Look at teh feminists! they’re trying to be radical!
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
please…continue in comments.
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April 23rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm #
Your totally harshing teh movement
how dare you intimate that my wedding to amna who for all my balling is still doing teh same thing as many otehr womens totally non fmeinist non big dela amarriages is not MOVEMENT OR RADICAL
POUTS AT YOU!
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:25 pm #
hahahahahaha….don’t pout sugar. I will have to eat you.
do u like feminist lady’s eyes? I do. I want them. I want the long strands of spit/blood coming from her mouth too. I could be totally crass and say it reminds me of my scary brown vagina. but I won’t go there.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:27 pm #
but I WILL!
dripping vagina wetness no absurd political attachment
i is not fmeinist enough for it
*hurries yto define vagina appropriately before orgasm*
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:27 pm #
p.s must thank caroline for the awesome picture.http://un-cool.tumblr.com/post/99458223/mogadonia-collectiverevolution
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm #
vagina wetness makes me laugh. I love vagina wetness. I want it. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm #
LOL
i havent updated you on teh crush situation
expect the worlds most tortutred emiddle shcool email
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm #
Radical Feminism has always given me a warm fuzzy feeling, now its giving me seizures.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 pm #
but that is the glory in it all isn’t it? dripping warm wet vaginas and spasms?
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:37 pm #
or slow pressure hands down tightnes srestraint
wait a minute are we clowning or talking bout my fantasy life?
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:39 pm #
ooooh, girl. fantasy life = SOOOOOOOO much better than reality. for *real*.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:43 pm #
sigh wher eis that half bling loud as sbrown nerd boy into dominance who desires to produce half brown radical singing monster noit alls the siz eof amll sapplings
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm #
Uh, I just spent the last hour and half getting a lady-boner watching Wild at Heart. For no other reason than that Laura Dern acting out being fucked makes me swoon. Holy moly. Rest of movie is a bit over the top for me, but Laura Dern…she is not usually who I get the hots for but man in this movie, she’s a fuckin’ cutie pie.
Does my crass mention of a lady-boner = enough lady parts joke to meet my quota? Even though it wasn’t technically funny?
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:42 pm #
…Barbie Cthlulhu?
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:48 pm #
girl needs some food.
April 23rd, 2009 at 8:18 pm #
Goddammit bfp and blackamazon, did you NOT get the memo?
The memo clearly states that nothing is real until a white feminist says it? Do you NOT understand that no one has a marriage of equals until a white feminist enters into marriage with a white feminist mayn to create the only weally twue mahwige of equals?
Dammit, I thought we had schooled “you people” on this shit years ago. It is so tiresome to have to bring it up yet again.
I need to post on my blog. Now where did I leave that mirror that focuses on my navel?
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 pm #
at some point I realized that the reason I had stopped identifying as a feminist wasn’t just a showy attempt to ingratiate myself to woc, nor was it my delayed realization that I might actually *be* a woc, but that I felt personally hurt and betrayed by feminism in myriad ways that i was too ashamed to describe because i felt like some kind of feminist fuckup.
once I was accosted by some PETA asshole who wanted to give me a flyer and I said, look, dude, I am not cool with what your organization does. he responded, sure we “objectify” women but we also do more work for animals than any other organization. and i said sorry dude, but PETA is not my friend. he seemed baffled.
at some point i realized that feminists are not my friend and that identifying as feminist puts me in the same category of people who have really hurt me. not just hurt me in some abstract way, i mean really hurt me with their ignorance and insensitivity and bullshit.
i cannot lie and say it doesn’t hurt and anger me anymore but the only way i can tolerate it is by relentlessly mocking it and tearing it to shreds in my head. i have to give it the levity it deserves. shallow begets shallow.
anyway, darcy-who-is-probably-no-longer-here, i don’t know if anyone else here has the same motives as i do, but this is the only reaction i can stand to this sort of fuckery.
when life hands you radical heartbreak, make a lolcat.
