The Fuel for 'Feminism' & Reclaiming the 'Feminine'

I’m Annie.  You probably know that.  So if you’ve met me, read my blog, followed me on twitter or simply heard of me, you probably also know me as a ‘Feminist’.  

“Hi, meet Annie, she’s a feminist”

“Oh so you’re Annie the feminist”

“You’re that feminist aren’t you, so why do you hate men then?”

As if it isn’t bad enough that feminists have been given the label of ‘man haters’ (see blog post on the F word), but my beliefs about gender equality have somehow managed to present themselves as my sole identity.  You may as well brand a big ‘F’ into my forehead!  

So for the sake of my own social retribution, let me explain why that ‘F’ should be replaced with a ‘C’.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was very angry and bitter, yet passionate about justice.  She dressed in dark clothing to match her dark soul and dark thoughts and she didn’t really like anyone.  She was sad and lonely and never really had much of an example of true ‘masculinity’ in the way that God intended it to be.  She saw violence, hatred, rage, malice and deception.  The definition of ‘man’ was: reckless predator with high alcohol content.  She felt the inflictions of this broken image and her heart gave birth to feminism, a screaming baby with high demands to be consoled.  She kicked and screamed and fought this ‘otherness’ of men that she just could not understand, as anger fuelled the journey in her search for peace between men and women.  Needless to say, anger does not breed justice.  No peace was found.

It wasn’t until the girl was touched by God, and for the first time in her life felt what is confined to the word ‘love’, that things began to change.  Her heart was transformed - a true miracle.  A perfect father affectionately placed his hand on the screaming rage and brought peace to an angry feminist.  All of a sudden, into her life came a figure of real ‘masculinity’, of love and comfort and adoration.  A protector had found her.  But she didn’t want to be protected, this was all new to her, she denied such love at first, and time was leant to her to grapple in search of understanding.  Darkness was all she’d ever known, so what was this light?  She tried to find ‘Mother God’, she found her, yet something was lacking.  Then God sent her an earthly father, a man persistent in love, a reflection of the heavenly parent who never gives up on his children.  She could not escape this physical presence and she softened, and as she learnt to receive love, she learnt also to give love in return.  The bitterness was made weak by the strength of deep compassion, and the feminist fell in love with Jesus the man and God the Father.

And they lived happily ever after...?  Well, almost.
The fuel behind my feminism has changed, but it is still there, just as it is there for God who hates violence and loves the unity of man and woman.  As we know, Jesus spent most of his life trying to liberate women.  My feminism is not something to be feared, or scoffed at, or joked about, because it’s probably not what you think it is.  So, to clear things up:

I am not a feminist because I hate men, but because I love them.

I am not a feminist because I love women more, but because I want men and women to love one another.

So I love men, does that make me a bad feminist?  Arguably I am ‘better at feminism’ now I’ve had a change of heart and the fuel is pure.  Through embracing an image of truer masculinity, I have also come to see the ‘feminine’ that once was lacking from my feminism.  Blessed also with an earthly godmother as of late, it has become all too evident that my desires have changed and my fears have been lifted.  Over time the dark clothes disappeared, I stopped hiding behind my grim image and bitter grudges against the hurt I’d suffered.  An exchange was made as the frustration of being weak and vulnerable evaporated, and was replaced by a new celebration of my God-given feminine beauty and a real sense of joy and peace that I am a woman.  So what if I’d like to be a wife and a mother!  Does that make me any less of a person?  You’d think so according to my own determined political passions, but being a feminist is NOT about becoming as ‘masculine’ as possible and denying all those wonderful things that women are so dearly blessed with.  I am a feminist whose heart has grown to love her femininity, to embrace it even and enjoy it for the blessing that it is.  I am a feminist who loves men and women for all their differences and unique characteristics that are equally beautiful reflections of a divine God.

