#feminism stuff

[ophiedokes]

Hi Ophie,

I watch your Youtube videos and I like them, and I was wondering, as a feminist lesbian, where do you stand on the 'Trust Your Gut' Mentality in some feminist circles?

I ask this because I saw one of your Baldoni Bingo livestreams where you were watching the guy on Penn Badgely's podcast, and one part that kinda made me raise an eyebrow a little bit was when you said you didn't trust Badgly because of his a-hole tendencies, especially when it comes to how he views women who like his character from YOU.

I understand why, given his ties to Baha'i and probably runs in similar circles as Baloney, but I when you said that I was thinking of the saying "Trust your Gut, No Matter What."

I know your gut was right about Blake Lively when the smear campaign against her came out in the summer last year, but what if there comes a point in time when your gut ends up being wrong? Because our gut instincts are not infallible because they are influenced by our exterior environments and personal upbringings.

I guess I would like an in-depth analysis from an actual feminist mind- that being you- on the "Trust Your Gut" mentality that many feminists sometimes fall for and the flaws in that type of thinking.

Hi!!

I think I have a few responses to this, I'm going to admit I had to kind of talk myself through not feeling defensive because my first pass on this message my takeaway was that I felt like I was being maybe accused of being unfair to gossip Girl guy in a way that made me bristle lol. Both because I didn't say anything in public about not liking him prior to being able to list the things that you mentioned in your message, but also just.... (and i dont even think youre saying this just that its a thing in general lol)

because I don't think that it is unfair to not fall for a famous guy's whole shtick and I think for some reason around men in particular when they have a very cultivated image you get responded to, as if you're not being fair if you don't buy 100% into the image that they want to show you, even though you're allowed to form your own opinion and be critical of women much more freely.

But!! I reread this and I felt like I was kind of not being in the best faith if that was the only way that I responded to this, if I'm understanding correctly that it just made you think more about this broadly.

I think Laura crone has spoken about this before, in her video about the pink aisle of True Crime. Reading your message made me think of hearing her say how "trust your gut" isn't infallible because your gut can be racist. That's I try not to advocate for a "trust your gut" sort of feminism even though I do trust my own analysis of situations. I don't know if that makes sense, but to me there's a difference between a gut feeling and a takeaway from the lens that I'm already viewing situations through.

Like, there are youtubers who I just don't watch because I have a bad vibe and that's much more of a gut feeling thing than a " here's 3 hours about why the handling of the toxic gossip train and the Amber Heard trial made me stop watching swoop", right, so i tend to just not mention it unless a specific thing comes up (austin green, brother of nickisnotgreen, with a commentary channel he copied from like 5 other commentary channels and talks about the same thing made a Hailey Bieber misogyny slop video with a thumbnail like "SHE COPIED EVERYTHING" and that was a specific bad behavior i was willing to point to, dunk, say, "oh wait commentary boys think copying is bad now???? Bc misogyny slop is copying.") And in those cases I am willing to say, yeah sometimes I had a feeling that somebody will do misogyny slop and then they misogyny slop and I'm right lol. But even that I think is more recognizing of patterns than it is trusting in your gut above all else.

I don't know, this is interesting. I do like what Laura crone said and I agree with her about that, there's also even a multi-level marketing thing that pops into my mind. Its called damsel in defense. Pink girly self-defense items that are like maybe not entirely legal in some of the states they're selling them in if you actually look into it lol And that's sold the same way as the White Women Getting Human Trafficked In Walmart Parking Lot Stay Safe Mamas Trust Your Gut thing is, only with a slightly different veneer. Thats not feminism. But encouraging people to find patterns is.

If you haven't already seen it, I did a video with Kat Tenbarge and I think the way we both spoke about " never trust a male feminist" being too broad is also a bit applicable to this conversation.

Thank you for the brain teaser! this might be something that comes up in the future. I don't see it as being a video topic immediately which is also why I just kind of wanted to brain dump about it lol.

[itdobethatbitch]

I'm reading dostoevsky's notes from underground, and I realized something that I completely overlooked, about men having more power in general, on a global scale.

