What gets me bout people who yap about “i worked hard to get here, why dont you” is,
most the world works way harder and dont get nowhere.
And funny how what you call “work” involved havin hella access and opportunities and is easy on the physical labor side.
While you delegitimize all the backbreaking work folks do to maintain those comforts of yours.
The notion of work that only validates elite endeavors and positions? And invalidates the much more tedious, intensive labor of most the world without the kinda access you have?
Can kiss my fucking ass.
The whole focus on labor and productivity is capitalist as fuck to begin with.
The higher position and income, the less you work, usually. Few exceptions.
(via deafmuslimpunx)
Femme Privilege Does Not Exist
by Cyree Jarelle Johnson
I’m (not) sorry to inform you that femme privilege does not exist. Not in the queer community. Not in the world at large. Does. Not. Exist. In fact, the very idea of inherent “femme privilege” is rooted in misguided misogyny. It operates under the erroneous idea that the discrimination and violence that femmes in particular and feminities in general experience is not based on our gender presentations. It relies on the idea that all femmes are cisgendered and cissexual, which is cissexist. It anachronistically leaves out femme as a genderqueer identity. It is ignorant to the continuing oppression of women, femmes, and other femininities by patriarchy and masculine privilege.
The most common argument for femme privilege I encounter is that femmes are not the recipients of physical and spiritual violence because of their femininity, while female masculinities are frequently the target of such assaults. Even upon first glance this ignores the constant reality of rape and sexual assault in the lives of lots of transgressive femininities. Personally, I have been “corrective”ly raped twice for being femme, once by a doctor when I was 17 after coming out on my intake forms and the second time during my time working at a bar in Newark. According to a study performed by Keren Lehavot, Ph.D. “women who identify as “femme” (or feminine) and have a more feminine appearance report more adult sexual assaults” than women in the study who identified as “butch”.
That’s not even to speak of the harassment that I experience every day on the street. Not just the street, everywhere I go. It is frequently terrifying, and it also leads to more terrifying things. Of course, omnipresent harassment is afforded to masculine of center folks as well: because in both cases the harassers are targeting our gender presentation. For real, they are. The truly hate us both, for the same reason. Our harassers are deeply invested in the control and ownership of bodies they perceive as “women”. They want to decide who gets to be included in that category, and what that identity means. It is not a complement when I am catcalled, grabbed, pushed, smacked, and groped on the street, it is an insult. And it is certainly not a privilege.
Then there’s that weird concept of passing privilege that I don’t even think works for sexual identity in the way that it does for race, but is so frequently employed that way. Racial groups have phenotypical markers that differentiate their skin and hair and body features from that of a privileged race. Being gay or queer looks different in every corner of this country and every corner of the world.
The idea of cisfemmes passing for straight and receiving straight privilege ignores the fact that to patriarchy inside every lesbian lies a straight woman. Straight people don’t see anything but straight. Even if very masculine female identified folks are instantly read as gay by heterosexuals, does that necessarily make not experiencing that a privilege? Passing is a privilege when you pass into a group that has privilege. “Woman” is not an inherently privileged category at all, nor is “feminine”. Femininity, queer and straight alike, is viewed as frivolous and shallow, stupid and excessive. Most importantly, it is taken much less seriously than masculinity.
Moreover, regarding femmeness as privilege ignores the existence of femmes who are trans*women, androfemmes, kikis, and all those who may simultaneously be femme and not able to pass for straight or even pass for feminine. It forgets us femmes who try and fail and try and fail again to be seen as authentically feminine. We femmes with tapers and Caesars lined up. We femmes who are 6’4 in heels and rock a bitchin’ limp that people frequently comment on yet rarely stare at. We femmes who sit gap legged in flannel waiting for folks to stop telling them to be more feminine when we are trying as hard as we fucking can.
In her interview with Elixher.com, Brown Grrlz Project Co-Founder Trinz Massiah writes that femme privilege “is a matter of perspective. A femme identified womyn has to negotiate always safe spaces to “come out” over and over again… Can you imagine the anxiety of negotiating safe spaces constantly?” Central to femme invisibility (which should be called femme erasure, in my opinion) is the allegation that femmes are not “gay looking”. Ok, then who is and why? Who gets the privilege to set the tone of the conversation of what it means to look queer or gay? Clearly not femmes or we would have at least included ourselves.
