woman bore me, I will rise

[poniatowskaja]

Sad that 'depilation' and 'epilation' both mean the same thing: hair removal. I see places advertising one or the other, but 'epilation' sounds like it should be the opposite: the adding of more hair, a practice I would prefer to see. Without wishing to support the beauty industry in any way, I see a gap in the market: hair loss treatment, but for body hair, not the hair on the head. Something for that bald patch on my calf!

[poniatowskaja]

Co znaczy „dywidendy” – nie wiedziałam, ale wiedziałam na pewno, że nie ma siły ludzkiej, że nie ma siły nadludzkiej, jaka by mnie zmusiła do położenia się do łóżka z tym łysym milionerem, którego oblicze ospa oszczędziła, a tylko i wyłącznie zostawiła okrutną o sobie pamięć na nosie. Że też ten najmądrzejszy z tatusiów nie rozumie najprostszej sprawy na świecie! Nie można niczego nakazać ciału. Przecież to proste... a jednak prowadzące do najbardziej zagmatwanych komplikacji, zasupłanych węzłów nie do rozsupłania. – Tatusiu! – powiedziałam szeptem. – Tatusiu... Czy ty umiesz, czy ty potrafisz tak zrobić? – Co, córuchno, co zrobić? – Nakazać ciału, zmusić ciało, żeby chciało?... – Trąbala, Habusia, nie pleć głupstw! Co to znaczy: zmusić ciało? Setki tysięcy, co mówię – miliony kobiet zmusza ciało i... wychodzi im to na zdrowie. Zrozum jedno: twój tatuś nie będzie wiecznie żył. Co ja dla ciebie mogę zrobić? No, zostawię ci dwa domy w Warszawie. Czy to jest najpewniejsze zabezpieczenie? Trąbala, oni mają część pieniędzy w Szwajcarii, część w Ameryce, część jeszcze gdzie indziej. On jest królem żelaza. Kopalnie, rozumiesz, kopalnie tu, kopalnie w Saargebiet, kopalnie w północnej Francji, kopalnie w Anglii. Wyjdziesz za niego, a ja odetchnę. Paliłam już czwartego papierosa. Tatuś odłożył niezgaszone cygaro na brzeg wielkiej, kryształowej popielniczki. – Najgorsze jest to, że ty nie znasz wartości pieniądza, co zresztą jest moją winą. Jesteś wciąż bezsensownie dziecinna, nie rozumiesz, że na świecie ocenia się człowieka według jego ciężaru gatunkowego, a ciężar gatunkowy – to pieniądz... Indory na obrazie ze sterczącym, patykowatymi nogami, rozeźlone, za chwilę skoczą na siebie. Puchate, żółte pisklęta rozbiegną się daleko od swojej mamusi, nóżki mają cieniutkie jak wykałaczki. – Zgadzam się, tatusiu. Wyjdę za mąż za tego żelaźnika pod jedynym warunkiem. Tatuś podniósł rękę do skroni z uniesionym wskazującym palcem (ten właśnie gest odziedziczyłam po nim). – Jaki to warunek? Wstałam i szłam wolno ku drzwiom. – Och, niewielki, wyjdę za niego za mąż, ale ty z nim będziesz spał. Wysunęłam się z gabinetu i cicho zamknęłam za sobą drzwi.

Izabela Czajka-Stachowicz, Nigdy nie wyjdę za mąż (1966)

[endophagia-moved]

the erasure of the rape element in mythological retellings is so heinous it borders on misogyny

[avicecaro]

it’s the idea that because rape as an act is misogyny, that talking about rape or including it in stories is also misogyny. as if acknowledging that women were denied agency and dignity somehow further denies us agency and dignity. when really, acknowledging the ways women were/are denied agency and dignity affirms that we are entitled to these things. a feminist story isn’t just a story in which no bad things happen to women. bad things do happen to women. pretending they don’t, and especially trying to superimpose that conviction onto the past, just because it isn’t as fun to dwell on, is not a feminist position.

[poetreeanon]

Literally every modern retelling that ignores Persephone was kidnapped and raped (and forced to marry her rapist). I can't recall even ONE story based on this myth that at least vaguely implies the actual rape element

[germananon]

I think @cisthoughtcrime's tags belong in the body of the post.

[poniatowskaja]

Saw the most cheerful antisemitism earlier this month. On an advertisement for the Jewish Museum Galicia, someone had written 'Glory to Jesus Christ' in Ukrainian with a big =D (but the right way up) following. It beat the 'żydokomuna' signs I used to take down from such advertising columns, but a museum whose main exhibition is on the remnants of Jewish life in Poland, photographs of graves, photographs of where synagogues once stood, cannot be left alone to advertise itself, but must be put in its place with Christian proselytism.

[virtualcremefem]

Basic radical feminism: Women are not objects

Liberal "feminists":

But what if women could be objects?

But what about women choosing to be objects?

But what about women who enjoy being objects?

But what about the complex cultural, personal, intersectional and political landscape around being an object?