If I were branded, brand me with a ‘C’.  I belong to Christ, and my love for him comes first, as he first loved me.  The consequence of this is an outpouring of that love, so through me flows a passion for the lost and broken.  A consequence of this is my feminism.  For God so loved the world, man and woman, that he made us all in his beautiful image - God so loved the world, man and woman, that he gave his only son to set us free of conflict and hatred.  And there you have it.

'I never kiss and tell'

I’ve found myself walking past a group of ‘lads’, bantering about the girl they pulled last night and how good (or bad!) she was in bed.  On a disturbing number of occasions I’ve heard some vulgar mutterings and extremely embarrassing revelations of the all too common drunken fling.  I’ve heard girls being called some horrid names, and criticised for how much pubic hair they have, or for their choice of underwear, or for the manners in which they try to arouse a man.  I’ve felt a heartbreaking flinch at the echoing laughter at the misfortune of some poor girl oblivious to any of this mockery.  It could even be a girl I know.  It could be you.  Whatever happened to ‘I don’t kiss and tell’? 
Gone are the days where one would exercise modesty, honour, respect.  In the rise of ‘sexual liberation’ and the acceptance of sexual pluralism, we find a string of destruction trailing behind.  The most disturbing notion I have observed is that it seems to go unnoticed.  But does that make it acceptable?  So what if people are laughing behind your back - you can’t hear it so you don’t care.  Sadly that’s not the case.  We all want due respect.

When we look at the effects of gossip on a wider scale, we can see that metanarratives are being created, and standards set for women everywhere.  Women are being objectified as tools for sexual gratification, and as these tools we are expected to meet a certain criteria of how we should look, the clothes we should wear and the way we should act in a sexual setting.  With these ideals and ‘perfections’ comes a disqualification of the different, and if we do not fit these categories of the perfect sexual object we are excluded, laughed at, mocked amongst others.  The irony is found in that no-one meets these expectations.  Men expect a porn-star fantasy, when in reality, women have lumps and bumps and emotions and wants underneath that shiny shaven sexual robot.  Sorry guys, we are just as human as you are!

Now I have successfully created man-haters of you all, I would like to make the point that women too are guilty of this gossip.  Although it seems far more rare, I have heard the occasional comparison of body shape, penis size and duration of erectile function.  Girls, you wouldn’t appreciate guys talking about you in this way.  It’s not clever, and you don’t look good for mocking.  It’s actually rather embarrassing.  However, I have found that this is extremely rare, and although girls are more prone to gossip, it’s usually on the subject of the qualities the encountered man possesses.  “What does he study? Is he nice? Where did he take you? Are you going to see him again?”  Women on the whole seem to have more decency about them when it comes to mocking sexual exploits. (1) 

So, I’m not saying we should stop talking about sex.  I’m simply saying we need to start doing it respectfully, honouring the people that decide to make themselves so vulnerable to you that they allow you to share with them a sexual experience.  Whether you are in a long term relationship or participating in drunken flings (2), I urge you to have some respect for the other partner.  It’s not cool to banter about such a personal experience with ‘the lads’.  It’s not smart to mock someone because they don’t fit your ideals (3) (the truth is that you probably don’t fit theirs either).  But the fact is that you shared that experience together, you both opened up and gave yourselves physically to one another.  Surely this deserves some honour and respect. Bring it back: ‘I never kiss and tell’.

(1) I maintain however that I have no statistical proof for such a theory, I am merely referring to personal research and experience.

(2) I will refrain from going into my views on the proper use of sex on this occasion.

(3) Or arguably societies ideals.

Renaissance: The New Feminism

How many times have you heard that there is no need for feminism in the modern world?  Women have the right to vote, financial independence, (almost) equal job opportunities and powerful positions in the government and other institutions.  The Suffragette’s have won all they fought for, and a line has been drawn through ‘feminism’ as a done and dealt-with cured ill of our society.  So is feminism dead?

