the course of at least 10 years of my life. i know more than you. and this isn’t FUCKING about you. if you weren’t useless and exhausting, you would have happily scrolled by and went on with your night. but by sending me this message you proved yourself to be IMPRESSIVELY: useless and exhausting. shut the fuck up for about 3-4 years. you might learn something. also, read men explain things to me by rebecca solnit. she says all this better than i do. 

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Inga Muscio.

[the-cancer-of-society-co-le-blog]

I am a straight, white, cis, male, or in other words a bug of a person. Please tell me how I oppress my sister, my mother, my best friend, my teacher, my aunt, etc, personally.. Please tell me. I dare you

[feministlisafrank]

Do you want me to start with the implied threat in your statement, the way you appear to have created an anonymous blog for the sole purpose of insulting and criticizing blogs that argue for equality, the way you asked a total stranger to provide you with specific personal examples because you want to shut me down rather than engage in an actual dialogue, or the fact that you already consider yourself to be a blight on humanity without my assistance based on your username?

[firstnonbinarypresident-deactiv]

Or the fact that he used all the women he knows as leverage in this conversation as if knowing 50% of the population is so difficult and as if he chose to have a mother, sister, aunt, and teacher. As if by having those people in your life we automatically know for certain that you don’t treat them like crap.

Or how he immediately made this post about himself when he isn’t a poc or a woman so this wasn’t addressed to him, but I guess he just clicked the first post he saw on your blog because any blog with feminism in the name is one he wants to harass regardless of the kind of feminism it is.

Like… dude, we don’t know you, we can’t really tell you how you oppress them besides by willfully ignoring the fact that they are systemically oppressed by forces other than you, by the government and media and a lot of men that you aren’t, but we can certainly tell you that there are plenty of people that have daughters and sisters and mothers, men in fact, that rape them, abuse them, murder them, that’s an indisputable fact regardless of your beliefs on feminism. So no, you don’t get to treat this like just because you have a woman in your life you’re immune to the accusations of sexism. Unless you’ve lived in a strict commune in Antarctica, you’ve men some women. All sexists have met women. How else did they oppress them?

[feministlisafrank]

[feministlisafrank]

First, it’s people/person of color, not “colored.” That’s an outdated and offensive term, which you probably at least suspected since you put it in quotes, but went ahead and used it anyway. So if you’re hoping to have people distrust you for your actions instead of your identity, you’re off to a solid start. If you’re genuinely unsure what a group of people prefers to be called, google it, or ask one of them politely.

If you get upset by oppression and want to be a part of changing it, here is my suggestion. Every time you see someone complaining about cis straight white people and it bugs you, go do something to prove it wrong. Donate what you can to the ACLU, or Planned Parenthood, or any of the other myriad of organizations working against oppressive power structures. Call your government representatives and tell them a cause you want them to consider important. If you’re in the US, volunteer to help get people registered to vote, or make calls/door-to-door visits to talk to people about voting in the mid-terms, or supporting candidates that are advocating for change. Read an informative article and share it on social media, or with conservative family members. Read a book by someone in the LGBTQIA+ community. Watch a show with diverse representation and a showrunner of color. See if there’s anything you can do at your place of work to make it more accessible. Something.

If every time you felt that all straight white people were getting a bad rap they didn’t *all* deserve you did something productive to prove it wrong, not only would you be bettering yourself and society, but you’d be helping to change the perception. When instead you rant reply to someone’s post - which initially was *JUST* a post about considering it reasonable to hold everyone accountable for working to educate themselves about the plights of others and helping to lessen them - about how unfair it all is that strangers aren’t giving you credit for work they don’t know you’re doing, not only do you not come across as an ally, but you waste everyone’s time.

I am white, and I am a feminist. I don’t get upset or defensive when I see people complaining about White Feminists, because I know there is a specific type of person that they’re complaining about, and I know that I put active work every day into not being that person. I don’t need someone to pat me on the back or acknowledge it. I love reading complaints about White Feminists, because sometimes they teach me about things I don’t know and show me behaviors I don’t want to adopt, ways to keep myself from becoming the kind of person being complained about. No stranger is complaining about me personally. But if they *are*? I want to listen, and learn to do better.

