Homophobia at MPLS Pride

First, we've got this video of a group of young teens harassing a man as he leaves the Minneapolis Pride parade, including walking past some security guards from a local building:



The man in the video has utter composure and reacts in the best, most impossible manner. Also, don't read the comments on the video. It's a combination of racism and heterosexism.

Then some people were kicked out of a taxi by a homophobic driver (after being picked up in front of a gay bar).

And out of Minneapolis, there's this.

How? How in this day and age can people still be like this? How do we as surrounding society allow this to happen? Why do we create these spaces where homophobia thrives and grows?

To the people in these situations, my utter condolences.

via.

A comment on humor

Tonight I saw someone that I was good friends with several years ago. Our friendship ended mainly because I went to college and he didn't and because when I saw him he would make offensive comments.

Example: Last fourth of July my friend who's from Sri Lanka unknowingly sat down in a chair where someone else had been planning to sit. He said, "Oh, you just got brown skinned." We said, "Brown skinned?" and he said, "Yeah, it's like being jewed." We told him those comments made us uncomfortable and he continued to say similar things, later attacking one of my friends by saying she hated men.

Tonight I saw this friend again and he was with another friend that likes to make offensive comments. They started saying offensive things and told me they were going to hit me with a car because I am a Marxist. I told them I was uncomfortable with what they were saying. They would stop and then start again on a new train of offensive things. I didn't want to leave because I knew as soon as I did they would talk about me and how I have no sense of humor, but I wanted to leave because I was uncomfortable. Eventually I just left.

This left the question: why do they feel it necessary to make these comments? I feel like I have a very humor-filled life without making jokes that bring groups of people down. Do they enjoy making other people uncomfortable? And if so, why do they enjoy it?

Quote of the Day: Megan Fox Edition

Via Jezebel:

"If you want your girls to feel strong and intelligent and be outspoken and fight for what they think is right, then I want to be that type of role model." - Times of London, June 2009

Thanks to my friend Stef for finding this for me.

Maria Isa - Image

Maria Isa, off her new album Street Politics.

On being a woman in hip-hip:

I always see these hip-hop bills and they always have like 10 men and one female. So, I knew I had to rep hard, because you have three men and one female and you’re going on first, and you’re just a little girl in a skirt who raps. And I really wanted their respect.

Apologies and Excuses: Eating as a Pathology

This summer I’m doing research at my college, and I’m living with two roommates. Something I’ve noticed is that I’ve been actively avoiding eating in front of them, and I think this tied into a larger theme common to many women: Food guilt.

At my college, I have worked for the past two years at a small convenience store on campus. The store is frequented by a large number of students and is an employer of many more. One of my main tasks as a student employee is to check people out at the register, which means that I get to know, or at least recognize the faces of, the people who shop at the store.

I quickly noticed a trend in which female customers would come in, bring what they deemed “unhealthy” foods (ranging from a bag of Cheetos to a bottle of Coke) to the register and make excuses, either to me or whoever they were with, about why they were purchasing such items, despite knowing how “bad” they supposedly were. Other female customers would bring a basket filled with food to the register and quickly go on about how they hadn’t eaten all day, how it was for their friends, or something similar, as if they needed to provide a reason for buying so much to eat. And there were others who I saw more often and who obviously recognized me, who would some in and say things like, “I’m sorry that I come in here all the time. You must think I’m fat for buying so much food.”

The strange part about all this is that when I was working and I encountered women saying such things, I thought it was really odd. But whenever I went to buy food at the same place, I always secretly wondered what the student cashiers thought of me and the food I was buying.

The other strange thing was that no matter how much, or what kinds of things, the male customers I saw purchased, they made excuses and apologized drastically less frequently than their female counterparts.

As I recall these experiences, all I can think about is how, for women and girls, relentless socialization has turned eating into a pathology.