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:23 pm #
wowowowowowow is all i gotta say– even if i didnt know the history its shocking– even though it shouldnt be– when it happens again and when ive been enjoying the conversations in the threads and conversations with friends sparked by all of yalls wonderful musings…
i wasnt around for the last round of this, but i read enough of the surrounding story to get the picture.
also i love the pic for this thread bfp. hee.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:00 am #
ja ja that picture is fucking hilarious.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:01 am #
so I’m late on this but, can I just say that I find it really puzzling to claim that it is unusual for feminists to critique the existence of marriage when GLORIA STEINEM was very vocally & publicly anti-marriage? GLORIA STEINEM, probably if you did a survey of totally random Americans the most famous feminist of the twentieth century? like without necessarily endorsing anything Gloria Steinem has ever said at all, it is really undeniable that she was, in fact, anti-marriage, and pretty famous about it for feminist standards, a good 30+ years ago. on fuckin letterman.
also re: the use of the word radical, I am reminded of The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
actually that could be applied to the world “love” also. it should really read “marriage” or “romantic love” or something like that.
okay can I make a confession about how naive I am? seriously, once I asked a friend what my tragic flaw would be if I were a Shakespearian hero, & he said, incurable naivete. so: when I read the title, & read the article that had pretty much exactly zero to do with the title, I honestly thought to myself: well, maybe it is just a coincidence. I mean, the concepts discussed are just SO COMPLETELY REMOVED from any other context in which I have heard that phrase, there is no way the one could have anything to do with the other, right? it makes too little sense. my worldview, it cannot tolerate something so bizarre. this was honestly my first set of reactions, because I am apparently six and still believe in the tooth fairy. yeah. one day I’ll learn. maybe.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:08 am #
Oh and I want to say that when I read the original link last evening, I was at my mom’s house I yelled out loud ” oh no fuck that shit!!” my children were impressed. I am raising my nenas to be kick ass nenas, pero sure as hell ain’t raising them to be feminists as long as J.V. continues to be the poster child.
April 24th, 2009 at 4:33 am #
“You can’t leave the dishes for later, wash the dishes badly, not use soap, drink straight from the container.”
And there was silly little me worrying about Angie Zapata being beaten to death and asylum seeker women who have been raped and tortured being sent back to get raped again and Ashley X being mutilated and children being forced into sex work. And silly little me thinking that maybe if these women were loved and seen as human that shit wouldn’t happen. ZOMG I must be REALLY stupid.
April 24th, 2009 at 4:36 am #
“After all, who spends more time at the office than one half of a couple looking to avoid home?”
Because the only work that matters enough to be talked about is work that happens in an office. Forget feilds and factories. The people who work in those places don’t matter. And as for people who can’t work because of disability/can’t find work – those people might as well not exist.
April 24th, 2009 at 4:39 am #
“it made me think of feminism as the adultery of social norms”
Except for the social norms of classism and white supremacism.
“What do you mean you want to keep your own last name when you get married? Or refuse to buy that wrinkle cream? Or play baseball instead of softball? I liken feminism to cheating on the deeply ingrained gender standards that our society clings to as tightly as it holds on to the idea of love.”
Ooh, rebel.
I just keep rereading this and finding more reasons to laugh/cry/stab Ms. Valenti in the eye/ all of the above.
April 24th, 2009 at 4:41 am #
“I also realized that if Kipnis could unequivocally declare that love — of all things, love! — was crap, then there was nothing I couldn’t say without hesitation.”
Except “Sorry for being such a jerk and stealing and not caring about disabled women, poor women, queer women, trans women and especially not giving two sh*ts about woc?”
April 24th, 2009 at 4:46 am #
“I stopped being the kind of pro-choicer who calls abortion a sad reality, a tragic choice, or some other such nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with abortion.”
Nope, nothing wrong with poor women terminating wanted pregnancies cause they can’t afford to feed their kids. I mean, the kids whould have been poor. And they might even be BROWN! Ugh! Who would want them to exist?
And who would want more crips to be born and pollute the world? Hooray for pre-natal tests! Hooray for eugenics!
And of course repro justice is 100% about providing abortion and 0% about preventing forced abortion, forced sterilisation and rape.
April 24th, 2009 at 4:47 am #
“with pictures of lingerie-clad women on the cover, to boot”
YAY! Because women just aren’t objectified enough.
April 24th, 2009 at 4:51 am #
“also re: the use of the word radical, I am reminded of The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.””
LOL.
Ok, now I’m totally picturing BFP with a sword in her hand “My name is brownfemipower. You appropriated my language. Prepare to die!”
Sorry for so many comments. Justr uberpissed off.
April 24th, 2009 at 6:05 am #
Writing on radical love is not the same as writing about marriage, coupledom, especially weddings.
You want to get serious about radical love, weddings – the billion dollar industry that it is – cannot be in the same breath of conversation.
I write that a feminist identified womyn of color who married in the midwest, wore a white dress, and had one of those obnoxiously large weddings with a dj and open bar.
That was and is me and to centralize “radical” love on how you conduct your WEDDING is utterly – as BFP points out – laughable.
I write that as someone with a hyphenated name and can’t stand how often that is a weak talking point for a “feminist marriage.”
