Tag: proletarian feminism

One of the reasons I think a feminism based in liberalism is doomed to fail is it’s entirely based on the good will of our oppressors, whereas with a leftist based feminism we have something to bargain with (I.e. You need a united working class for your liberation, thus your liberation is dependent on ours now stop being a sexist douche)

Desiring Desire

Also is it just me or does it seem like women being socially conditioned to desire desire (more than desiring a given partner), to find being the object of desire more erotic than doing the desiring is a patriarchal thing… like we’re conditioned to desire to be objects of male-gaze without having our own gaze if that makes sense. I know that I personally very much want my partner to be desirable and know they’re desirable and kind of flaunt that desirability and use it in a very “feminine coded” way, idk

I think this is something that developed with capitalism and has correlates interesting with developments in costume history. In 15th century Europe for example women were perceived as the lustful ones and men perceived as “just wanting commitment” while still being an immensely patriarchal group of societies… but men’s clothing was brighter and had a lot more elements of “sexual display” than women’s did at the time (I don’t think clothing is inherently sexual but when unclothed bodies are sexualized and there’s like a contrast in the sexualization of clothing between groups there’s sort of like… something going on semiotically, and this women are lustful rhetoric was used as a justification for the inferior status of women… so like that’s interesting) and in fact the 19th century “women are purer” was a reaction to the historical idea of women as the “lustful” sex (their terminology, not mine, obviously that’s super binarist and essentialist and fucked in a myriad of ways) and this was the period during which European men’s clothes went from pretty and colorful and display-y to drab and boring and sort of intentionally anti-sexual. IDK I think it might have something to do with the fully development of capitalism (which I think really blossomed in the 19th century which fits well with my historical materialist theory of cosmetics usage) but like IDK exactly what it means but it all seems sort of… suggestive of something doesn’t it (no pun intended)

I Feel Like The Proletariat Is Under A Lot More Pressure to Be “Moral and Respectable” Than The Bourgeoisie Is

Like prole girls are slut shamed more, our sexualities are pathologized constantly, we have to worry a lot more about seeming like good housekeepers, wives, and mothers because our housekeeping, wifely behavior and mothering is constantly policed… we’re told we’re too loud, too slutty, too slovenly, too selfish and neglectful of our children…

Working class men are under constant pressure to “be men” and look and act appropriately respectable and “manly” but also they’re pathologized as Stanley Kowalski style brutes (even though I’ve met far more brutes who were frat boys than proletarian brutes) also like bougie dudes are way more likely to get an “Awww” when they’re portrayed doing domestic labor and prole dudes are way more likely to be accused of being emasculated…

IDK if we’re not “nice and respectable and deserving” we can be tossed from the relative safety and security of the “stable” working class into the hard living lumpen proletariat…

Beauty

Does anyone else ever get kinda depressed by the “all women are beautiful” rhetoric? Not that I’m saying people aren’t, but it’s kind of fucked up to me that as a society we have to feel we’re beautiful in order to feel valid in any way. Like if we aren’t pretty it doesn’t matter if we save the world from exploding while curing cancer while riding around on a rocket surfboard, we’re still not good enough.

I remember reading an article where women talked about times they felt beautiful and they were listing times like “when I gave birth to my child” or “when I got my doctorate” or “when I climbed mt. kilimanjaro” and it’s like “why is ‘beautiful’ the only word we have to describe feeling good about ourselves? Why is the feeling of value so innately linked to our physical appearance? Why isn’t okay for a woman to be ugly ever? Like men can joke about being ‘ugly fucks’ or whatever, and like no one reassures them because when they say that they’re not saying ‘I’m inherently worthless’ they’re saying something equivalent to ‘I sure am bad at knitting, lol’ and why is that?”

I Think There’s an Interesting Thing About Society’s Views On Women

Where women especially have to be born to something in order to be valid.  Like female heroes in media rarely become special through their own agency, they were born special, to special parents.  Women are supposed to be born beautiful, beauty that isn’t *~*~*~*natural

*~*~*~*

is despised as unnatural and immoral.  I think one of the ways women are dehumanized is that we’re not supposed to grow or change or become.  We’re just supposed to be.  Women are sort of supposed to be like angels, purer and more moral than men, ethereal ideal beings without free will.  If we show signs of free will then we’re the devil. Men are allowed to be complex, flawed, growing, changing beings.  We’re supposed to be static.

The popularity of princess fantasies speaks to this to me.  Boys’ fantasy characters often become special.  Girls’ fantasy characters have to be born special.

IDK my point is that for women specialness or value isn’t something we’re supposed to be able to acquire for ourselves, but must be inherent to us or possibly bestowed by a man (through parentage or marriage)

Addendum: Also this probably relates to a lot of experiences I don’t have, and like someone confirmed my thought that this whole line of societal reasoning plays heavily into transmisogyny

I Have Like An Issue With People Loving Mousey Repressed Women In Media

Probably because I was one at one point and I had to get over it my damned self but ALSO I HAVE LEGITIMATE REASONS.

Women being seen as cute for being like that, fetishized for like “innocence” or whatever… grosses me the fuck out.

I’m so sick of the girl who’s too shy to ask for what she wants being the “good” one, and any woman who wants anything anything for herself, sexually or otherwise being demonized.

IDK I’m watching The Magicians and Alice is irritating the everloving shit out of me.

I just realized that a lot of the shittiest “feminists” I know are straight women who are all like “FUCK ALL DUDES” unless it’s their boyfriend, or men they regard as “their team” then they do what ‘appropriately" feminine women have always done, help their men get social dominance and get rid of “opposing men”, while coddling “their” men.

and she asked us “Would you like to have soft hands like the boss’s daughters? Would you like to have pretty dresses like the boss’s daughters? Well you can’t.” and then we all got mad again, we didn’t think it was fair that we had to work and they didn’t

The Wobblies Documentary