Feminism in the Morning
Written By: Kat
Pretty frequently, I get riled up about the state of feminism and begin to yell. Sometimes it’s triggered by a news story– an ignorant political comment, a gendered legal battle, a violent rape. Sometimes, it’s triggered when a man makes me uncomfortable walking down the street, leering, commenting on my body. Sometimes, I just wake up and I am mad for us. All of us.
This is what happened a few weeks ago. I woke up in the morning (held by my still-mostly-asleep gentleman friend) and I felt so fucking filled with feminist rage. I began to talk about it, about how I feel every day as a woman, sexualized and morally judged.
We laid in bed, and my voice escalated as I began detailing experiences my friends have had; the men who have forced themselves on them. How guilty it makes women feel to say “no.” How angry that guilt makes me. I described loudly the violations on my body– and the bodies of women around the globe– by men who were too selfish and too aggressive to see the hurt in our eyes. The vacancy, the fear. Ignorant to the ultimate feeling of violation that comes with having another person literally inside of you. Too fast, too jacked up on testosterone to care that it’s rape. Because it is rape.
If both people are not present, consenting, enthusiastic, it’s rape.
As my man made me breakfast, I was shouting for all of womankind. Shouting about society’s propagation of these roles, about how our culture still laughs at feminism. About how we all seem to think it’s so goddamn funny when men tell ladies to “get in the kitchen and make a sandwich.” Harr harr, it’s so funny. How women politicians and media members are required to be attractive, and their attractiveness rated regularly in magazines. We see it over and over and over until it’s normalized and part of our culture.
We don’t have equality yet. It’s not entertaining and it’s not funny. I am sick of the anti-feminist propaganda machine telling us “oh, your desire for empowerment is adorable, now quiet down and make some babies.”
I turned my anger toward popular media. 
Me: “Like Archer. Everyone laughs at that show, like it’s so fucking funny to be a sexist misogynist. Like it’s so funny to treat women like objects. Even their supposedly-empowered female character is constantly sexualized. Their females are written as men view women. Not as women really are. The whole show is about this played out stereotypical man with a Oedipus complex, projecting his negative views toward the opposite gender. And everyone keeps on joking about it, so it keeps being a joke. It’s disgusting.”
Gentleman Friend: “You bought me the Archer DVD.”
Fuck. Am I a bad feminist? ::hops off soapbox to confer::
No, wait. That’s not the point. ::hops back on::
I am a great feminist because I yell about inequality. All the time. I yell about it because, until the feminist yelling drowns out the sexist “jokes” and anti-feminist laughter, we aren’t equal. Period.
I yell about it because everyone should be yelling about it. Men and women. Because no woman ever ever ever should be told she deserved her rape. Until the media stops portraying women in a light that implies we are constantly-in-the-act-of-seduction, dangling our femininity in front of mankind like a carrot on a stick– making our sexuality something that belongs to men, it’s just going to keep happening. Until everyone is shouting about inequality, I’m not sure I can stop.
In my mind, the solution is to just be loud as fuck about menstruation and child birth and how expensive it is to buy tampons and bras, until it’s not men vs. women anymore. Until we aren’t this mysterious foreign creature you can violate and steal the magic of. Until we are viewed as people, not sex objects, regardless of how short our skirts are or how low-cut our tops. Because we don’t belong to you and we never did, so don’t be angry about it, bro.
Until this world is saturated with acceptance of female minds, bodies, hormones, and desires as valid, I won’t stop shouting about them. Until little girls stop being taught that their bodies are dangerous temples of temptation, and little boys are told that YES is the only thing that means YES, I won’t stop ranting. And that’s the state of modern feminism.
Your Monthly Periodical 
I love a mad feminist. Keep up the good work.
I have a (mostly tongue in cheek) question rants like this always make me wonder about. One of the 12 steps is about avoiding/removing temptation. While women have every right to dress however they want, and any form of disrespect based on their appearance is definitely wrong; wouldn’t it be a great show of support for womankind to demonstrate some modesty in support of menfolk, for whom sexual desire is genetically hardwired?
A beautiful woman in a low cut sun dress is going to get noticed. If we weren’t wired this way, the species probably would have died out a long time ago. While what a man DOES about noticing is their responsibility, I don’t know many alcoholics keeping a fridge full of beer around. Wouldn’t it be a great show of good faith in support of the weaker sex?
After all, actions speak louder than words any day.
I find it disheartening when men don’t give their own gender credit for self-control. We fancy ourselves an evolved species, except for when it comes to sex, apparently. For millennia, women have worked to accommodate the desires of men. Modern feminism is working to remove those final barriers and say GUESS WHAT MEN? YOU ARE EQUAL TO US AND WE EXPECT NO LESS THAN EQUAL RESPECT.
I would never walk up to a man working in his yard without a shirt and make a comment on his body. I might silently appreciate, and then move on. But I would never think it was okay to be disrespectful because he was “showing off his body.” Dude is just trying to rake leaves. But this same level of respect is not reciprocated. I assume you also would not walk up to that man and be rude to him. So why is it okay if it’s a sun-bathing lady?
It’s not even men vs. women, is my point. The battle of the sexes thing is so last century. We aren’t trying to “get ahead,” we’re just trying to be equal. If you don’t recognize inequality, you aren’t looking hard enough.
If you aren’t shouting about equality, you don’t want it badly enough.
Too true. It’s not Men V Women. We both have problems, and generally too little self control.
I consider myself a fairly intellectual, and very respectful guy. But, sometimes higher brain functions go right out the window in the presence of an instance of the perfect class (read: beautiful redhead).