[ineedatumblrforthisshit]

Joe Carstairs (1900 - 1993)

".. a wealthy British power boat racer known for her speed, eccentric lifestyle, and gender nonconformity"

[wholesome-dream]

Does anybody know any good books on the thermidorian reaction? 

[quercusfloreal]

I have this one but it’s in french :

En finir avec Robespierre et ses amis by Michel Biard.

[sieclesetcieux]

The Gilded Youth of Thermidor, by Francois Gendron. One of the rare French classics to be translated to English.

I can’t speak for the English translation as I haven’t read and verified its accuracy but the fact they put Marat on the cover is a bit strange… And considering its rather, uh, interesting French publication story, there’s cause to be slightly suspicious. (And hopefully I’m wrong.)

It was first published in 1979 under the title: La jeunesse dorée. Episodes de la Révolution française. (The Gilded Youth. Episodes of the French Revolution.) It was based on the PhD thesis of recent Quebecois graduate François Gendron and published at the Presses de l'Université du Québec (Quebec University Press). The foreword is by Albert Soboul, who directed the thesis.

It was incredibly rich in research. As the link to the English translation says: “François Gendron has made an exhaustive examination of the 36,000 files of the Revolutionary police to reconstruct events on the streets as they parallelled those in the Assembly and provides a picture of social and political life in Paris at the time.” This book has 446 pages.

There weren’t many Quebecois working on the French Revolution in 1979. As a matter of fact, there still aren’t many.

As you may gather, the book - despite its incredible wealth in resources and references - would have had a limited reach back then. It’s big, and it’s from Quebec.

And thus came a Faustian pact.

Gendron agreed to have his thesis published by the prestigious Presses Universitaires de France (University Press of France) in 1984:

But it came with certain conditions:

1) The title is now La jeunesse sous Thermidor, or “Youth During Thermidor”. That’s… not quite what the book is about. That’d be forgivable but…

2) The book is now only 242 pages long. Not just because there was some rewriting, which there always is, but because Gendron agreed to purge his entire critical apparatus. In other words: all the footnotes were deleted. These 36,000 files he researched? Gone. But also gone is any commentary you would add in footnotes. An academic book without footnotes is… not worth much. That’s over 60% (maybe more?) of the work behind the research that he had to sacrifice. The author of the foreword casually says so, and adds that “well, those who want to consult it may get the original version in Quebec”:

C’est un ouvrage savant qui repose sur une vaste documentation. Tous les souvenirs, tous les mémoires, tout l’imprimé, périodiques, affiches, pamphlets, de cette période de liberté progressivement recouvrée de juillet 1794 à novembre 1795, et les accablantes séries F 7 et F 11 des Archives nationales ont été systématiquement dépouillées. La jeunesse sous Thermidor découle de ce gros ouvrage. François Gendron a consenti de grands sacrifices : tout l’appareil critique, de nombreux développements. Mais il dégage mieux l’idée. Ceux qui voudront en savoir plus pourront se reporter à l’édition des Presses de l’Université du Québec. Rien de ce qui est avancé ne l’est à la légère. Ce livre est fait de bonnes mains d’ouvrier, suivant une démarche sûre, minutieuse et critique.

Can you imagine how hard it would be to get a 400-pages book from Quebec in the 1980s? It’s 2021 and it can take me weeks to get certain “rarer” (even if they’re new!) books via interlibrary loan.

3) The author of this foreword is Pierre Chaunu, a far right reactionary (with royalist sympathies of course) who is quite the polar opposite of Marxist Albert Soboul. His foreword guides the perspective differently, and he basically tells us not to feel too sorry for the Jacobins and Jacobines who were beaten by this proto-fascistic militia organized by Fréron. (Gendron’s book is one of the few documenting the misogynistic and downright sadistic violence of the Thermidorians against working class women and anyone who associated with the left aka the Jacobins and newly labelled “Terrorists”. They helped push the Reaction farther right than any member of the Montagne who conspired against Robespierre had intended.)

Remember that French Revolution history is always political.

[poniatowskaja]

Missed connections... I praised your item of clothing and you did not tell me where you obtained it

[radredfox]

Visibly not shaving as a woman is lowkey so wierd sometimes. I'm literally just being a natural human but I feel like the odd one out.

Wearing shorts at work because there's a heatwave and I can see my co-workers going 👀👁👁👀👁👁 all confused. Its a bit funny but also a bit sad. Like ladies please its OK! You are safe I'm just a bit annoying!

Anyway, resist the shave ladies 💪 its wierd but its also chill and funny.

