I Wear Pigtails Like A Good Girl

I wear my pigtails because I've always had "bad hair."  Every woman on the Dominican side of my family put in their long, labourious hours trying to tame my hair, or explain it at the beauty parlor.   Sometimes straightened without my permission, my hair was out of my own control for so long.  Now that I manage it myself, I want all my difficult and unruly curls intact so every person who ever reinforced that “bad hair” label can be mesmerized.  I wear my pigtails to show off how good my "bad hair" is.

  

I wear my pigtails because my sister used to say I looked so cute in them that I could get away with murder.  If my looks could kill, you would surely need a medic.  Apparently women are all vixens, sirens, and temptresses, and "jail bait" when they're too young to consent.  I was devastated when I turned 14 because I knew I wasn't a "nymphet" anymore.  I had only ever learned about my sexuality in terms of male pleasure and believed that Lolita was the pinnacle of girlhood.  I was on a date with an older man recently and he called me "dangerous" when I teased him.  But logically and realistically, he was the dangerous one.  Bigger than me, stronger than me, more credible than me in a court of law if he decided to take by force, because his tits weren't hanging out.  So to reclaim my role as a baby femme fatale from the legal side of 17, to murder you sweetly and to call attention from the blood on my hands, I wear pigtails like a good girl.

 

  

I wear my pigtails because I'm not quite sure how to be femme and I feel like a little girl who snuck into Mommy's make-up and jewelry.  If I have to revert back to childhood to feel feminine, I may as well be a spoiled princess this time around, like my rough childhood never allowed.  I'm not really a femme; I'm playing dress up like a naughty, pouty, foot-stamping Babygirl who needs discipline and a nice, firm tug on her hair.   I wear pigtails like a good girl so you have something to grab when you’re teaching me how to be good.

I wear my pigtails because I’m already big.  Every part of my body stands out and takes up space: big voice, big lips, big tits, big stomach, big arms, big thighs.  There’s no need to try and make my big hair seem quiet and small.  Women are constantly being told that there is no room for big, loud women here, but the more space I occupy, the better!  I demand to be seen and heard.  I wear pigtails to do myself some good.

 

Sexism Sucks (Like a Woman With a Lollipop)

tw: sexual harassment 

I had to go to the bank today because last week my account was overdrawn.  I'm poor as fuck, lest you forget.  I frequently get low balance alerts but I usually manage to scrape enough together to make a deposit before it gets overdrawn, so this was something I didn't know how to deal with.  

When I got to the bank, I decided to talk to a consultant or something instead of going up to a teller, to make sure I straightened everything out at once.  While I waited for the only person on the floor to become available, I helped myself to one of the lollipops in the dish because

1.       I was nervous about my financial situation and this would give me something to fidget with

2.       it gave me something to play with while I waited for her to attend to me

3.       it contained sugar and that shit's yummy

This turned out to be a big fucking error in judgment.  My house is not really that far from the bank, but every set of eyes that lingered on me in that short walk made it seem longer and longer.

I am used to a certain amount of street harassment.  It doesn't mean I like it.  It doesn't mean I invite it- even if I'm sucking on a lollipop. No, seriously.  That shit has nothing to do with you, the pedestrian walking past me.  But a woman can't just walk from point A to point B.  A woman with a lollipop in her mouth is clearly asking for it, right?  WRONG!

Has it ever occurred to you that a woman with a lollipop could possibly be nothing more than a person enjoying a piece of fucking candy?  Like, I don't think I would've gotten half the bullshit I endured had I been eating M+Ms.  But no, because it was a lollipop, it made you imagine me sucking your dick.  Fine.  I don't really care.  That's your own business.  I know I'm hot, I know lollipops are incredibly sexualized.  The part where your little private enjoyment of the 5 seconds it takes for us to cross paths becomes my problem is when you vocalize that shit and I have to hear you. 