I challenge this claim with the proposal that feminism is very much alive, and an essential tool for building a great society even today.  Yes, changes have been made.  Yes, goals have been met.  Yes, norms have been broken and women have been raised up to be more strong, powerful and influential than ever before in the history of gender politics.  But, when we look at the content and context of the most powerful women today, is this what those first feminists really wanted?

Sex: that three-letter word that has more power than the likes of words such as ‘peace’, ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’.  Sex: that weapon that women have used to manipulate the predatory male into a position of passivity and reliance.  Were women really onto something when they discovered the one thing that makes any man weak?  Or have they been lulled into a false sense of security, where once again, men have got women exactly where they want them; driving and fulfilling their sexual fantasies?

Let us take a quick look at a few powerful respected women.  Carla Bruni, Lady GaGa, Beyoncé, Lady Macbeth, Margaret Thatcher (wait, how did that one get in there…).  What do they all have in common?  Sexual provocation.  These wily women have all used their gorgeous bodies and alluring intimations to get them to the top.  But although they’re in the highest places, the men are still looking up their skirts.

Beyoncé is a fantastic example of feminism gone wrong.  Feel free to cringe as I quote some lyrics here: ‘if you like it then you should’a put a ring on it’, ‘my persuasion can build a nation, endless power, the love we can devour’ and the entire theme of the song ‘Independent Women’.  All of these signify all kinds of independence for women, emphasising the power and strength they supposedly manifest in todays society.  These lyrics alone represent the passion behind those very first feminists and the ideals they strived toward.  But the reality found in other lyrics such as ‘tonight I’ll be your naughty girl’, ‘I know you want my body’ and ‘ladies let him check up on it’ reveals that women are only powerful when using their sexuality as a manipulative tool. 

Feminist fought for freedom, and women having gained this freedom were so bewildered that they didn’t quite know what to do with it.  With this newfound freedom of expression, mixed together with male expectations, women easily fell into the bitter cocktail that we are still drowning in today.  We have a narrow choice: use sexual appeal to gain a cheated upper hand, or remain a weak, prudish, dehumanised existence.  Feminism needs to change this metanarrative, to reconstruct ideologies into realities.  Sexualising women is dehumanising.  Respecting women for their intellect, passion, and inner beauty, is the first step to bringing true equality.

The power of women needs to be reassessed. 

The reality of inequality needs to be reinterpreted. 

Feminism needs to be reborn. 

This is a call for Renaissance for today’s generation.

The Media God

 

Take a look at this Diesel advertisement: ‘Sex sells* (but unfortunately we sell jeans)’.  This is just one example of how the media forces pornography into modern culture, in this case as a form of advertisement.  Last week, a friend informed me that as TV turns digital in August, extra channels will be added to the network, and this will include pornography channels.  An Internet craze that is also available on satellite television has now stuck its filthy mitts into the likes of national television.  This exposure is somewhat criminal, and the government should be utterly ashamed of allowing such exploitative material to saturate our culture.

Advertisement and pornography channels are not the only media genres with dangerous content.  In England, America, across Europe and even more dominantly so in Asian cultures such as China and Japan, material promoting the exploitation of women is everywhere.  Strip bars and ‘gentleman’s’ entertainment clubs, raunchy music videos, newspaper photographs, magazines with pornographic images slapped on the front for any passer-by to stumble upon, it's all backwards.  For a country that's so 'politically correct' in its conservatism, this is beyond a joke.

‘If you don’t want to get involved with porn then don’t, it’s up to the individual.’

Well actually, it’s not.  Pornography affects everyone.  It is no longer a material that can be chosen by the individual to ‘enjoy’ in private.  But pornography is extremely evident in the public sector of today’s world, and cannot be avoided even at the greatest efforts.  Such material has such a huge part in media representation that it creates an entire narrative of what women are and how they should be treated.  The very fact that this material is now allowed onto national television is a huge statement in itself, a statement that says 'look everyone, it's ok to treat women as objects now because it's on TV'.  Men everywhere are jumping on the [im]moral bandwagon and women everywhere are feeling the effects.

