I think consent is both obligatory and sexy.

maximummisandry:

Wreck-It Ralph is an accurate depiction of what video games think women look like.

Why I love Fallout New Vegas: you can play a female character, and she doesn’t look like this. Neither do most of the female NPC characters. The only ones dressed in impractically sexy clothing are prostitutes, and the male prostitutes in the game are dressed in similarly impractically sexy clothes. That’s just due to their profession. Female merchants, fighters (blanket term for everybody that could fight you in combat; Khans, NCR, etc.), or other characters just don’t dress like that. (Not that there’s anything wrong with dressing up sexily, it just isn’t practical if you’re going to be fighting radscorpions or walking across the wasteland to sell your wares. It’s very practical if your job is to get paid for sex.)

Plus, you can be a lesbian or a gay guy or a bi person, you can vaporize people with a laser rifle, and you can talk your way out of some combat situations with a high enough speech skill. There’s an infinite amount of ways to play the game. It’s awesome. (And I killed a rapist, which was quite satisfying, although the game’s discussion of rape would have been triggering for some.)

Then again, I read a review that said, “Fallout: New Vegas is a pile of bugs with a game thrown in somewhere.” It’s true that the game is very buggy, and that gets frustrating. It’s also true that it has some problematic elements. However, it’s still a fun game, and it doesn’t portray women as stick figures with giant breasts wearing tight armor.

leslie-feinberg:

1_’I’m with CeCe!’_SF Trans March 2012

photo credit: Eric Wagner
1 of 5 photos

Photo information Eric Wagner:
San Francisco Trans March 2012

“CeCe McDonald is a young African-American trans woman who is being charged with murder after an attack which began when she was verbally and physically assaulted outside a bar in Minneapolis.”

www.transadvocate.com/have-you-heard-about-cece-mcdonald.htm

++++

Between now and trial I am posting
a photo a day to FREE CECE NOW!
[for information about CeCe McDonald’s struggle,
explore: supportcece.wordpress.com]

Thank you to the photographers/artists/activists
who are contributing photo/s to an online
SLIDE SHOW DEDICATION to FREE CECE McDONALD—
entitled “This is what solidarity looks like!”

The dedication will be part of the May Day 2013
free online publication of the 20th-anniversary
author edition of Stone Butch Blues

Please make your own individual and group photos
in support of CeCe’s struggle for the slide show
titled “This is what solidarity looks like!”

FREE CECE NOW!!

Photo information/photo credit forms:

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/leslie-feinberg-on-facebook/stone-butch-blues-multi-media-digital-dedication-to-free-cece-mcdonald/486837591335592

Tumblr:http://leslie-feinberg.tumblr.com/

IACenter.org:http://iacenter.org/lgbt/cecemcdonaldpictures/

illbeyourshouldertocryon:

veeisagenderneutralname:

I really wish people would stop shaming people who don’t like to “give” as much during sex. I mean, there are definitely a lot of aspects of this that have to do with really problematic and heteronormative sex roles, but I’m just talking about basic consent here….

I honestly don’t mind if my girlfriend doesn’t take care of me right away. I know she loves me I also know she’ll do it when she’s calmed down from sex. I’m not saying she’s a pillow princess cause she’s not. It’s not a matter of her taking care of me or me taking better care of her. I don’t take better care of her. It’s my body’s incapability of having extraordinary orgasms. I don’t feel neglected. Some people may be taken care of and still feel neglected because their partner didn’t spend as much time on them. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe they’re just sleepy? I mean I know I am after I come even once. So what I’m trying to say is; it doesn’t make you a pillow princess if you’re tired after or you just don’t want to. It makes you a human. We’re naturally selfish creatures just like other animals. That stands true for the other partner as well. They have the right to feel neglected if their partner doesn’t take care of them as much. I agree that it’s not right at all to force yourself on someone and I think that if they do they’re rapists. People who feel neglected and complain about it ARE NOT RAPISTS. They don’t force their partner to do anything. Their partner doesn’t HAVE to do anything that’s their choice. They’re capable making their own choices.
Thank you and goodnight.