I had a few guys whisper some shit to me in the first few blocks from the bank.  Concise, one-word comments that I tried to brush off and act like I didn't hear.  But then came the one that made me snap.

A group of middle-aged White dudes were clustered in front of an apartment building.  I crossed over to their side of the street to avoid the Firehouse entrance on my side.  As I approached them I told myself to relax because they were in a circle, facing each other, and looked far too engaged in their own conversation to say or do anything.  I wasn't even making eye contact with any of them.  And then I heard one of them say to the rest

"...sucking that lollipop real good!"

I was fed up at this point with pretending I hadn't heard shit.  I immediately whipped around and shouted angrily "I can hear you, you know!!" and, without waiting for a response or even seeing their faces, turned back around and kept walking.  Just as I began to lament not calling them assholes or walking up to really confront them, I heard one of them whine to one of the others "She heard you say that."  It wasn't congratulatory or celebratory or proud.  It was the whiny voice of a child who is getting in trouble for something their friend made them do.  And these men were grown.

I imagine they hold down jobs and have families and have people who look up to and respect them.  The fact that these grown-ass men, some of them with white hair, could feel perfectly comfortable hypersexualizing a woman walking past them on the street, and then crumble so completely when they are confronted about their little joke, is just one of a hundred billion reasons why sexism is still a problem we are dealing with.  

But happy Women's History Month. 

diary of a queer woman of colour/film student

This is something I posted on Tumblr last night.  I decided to put it here as well.


I like intense films.




I like when important characters die.  I like when their death means something deeper than just another one biting the dust for the sake of beefing up the body count, when someone who they loved and trusted is responsible for it.


I like when the person responsible loves them too.  I like when they are conflicted about the murder and have to live with the guilt.




I like when actors look awful.  I like when make up artists spend their energy making their eyes look puffy and when they have stubble and disheveled hair and bruises and look like they haven’t showered in days when their characters haven’t showered in days.  Or when they look like they just woke up when their character just woke up.




I like when time is malleable and the film doesn’t unfold in chronological order.  I like the challenge, having to figure out what’s going on and hate being led by the hand.




I like when actors surprise themselves and everyone else.  When they leave their comfort zone, when they ad-lib and go out on a limb and even scare me.




I like when questions of morality are used to disrupt the status quo.  I don’t like when they reinforce it.




I don’t like when films insult my intelligence.




I don’t like the way some human beings are reduced to stereotypes while others enjoy the warm hues of complexity.  I don’t like narratives with double standards or when women are objectified and not treated with the same respect by the camera as men or when people from oppressed groups are made the butt of the joke… or the villain.




I like films.  I like to watch them.  I like to analyze them.  What I don’t like is feeling like they don’t like me.

#ToMyUnbornChild

Since this month began (you know, Women’s History Month, the month that’s supposed to make me happy and proud) I have been bombarded with overwhelming true stories of ridiculous hate crimes and it’s fucking appalling.  There is no other word for what’s been going on. 

First, there’s the story of George Hodgins, the 22-year-old autistic man who was killed by his mother in a murder-suicide that will likely be remembered as another “act of desperation from a long-suffering mother” instead of the despicable murder it really was.  The next thing was the murder of the 28-year-old Mexican transgender activist Agnes Torres.  Unlike George, she was not killed by her own parent, but she was the sixth member of the LGBTQ community to be murdered in the town of Puebla since January.  Now, on the heels of these horrific stories I’m learning about (but, sadly, am no stranger to) comes a Twitter trend so disturbing that I have to put my foot down and address it. 

Expecting parents and people who fantasize about someday having children often write letters or make promises to their offspring about how they intend to raise them.  I know that when my sister was pregnant with her first child, she wrote a letter of undying love and unconditional support to him.  Similarly, my girlfriend often vows that anyone who dares to hurt her future babies will suffer unimaginable pain.  This is typical, protective, parental devotion.  What is decidedly not “protective,” “parental,” or a display of “devotion” by any stretch of the imagination is the string of unsavory and homophobic tweets found on the hashtag #ToMyUnbornChild, a trend which has been absolutely blowing up recently.