A radical union based in love is bastardized by “feminist analysis” and this dogging white dresses, last names, and bank accounts, and “independence.”
And romantic love? GOOD LAWD! We’re just throwing everything in this stew, aren’t we?
If you want to talk about westernized weddings, talk westernized weddings. If you want to talk about “romantic love,” then do it. If you want to talk about marriage, then speak about marriage. If you want to talk about sexuality or sexual expression, that is another topic as well.
To throw all these ideas, concepts, and words together without any form of cultural distinction or brushing over them as if they are all the same thing is about as nuanced as this current season of American Idol.
But if you want to talk about radical love, RADICAL LOVE, then it precipitates a vision of relationship, being, and action that is bound by nothing, not even your own definitions of “radical” love.
Love. The quiet power of feminism has been out of practice so long that its so-called practitioners have forgotten that drawing from your own experience is valuable, but is and cannot be centralized or universal.
Wake up, Femmies, wake up.
April 24th, 2009 at 9:22 am #
There was actually some person at my school recently–like, a couple of weeks ago–giving a talk on “radical love” recently, forget the name, but she was kind of your typical pop-culture circuit person, and the description on the flyer did actually sound like what Valenti’s spieling: sort of dumbed-down Kipnis with a heaping helping of self-help.
April 24th, 2009 at 9:27 am #
Yes, here’s the announcement. It actually sounds more like poly 101. Sort of. But…
“Wendy-O-Matik.” I gave it a miss, yes.
…cordially invites you to a special evening talk on: Radical Love: A Spiritual Tool for Building a Sustainable Community, with Wendy-O Matik
Building on her feminist critique of love and relationships, Wendy presents the major challenges that we face trying to re-invent our relationships outside the dominant social paradigm. Radical love is the freedom to love who you want, how you want, and as many as you want, so long a personal integrity, respect, honesty, and consent are at the core of any and all relationships. Radical love primarily focuses on love and intimacy, not sex and sexual conquest. At the heart of this work are three components: feminism, social activism, and spirituality. The lecture is followed by Q&A.
Wendy-O Matik is the author of Redefining Our Relationships: Guidelines for Responsible Open Relationships, a feminist critique of love and relationships outside the status quo. As an educator, role model, and spokesperson for the polyamory community, Wendy has become a revolutionary activist of the heart. Since the release of her book, she has taught over a hundred “Radical Love & Relationship” classes globally, excavating important social trends and reshaping the future of alternative relationship models for the 21st century. As an activist for social change, Wendy is pushing the boundaries on firmly rooted notions in mainstream society on relationships, love, gender, sexual equality, and sexual politics.
April 24th, 2009 at 9:37 am #
seems to me what you’re talking about is much more in line with:
“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
which was pretty damn radical in context, yes.
unfortunately people are always capable of going back to blithely mouthing the words without the tune, no matter what they are. Christians, Bay Area New Agers, pop feminists on the gravy train, etc. etc. etc. etc.
April 24th, 2009 at 9:44 am #
I was already pretty deeply irked just from this Wendy person’s description: like, what, she invented poly now? Queer sex? (garsh it sure sounds pitched to heteros from the flyer)? “Pushing the boundaries on firmly rooted notions…on gender…sexual politics?”
I should’ve probably gone just to see her spiel.
I know when I left my last group class, they were talking about it–well, one person had gone and it was clearly new material for him, which all right more power to him, he’s all fresh faced and wide eyed and struggling with this stuff;
the rest of the discussion was this sort of bastardized ev psych, and–
yeah. oh well…
April 24th, 2009 at 11:51 am #
“with pictures of lingerie-clad women on the cover, to boot”
ooooooooo noooooooo!!!!!!!
shoulda puta pwetty white tummy onta cova and itwouldbe WEAL WADICAL!!!!!
we’d better “check it out” [so rebellious] no need 4 second opinions just read and weep LOL
edited out a link. because it distracts from my blood spitting vagina.
April 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am #
I read Matik’s book. Yes, it’s basically a polyamory 101.
April 24th, 2009 at 1:13 pm #
it’s just….I really don’t care. not enough to have an analysis, not enough do links, not enough to care. We are in bizarro world right now. And the only thing a person can do when in bizarro world is attack other people with their chin hair or spit long streams of blood out of their scary big brown world destroying vaginas. I choose to attack people with streams of blood.
I believe that is the radical choice.