It’s true that complaining about feeling neglected doesn’t make someone a rapist. That said, I believe the OP was talking about shaming someone for their desires or lack of desire, which is not okay. There’s a huge difference between saying “I feel neglected when you don’t take care of me” and saying “You’re a terrible prude for not taking care of me.” One is communication, and the other is coercion. I think that what the second poster was talking about was that if someone is uncomfortable with a certain act, then their partner shouldn’t shame them for that. So, if someone doesn’t want to receive penetration, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be open to other things, and it certainly doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in reciprocity. In addition, if someone is uncomfortable with going down on someone, it also doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be open to taking care of their partner in other ways and it also doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in reciprocity.

As for what you were saying, I agree with pretty much all of it. I think that if someone feels neglected (even if they’ve been taken care of!) then it’s an important thing to communicate. I don’t think that being open about your feelings makes you a rapist. Forcing yourself on another person is 100% awful, shaming someone for their desire or lack of desire creates an unhealthy environment in a relationship, but being open about your feelings isn’t coercive, nor is it non-consent, nor is it rape culture. Explaining that “I feel neglected when you come and I don’t” isn’t the same as forcing someone to have sex with you. It’s basic communication, which is a good thing, even if the feelings you’re communicating are negative ones.

If one partner gets sleepy after they come and the other one doesn’t, the obvious solution is to have the non-sleepy person come first (if both people consent to that). Then, everybody feels good. I think that sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the obvious fact that sex is supposed to feel good, and if it doesn’t, something is wrong. If it doesn’t feel good to either person, maybe those people would want to try something else, or maybe one of them just isn’t in the mood that day.

(Side note: Sometimes I wonder if I’m a stone femme, but that’s an entirely different conversation. Maybe I just like the thought of my partner getting pleasure from giving me pleasure.)

(Another side note: I seem to recall that your body can be very capable of “having extraordinary orgasms.” They just take more time than mine.)

feministdisney:

angrygirlcomics:

winterofcontent:

This is the first piece of spoken word I’ve ever written (!). I performed it at an Open Mic on campus this evening.

—

White man who tells me
about how it’s better to be a minority
because we’ve can get into university
and we’ve got the advantage because America’s “PC”
and you’re sick and tired of—what, exactly?

Because I will trade you.
I will trade your warm security
for my cold fear when a man’s naked eyes
travel over my body,
for the way my heart jumps into my throat
when it’s late at night and I hear footsteps,
for the hot flash of disgust when leering men
ask me to give them a smile,
ask me how tight my vagina is,
call me “ching-a-ling”—
I will trade you complacency and broad shoulders
for my small breasts and slight figure,
for a chance to walk the streets at night
and feel like a king.

I will rip the skin off my body for your pale armor,
specially designed to deflect racial slurs,
peeling back layers of contentment
while you repeat “we all bleed red”
like a joke whose punchline has run out of credit,
I will trade you your outrage at being called “cracker”
for my nine-year-old shame on the playground
when people shout “ching chong” and other phrases
in the mangled language of hurt.

When you cry about reverse racism,
I cry for people who are dying,
shot in the back, in the backs of cars,
falling forward because you don’t need
to see a face to know their skin is guilty.
For you, racism is a college course
you can walk out on, sleep through,
forget it’s even on your schedule,
and still be at the top of your class.
For me, racism is a prison I can’t escape
because I don’t have my white-passing papers.

Say my life is easier, and I will trade you
my helpless anger, the roiling disgust
when told, go back to China, we don’t want your kind,
here, take the heaviness that comes
with screaming at a face whose mind is shut,
take my glass ceiling and give me your sky,
I will trade my model minority treadmill
for your golden boy highway,
my tired legs for your power-slick wheels,
I will trade you a name that serves
as a one-way ticket to stagnation
because people like me can’t speak English,
people like me don’t get things published,
people like me are good for nothing but
working twice as hard for half as much pay
and people like me are good at keeping our mouths shut.

omfg this is AMAZING!!! oh my god all of the snaps and claps! I hope you got a standing ovation at your open mic because holy crap 

gorgeous and powerful and evocative

if this is your first spoken word piece I hope you write eight million more :D

great work!!  I miss experiencing spoken word poetry like this :(

arletterocks:

Isn’t it humbling to write hundreds and hundreds of words about sexism and gender and entitlement and then remember that “Flight of the Conchords” nailed the whole displacement-of-responsibility and nice-guy rage things in, like, four sentences?

siddharthasmama:

traumachu:

I used to be the one who said, “I don’t mind.”