‘But it’s just porn, it’s not such a big deal.’

Well actually, it is.  Men like to erect (excuse the pun) a barrier between fantasy (fictional pornography) and reality.  Pornography is indeed a form of representation rather than ‘real-life sex’, but like most developed media adopts the concept of realism, and therefore naturalising such ideas so that this barrier is broken.  It might be argued that this realism proves that pornographic media simply holds a mirror to the world in its natural state, but someone is creating these representations and manipulating reality through repeated exposure to such ideals.  Such material is the propaganda of a male army, created to brainwash the world constructing a social acceptance of their perverse desires.  And it will work.  It has worked.  The media is the great dictator of social values, a very dangerous tool, and when used in this way causes severe dysfunction.  To make matters worse, due to realism creating a sense of naturalisation, this exploitation is becoming a blind ‘normality’.  People are failing to question such ideals and are worshipping ‘the media god’.

‘So how exactly does embracing pornographic media affect women on a whole?’

Marquis de Sade famously made the connection between sex and violence.  He said, ‘there’s not a woman on earth who would ever have had cause to complain of my services if I’d been sure of being able to kill her afterwards’.  The women in pornographic images are dead, both virtually and functionally.  Victimised as a piece of meat for the pleasure of the predatory male, these women have no role in the outside world.  If Sade was able to kill his women afterward they would only ever be dead, existing only as lifeless objects in the sexual realm with no experience of the outside world.  Without the escape from the sex realm to the mortal realm, women would not be able to reflect upon the abusive nature of such victimisation.  However we DO have ‘cause to complain’, as some of us are able to reflect, some of us are able to see the true damage.  This fiction, the created (fiction from ‘fingere’ = to form) enables fact to be continued into reality.  Men objectify women, using them for sex, acting violently toward them, giving them unequal disadvantage in the workplace, as well as administering continued misrepresentation of women in politics and the media. 

‘I watch porn and I’ve never hit or raped a woman’

This statement is a great example of how [some] men are getting this whole issue completely wrong.  Most think this is a battle not worth fighting.  One comment I received in discussion of this topic is that ‘watching porn stops rape’.  So not only should we accept that men are sexual predators that need to be relieved, but we as women are the ones to provide an alternative method of pleasing them to save ourselves from being raped.  We are still being raped every single day, in many ways, ways that are taken for granted.  Objectification comes in many shapes and sizes and I am sure the majority of men are unconsciously guilty of it.  You may not have raped a woman or physically abused her, but have you ever made a comment such as ‘women are bad drivers’ or criticised their capability in the work place or within education?  Have you ever judged a girl for what she is dressed like, slapping on labels such as ‘slut’, ‘slag’ or ‘whore’ upon someone you don’t even know?  Have you ever made a suggestive comment to a woman or touched a woman’s body, or expected that a woman is ‘up for it’ because of the way she is dressed?  I don’t think I have ever been on a night out without one of my girl friends or myself being ogled at or groped.  Women can’t even walk down the street without a man leaning out of a car window and hurling some lecherous comment at her.  The problems are more widespread than you thought.

‘But pornographic media can be empowering to women’

Well, if the way a woman empowers herself is through sexual objectification then there is definitely something wrong with the world.  It is far more empowering for a woman to work 9 till 5 earnestly sweeping floors than for a woman to sell herself as an object to a man.  The women that aren’t being forced into such degrading submission usually only apply for these jobs because they are pressured into thinking that this makes them beautiful.  Particularly girls who have low self-esteem and little self-worth due to lack of appreciation of personal qualities and lack of motivation toward them reaching higher goals.  This is one way a woman can gain attention from men, and what is perceived to be ‘respect’, although is actually the complete lack of.  A common argument is that ‘women get paid for doing this so there’s no issue’.  Being paid is exactly what makes them objects.  Again due to discouragement in the workplace and throughout education, women are lacking the support and encouragement they need to succeed, and therefore take the easy option of selling their bodies in pornography, strip bars and prostitution.  At this point I will point out that not only men are to blame for this societal corruption, but women too are responsible for adhering to such ‘ideals’ and degrading positions, and therefore subjecting women on the whole to such victimisation.