There is the problem of “looking straight” and needing to access queer/gay safe spaces and being questioned uncomfortably. Of spending time scrimping and saving to dress up for the dyke bar and pay the cover just to have everyone treat you like a fag hag. Of being out for almost a decade and still getting treated like an interloper until someone sees me with a stud they know. Of being made to find people to vouch for your dykedom. Of having to come out every day to everyone, often several times to the same people because apparently femmes are not experts on their own lives.
So, in short, don’t come at me with that shit. Quit relegating feminitinity to the backburners of queerness because of a faulty generalization. Check your own association of femmeness with excess and shallowness and stupidity. Learn how to see femmes, and stop blaming us for our own erasure.
The handful of films that do focus on people in subordinate groups are likely to be tagged (and devalued) as ‘women’s films’ (‘chick flicks’) or ‘Black films’ or ‘gay films’ or ‘lesbian films’, even though all the rest ar never called ‘men’s films’ or ‘white films’ or ‘heterosexual films’. In a society identified with dominant groups, such films are supposedly about everyone, or at least everyone who counts."
— Allan G. Johnson (via wretchedoftheearth)
(via stopwhitewashing)
I can’t believe it is so ingrained in our society that feminists can fight for equal rights, but masculinits must be misogynistic assholes.
Seriously, what the actual fuck?
99% of people will agree that masculinists must be sexist bigoted oppressors, but a feminist? oh no, they just want to make things equal.
masculinists are sexist bigoted assholes
how many more fucking power and privilege could you possibly want?
isn’t it enough to be on top of everything all the time?
Men’s rights activism is like activism for the rights of white people, straight people, cisgender people, able bodied people and rich people. Men are a part of a privileged class (they own most of the world’s property, control most of the world’s wealth, control and own most media outlets and make up nearly all world leaders), HOW MUCH MORE POWER COULD THEY POSSIBLE NEED!In other words, they already have, socioeconomic, sociopolitical and sociocultural superiority, in this case, to be a “masculinist,” can’t possibly be advocating for their equality through “empowerment,” but is actually is just reinforcing the powerful position they already have.
Excuse me, women control 60% of the countries wealth. Women outpace men in universities and graduation rates, For the first time in american history there are now a million more female college graduates than male. Men are oppressed in the legal system in both sentencing and child custody issues. Women start 2 businesses to every 1 business created by a man, childless women in their twenties make 113% of what childless men in their twenties make. in the nations largest cities, women make up to 20% more than men for the same job, with the same title. Women are at a huge advantage in the education system when applying for scholarships. Any time a male gets off on a rape charge the pity always falls on the woman assuming she was actually raped instead of any sympathy towards the man who was arrested under presumably false allegations.
Inaccurate. According to the World Bank, women only control 1% of world wealth.
Also, the gender wage gap does not work in our favor. At all: “Salaried women workers earn 62 cents for every $1 that men earn in Germany, 64 cents in India and about 80 cents in Mexico and Egypt. Women entrepreneurs fare far worse, earning 34 cents for every $1 men earn in Ethiopia and just 12 cents in Bangladesh relative to every $1 for men.” [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/19/women-make-only-1-percent-wealth_n_969439.html ]
The United States Bureau reported that in 2010: “the earnings of women who worked full time, year-round were 77 percent of that for men working full time, year-round.”
According to the Center for American Progress: “Women earn less than men within all racial and ethnic groups,…Even though women are outpacing men in getting college degrees that’s not enough to close the gender pay gap,…More than 40 percent of the wage gap cannot be explained by occupation, work experience, race, or union membership,…[and] Mothers earn about 7 percent less per child than childless women.”According to the World Economic Forum: Women make up less than 20% of world leaders: “
According to the Global Campaign for Education UK: 53% of the 67 million children missing out on school are girls
According to UN Women: There are only 117 countries that have equal pay laws and women still earn 10-30% less than their male counterparts.
According to Amnesty International , the US Census Bureau and the
Women’s Learning Partnership: Women perform 66% of the world’s work, but receive only 11% of the world’s income, and own only 1% of the world’s land. Women make up 66% of the world’s illiterate adults. Two-thirds of the world’s children who receive less than four years of education are girls. Girls represent nearly 60% of the children not in school. About 75% of the refugees and internally displaced in the world are women who have lost their families and their homes.How can women be at a HUGE ADVANTAGE in the education system, when women are more likely to be impoverished and more likely to be illiterate?
Not to mention, that I’d more likely side with a potential rape VICTIM than potential perpetrator of rape.
Hey Masculinist/MRAs….
—
Becky Thompson, “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism,” in Nancy Hewitt, ed., No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminisms (via ohgeeznora
)
This was on the comps list. #goodshit.
(via newmodelminority)
(via racialicious)