 ”I’m Asian and I don’t mind” 

“I’m a woman and I don’t mind”

“I’m queer and I don’t mind”

 - So why don’t the rest of you just lighten the fuck up.

In fact, I’m Asian and I think it’s funny.

It’s just a joke.

You say it because there is a place inside of you that hurts and it shouldn’t.  

You think it’s weak. You think, who the fuck cares?

Maybe you say it because you’ve heard it so many times that you’ve become desensitized to hurt, and you accept it as normal.

Or maybe you say it because you’ve made yourself blind to injustices so you never hurt at all. 

I laughed. I laughed at the jokes and the stereotypes. I laughed because I made myself laugh, and the sound of it covered up my discomfort, and my shame. 

When you laugh enough, laughing becomes second nature. 

Not caring becomes second nature. And then, you eye everyone who does care with disdain. They have no sense of humor. They’re too sensitive. You’re better than them. They make the rest of us look bad.

They’re being a bad minority.

or

They’re so annoying. They’re the reason why people hate feminists.

What I actually meant when I said “I don’t mind” is:

Please accept me

Please think I’m special 

Please make me one of you

And what they heard when I said “I don’t mind” is that it’s okay.

It’s okay to laugh at someone for being Asian - my mother, father, my grandparents; my cousins, my aunts, my uncles.

It’s okay to laugh at women - my mother, my sisters, my friends

It’s okay to laugh at queers - my friends, my lovers 

Because they’re friends with a PoC, you see, so they can’t actually be racist, especially if their friend is okay with it. 

I said it was okay. So it must be.

Everyone else is just oversensitive. Everyone else is just uptight.

What they heard when I said “I don’t mind” is that if you mind, you don’t matter. Your experiences don’t matter. Because they have this friend who said it was okay. 

What I meant when I said “I don’t mind”:

I want to laugh with you; I don’t want to be laughed at.

And what I didn’t know was that just because I didn’t mind, it didn’t make me special. When you laughed at those people, that included me, too.

And what they don’t tell you when  you say “I don’t mind,” is that from that moment on, you will be championed as a representative of an entire race/gender/orientation/identity. And your words of “I don’t mind,” or “I think it’s funny” will be used as an example, to put down countless others of other races/genders/orientations.

To say “I don’t mind” is not what makes you strong. It takes far more strength to care, and address the issues. It takes courage to look unpopular, to look “humorless” or to be a “bad minority.”

We should mind. It does matter. If more people minded, instead of feeling like they didn’t have to, then maybe people would start seeing that there is a very real problem.

File Under: Things white people will never feel/understand as they never have to face being ‘othered’ (and no, being a white person in a mostly POC/queer space does not count; you’re still white and still hold the “power”).

White queers face being ‘othered’ too, by the heteronormative society we live in. Although we aren’t marginalized because of our race, we’re still othered for different reasons. So, I related to the parts of this that discussed being a woman and being queer. I don’t experience racism, but I know what it’s like to deal with sexism and homophobia, and I’ve been in the same position with regards to sexist/homophobic “jokes.”

TL;DR: Some white people are oppressed for reasons other than their race, so some of us know what it’s like to be ‘othered,’ although our experiences will be different from yours without having to deal with racism.

(Also, yeah, being a white person in a mostly POC space does not count as being marginalized, and I’m tired of hearing that bullshit from other white folks. Just wanted to make it clear that I agree with that part of your statement 100%.)

justamus:

A rare vintage photograph of an onna-bugeisha, one of the female warriors of the upper social classes in feudal Japan.

Often mistakenly referred to as “female samurai”, female warriors have a long history in Japan, beginning long before samurai emerged as a warrior class.

feministdisney:

with natural hair .

(Sorry im not the best drawer on my tablet )

Interested in submitting to the photo challenge? click here