April 24th, 2009 at 1:38 pm #
right on, bfp- no matter what the fuck you say they are going to accuse you of being all kinds of things irrational and over-emotional and other derailing crap so you might as well say fuck it and try to laugh. i think your picture speaks a thousand words. haha
honestly though i have such a disgusting upset stomach because i just cannot believe this priviliged shit (choosing to change carreers, keep last name, leave dishes in the sink) is seen as the normal and important experience. how fucking dare she.
this is triggering me in all kinds of ways.
this is radical love?!?!?! no sense of community responsibility or shared/creative survival/love and thriving of people living under seige. just borgeoisie crap. i’m not even spelling right at this point.
it’s like at all times there is a real radical conversation going on under a “mainstream” bullshit appropriated version. how disheartening.
April 24th, 2009 at 2:31 pm #
Going against all notions of reasonableness, I decided to take a peek inside Kipnis’s book “Against Love”, clicked on Surprise Me which takes you to a random page, and landed on this passage: “…needless to say, once you’ve been caught in an affair, domestic life quickly transforms itself into the domestic equivalent of a South American police state, subjecting you to periodic search and seizures, ritual interrogations…” (p.134)
Wow. This whole situation just gets worse and worse. I’m glad you’ve decided to laugh this one off, BFP, it is a joke. An insulting joke, admittedly, but what can one do about folks who just really don’t give a shit and proudly flaunt it.
April 24th, 2009 at 2:34 pm #
oh my god.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm #
Rock the fuck ON, BFP.
Also, if anyone here needs more convincing (though I highly doubt it) that pretty pretty white weddings n’ feminism pretty much don’t mix well, Rebecca Mead’s book One Perfect Day is a fascinating expose/critique of the wedding industry in the U.S.
April 24th, 2009 at 3:33 pm #
“edited out a link. because it distracts from my blood spitting vagina.”
hehe sorry
i’d rather see a blood spitting vagina 2;)
April 24th, 2009 at 3:38 pm #
the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, children are crying and people are dying…
BUT I’M GONNA PLAY BASEBALL DAMMIT!!!!!!! EMPOWERFULNESS 4EVA!!!
April 24th, 2009 at 4:36 pm #
I love you. And I love this blog. That is all.
April 24th, 2009 at 8:17 pm #
What Superla said.
And oops, I’m drinking out of the container. But somehow Dew doesn’t taste the same surrounded by glass.
Not a feminist though if someone paid me enough I might play one on TV. With a couple of shots of Dew and Vodka first.
April 24th, 2009 at 8:29 pm #
“Radical love” + purple dress = *facepalm*
April 25th, 2009 at 4:08 am #
I’d say “unreal” except that this is same shit different day for these women. Still stinks as much today as it did yesterday… and last week… and last year… and…
April 25th, 2009 at 6:37 am #
This really is love though… loving ourself enough to survive this triggering bullshit through humour. And responding to her erasure with laughter instead of hate.
April 25th, 2009 at 10:59 am #
Yes, it’s wrong that Jessica Valenti has a book deal, with two works currently in print and more on the way, even though she doesn’t have anything original to say about feminism.
I’m sure that’s angrymaking for those who DO have something to say, but who don’t have a fiance with ties to the Democratic Leadership Council, like Andrew Golis (Jessica Valenti’s future husband) does, so they don’t have the right connections to get a publishing deal.
I understand the rage that you feel.
But I also understand that, while venting might feel good, it looks very bad – it looks like petty jealousy, even to a sympathetic observer like myself, and the rightness of your anger gets lost in all of the hateraide.
April 25th, 2009 at 11:16 am #
Maybe this is presumptuous of me but I just don’t know anyone in an equal partnership who would feel the need to go around telling everyone how feminist their relationship is, especially in such trite and superficial ways. Maybe that’s unfair of me because I don’t have my relationship in some public spotlight and have people criticizing whether my relationship is feminist or not, or whatever, but the articles just read in a way that makes me wonder who she is trying to convince.
and seriously I wish the bad view of marriage I got growing up was just the unequal distribution of household chores and not that marriage has the potential to trap you in abusive, violent ways.
I’m totally with you Lisa, I don’t see the connection between wedding rituals and love, let alone radical love? It’s disheartening to see words like that being thrown around all willy-nilly-like.
April 25th, 2009 at 11:45 am #
Gregory – if you actually understood anything, even one thing about this, you would not have left that comment.
April 25th, 2009 at 12:37 pm #
“Sympathetic observer.” Yes, concern troll is deeply, deeply concerned.
April 25th, 2009 at 12:50 pm #
Dear Gregory,
I’m assuming that you haven’t ever read BFP’s work before because if you understood her stand against feminism, particularly mainstream feminism, and its history of swording communities of difference – whether it’s the queer, womyn of color, disability movement, trans, and GLBTQ – you’d understand that her words are anything but jealousy.