Here are just some of the grotesque things people have been tweeting:

 

 

So basically, I am praying that every single one of these people just puts the kid up for adoption instantly so that someone who would actually like to be a parent can have a chance.  Or, they should get an abortion- and that brings me to my Women’s History Month angle. The way I understand it, Republicans are all gnashing their nails because sexually active (and responsible) people all over the country have the outlandish idea that they are entitled to reproductive rights.  This includes access to contraceptives and birth control as well as the right to abort the unwanted fetuses they have become impregnated with.  Scary stuff indeed.  It is so scary, in fact, that women were not allowed to attend the meetings in which these issues were discussed (the Republican Hearing on Contraception).  Anyone with a uterus (i.e. the people who typically become pregnant) was automatically disqualified from these hearings.

Apparently, the only people allowed to attend the hearings were people who would rather let unwanted and unloved babies grow up and be murdered at the hands of their own parents than allow the unfit parents-to-be to abort the potentially gay fetus they so despise.  A fetus is not a living being; a baby is.  When a person gives birth to the thing that they were carrying in their womb during their pregnancy, when that creature breathes air independently for the first time, that is when it is another living being.  So, abortion is not murder.  And even if everything I've said is suddenly rendered inaccurate and this debate regarding the abortion/murder struggle becomes more clouded than it currently is, you know what is a perfectly simple example of murder?  Killing your 22-year-old son because you consider him a burden. That is homicide, straight up, and sympathy for that is disgusting.  Killing your gay child would also be an example of murder, but I guess not many Republicans would care to back me up on that observation. 

As an unwanted child myself, it disgusts me to think that someone should have to grow up knowing that their parents hate their very existence.  Whether it’s because they are gay, bisexual, autistic, transgender, or just happened to be born to people who didn’t want them, no one should live in fear of one day being murdered by anyone, least of all their own parents.  That is fucking disgraceful. 

So, To My Unborn Child (the one I’m not planning to have any time within the next ten years, if at all),

I really wish I could promise you a world that does not suck at its very core.  I wish that when you are born, you don’t have to endure this despicable environment that champions ignorance and hate and snuffs out any sign of deviation at the source.  I wish that I could give you assurance that the people you meet would only judge you based on your character, like Martin Luther King preached, but I can’t and for that I apologize.  I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to change the harmful way that people think and act to make this world safer for you.

The only thing I can promise to do is raise you with unconditional love and support from my heart- even if you do end up being straight.

Love,

Mom

The Twilight Effect

First off, Happy International Women’s Day!  That’s right!  We get one little month to celebrate our history; one measly day that people hardly remember for women all over the world.  But, hey, it’s something.

It was a pretty sad day for me, though, because I finally finished reading Twilight today.  I know.  I KNOW! 

It was assigned reading for my Women’s Studies class and I’m just a painfully good student.  I say “painful” and I absolutely mean it because I found this book so distressing that it was actually hurting my brain.  Now, since this harmful piece of literary shit has been floating around for nearly a decade- with a movie franchise that seems as impossible to kill as Edward Cullen himself- anything I might say about the abusive relationship or Meyer’s horribly inept writing has been said before and said to death.  Suffice to say, the Edward/Bella relationship is abusive and unhealthy and no one should emulate it, ever, because Edward

1.       is possessive- way beyond the point of flattery

2.       stalks her, but actually!, and gets creepily intrusive (she specifically tells him NOT to listen in on certain conversations and he does anyway without a hint of remorse)

3.       uses physical force to get his way (dragging her around, carrying her against her will, kidnapping her to take her to prom…)

4.       spends no less than THE ENTIRE BOOK “laughing,” “chuckling,” or “suppressing laughter” at her whenever she does/says anything

5.       is a vampire that wants to drink her blood (more than anyone else’s blood… ever)

and then, of course, Bella has absolutely no sense of self-preservation.

