Dear essentialist femme fuckwit:

[textualdeviance]

I am not "threatened" by your femininity. I simply find it irritating that you not only feel you need to adhere to your culture's prescription for rigid gender roles and presentation, but that other women are required to do this, too.

No love,
That tomboy who dresses "unattractively"

Seriously? I fucking hate women who reinforce sexism, especially if they're doing it with the excuse of A) Essentialist bullshit about how this is how women "naturally" are, and by denying our "true" femininity, we're being sexist ourselves and/or B) Going off about how true feminism means not only respecting her "choice" to tart up/be a domestic doormat, but going along with her plan to require the same of every other woman (or at least create an army of femme peer pressure to encourage it.)

Just because I'm not interested in looking/acting like Barbie or June Cleaver does not mean I'm a traitor to my gender, asshat. Modern Western ideals of femininity have jack shit to do with what we actually are as human beings. Instead, they have a lot more to do with cultural conditioning to make us (and men) believe that we're naturally best suited to be mindless spooge receptacles and/or baby machines. No, of course there's nothing wrong with sex or parenthood, but presenting those things as if they're inherently feminine or somehow essential elements of the life of anyone who has a vagina? Is bullshit. Knock it the fuck off.

Comments

[monkey5s.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, what memories this brings up. My worst experience in my brief college career (back in the Dark Ages, aka the seventies) was my wall-mate in the residence hall that first year. She was attending college specifically to find a husband who would be able to support her in the manner to which she would like to become accustomed. She was several shades of outraged at those of us who expressed bafflement that she was attending this college- and it wasn't cheap, and she came from middle class, so there was a sacrifice to send her- and yet she was completely disinterested in actually, you know, learning anything, while she was actively pursuing her meal ticket to the future.

More than once, I told her that I completely supported her personal expression of life meaning, despite it being very much not anything I could identify with. And I expected her to show me the same courtesy.

Which she most emphatically did not. We who felt that women should be people in our own rights, were wrong, wrong, and OHSOWRONG, in her world view. And our very existence offended her, deeply. Because, we were WRONG. Women were made for getting married and having babies and taking care of hubby and house- and nothing else. Which, really, whenever she started ranting, made me kind of throw up a little.

Funny how times juuuuust don't ever quite change, huh?

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Horrid. I know M's mom went to college to, as they say, get her MRS degree. But that's a Mormon school for ya. Always freaky to see the same attitude outside of religious communities like that.