[ink-the-artist]

Girls when their periods sync

[sakrafka]

I'll delete this later and I know the post caption is probably just a cute joke thingie, but I love this piece so much, not only because the art is beautiful but because this is exactly what I'm trying to do with my artwork too, make women into little creatures! This makes me feel so represented because women almost never get representation like this. Again I know this caption was more of a "meme" than a serious thing but it still made me happy! I know this wasn't the artist's intention and these are my own personal thoughts - this might sound stupid but it took me so long to figure out I was a woman because I never even realised that women can be like this. I don't mean literal werewolves obviously, but it's hard to explain - the fact that you can point at a picture of hairy werewolves dancing and say "girls on their period" instead of "little guys/bro's night". Yknow how everyone looks at a creature/animal and goes "he/him/little guy" assuming that everything is male by default, because people usually only recognise women when they are pink/girly - because womanhood is mostly a performance. Men can exist as they are, they don't have to shave, have eyelashes, etc. and everyone will recognise them as "men", while women have to do this whole performance. You would have to glue long eyelashes, boobs and pink paint on a an animal to make people recognise it as a "she". This is not every case ofc but it's just mostly what I've experienced.

And for the longest time I thought in order to be a woman I had to do this "performance" as well, because that's just what womanhood is. And it never felt right, I could never do it (especially as an autistic person), which made me believe I wasn't a woman at all. I just subconsciously associated women with pink/feminine/babies/girly stuff... because I never had representation like this. Women existing in their natural state - again, I don't mean literal werewolves - but, hairy, fat, "ugly". I had to LEARN that women can look/be neutral, and even masculine (please don't judge too hard, I was raised in as a hardcore Christian in the worst country in the EU so I had a lot of internalised misogyny to undo).

I only realised it later that women can be so much more. That I can be free. Women can even be hairy werewolves dancing around fire.

This is why I call lots of my creature-characters and clay figurines "she", because to me, it feels so gender-affirming and makes me so happy to have this kind of representation, as weird as it might sound.

Being a gender-noncomforming hairy, stinky woman-creature is absolutely my gender and I'm so happy when I see art like this

[ink-the-artist]

No ur completely spot on lol I have a very similar mindset for a lot of my art including the part about calling your clay creatures “she” I do the same for my creature sculptures. Some of my arts captions/titles are more genuine than others that are more meant for a joke (often it’s somewhere in between) this one’s a joke in the implication this is what happens to girls when their periods sync (and it being about periods at all really) but the werewolves were absolutely meant to be women and I set out intending to draw weird monstrous-looking women having fun.

assuming that everything is male by default, because people usually only recognise women when they are pink/girly - because womanhood is mostly a performance. Men can exist as they are, they don't have to shave, have eyelashes, etc. and everyone will recognise them as "men", while women have to do this whole performance. You would have to glue long eyelashes, boobs and pink paint on a an animal to make people recognise it as a "she"

This part especially I have a whole post talking about this sort of thing with my art

[honeydewdrops333]

what doesn’t kill you makes your nervous system more sensitive for the rest of your life

[trzpiotka]

Szymborska - "Jeszcze"

W zaplombowanych wagonach jadą krajem imiona, a dokąd tak jechać będą, a czy kiedy wysiędą, nie pytajcie, nie powiem, nie wiem. Imię Natan bije pięścią w ścianę, imię Izaak śpiewa obłąkane, imię Sara wody woła dla imienia Aaron, które umiera z pragnienia. Nie skacz w biegu, imię Dawida. Tyś jest imię skazujące na klęskę, nie dawane nikomu, bez domu, do noszenia w tym kraju zbyt ciężkie. Syn niech imię słowiańskie ma, bo tu liczą włosy na głowie, bo tu dzielą dobro od zła wedle imion i kroju powiek. Nie skacz w biegu. Syn będzie Lech. Nie skacz w biegu. Jeszcze nie pora. Nie skacz. Noc się rozlega jak śmiech i przedrzeźnia kół stukanie na torach. Chmura z ludźmi nad krajem szła, z dużej chmury mały deszcze, jedna łza, mały deszcze, jedna łza, suchy czas. Tory wiodą czarny las. Tak to, tak, stuka koło. Las bez polan. Tak to, tak. Lasem jedzie transport wołań. Tak to, tak. Obudzona w nocy słyszę tak to, tak, łomotanie ciszy w ciszę.

[gorskivijenac]

Southern Serbia. Traditional vernacular architecture, Ranko Findrik.

[draculuve]

female hair removal culture is crazy actually bc why are we pressuring half the population into bald mammal cosplay

[altarista]

oh my fucking god they put a gnome in Oxford too

[femsolid]

“A woman who is only exposed to the ideas, opinions, attitudes, feelings, and needs of men (and boys) is a woman who is ideologically isolated. Ideological isolation occurs whenever women do not have access to others who espouse women’s perspectives as opposed to men’s. Ideological isolation is likely to occur when women get together but one or more men are present. This is because most women try to take care of men and to ward off men’s anger. Men therefore tend to become leaders of such groups and to be more influential than women members of the group. Most men get upset if women focus their attention on one another, and most women are afraid to upset men.”

Dee Graham, Loving to Survive, pages 115-116

[poniatowskaja]

Watch Spellbinder (1995) for:

The secret of gunpowder

Alternate universe where people speak in a Polish accent

Annoying male teen's arc to becoming less annoying includes successfully finishing a book

One of Piotr Adamczyk's first four roles is getting exiled to the Wastelands for making a toy

Woman in electrically charged armour blasting every problem