‘It’s too late to change things’

The tragic truth is that pornographic imaging is something that has existed for thousands of years, dating back to the Romans and the Greeks.  This is far too often used as an excuse as to why it is acceptable to continue such degrading behaviour; ‘porn isn’t wrong, it’s always been around’.  So has the slave trade.  But surely if a diseased thinking has been spreading through the generations for so long, this age of revolution is the perfect time to step outside the box of conservative ideas and change things.  Think about it (and yes I AM going to play this card), is this really the kind of world we want to bring our children into?  It is disturbingly easy for an innocent child to flick over the television channels and find some form of pornographic imaging, or walk around newsagents and supermarkets with parents to glance upon the revealing covers of ‘ladmags’ such as ‘Nuts’ or ‘Zoo’, or even the pages of tabloid newspapers.  Not only does it affect children directly, but indirectly.  As men are naturalised to embrace certain concepts of women, this is passed not only between friends but also down to their children through primary socialisation in the home.  Pornography causing sexual deviance and unequal treatment and expectations of women, often results in damaged relationships, and in some cases can cause parents to break apart and therefore leave an inheritance of disrespect toward women.  Problems are then magnified through secondary socialisation from the education system, impact from peers and again the media.

‘So what can I do?’
MEN:

Ok men, if you’ve come this far then perhaps you’ve realised that you feel a slight pang of revolutionary passion for the fight for equality.  After this stage, some men tend to hit a brick wall: ‘There would be a representation of us as impotent and as losers which we cannot risk’.  Well ‘man-up’ and risk it.  Women need you.  The revolution against racism could not have succeeded so well without the white man accepting equality and forming an alliance to end such discrimination and oppression.  Challenge the ‘man-made morality which covers up the immorality of women’s oppression, subordination and violation’.  Empower the weak and bring them to your level, respect them as equals and exhibit this attitude to the world.  Stop watching porn and find a real woman.  Love and care for her.  Tell a woman she’s smart, acknowledge her potential, be a supporting figure rather than tearing women down all the time.  And if you do respect women, do not be ashamed, but make it known throughout your day-to-day life.  Chivalry will never go out of fashion.

  

WOMEN:

            United we stand! (Which is exactly why we’ve fallen so far…)

Women have died so that we, the women of the future, have the blessing of freedom.  And look what we’ve done with that freedom.  We’ve been given a voice and a choice, so why do we still choose to be objectified and fail to use our voices?  I ask you also to ‘man-up’, to take responsibility as a singular woman and set an example for the nation of women.  Do not try to be what other people want you to be.  Learn to love yourself, and do not ever feel as though you have to prove yourself to anyone.  You do not need to take your clothes off to be beautiful.  Look for respect where respect is due, and never underestimate your potential as a human being.

Everyone:

‘In Switzerland, women took the military to court for allowing officers to use photographs of a woman as targets for shooting practice.  The reply of the Swiss authorities was that only the particular woman, the model of the photographs, could sue.  And she would be unlikely to, added a spokesman, since she had posed in the first place.’

Do not fall into the trap of treating each case singularly.  This is a widespread problem and representation has lead to the naturalisation of generalisation.  A tiny drop can cause a huge ripple, and every snowflake pleads ‘not-guilty’ in an avalanche.  So be a good snowflake.  There are always going to be worshippers of ‘the media god’, and there are always going to be people that pull the rope the other way.  But the more people that play on the right side of this tug-of-war, the more chance we have of changing things.  It’s not impossible.  Black and white people share contented lives; racism is dying a well-deserved death.  Our next world mission: gender equality.  Get on board.

(quotes from ‘The Pornography of Representation’ by Susanne Kappeler)