Trust isn’t something you just get from people the second you meet them. Trust is something you earn over time, repeatedly, through consistent actions. Honestly? Some people might never trust you, and it may or may not have anything to do with you. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. Fighting oppression isn’t something you should do because you want to be given a gold star for your ability to be a decent human being. It’s something you should do because it needs to be done.

[feministlisafrank]

Dear Strange Man on the Train,

At 11 o’clock at night, you moved across the train car to sit far too close to two girls about half your age so you could interrupt our conversation to tell us how pretty we are. We said thank you, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.

You interrupted us a second time to say that you didn’t want to bother us, but we needed to hear it, how pretty we are. We said cool, thanks, have a good night, and went back to our conversation.

You interrupted us a third time to say you wouldn’t say anything else, you didn’t want to bother us, you just had to let us know. We said have a good night, and went back to our conversation.

This seemed to perplex you. You came all that way across a train car to bestow upon us this life altering knowledge - the fact we were pretty - and all you got was a polite thank you? You grumbled about gratitude, about how you better not end up on facebook, were we putting you on facebook? Why was my friend looking at her phone? Was she putting you on facebook? All you’d done was tell us we were pretty.

At this point, my friend says, “Sir, we’re trying to have a conversation. Please don’t be disrespectful.”

This was when you got angry. Disrespectful? YOU? For taking the time out of your day to tell us we were pretty? Did we know we were pretty?

“Yes, we knew,” says my friend.

Well, that was the last straw. How dare we know we were pretty! Sure, you were allowed to tell us we were pretty, but we weren’t allowed to think it independently, without your permission! And if we had somehow already known - perhaps some other strange man had informed us earlier in the day - we certainly weren’t allowed to SAY it! Where did we get off, having confidence in ourselves? You wanted us to know we were pretty, sure, but only as a reward for good behavior. We were pretty when you gifted it upon us with your words, and not a moment before! You raged for a minute about how horrible we were for saying we thought we were pretty, how awful we turned out to be.

I took a page out of your book and interrupted you. “Sir, you said you wouldn’t say anything else, and then you kept talking,” I said. “You complimented us, we said thank you, and we don’t owe you anything else. It’s late, you’re a stranger, and I don’t want to talk to you. We’ve tried to disengage multiple times but you keep bothering us.”

At this point, our train pulled into the next stop. My friend suggested we leave, so we got up and went to the door.

Seeing your last chance, you lashed out with the killing blow. “I was wrong!” you shouted at us as we left, “You’re ugly! You’re both REALLY UGLY!”

Fortunately, since our worth as human beings is in no way dependent upon how physically attractive you find us, my friend and I were unharmed and continued on with our night. She walked home; I switched to the next train car and sat down.

So, strange man, I know you’re confused. I don’t know if you’ll think about anything I said to you, but I hope you do learn this: when you give someone something - a gift, a compliment, whatever - with stringent stipulations about how they respond to it, you are not giving anything. You are setting a trap. It is not as nice as you think it is.

But you’ll be happy to know that when I sat down in the next car, a strange man several seats over called, “Hey, pretty girl. Nice guitar. How was your concert?”

“Thanks. Good,” I said, then looked away and put on my headphones, the universal sign for ‘I’d like to be left alone.’

“Wow. Fine. Whatever. Fucking bitch,” he said.

[jacobross820-blog]

Fucking creepers. May I ask how feminism or anything similar would actually have prevented this from happening? This ya already socially unacceptable.

[feministlisafrank]

Men - because to be clear, I called them ‘strange men’ because they were strangers to me, not because there was anything abnormal about them - act this way because they are raised in a culture that lets them believe their time and opinions are more important than the time and opinions of women, and that as a consequence, they are owed women’s attention. They are socialized to believe women should be grateful to them for their attention, and that they are being denied something rightfully theirs when women are not.

