Lolita's Fist

The next time you're tempted to think that women's choices about subjects to take or jobs to apply for, think about these subtle signals that we are peppered with daily that underscore the message "We don't want you here." The subtle ways that discrimination works https://www.economist.com/business/2019/04/20/the-subtle-ways-that-discrimination-works

Quillette:  https://quillette.com/2018/12/20/feminisms-dependency-trap/ I don't agree with this article. The article is written by a woman raising issues about how feminists define themselves in the negative against their issues with men and saying that's a problem.  That is how the world changes its ideas. Oh gosh, I hate the capitalism stuff - it's greedy, it prevents creative solutions, it tends to the lowest common denominator... What would world look like without it? People would would work because they want to, they would be paid within an equity scale. That is how ideas happen. They examine what is wrong with the world and come up with alternate ideas. And the people with power and things to lose resist the ideas and the changes. And then there's a revolution.  I don't think the author understands the process of world change.  She sneers at women driving cars their fathers bought and receiving education from the pockets of their fathers' ...

I am loving it. The photography is spectacular. The framing of the movement is like an actor. So slight. Almost imperceptible, and yet planned so carefully, chock-full with content.  Trivia alert. However, the eyebrows of the lead character are driving me mad. Why do I alway feel eyebrows are over acting. They should have a show where all the eyebrows can go and act in. They need their own series.  Actors, in general, seem to be chosen on their left-handedness, and their ability to slant their eyebrows up in the center. I think this is not an expression the people in my country can do. It's genetic I guess. So when I when I see it, it seems extreme. An overly overt expression. Annoying. Strange.  It's a tidbitty observation.  

Clitorises come in many forms. I read about women in a part of Africa, back in the day, when women couldn’t own land, have a bank account, a house, a garden. They also could not have a clitoris. If they had a clitoris, they could not get married, because no man would want them. So, if your mother didn’t excise your clitoris, she doomed you to no land, no bank account, no house, no garden, no man to feed you. Essential joys-choices are taken from us. Nowadays, our clitorises are ‘you have to be the secretary’, ‘you have to wear dresses’, ‘you have to wear high-heeled shoes’, ‘you have to give me a blowjob’. The currency changes appearance. The currency used to be clitorises, now it’s heels. Audre Lorde says you can’t use the master’s tools, and I think some women can’t recognise the tools. ... Reference: Lorde , Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Pr...

I attend these diversity dialogues. And I am the worst dialoguer. Mainly because I am not the girl to describe-the-problem. Going over and over stuff and exploring feelings over and over is just not me. I went to a psychologist once for many months and was annoyed that I had suspended my disbelief in the process and found that psychologists are trained to describe-the-problem using variables from a pathologising formulaic book that rarely gets updated (DSM). I can think of a few other examples of books that rarely get updated. Problem describers. I love The Dreaming . A part of the dialogue is imagining what the world would look like without that problem. People try to imagine the world, smell it, breathe it, see it. They are so tentative, so hesitant, so bound to reality. People of privilege often don’t know words like ‘the Geni coefficient’ or ‘the Copper T’. I don’t mean to use these obscure terms, I hate people who try to baffle others and I rephrase if another opportunit...

#Movies ~ Handmaid's Tale series (2017). The most ominous thing I have ever seen is Hannah's pink dress.  #NoteToMy13yoSelf 

To all the people who know that Blade Runner is my favourite movie of all time. I was 19 when I saw this movie, and I was mindbound (like footbinding, see Mary Daly). The patriarchal narrative enveloped/s me. Even after 30 years of my own feminism. The patriarchy is insidious and systemic, and I have to work daily to find the nooks and crannies it lurks in. I was so in love with Harrison Ford. He was an embodiment of the men in the Mills & Boon I was reading. Craggy, bad-tempered, masculine. Ooh. And scifi was new to me. New on film to everyone. It was shiny, it was intellectual, it was engaging, it was Mills & Boon antidote. From when I was five (or that’s when I remember), I have been protesting the advances of men. I still did not see Sean Young protest. When I started to feel horny when I was young, I saw that women were NEVER allowed to want sex, NEVER ask for fingers in your vagina, NEVER ask for hands to touch your breasts, NEVER ask for a kiss, NEVER...

#Feminism #Racism  Fridging ~ female or black characters who are injured, raped, killed, or disempowered sometimes to stimulate protective traits among men or whites. The fridging is a plot device intended to move a male or white character's story arc forward. (From a comic book story where a female character is killed and stuffed in a fridge.)