From a young age, girls are taught that appearances are important to their identity. They are socialized into this in many ways, ranging from the types of compliments they receive (“You look so pretty!”) to the kinds of play things meant for people of their gender (Barbies, princess dress up clothes). This appearance-centered world that girls are socialized into is made more problematic when it’s coupled with the narrow ideal of female beauty: being flawlessly thin.

For women, eating is not merely about nutrition. It is seen as a disorder, a pathology. Women are taught to control their bodies through controlling their eating habits with the help of diet plans, low-fat food, diet soda, and other such products. If a woman eats, she is often made to feel as if she has “let herself go,” as if she does not care about her body the way she should, as if there is something wrong with her.

And so women who come to buy food at the convenience store at my college campus make excuses for their purchases have clearly internalized the messages from the greater society that say that eating is a poor reflection on them – that it is a disorder.

As a young woman who deals with this problem every day of my life, who feels extreme guilt for eating anything and who feel hyper-aware of how other perceive my eating habits, I have not been able to fully explore all the reasons and meanings behind this issue. But I do hope to write about this more in the future.


NOTE: The main idea for this post came to me after reading Reading Ads Socially by Robert Goldman. In chapter 5 of this book, Goldman writes about how advertisements contribute to the notion that if women don’t add up to the idealized image of female beauty, that they have a flaw. I thought this point fit particularly well with my experiences and the common problem of women’s messed up ideas about eating.

Summer

Hello Strangers!
Well, I haven't blogged in a long time, and if you are a new reader, you may not even remember me. But, quickly, I'm Kate. I'm one of the original bloggers and biggest slacker of the Female Impersonators. I go to school with Amelia, but this summer I have a nice little, unpaid internship at Democracy for America.
I'm living in Vermont with an awesome host family, biking places on my bright yellow 1982 bike, drinking coffee, photocopying, doing work projects, and enjoying the summer sunshine. Its been a nice few weeks.
I don't have wifi at my house, so I have to blog from the public library. So I can't promise that I will be blogging regurarly, but I'm gonna give it a good effort.
Democracy for America is Howard Dean's organization. It emphasizes grassroots action in all fifty states, and encourages citizen participation in local, state, and national politics. I love my job so far, and I must say it was pretty cool being in a conference room with Howard Dean the same day that he went on the Colbert Report. The organization is working to get support for the public option, so I'm learning tons about healthcare. Hopefully, I'll blog about that this summer.
I don't know anyone in Vermont, so I've been spending a lot of time reading. I just finished The Woman's Room, which I was inspired to read after hearing the author died. It was an extradinary book, and I would recommend it. Now, your turn; I would love any book recommendations from readers.
I don't have anything very specific to blog about, but expect to hear from me more soon.

Apparenly only women can display products and metal cases

You know what I'd like to see?

Game shows where the attendants are men. I'm looking at you, The Price is Right, Deal or No Deal, Wheel of Fortune, etc.


I can do without a reinforcement of beauty standards in my game shows.*

*That doesn't mean to replace societally approved beautiful women with societally approved beautiful men. A little diversity of beauty in there works for me too.

The real failure behind the Transformers movie

My friend Will, in forestry school for urban forestry, had this to say about the new Transformers movie:

"It's metal fighting metal. And no one's recycling. Tell me who recycles all that metal--no one. That's the real tragedy."



Hehe. Has anyone actually seen it and want to share on the nature of recycling? I bet Optimus Prime recycles. At least, the Optimus Prime of my youth.

Quick Read: Muslimah Media Watch on Neda and the Media

Take a minute to read this really great post by Fatemah at Muslimah Media Watch on the media's use of Neda Agha-Soltani's image after her death:

Aside from the talk that she is a martyr for Iran’s opposition movement, many in the West are using her death to educate themselves about Iran’s current crisis, viewing Iran through a lens of violence and cruelty, which many add to their current knowledge of the country as repressive, backward, and unsafe for Americans. Neda’s death may help Iranians band closer together and become stronger in their fight for a government that treats them with respect, but here in the West, her lifeless body is little more than another reminder of the instability and danger of “over there”.