Raising someone with feminism, the idea that all sexes/genders are equals and thus no party is beholden to or more important than another, would have prevented this by not allowing men to grow up expecting ‘rights’ that are not actually theirs. You say this is socially unacceptable, but there were 20+ people on that train who actively watched us being harassed and did not say a word. It is socially unacceptable, but this kind of thing happens to me and many other women multiple times a week, with often more traumatic results.

So, yes, I believe more feminism would prevent sexist moments like this. Also, water is wet, the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, and cheese is addictive.

[rc-hawkeye]

This was not sexist, this was an awkward man, possibly trying to get a positive reaction versus a neutral or negative one that was displayed, based off of the context you showed. Awful that he interrupted your conversation, and wanted to be engaging socially, whatever his reasons that motivated him. Generalizations of a certain biological sex does not help society as a whole, and the ideal of feminism does not help. The people who “actively watched” you be verbally harassed possibly believed you were perfectly capable in handle yourselves. You’d probably be more upset if there was another man that told the strange man to back off, due to him possibly being “chivalrous”. I find the whole event to be amusing for the awkwardness of the conversation and would only had stepped in had he’d been physical. I really don’t see how this event was “sexist”, and only say that you’re really reaching.

[featherplucking-deactivated2016]

Well I wouldn’t see any part of this amusing, more times then I can count on my hands I’ve been"complemented" and met with really awful responses when I don’t praise someone endlessly… Yes some guys are awkward which is unfortunately bundled up it these kind of interaction. But the problem is when people are instantly hostile when you don’t drop everything and pretend it’s the first time someone’s every noticed you let alone called you pretty! Imagine it’s so women saying this to a guy, if she reacted the same way she’d get called out on being a bitch or what have you… I’m in a shit mood some my writing is terrible but here are two examples;

At the shops waiting for people doing my own thing and someone calls me pretty. I’m preoccupied but I look up and say oh thank you and go back to what I was doing only to have them mutter that they did me a favour and it’d pay to not be so emo. Like sorry I’m on the phone and didn’t drop everything… Perhaps I could say “I was at fault for not engaging in further conversation”

And more recently on a train had a dude compliment my bow to which I replied the same way “oh thanks” and he wished me a good day as I did to him. That was it. Same response from me but boy it’s nice to not feel like I’m a bad person for not saying how amazing and nice they are for complementing me??

Ugh I doubt any of this makes sense or helps but I really can’t look at the situations I’ve been put into and find them funny…..

[rc-hawkeye]

Thanks for the response and the perspective, and yes they are two different incidents that happened. I find that these compliment baiters to be funny, because they just want attention too, but aren’t observant of the environment they’re in. The situation is uncomfortable, sure, especially when they resort to negative attention seeking behaviors, but for her to contort it to a sexist deposition is something that I’m confused about and don’t agree with at all. These people were probably not taught the art of communication and observation. They don’t need feminism for that. They need to experience a social life.

[elegantmess-southernbelle]

It’s got nothing to do with sex. There is a pervasive psychological thread where men chase and women are chased. It’s not always in a sexual way. It’s a power thing. These awkward men don’t seem to approach other men. Why? Because those men might chase back. A person could get hurt that way. But, women, our subconscious tells us, do not fight or chase.

Might a social life help? Depends on the crowd. A crowd of people who object to such behavior and socially reward the opposite might nip those shenanigans in the bud. But, those shenanigans might never start if a child of any gender is taught, starting at a young age, that nobody owes you any reaction.

I’m awkward myself. Right now, I’m out of my comfort zone for the next three days and I don’t know what to do. But my first instinct after years of being told to be nice and stay passive and quiet is to hold back and remain silent. Why? Because girls don’t approach. They do not engage. They are engaged. I live in terror that someone will take offense to my trying to stick up for my personal freedom and space and attack me. It happens everyday and in every country. Would a social life help? Maybe. But that assumes I’m socializing with people who won’t push or get aggressive.

And there is where feminism comes in. It doesn’t start as sex, it might not end as sex. It begins with how we’re taught power and behavior. It ends with either what happened above or the opposite.