Charlotte Alter writes "As soon as the world perceived them as male. They gained professional respect, but lost intimacy. They exuded authority, but caused fear. From courtrooms to playgrounds to prisons to train stations, at work and at home, with friends and alone, trans men reiterated how fundamentally different it is to experience the world as a man." Source:  https://time.com/transgender-men-sexism/

Delicious feminist analysis by Megan Garber. " I never bothered to question why it was Harry who met Sally, and not the other way around. I never wondered why it was Harry who changed so drastically over the course of the film, while Sally's primary evolution involved her hairstyle. I never paid much attention to all the hints the movie drops that Sally, from almost the beginning of her friendship with Harry, has been waiting for him to decide that, when it comes to her, he wants  the sex part to get in the way ." Source:  https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/07/when-harry-met-sally-and-the-high-maintenance-woman/594382/

Bechdel-passed Collide (2016) because one women tells another that she is going to die if she doesn't get a kidney transplant. This sets in motion death and mayhem, car chases and shootouts, and multiple civilian deaths in a cocaine sale effort to save the woman's life. Her voice is then used to justify the whole lot. The women are literally used as plot device to set the film in motion and then used to manipulate morality. #Fuckit

I am (famous, hehe) for saying if you moved your left eyelash for activism, it's activism and no one should walk behind you and say, "But what about the child refugees in Bosnia", "But what about the deforestation of the Amazon". Activists must be encouraged and supported. No discussion.  For those of us who are ready to tackle the next step, we see the interrelatedness. Like when you understand racism, you understand genderism. Just because we know one word, it opens up the interrelatedness of words and language is learned. The language of straws is linked to the language of the Pacific gyre.  People from one country only learn a few words and get by in another. And they are an integral part of the community, of the social ecology. Similarly, straw refusers play a small but integral part in our world.       ...      Thursday's Cat Media        Tanya Pretorius   |...

I am often shocked by how people romanticize the past and the things that made the past what it is. Women who never have orgasms. Women who are ok with fellow women having their clitorises excised. Women who are no more than indentured servants indentured to their children. Slaves while men are getting their dick wet, having their food on the table at the same time daily, and free child care.  All courtesy of the virginity cult and women giving them a free pass to all women's bodies all the time, and then giggling as other women maintain the virginity cult with the word the men use - slut.  While the men close the clinics so women have no access to contraception. They're slut shamed at the clinics, so Russian roulette with men's lies is preferable. Not to mention how the shame culture works, that if you're raped it's your fault, if you believe the lies my friends are told so that men ~ fathers, uncles, brothers, strangers ~  can add their Virgin scalps ...

Just go with it (2011) is a silly movie but I love the love scene in front of her hotel door. Anniston and Sandler do the best job of making me believe it. And I rarely do. Very rarely. Major suspension of diselief is required for love scenes for a radical feminist like me. I got it right with Hanks and Ryan too, and then she spoiled it by slagging off romantic comedies and refusing to consider doing one with Hanks again.

I love Juliette Binoche's bush. Oh my gosh, it's luxurious and fuckyouey in a world where Barbie has no nipples and no pussy and Barbie's name is used as a labiaplasty 'STYLE'. I love the 'Juliette', I wish for the 'Juliette'. The 'Juliette' reeks of abundance and agency, and it smells good. Thanks Juliette. #YouRock

#Movies ~ The Highwaymen  (2019). I looked at the movie header. Two men. Seriously? OK but it's Kevin Costner. Love him. Skipped watching it a few times. Eventually, this morning I started. You know how they ALWAYS  have to have that scene where the man is going to go out and change the world, big VDay speech, big dragon slaying, big moon landing. There's the woman, "Errh, my dinner's getting cold. Errh, but you said you would be home more, you promised. Errh, I have pilates on Tuesday and who will pick up the children."  *eyeroll*.  In this movie, she said a list of things she WOULDN'T say and then said, "But I'm not going to say any of those things, I knew who you were when I married you." Then she goes off to serve the party punch. Woohoo! Headway! Small shift, but let's get out the champagne!   Ironically the movie has Bonnie and Clyde in it, and back in the day, Faye Dunaway played Bonnie. In those the days, the Highwaymen had wom...

 REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA CRIMINAL LAW (SEXUAL OFFENCES AND RELATED MATTERS) AMENDMENT ACT   REPUBLIEK VAN SUID-AFRIKA WYSIGINGSWET OP DIE STRAFREG (SEKSUELE MISDRYWE EN VERWANTE AANGELEENTHEDE)   No 32, 2007 GENERAL EXPLANATORY NOTE: [ ] Words in bold type in square brackets indicate omissions from existing enactments. Words underlined with a solid line indicate insertions in existing enactments.    ACT To comprehensively and extensively review and amend all aspects of the laws and the implementation of the laws relating to sexual offences, and to deal with all legal aspects of or relating to sexual offences in a single statute, by— * repealing the common law offence of rape and replacing it with a new expanded statutory offence of rape, applicable to all forms of sexual penetration without consent, irrespective of gender; * repealing the common law offence of indecent assault and replacing it with a new statutory offence of sexual assault, applica...