She analyzes and writes from a distinct place that most mainstream “feminist” writers lack – a core sense of reality for real womyn of the world.
Writing like that is never rewarded with book deals, only notoriety of “jealousy” and bitterness of other published writers.
With your comment, you numbered yourself #7861540 for judging her, this blog, and her words without becoming familiar with her work. Or understanding the bullshit and politics of publicized feminist writing and the blogosphere which has only reinforced kyriarchal domination with its own special twist.
April 25th, 2009 at 2:08 pm #
Gregory, see, this is *exactly* what I’m trying to explain to you back at Feministing (where I’m ghostorchid) about the problem with feeling comfortable speaking and getting involved in discourse before you’ve really grasped the situation here! How ironic!
You’re coming off badly here, and that’s because:
a) you assume the sentiment here is “rage” and that you understand it
b) you assume that people are mad because Jessica gets book deals (where did that come from?!)
c) you assume that people here care about looking bad to a white feminist who is acting like an idiot, and her white feminist supporters
d) you assume that people here *ought* to make themselves “come off well” or look good according to the standards of the white feminist mainstream
e) you assume that people here care about conveying their emotions accurately to the privileged white feminist crowd (lest they, I assume, damage relations which people who seem to be doing everything they can to sabotage them first)
f) you assume that people here are not aware of what white mainstream feminists think of them and their discourse
g) you assume that you will be helpful (I presume) by telling them all these assumptions
…just for starters.
All of these hinge on your fatal assumption that you don’t need to shut up and listen to comment intelligently. Which is what I was trying to warn about back at Feministing.
April 25th, 2009 at 3:57 pm #
*mouth hangs open*
April 25th, 2009 at 4:06 pm #
What everyone else said and: I’m truly sorry for posting that link before. I didn’t realize it would serve as a gateway for trolls.
April 25th, 2009 at 5:08 pm #
Wow. I walked in on this stuff last year and though I didn’t doubt the situation, it just all seemed so vague and esoteric.
This time it is so, so clear.
April 25th, 2009 at 6:23 pm #
greg–thank you for writing your assumptions all over me. That felt really good.
bfp
April 25th, 2009 at 6:42 pm #
I ate raw liver today. Combine that with my raw stomach, and I think I should have a blood shooting vagina all set up and ready to go in about three hours. I vote we go after teh kittehs first. raw kitteh with shooting blood=bfp’s fav nom nom.
April 25th, 2009 at 7:31 pm #
Gregory, did u just crawl from under a rock? I mean, as a concern troll can you have a new faux concer/piece of advice? Cuz that one–it’s old.
April 26th, 2009 at 9:39 am #
mommy wheres myc oncern troll my vagina spits blood yards
April 26th, 2009 at 10:38 am #
This comment thread is useless without pics:
April 26th, 2009 at 10:39 am #
er, gratuitous cat macro.
April 28th, 2009 at 1:26 am #
You know, I’m glad you’re the first person I’ve seen comment on this, bfp, because if I’d seen it somewhere where people are likely to be discussing it on Ms Valenti’s terms, I think… well, let’s just say I don’t need yet another bulging vein on my forehead.
Plus, I dunno, white middle-class feminists spend so much time hand-wringing about how they only ever analyse white middle-class femininity to the exclusion of all else, but this shit says to me they’re failing to analyse white middle-class femininity (I mean, obviously cause they’re creating situations where they’ll be comfortable, and analysis of the femininity that pretty much has made you what you are is going to be uncomfortable).
Fact is, between a debutante at a debutante ball, a girl having a birthday party, or a feminist confounding expectations by wearing birkenstocks under her dress (or not wearing the birkenstocks), the results are the same, everyone looks at you, you’re a beautiful and unique snowflake. That’s what makes it essentialist, white, middle-class femininity – the rest is just a choice of props. Jessica Valenti, or that silent actress in Sunset Boulevard raving about “all those wonderful people out there in the dark”, it’s all the same, one shoots someone and the other puts out crappy self-help books.
Plus, putting out a self-help book made up of your old blog posts counts as “I’m an intelligent woman” – railing against all those stereotypes but “intelligent woman” is no less of a one than “dumb blonde” or “accomplished woman” back in the 19th century.
And you have no idea how many white middle-class feminists you can piss off all in one go by telling them these things, because those stereotypes that pre-second-wave feminists railed against now make up the backbone of white, middle-class, dominant feminism. It’s like knowing the Touch of Death or something.
April 28th, 2009 at 1:55 am #
Speaking of which, reckon Valenti hires someone to crash cymbals right after she says “I’m a feminist!” whenever she introduces herself?