[feministlisafrank]

^ Yep, this.

Also, an interesting intellectual disconnect: a guy can experience this situation and “find the compliment baiters amusing,” whereas most women in this situation have been raised to be careful and behave so they won’t get raped or murdered by a stranger, told all the ways to not make themselves a potential victim, consumed media that is just a repetition of stories of women being hurt for essentially existing. It’s not particularly funny or amusing to me since every time it happens, I have to wonder, is this the man who’s going to snap and end my life?

But, fine, whatever, let’s say for a minute that these are just a couple of awkward guys who don’t know how to interact with women and are handling it badly. Let’s say they’re men who have been brought up consuming that same media, where the man has to be in charge, rugged, emotionally controlled, suave, and the initiator of all potential romantic interactions. Let’s say that they fall short in some way and can’t emulate the ideal male image perpetuated by society, so they can’t figure out how to interact in social situations, so they just begin to experience a deep level of frustration and despair that they can’t express to anyone, since men are supposed to be tough and unemotional. Let’s say this emotional cycle continues until it results in them lashing out at strange women because they can’t figure out how to get their attention, even though it is the one thing they want and feel they deserve.

You know what would prevent men feeling like this? Feminism. Because our society puts just as much pressure on men to fill sometimes unachievable roles as it does women, and a society where we were equally allowed to fill a variety of roles regardless of race/gender/sexuality/etc would not hold that same pressure.

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Senator Tammy Duckworth.

[cullingofthelambs]

So how exactly is Trump a bully? Do keep in mind that you live in a country where you can openly denounce and mock your own leaders without fear of imprisonment or worse…

[feministlisafrank]

Do keep in mind that Trump had absolutely nothing to do with making the US a place where you can “openly denounce and mock your own leaders without fear of imprisonment or worse” and frequently makes statements that sound like he’d be more than happy to abolish those protections. 

Putting aside the term ‘bully’ for a second since it’s technically subjective, Trump and members of his administration frequently use official channels and twitter accounts to attack and disparage both businesses and private citizens for taking actions/making statements with which the administration doesn’t agree. At best, this is incredibly tacky. At worst, it’s a federal offense. It’s against the law to use public office for private gain. He also knows that he has a very active and protective fan base that will look up anyone he speaks badly of and harass them. He has encouraged this behavior, both online and at his rallies, and even encouraged physical violence against people. He’s made statements supporting making aggressive sexual advances against women without their consent. He enacted a policy to remove migrant children from their families for seeking asylum - which is not illegal - and then claimed it was the fault of the Democrats not agreeing with him that was keeping this policy in place. This is all pretty standard bully behavior, though honestly, ‘bully’ is a much nicer word for him than I would personally use. 

[plaguedaddy420]

Is no one going to mention the lisa frank background…?

[feministlisafrank]

[feministlisafrank]

What rights do men have, that women don't, in first world countries?

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Kristin Russo.

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Inga Muscio.

[the-cancer-of-society-co-le-blog]

I am a straight, white, cis, male, or in other words a bug of a person. Please tell me how I oppress my sister, my mother, my best friend, my teacher, my aunt, etc, personally.. Please tell me. I dare you

[feministlisafrank]

Do you want me to start with the implied threat in your statement, the way you appear to have created an anonymous blog for the sole purpose of insulting and criticizing blogs that argue for equality, the way you asked a total stranger to provide you with specific personal examples because you want to shut me down rather than engage in an actual dialogue, or the fact that you already consider yourself to be a blight on humanity without my assistance based on your username?

[firstnonbinarypresident-deactiv]

Or the fact that he used all the women he knows as leverage in this conversation as if knowing 50% of the population is so difficult and as if he chose to have a mother, sister, aunt, and teacher. As if by having those people in your life we automatically know for certain that you don’t treat them like crap.

Or how he immediately made this post about himself when he isn’t a poc or a woman so this wasn’t addressed to him, but I guess he just clicked the first post he saw on your blog because any blog with feminism in the name is one he wants to harass regardless of the kind of feminism it is.