I get that the book was relatable- believe me, I understand.  I knew exactly how Bella felt in those 140-odd pages towards the beginning she spent over-analyzing every interaction she had with Edward.  But that hardly means I want to read about it!  And I honestly cannot recall another book in which the villain (and actual plot) was introduced in the last quarter of the fucking novel.  But my problem with Twilight is not entirely centered on the fact that it is awful (AND HARMFUL!); my problem is that it makes me embarrassed to be a woman.

On this day, of all days, I should be able to look at the things that my badass predecessors achieved and fought for and be proud.  Instead, I had to finish reading Twilight- a book whose heroine is a self-proclaimed “damsel in distress”- and I just can’t find anything to be proud of right now.  Obviously, there are lots of things to be proud of and inspired by- just in the way of women writers alone- and yet, I have this overwhelming sense of despair.  Why?  Because as a woman, and as a woman writer, I’m terrified that Stephenie Meyer will have some bearing on the way people view women writers.  It’s obvious that she already does, but I really fear that her terrible books and views will endure as the kind of things that women write.  I find that unacceptable.

When a man writes a shitty book, he is not held up as an example of all masculine authors.  Instead of singling Meyer out as one awful writer, people tend to expand on it and make it an issue of her being a woman, specifically targeting young girls.  That offends me.  I think we should just say “Stephenie Meyer wrote some terrible books, not because she is a woman, but because she can’t write.” and leave her gender out of it.  It was insulting to have to endure that book, all the while, knowing that this is how people will expect me to write, what they will expect me to write about.

And, while I’m on the topic, I would like to express my disgust with the current meme “Still not as gay as Twilight.”  This meme is appalling on so many levels and I know “it’s just an internet meme, calm down!” but I don’t think anything as persistent as that can be considered innocent.  It stems from this idea that something is “gay” if it centers on romance or appeals to women.  I will admit, dousing your leading man in pride parade glitter is hella gay, but that’s kind of the only thing in this whole story that isn’t 100% heterosexual- and I don’t mean that as a good thing.  The story, the characters, their interactions, every last thing in this book reinforces the gender binary and the institution of heterosexual romance.  Again, SHE CALLS HERSELF A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS!!!! Need I say more?

So, to recap,

1.       Happy International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month

2.       stop blaming all women writers for Stephenie Meyer being shit

3.       stop calling Twilight “gay”

4.       don’t emulate the Edward/Bella relationship

The Worst Mistake

“Whats the useless skin around the vagina called?... A woman.”

Isn’t that a hilarious joke?!  No?  You didn’t think that was funny?  You thought it was offensive and sexist and subscribes to the harmful misconception that everyone with a vagina is a woman (and, similarly, people without vaginas are not women)?  Yeah, I didn’t think it was funny either.  I was even less inclined to find it amusing given the circumstances under which I found this joke.

Before I explain those circumstances, I think we should pause and focus on the word “joke.”  These are definitions of the word as found on dictionary.com:

1. something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act: He tells very funny jokes. She played a joke on him. 

2. something that is amusing or ridiculous, especially because of being ludicrously inadequate or a sham; a thing, situation, or person laughed at rather than taken seriously; farce: Their pretense of generosity is a joke. An officer with no ability to command is a joke.
 

3. a matter that need not be taken very seriously; trifling matter: The loss was no joke.
 

4. something that does not present the expected challenge; something very easy: The test was a joke for the whole class.

My personal favourite is number 3 because it is clearly not applicable in this situation.  This joke and where it stems from is hardly “a trifling matter” and we cannot pretend that it is.  We have not reached a point of gender equality where we can look back at it and laugh, and even if we did reach that point, there’s not a hell of a lot there to laugh about.  Telling a woman to get back in the kitchen or to go make a sandwich isn’t funny.  It’s not that we’re too sensitive; it’s that we’re too oppressed.  We are still the victims of institutionalized discrimination that prevents us from equal rights, earning equal pay, getting respect, and being taken seriously in general.  This brings me to that aforementioned circumstance and how I happened upon the "hilarious joke" I opened with.  