So the book is written from a characters perspective as if he is speaking to the reader. As such, he addresses the reader, "sir". And it is translated from russian so I am unsure of how the russian language uses pronouns and the such, so I could be wrong here but it got me thinking...men, in the past, only expected other men to read their work. I didnt even think about it like that, I mean how often have I seen commentary on "locker talk" and not thought about the actual books and research articles published that, the authors just assumed only other men would read.

Just a thought, I could be wrong I suppose, but it was an interesting little extra hmmm moment

[megbox]

We can finally all agree that women want to have sex. Variously portrayed in the past as tamers of men and tenders of children we're not deemed well endowed with horniness. But does that mean we experience desire in the same way that men do? My lust tells me we don't. Mine, I confess, isn't blind or monumental or animal. It comes with an endless internal monologue - or maybe dialogue, or maybe babel. My desire is always guessing, often second-guessing. Female lust is a powerful force, but it surges in the form of an interrogation, rather than a statement. Not 'I want this' but 'Do I want this? What exactly do I want? How about now? And now?'

Claire Dederer, “Why Is It So Hard for Women to Talk About Sex?” from The Atlantic, March 2014 

[iceiceyuuri-blog]

When. When will she stop. And when will people stop hailing her as some kind of feminist figurehead.

[feminism-is-fallacious]

[hsm2016-blog]

So one of my gen eds this quarter is a class on human rights, specifically relating to gender identity/sex/sexuality, which is cool, and it’s also my first (and probably only) class taught by a women & gender studies prof which is also cool. Our first two lectures have basically been laying the groundwork for the development of human rights as a concept, generally being traced to things like the protestant reformation, enlightenment thinking and stuff like that. My prof (an old white lesbian) has been lecturing through a framework of the development of women’s roles in society and we spent a good chunk of class today discussing the development of society as it accepted women as actual human beings according to the law. Something began to grate on me though as we talked about marriage and economic laws... the professor saying “women were considered to be...” “women had the ability to....” over and over again. As though women in 16th-19th Europe and North America were a homogenous group. As though distinctions along class and RACIAL lines were less important than distinctions of sex. As though all “women” experienced changes in the concept of human rights and property laws and economic development the same way. With virtually no reference to slavery, except to point out the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson writing about the equality of man while owning slaves (no mention of him also raping Sally Hemings). At the end of class we talked about the limitations placed on women in terms of serving on juries, voting, opening lines of credit and handling finances in their own names in the U.S. into the 20th century. At this point I finally raised my hand and brought up the importance of clarifying when we are talking about WHITE women as opposed to women of color in these situations, because as we know while WHITE women got the right to vote in 1920, that meant nothing for women of color until at LEAST 1964, and while WHITE women got the right to open lines of credit in the later 20th century, women of color are STILL commonly denied credit on the basis of race and location. My professor said “absolutely!” and kind of nodded. Then she did something really troubling to me; she said “and remember, it’s not just darker women who are experiencing these problems. Women in Switzerland didn’t get the vote until 1971!” and class ended. Am I right to be concerned? I’m hoping that her lectures are so general just to set up more specific conversations later on but I have to admit I really didn’t like the tone that she used and I am dreading the next ten weeks of White Academic Feminism.

[vortexofgarbage]

oh and here’s an interesting thing about the american health care system wrt women’s health. a girl in my gender studies class is from sweden and when the topic of whether or not to fund planned parenthood came up she turned to me and was like “this is a problem in america? you don’t have planned parenthood?” and i had to explain to her that, yes, here in america tons of white dudes tried and continue to try to have the power to control when and where girls get health care

[atallchild]

I have become so aware lately that it isn't up to me to protect any man's ego or feelings and I'm doing so well with that concept when it comes to strangers and coworkers but it's so much harder to apply that concept to interactions with men that I love I find myself still prostrating myself in front of them when we have disagreements or even refusing to voice my displeasure with their behaviour at all and I find that distressing because they have no trouble bringing up the issues they have with the things that I do I need to remind myself that nobody gets a free pass and especially not men who love me and care for me because I deserve the same respect that I show to them I also need to remind myself that the fact that I am silent about interpersonal issues with them directly stems from the fact that they are men whose egos I am afraid to bruise