Like… dude, we don’t know you, we can’t really tell you how you oppress them besides by willfully ignoring the fact that they are systemically oppressed by forces other than you, by the government and media and a lot of men that you aren’t, but we can certainly tell you that there are plenty of people that have daughters and sisters and mothers, men in fact, that rape them, abuse them, murder them, that’s an indisputable fact regardless of your beliefs on feminism. So no, you don’t get to treat this like just because you have a woman in your life you’re immune to the accusations of sexism. Unless you’ve lived in a strict commune in Antarctica, you’ve men some women. All sexists have met women. How else did they oppress them?

[feministlisafrank]

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Senator Tammy Duckworth.

[cullingofthelambs]

So how exactly is Trump a bully? Do keep in mind that you live in a country where you can openly denounce and mock your own leaders without fear of imprisonment or worse…

[feministlisafrank]

Do keep in mind that Trump had absolutely nothing to do with making the US a place where you can “openly denounce and mock your own leaders without fear of imprisonment or worse” and frequently makes statements that sound like he’d be more than happy to abolish those protections. 

Putting aside the term ‘bully’ for a second since it’s technically subjective, Trump and members of his administration frequently use official channels and twitter accounts to attack and disparage both businesses and private citizens for taking actions/making statements with which the administration doesn’t agree. At best, this is incredibly tacky. At worst, it’s a federal offense. It’s against the law to use public office for private gain. He also knows that he has a very active and protective fan base that will look up anyone he speaks badly of and harass them. He has encouraged this behavior, both online and at his rallies, and even encouraged physical violence against people. He’s made statements supporting making aggressive sexual advances against women without their consent. He enacted a policy to remove migrant children from their families for seeking asylum - which is not illegal - and then claimed it was the fault of the Democrats not agreeing with him that was keeping this policy in place. This is all pretty standard bully behavior, though honestly, ‘bully’ is a much nicer word for him than I would personally use. 

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

The Anatomy of Rage

This post is going to be a mess, because I’m just …untidily angry right now. It began with a series of tweets I made today about my ever-broken Datsun. The mechanic had told my husband that he was “working on that Datsun just as fast as I can because now that I’ve met her I can’t wait to get that little girl behind the wheel again.“

Little girl.

As I tweeted that I was 33 and had earned each of those years and thus preferred to be referred to as "Danger Smog-Dragon” or “Rage-Mistress” or “Ephemeral Time Lady” or “Maggie Stiefvater, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of the Raven Cycle,” a well-meaning fellow replied that perhaps I should “use [my] words, politely but firmly, to his face…” He further observed that he’d told his wife that “you know, Honey, unless you’re willing to SAY THAT to (those people), NOTHING is going to change”.

(note: please do not go search for this fellow on twitter to rage at him; this is not about him. He is set dressing, made more appropriate to the conversation at hand by the fact that he probably is a perfectly nice guy who really didn’t mean disrespect).

I told TwitterMan that I was tired of have to use my words.It’s been 33 years of using my words. Why is it my job to continuously ask to be treated equivalent to a male customer? Why is that when I arrive at a shop, I’m reminded that I have to push the clutch in if I want to start my own car? It’s 2015. Why is it still all sexism all the time?

I discovered that I was actually furious. I thought I was over being furious, but it turns out, the rage was merely dormant. I’m furious that it’s been over a decade and nothing has changed. I’m furious that sexism was everywhere in the world of college-Maggie and it remains thus, even if I out-learn, out-earn, out-drive, and out-perform my male counterparts. At the end of the day, I’m still “little girl.”

Possibly this is the point where some people are asking why this tiny gesture of all gestures should be the one to break me.

Here is the anatomy of my rage.

