Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

This is not to say that humans, as animals prior to any development of culture, did not engage in behaviors now recognized as “sex”, but rather their discursive meaning and all the material practices constituting them are historically produced. In the same manner, humans have always acted and created, but it is only in capitalist development, in the processes that alienated and proletarianized us, that this becomes secured as “labor.” What drives us towards having sex, in the here and now, is something determined by the flows of power and economic structures that produce us as “women,” “men,” “trans,” “straight,” etc. If thousands of years ago there was a pre-gendered mode of pleasure, embodiment, and usage of genitalia, it is irretrievably lost to us.

seems iffy? at the very least this pre-cultural sex should be vestigial, if not underlining the entire thing.

it's such a bold critique to say that we are not only more than animals, but actually not animals at all

just glancing at the quotes, it seems like a bit of critical theory by numbers, even including a kind of negative idea of the subject as a way to, you know, actually do critical theory as itself something "undetermined" by "flows of power and economic structures." it makes an exception of itself from a totalizing vision of determination as a way to guarantee the coherence of that picture.

the idea of a prelapsarian sexuality seems a little... optimistic to me

but what do i know, i stan for kludgey modernity

i don't think anyone would describe animal sexuality as prelapsarian!

mb bonobos

http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2014/05/22/animal_social_justice_equality_in_bonobos_chimps_monkeys_lions_baboons.html

http://i.imgur.com/XgesA6n.jpg

wtf

Good article tbh

do not feed the clickbait

?

You talking about the Slate article?

Not sure how well this article fits here, but I found this interesting...
http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/the-h-word-in-search-of-horrible-women/

About how some people find it difficult to accept realistic female characters that are bad people.

does that article discuss the book Tampa?

No but there is something quite similar

Article reminds me FONDLY of the couple times a stranger has asked me, while knitting in public, if I was doing a Madame Defarge code. <3

guess she's overhighlighted or whatever but i hope lady macbeth kills everyone on that list until she's #1

that which hath made them drunk hath made me bold
what hath quench'd them hath given me fire

This is pretty interesting. I don't have much to say about it and am just gonna throw it out there:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/29/slut-shaming-study.html

thanks for the links, RAG & hurting.

wr2 the "h-word" article, i'm torn in two directions. on one hand, i'm often troubled by the limited number of modes available to women as characters in popular entertainment. on the other, i sometimes have the unpleasant sense that "horrible" women in stories created by men are punching bags for the venting of grievance. thinking in particular of the "bad exes" of mad men and weeds.

You might know about this already but Kier-La Janisse written a book called House Of Psychotic Women and she talks about lots of films that have been dismissed as sexist (misogynist often). The book (which I haven't read but I listened to a series of interviews with her about it) is about horror films prominently featuring female neurosis and how they resonate with her and seem to with quite a lot of other women (plenty of female bloggers particularly love giallo and slasher films). She talked about even though giallo films are sexist they still showed her things that she felt were true in her life. The book has been well received and it doesn't sound like it strains too hard in the apologist bullshit direction.

Personally I think that men often get actresses or create female characters that are often beautiful (usually in a innocent or ethereal way) and can scream and express emotions in way that is impressive, enviable, cathertic and intoxicating. I think it helps them articulate emotions that they couldn't otherwise.

i sometimes have the unpleasant sense that "horrible" women in stories created by men are punching bags for the venting of grievance. thinking in particular of the "bad exes" of mad men and weeds.

wasn't weeds created by a woman?

wuzzit? [investigates...]

lol, yeah, i guess i'm guilty of exactly what SPM was talking abt in that nightmare essay: rejecting a negative female character based on what i assumed it was trying to "say". weeds eps written by a large and gender-varied group of people, but by no means generally "by men".

imaginary sexism aside, show's treatment of elizabeth perkins' cecilia still bugs me. seems vindictive & unfunny. i don't dislike her, but the show seems to.

I felt like even though the characters were good in Sopranos, I feel like a lot of them were punching bags too. I think Betty Draper is a good character too.
I feel like when I read Victorian ghost stories there is often an idiot portrayed with total contempt and that annoys me, maybe these writers didn't have anyone to bitch about these people to, but I rarely appreciate characters who are nothing but punching bags.

I just read my previous post, sorry for how horribly I written it.

Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes because people don't respect them, study finds

karma

And Hurricane Amanda seemed so warm and fluffy.

didn't she though

Regarding that hurricane article, there was a comment on the Economist that was basically to the effect of "people who evaluate the danger of a storm by its name are being killed... are we sure this is a bad thing?"

Lol do not underestimate Hurricane Amanda.

No one could have predicted that a sassy lil thang named Katrina could have breached the levies.

xp i called her mandy and she blew my house down now that's just over-reacting

"Female hurricanes are 'crazy'"

No one could have predicted that a sassy lil thang named Katrina could have breached the levies.

― ₴HABΔZZ ¶IZZΔ (Hurting 2), Monday, June 2, 2014 8:48 PM (2 hours ago)

More fool them, she'd been openly associating with The Waves since like 1985.

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

so good.

category 5!!!!

Beautifully done

Debunked:

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/02/why-have-female-hurricanes-killed-more-people-than-male-ones/

All hurricanes had female names until 1979, and hurricanes have been getting steadily less deadly in recent years with the increase in early warning etc. Correlation does not imply causation.

that was exactly my first thought

my first thought was also a Katrina and the Waves joke

my first thought was a Boston lyric: "I'm gonna say it like a man and make you understand/ Amanda"

I thought this was really really good:
https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-ultimate-humiliation/

this whole thing has made me think a lot about stalkers and romance, particularly that awful poster board guy from "love, actually"

my first thought was a Boston lyric: "I'm gonna say it like a man and make you understand/ Amanda"

when i was in 8th gr it was "i'm gonna take you by the thighs and make you realize…amanda"
not cool

wowed by that piece

first graf reminded me of joan didion.

It was the one thing about this situation that I read from start to finish.

Part of what impressed me about it was how much the author seemed legit driven to understand her subject rather that fall back on canned explanations, even though it's in some ways a repulsive subject. Also some of the stuff toward the end was some of the smartest writing about sex I've ever read and actually helped me understand myself a little better.