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ETA: Okay, I've officially spent too much time on this in the last couple of days. Still hot on the subject (and probably always will be) but time to go take care of some other stuff. My apologies if you comment and I don't reply.)
ETA 2: In-depth post in response to some recent comments here. Comments on this entry are now frozen. Sorry, but I've no time to engage in back-and-forths with several people all day.
I've figured it out:
The reason the "femme pride" crowd pisses me off is that they want to have it both ways: they want to insist that there is strength in stereotypical femininity, and yet they want the privilege of being pampered like a weak little princess. They want chivarly, and doors opened, and some big strong butch to take care of them, and they don't want to have to take responsibility for the fact that being femme IS a power position, in relation to non-femme women. Sorry, girls, you can't have it both ways. With power comes responsibility. If you don't want the responsibility, then don't try to sell me the myth that wearing lipstick is an act of assertiveness, or anything more than a self-centered, immature little girl playing dress-up to get attention.
Hanne Blank-- someone I've previously had a lot of respect for-- has just banned me and deleted a bunch of my comments from her journal, supposedly for being "rude." The rudeness in question? I challenged her assumption that being a femme woman is some sort of special status that deserves celebration and a place of honor. Apparently I'm supposed to kiss her ass and treat her like a "lady" instead of bluntly picking apart her prurient description of how great it is to be femme. If her lurid description of femme space were instead a celebration of how great it is to be white, and to hang out in white space, people would be jumping down her throat. But because she and others like her have convinced themselves that being a femme woman is some sort of special minority status that deserves honor, instead of the privileged position it really is, they don't realize how offensive what she said is.
The thing is: she's smarter than that. I know she is. But for some reason, she's freaking out about being challenged on this. My guess is that being femme is something she's really psychologically invested in, and she's probably a lot more culturally-pressured on it than she thinks. Most women who freak out when challenged about being femme do so because they don't want to admit that they really are succumbing to cultural pressure to be properly feminine. Intelligent, progressive women like Blank like to believe in the myth that we're in a post-feminist era, and that we can somehow "reclaim" stereotypical femininity because it's no longer inherently harmful to women. Problem is: we're not. Mandatory femininity continues to destroy millions of women all over the world. It is not a choice which can be made lightly, and it's certainly not a choice which should be celebrated as if it were some special minority status.
( privilege and responsibility )
ETA 2: In-depth post in response to some recent comments here. Comments on this entry are now frozen. Sorry, but I've no time to engage in back-and-forths with several people all day.
I've figured it out:
The reason the "femme pride" crowd pisses me off is that they want to have it both ways: they want to insist that there is strength in stereotypical femininity, and yet they want the privilege of being pampered like a weak little princess. They want chivarly, and doors opened, and some big strong butch to take care of them, and they don't want to have to take responsibility for the fact that being femme IS a power position, in relation to non-femme women. Sorry, girls, you can't have it both ways. With power comes responsibility. If you don't want the responsibility, then don't try to sell me the myth that wearing lipstick is an act of assertiveness, or anything more than a self-centered, immature little girl playing dress-up to get attention.
Hanne Blank-- someone I've previously had a lot of respect for-- has just banned me and deleted a bunch of my comments from her journal, supposedly for being "rude." The rudeness in question? I challenged her assumption that being a femme woman is some sort of special status that deserves celebration and a place of honor. Apparently I'm supposed to kiss her ass and treat her like a "lady" instead of bluntly picking apart her prurient description of how great it is to be femme. If her lurid description of femme space were instead a celebration of how great it is to be white, and to hang out in white space, people would be jumping down her throat. But because she and others like her have convinced themselves that being a femme woman is some sort of special minority status that deserves honor, instead of the privileged position it really is, they don't realize how offensive what she said is.
The thing is: she's smarter than that. I know she is. But for some reason, she's freaking out about being challenged on this. My guess is that being femme is something she's really psychologically invested in, and she's probably a lot more culturally-pressured on it than she thinks. Most women who freak out when challenged about being femme do so because they don't want to admit that they really are succumbing to cultural pressure to be properly feminine. Intelligent, progressive women like Blank like to believe in the myth that we're in a post-feminist era, and that we can somehow "reclaim" stereotypical femininity because it's no longer inherently harmful to women. Problem is: we're not. Mandatory femininity continues to destroy millions of women all over the world. It is not a choice which can be made lightly, and it's certainly not a choice which should be celebrated as if it were some special minority status.
( privilege and responsibility )