Step one: It is 1999 or 2000. I am 16. I go to college. A professor tells me I’m pretty. A married man in the bagpipe band I’m in tells me he just can’t control himself around me: he stays up nights thinking of my skin. Another man tells me he can’t believe that ‘a little bitch’ like me got into the competition group after a year of playing when he’s been at it for twenty years. After becoming friends with a professor’s daughter, I’m at her house sleeping on the couch, and I wake up to find the professor running his hand from my ankle bone to my thigh. I pretend I’m still asleep. I’m 17. “If something happened to my wife,” he tells me later, “I could be with you.” At my next visit to her house, I see the wife’s left a book on the kitchen table: how to rekindle your husband’s love.

Step two: It’s 2008. I finally buy the car of my dreams, a 1973 Camaro, and make it my official business vehicle. The first time I take it to put gas in it, a man tells me, “if I were your husband, I wouldn’t want you out driving my car.” I tell him, “if you were my husband, I’d be a widow.” The car requires a lot of gas. I get cat-called every other time I’m at a gas station. Once, I go into the gas station to get a drink, and when I come out, a bunch of guys have parked me in. They want, they say, to have a word with me, little lady. We play automotive chicken which I win because I would rather smash the back of my ’73 Camaro into their IROC than have to stab one of them with the knife on my keychain.

Step three: It’s 2011. I’m on tour in a European country, on my own, escorted only by my foreign publisher. I am at a business dinner, and say I’m going to my room. My female editor embraces me; my male publicist embraces me and then puts his tongue in my ear, covering it with his hand so that the crowd of twenty professionals does not see. My choices are to say nothing to avoid making a scene in front of my publisher’s people, or to say FUCK YOU. I apparently was never offered the choice of not having a tongue in my ear.

Step four: It’s 2012. I buy a race car. Well, a rally car. Someone asks my male co-driver if I’m good in bed. Someone asks me if I got sponsorship because someone was ‘trying to check the woman box.’ People ask me if I drive like a girl. Yeah, I do, actually. Let’s play a game called: who’s faster off the start?

Step five: It’s 2014. I’m driving my Camaro cross-country on book tour. It breaks down a lot. I’m under the hood and a pick up truck stops beside me. “Hey baby,” asks the driver, “do you need any help?” “Yeah,” I reply, “do you have a 5/8 wrench?” He did not.

Step six: It’s 2015. It’s sixteen years after I learned that I was a thing to be touched and kissed and hooted at unless I took it upon myself to say no, and no again, and no some more, and no no no. My friend Tessa Gratton points out that a male author used casually sexist language in a brief interview. She is dragged through the muck for pointing out how deeply-rooted our systemic sexism is. The publishing industry rises to the defense of the male author as if he has been deeply wronged. I tweet that the language was indeed sexist, though I didn’t think it was useful to condemn said male author. A male editor emails me privately to ask me if maybe I wasn’t being a little problematic by engaging in the discussion?

Step seven. Still 2015. Someone very close to me confesses that her college boyfriend keeps trying to push her past kissing, and she doesn’t want to. I tell her to set boundaries, and leave him if he doesn’t. A month passes. This week I find out she just had sex for the first time after he urged her to have several glasses of wine. She doesn’t drink. She was crying. She says, “I didn’t say no, though.”

It’s been sixteen damn years. I’m tired of having to say no. I’m tired of the media telling me that it’s mouth breathing bros and rednecks perpetuating the sexism. No: I can tell you that the most insidious form is the nice guy. Who is a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. I carry my own prejudices that I work through, and I don’t believe in demonizing people who aren’t perfect yet — none of us are. But the nice guy who says something sexist gets away with it. The nice guy who says something sexist sounds right and reasonable. The nice guy’s not helping, though. It’s been sixteen years, and the nice guys are nice, but we’re still things to be acquired. We are still creatures to be asked on dates. We are still saying no, still shouting NO, still having to always again and again say “no, please treat me with respect.”

I was just invited to a car show; the well-meaning guy who asked wanted me to bring my souped up Mitsubishi. I clicked on the event page. It’s catered by Hooters. I’m not going. Yeah, it’s a little thing, but I have a lifetime of them. I’m taking my toys and going home.

“I can’t wait to get that little girl behind the wheel again.“

[feministlisafrank]

[feministlisafrank]

Quote by Senator Tammy Duckworth.