What difference has her death made here in the West? As far as I can tell, the only Western response to her death (aside from the gruesome fact that her last moments are a now common fixture on blogs and news sites) has been a website, weareallneda.com, where mourners can leave messages to a Neda who cannot read them. Below the site’s banner is a stylized rendering of her lifeless face amid a river of blood, shown above left.

The cruelty and horror of Neda’s death may be a call to action, but her death mask shouldn’t.

You can find it here.

Hairstyles are not political news, pt 5

Minnesota Independent, you know I love you, right? I enjoy your local focus on progressive topics, often providing good information on local feminist/GLBTQ/progressive organizations and individuals for blogging. That's why it makes me sad to see this:

In a new official portrait photo issued today, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum appears to have moved the part in her hair from the left to center-right. The Democrat also has added a House of Representatives pin on what appears to be a mauve Mao jacket, effectively jamming attempts at easy ideological interpretation.

Seriously? Come on, that's the best you can do today? The clothing and hair of politicians is NEVER news, but especially when it involves women. Of the four Minnesota politicians mentioned in the article, three are women (Betty McCollum, Amy Klobuchar, and Michele Bachmann vs. Tim Pawlenty) plus a fictional woman (Betty Crocker). And the only reason you mentioned Pawlenty is because you wanted to make fun of his mullet.

Let's spend more time talking about something else, even though I'm sure you're getting tired of reporting on the Franken/Coleman Senate race. I'm sure you can either a) find something else, or b) not post at all.

I don't know if you've heard this or not, but fashion and women's hairstyles are not political news. Parts one, two, three and four.

Old School Sexism

According to Disney, I will never have a beau because...



I don't walk feminine, talk feminine...
I don't act shy or sigh feminine...
I'm not delicate or demure...
And I never hide the real me.

Damn.

A friend of mine told me this song ("Femininity" from the movie Summer Magic) made her think of me in an ironic sort of way. I haven't seen this movie. Have you? What do you think of this song?

Calling yourself progressive isn't a free pass to be NOT progressive

(potential trigger warning)

To the young man working with me on a progressive political campaign:

I know you self identify as a feminist, but let me tell you, saying you're going to "cunt-punch the bitch" isn't REMOTELY progressive at all.

It's not irony, just your weak excuse for saying something like that in a car full of feminists. Irony, when done right, creates a discordance between truth and an intentionally false statement. It's saying you hate ice cream while holding an ice cream cone and eating it.

It's not irony because you meant it. When sincerely talking about how much you didn't like the women in question, it's not irony to threaten sexual violence and verbally disparage her. It's not irony because you weren't being ironic, just offensive. Even so, violence against women is never funny and never to be tossed around lightly by a young man.

Calling yourself a feminist isn't a free pass to let whatever women-hating bile spew from your mouth. So until you start respecting women, both in word and action, stop self identifying as feminist. You're not helping.

Huggles,
Lindsay

"In what could be interpreted as sexist bullshit..."

So, during my daily perusal of the BBC News website, I came across this screen and had to get a screen shot of one of the pictures featured on it, since I'm sure it won't be up long. Above a link to this article ("Argghougooou!") on the front page were two pictures: The face of a female tennis player that I could not recognize...and a hippo with its mouth wide open. The caption read, "Does the grunting really help tennis stars?" If you click on the picture above, you will see the screen shot I took. I put a little red box around the picture in the lower left corner.

Awesome, I thought. Equating women athletes with hippos. Not like girls who want to be athletes have enough to deal with already. Let's just add to the mix the fear of being associated with an animal that has been used as a comparison to degrade large women.

When I finally got to the article, I could already imagine some of what I was in store for. I'm not an avid tennis fan, but I do find it interesting the way the topic of grunting tends to be covered so frequently (as I wrote about here).