I do think it’s a little fallacious to hold your own good decorum up as representative of the female side though.
I get an awful lot of photos of topless men with things like the sexy firemen’s “Excuse me while I set my house on fire” caption from the women in my FB feed. And also, while I don’t consider myself particularly handsome, I have spent a few summers as the shirtless construction worker. Let me just say I appreciate your more conservative approach, it would be a refreshing turn from the norm.
=P, thx 4 indulging a little devilish advocacy.
You know I’m a fan.
There’s are some basic assumptions of responsibility here that should be questioned. “Avoiding/removing temptation” is the responsibility of the person being tempted. We shouldn’t expect the world to know what you’re tempted by and accommodate you. Asking women to dress more “modestly” puts the responsibility to control *your* temptations on the ~3.5 billion women of the world. Men should take responsibility for our own temptations before we ask women to do or change anything–they’ve already accommodated us enough!
I also think it’s inaccurate to say “sexual desire is genetically hardwired” in men. There’s a wide spectrum of desire among all humans, and for some it’s greater than for others. Some of us desire women, some desire men, some a whole range of things in between. But men aren’t genetically dispositioned to be tremendously more sex hungry than other genders, it’s just not true.
Women shouldn’t be asked to accommodate men’s uncontrollable sexual rage or else pay terrible consequences. We, men, should work on what gets in our way of getting to know women and appreciating them for who they are beyond their bodies. Getting at the root of our own desires is an action that will speak louder than words ever could!
“I also think it’s inaccurate to say “sexual desire is genetically hardwired” in men.” Wow, take a biology class. lol.
Yes, there are men AND women all points on the sex drive spectrum. And across the whole sexual preference spectrum too.
You’ve also proceded to answer arguments I simply didn’t make. “But men aren’t genetically dispositioned to be tremendously more sex hungry than other genders, it’s just not true.” Never asserted it was. Just that humans, on average, want sex.
I don’t even want to get into your stilted sensationalization of a modest proposal so I’ll just point out: After a month or so of daily harangues by campus co-eds on a construction site I worked, I put my t-shirt back on. Guess what? Problem solved. Inconvenience? Minor. Should we have to? No. Does it work? Yes. In nature they call this the plumage effect.
It’s this sort of blind adherence to parroting rhetoric spawned in a narrow context and attempting to apply it ubiquitously to arguments that are at best tangential; that is hindering progress of the ‘feminist movement’.
I like Jacque’s response below on this point. Some the strongest women I know have VERY strong mothers. Some of the strongest men I know do, too.
The BitchyEditor isn’t a ‘bad feminist’ for buying an Archer DVD. Unless her guilt makes her feel that way. But more likely I suspect she slid a few notches over on one of those spectrums you referenced and was enjoying the proceedings right along with her gentleman. To err is human. If it really is an err.
In fact she’s a terrific female because she’s got the strength and opinions to stand up to more colloquial lines of thought and say ‘no, that vision of feminism just doesn’t work for me’. [She does this frequently, if indirectly if you’ve been following along the last year]
Form your own opinions.
The trajectory and change in feminist thought has been somewhat inevitable. In the early, heady days, all energies were focused on detailing, describing, and analyzing male dominance. Deconstructing patriarchy and the myriad ways it shaped and organized our lives was the central project. Then, as in any movement that matures, we began to look inward, to examine the more complex and painful ways we were implicated in the reproduction of patriarchy. The more we discovered the depth and range of male dominance, the more we realized its complex and contradictory nature and the real difficulties of overcoming it. This larger feminist shift (by no means linear and still continuing)—from an emphasis on our shared experience as women, our commonality and similarity, to a new recognition of the “differences” (class, race, sexual preference) that made identification as women so problematic—has its corollary in studies of mothering and how the mother/daughter relationship is a quicker track to change.
Yes! I wholeheartedly believe change is still happening, and I presume it will be generational. I hope 50 years from now the ladies of the world are able to look back at this time and enjoy an actual laugh about “the way things used to be,” instead of the joke being on us. Maybe some day ladies will recall the days of “slut shaming” and “legitimate rape” with an embarrassed cringe, like looking a photo of ourselves with a mullet.
When we have equal pay, when we have equal respect, when we have equal representation amongst our world leaders, I will laugh about feminism. Until then, I’ll be on my little soapbox shouting!
Oh my god, everything about this made me so happy. Ridiculously happy. I agree with every point (including the: wait, I did this, am I a bad feminist? Which I think about lots of things all the time.)
It drives me mad when ambitious, smart female friends claim not to be a feminist. It’s like it’s a dirty word. I mean, what part of feminism doesn’t work for you??? It’s about equality, not man-hating.
This is awesome, thanks for writing this.
Thank you! I couldnt agree any more, it’s a challenge for us ladies to balance the bra-burning-man-hating sentiments of the early feminists with the “slut power” feminism of the new millennium. I’ve realized that as long as I am shouting and mad and never complacent in the idea that we are equal (because, seriously, come ON), I am not a bad feminist. I am just a confused human, and that’s okay, too.
I found this blog via a site dedicated to putting food on your breasts. I think you’re confused about what’s making you angry.
You would probably enjoy life much more if you didn’t worry so much about little cartoons like this. The show is style after 1970s films and this is how they were. If they made this feminist approved it wouldn’t make sense, thus it wouldn’t be funny. Also, the main viewership is men so the characters are geared that way. Enjoy life and don’t sweat the small stuff. Men and women are not the same thing so the world is going to revolve around the stronger. This has been going on forever because it’s NATURE.