Acquiring 1,445 likes in 8 hours, this cartoon was posted on Facebook by a certain group, accompanied by the caption “Worst mistake in history”

Come again?  The “worst mistake in history” you say?  I hope you’ll understand why I’m not particularly amused by this kind of joke.  And I hope that in that understanding you DO NOT chalk it up to me being “too sensitive” or not having “a sense of humour” or some other bullshit that is meant to justify this kind of blatant misogyny.  It is hardly an issue of not taking a joke; it’s more an issue of recognizing the thinly veiled message of the disgruntled, privileged male who is grossly misinformed in his opinion that women currently wield too much power, and being fed up with it.

Usually, when I get upset I say something.  (It’s this wonderful ability I’ve had ever since I learned how to talk.)   So, I said something.  

“this is not just a joke.  this is extremely sexist and extremely harmful.  where the fuck does anyone get off expressing discomfort because a group of people (a group which, incidentally, makes up roughly 50% of the globe) learned to speak, a.k.a. voice their opinions, feelings, complaints?!  how dare anyone present this as a problem and how dare they label that ‘problem’ as ‘the worst mistake in history?!’
this isn’t just a cartoon and I will not relax becuz it’s just a joke.  anyone who is saying that is so thoroughly embedded in the misogynistic perception of the world and our culture that they don’t realize how ultimately harmful and inherently pernicious this cartoon is.”     

My comment got 10 likes before it was removed when I disliked the group.  In retrospect, I think I should not have disliked the group because now the majority of the comments look like this:

 

These are just some of the comments you can find on this picture.  For the record, I didn’t block out their names because these assholes don’t deserve anonymity.  Don't try to placate me with the standard "they're just jerks on the internet."  It's true that they are jerks on the internet, but it can hardly be reduced to that.  And to Chris Favuzza: Seriously?  It’s a “bitch fit” to be offended when everything about this cartoon, comment section, culture, mentality is a personal threat to our dignity.  This kind of thing plays no small role in how women are treated in the professional world, not to mention the dating world, the domicile, the medical world, the education system, and the legal system.  Where do you get off thanking those who displayed what you would call “a sense of humour” but what I call “complacency?”  And I'm not personally attacking all the women who found this funny; I am, however, pissed the fuck off at the culture which allows this kind of thing to go on and then tells me to "shut the fuck up" about my anger.

But since everyone is so quick to cry about how a lack of humour is causing all these “uptight” women to get all bent out of shape and hysterical about a simple joke, let’s focus on that for a second.  Fuck Sam Phillips and his truly original request for a sandwich, let’s look at what Tremayne Craigg has to say:

You probably would just laugh, Tremayne, but I would argue that that has more to do with your relative position of power than with your genuine good nature.  It’s not the same when a joke is made about a man’s worth in society as when the joke is made about women.  And, personally, I don’t think it’s nice to do that to men either but that’s just because I happen to be an egalitarian.  You see, Tremayne and people of his gender have the luxury of moving on.  And I really didn’t appreciate being reduced to a “sensitive bitch” because I was offended by a) the cartoon, b) the caption “worst mistake in history,” and c) the asshole comments telling me to lighten up, calling me useless, demanding that I go make a sandwich, explaining that I require a dick shoved in my mouth, and reiterating that I need to get over myself.

This is an issue we do not address nearly enough in this country, and it isn’t going anywhere.  It’s not just a fucking joke to be laughed at, and then disregarded; it’s a fucking tragedy and it is suffocating us.  What harm could it do to stand by and let that suffocation occur?  Well, it might prove to be the worst mistake in history.