I'll admit that when I first read this piece, I was really skeptical about it. A lot of what I have read about tennis players and the noise they make has portrayed women in very unfavorable terms that sometimes seem to have little to do with the topic at hand - the noise they make. This piece was especially upsetting.

First of all, the picture at the top of the article is a rectangle composed of four smaller pictures, three female tennis players and one male. Two of the women are shown hitting a tennis ball, as is the lone male player. The third woman is shown with her mouth open, in an expression that looks like one of joy. She is not hitting the ball. Her inclusion in an illustration about the noises made by tennis players hitting tennis balls is confusing. Perhaps it is to remind the reader of the hippo with its mouth open?

Once I finally made my way into the piece itself, I was struck by the terms used to describe the sounds at some women's tennis matches. In the second paragraph, the author, Tom Geoghegan, describes a fear that some women's matches "now bear more of an aural resemblance to a torture chamber." Not far down the page, the author tells how Portuguese player Michelle Larcher de Brito's "grunt has all the aural elements of a wounded fox."

Grunting isn't a new phenomenon in tennis, the author assures the reader. In the 1970s, Jimmy Connors was known for his "noisy game" and in 1988 Andre Agassi had a complaint lodged against him for his "expressive exertions."

Before diving into the perceived drawbacks and benefits of grunting during matches, and an overview of the rules of the sport regarding it, the author had this to say:

But, in what could be interpreted as a sexist backlash, it is only since women took up the habit that it has become much of an issue.

Interesting that you would say that, Tom Geoghegan. I was definitely getting the sense that you were being sexist in your choice of descriptions of female and male players. I understand that these players may very well make different sounds during their games, but the huge discrepancy between descriptions relating women's sounds to "torture chambers" and "wounded foxes" and men's sounds as "noisy" and "expressive exertions" is inexcusable and sexist. There are ways to describe differences in sounds that do not rely on such degrading images, especially when such images are only applied to one group of athletes, and not another.

This piece was so full of sexist fail that I'm not even going to talk about its other content.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all fathers, grandfathers, or other male guardians in America today.

Transgender people and passing in Iran: Be Like Others and Offside

I just wanted to pass on these two clips from Be Like Others, a documentary on transgender individuals in Iran.





Trent Gilliss from Speaking of Faith writes,

What’s surprising to me in these clips is the nature of the conversation. Even though there are discussions about operations and genetic tests confirming a biological male identity, the root of these conversations is love and caring and community. Despite her objections about his transformation, the mother in the second clips spends as much energy lecturing her son on wearing less makeup and donning the hijab properly when going out; in the first clip, a member of the transgender community reprimands a peer for going out in public with hair hanging out the back of her hijab and talks of bringing respect to their community.

Although these individuals are pursuing lifestyles that are outside the cultural norm, it doesn’t mean that they abandon their upbringing and the values instilled in them. They continue to live within the larger culture, defying some strictures while observing others. Obviously, they face predicaments I can’t imagine, but, it’s also heartening to see that their families remain in dialogue with them in tense circumstances. I find that heartening and am anxious to view the documentary.

I'm looking forward to seeing the documentary as well. While on the topic of passing genders, I want to mention Offside, a movie about women in Iran trying to pass as men in order to see a World Cup match. While what the women in the movie are doing is vastly different from the people in Be Like Others, it's an interesting fictional take on something similar. The girls in the movie end up being caught by the police and put in a holding pen until their relatives can pick them up, but in the end the celebration of winning the match overcomes all gender restrictions. The gender-bending and quietly powerful subversiveness is enough for me to recommend this movie. While what's actual said in the film is thought-provoking in its own right, what's left unsaid is just as interesting.

Today in horrible.

Bacardi Ad Uses Misogyny To Sell Alcohol To Women.

Wanna look amazing this summer?
Get your hands on the hotness-boosting accessory now:
An Ugly Girlfriend!

Disgusting.