If You Ain't Makin' Waves, You Ain't Kickin' Hard Enough

There's been some discussion lately up here in the Great White North - or at any rate in the pages of the less-awful of my local print newspapers, The Calgary Herald - about the possibility of banning burqas. One Herald columnist, Licia Corbella, wrote that No sane, free person would choose to wear a burka. I can't say I'm impressed with that title (which is also the concluding line); it's either an example of the No True Scotsman logical fallacy, or an indirect reference to the Marxist-associated concept of false consciousness (or both; they're not wholly mutually exclusive), and whiffs of mental-health ablism.

Of course, this is op-ed rhetoric, not Socratic debate; its purpose is to draw attention - to that end, logical fallacies and oppressive *isms are considered a feature, not a bug. So I'll leave aside the business-as-usual, and get to the meat of the piece.

There's a great deal stated or suggested in there that I'm very much onside with. Most particularly, that the burqa is both a tool of oppression, and a very powerful symbol of oppression. But I'm very bothered by the underlying implication that legislative prohibition of the tool/symbol is a solution. Eliminate the tool, the means of oppression, and those who wish to oppress will find other means; eliminate the symbol, and other symbols will arise to take its place, or the oppression will be made less visible. If the goal is to eliminate the oppression, then - sooner or later - the oppression itself is what must be addressed.

Over at Tiger Beatdown a couple of weeks ago, Sady posted a great piece, Dear Andrea Dworkin. (Bear with me here; this isn't a non sequiteur or a topic change.) The comment thread, though long, is also very much worth a read. Naturally, since Sady is talking about what she doesn't like, and what she disagrees with (as well as what she does like and/or agree with) in Dworkin's writing, defenders of Dworkin have emerged to speak their minds; along with the predictable Militant Radfems (the ones who frequently lead me to scratch my head and ponder, "and that's radical how?") there are what appear to be some honest-to-Shulamith radical feminists. And there is engagement. More-or-less civil engagement - there's some heat, but quite a bit of light. If you yearn (as I do) to see feminists of different stripes actually discussing their disagreements, with arguments of substance rather than virulent invective, it's not perfect, but it's about as good as it gets (IME).

If you're so inclined, you can go check it out right now - this post will still be here when you get back. But you can easily save it for later (or choose to skip it; I think it's worth reading, but that's an opinion, not an injunction); I'm not directly addressing anything in it here.

As I was reading the interwoven discussions, it dawned on me that much of the substance of Dworkin and of Dworkin-related discourse is (see, I told you it was relevant) the ways in which expressions of sexuality can be tools and symbols of patriarchal oppression. (And of other manifestations of kyriarchy as well, but getting into that would make a much longer post.) Sometimes this gets parsed in terms of particular acts and objects - most famously, fellatio and pornography (with a side order of BDSM - mention of which gives me a chance to use an icon I haven't yet had opportunity to, ahem, show off).

There are those - not always the same "those", though I expect there's a good bit of overlap - who argue that fellatio is always an unfeminist, or even outright anti-feminist, act; that the very concept of pornography is a tool of oppression; that BDSM necessarily and by its nature reifies the power imbalances of patriarchy. It's rare to see them argued without a significant component of either personal squick or false assumptions on the part of the arguer, but it can be done.

Not in a way that's convincing to me, though. Such arguments, constructed from accurate information about the practices and without universalizing one's personal reactions, are legitimate and useful for examining the ways in which these things, through being used to oppress, have become imbued with oppression, and how we can go about disentangling them. They are neither legitimate nor useful when used simply to make prohibitive declarations about others' actions.

Prohibiting fellatio or porn or BDSM - or even all three - won't overthrow the patriarchy; all it does is take those forms of sexual expression off the table. Those choices won't be available, but the patriarchal oppression will still be there, finding new ways to oppress.

If, once we eliminate patriarchal oppression, there are no women who wish to engage in those practices (doesn't strike me as probable, but I could be wrong), it'll be unnecessary to prohibit them; if there are still women who wish to engage in those practices, it'll be an act of full agency.

It seems more probable to me that, with full agency and without the pressures of oppression, there will be no woman who chooses to meet the requirements of hijab by wearing a burqa. But if there are, that choice must be available to her, or all our fine words about choice and agency are merely disguises for a different form of oppression, a different manifestation of kyriarchy.

The tools and symbols are - at most - symptoms, not causes, I would far rather support women's full, free agency by ensuring that no woman ever has to give a blow job, or wear a burqa, or any of thousands of other things, except by her own, uncoerced and unpressured, choice. Removing choices from the table - that's what oppressors do.

A number of intersecting incidents in the past week, including (but by no means restricted to) responses both in comments and privately to my last post, have been smacking me over the head to tell me it's time to stop chewing on this and write about it.

A few months back, I had my attention called to a couple of "Don't Be An Asshole" 101-type things that were lists of inappropriate terms - "inappropriate" in context of the specific sort of anti-oppression they referred to, that is (IIRC, but I might not, one listed homophobic terms and the other listed ablist terms). Unfortunately - and this is part of why my intersectional e-quaintances were pointing them out - they were a bit too context-specific. The errors weren't quite as egregiously bad as, "Don't call something 'gay', that's homophobic; call it 'lame' instead," but that illustrates what kind of error was involved.

It occurred to me at the time just how often, when lists of inappropriate words are presented, they're accompanied by a corollary list of words to use instead - and on the rare occasions they're not, such a corollary list is asked for demanded by commenters: "But if we can't use those words, what words can we use?!?" they wail.

Zounds! What a pressing problem of social injustice! However shall we manage to do our insult-throwing, disparagement, and name-calling, if the words we're accustomed to using for this task are forbidden?

I didn't spot that right away; initially, I just had a strong but inchoate sense that there was more wrong there than just "the gay-rights folks screw up and use ablist language; the disability-rights folks screw up and use homophobic language." It was only after quite a bit of reflection that I realized the problem was with the very notion that substitute insults are necessary.

Observing the problem from up in Theory Tower (a useful perspective, as long as one remembers to come down from the tower), the idea that name-calling, insult, and disparagement are natural, inherent, and inevitable is a kyriarchic assumption. Such things are used to reinforce the kyriarchic pecking orders, to police others to ensure they "know their place", and to identify things as good or bad according to a cultural norm (when "gay" is used in popular slang, it virtually always identifies some person, object, idea, or activity as "my class/culture/subculture looks down on it, therefore I look down on it"). More, they're geared to make it unnecessary to think about why a person, object, idea, or activity is disparagement-worthy and/or needs to be "put in its place" - and I don't believe the discouragement of thinking is accidental.

Coming back down from the Tower, I'm not saying all is lovely in the garden and it's inappropriate to distinguish between that which you approve of and that which you disapprove of. Some things are disparagement-worthy. But I find that, if I wish to disparage something, I can do so far more effectively by considering it in some detail, determining what about it I disapprove of and why I want to put time and effort into active disparagement, and constructing my takedowns accordingly, than I can by simply throwing insults at it and calling it names.

Occasionally, I do in the end throw insults and call names - they're likely to be insults and names chosen to be accurately descriptive As a bonus, they're also more likely to be funny. (To nod back at things related to my last post, [political alignnment] + [reference to a once-common way of writing off the neurodiverse, both officially/medically and as a playground insult] != wit. Choosing a political alignment, even dogmatically, is not an indication of developmental disability; neither having a developmental disability nor being non-neurotypical in a way that might be misdiagnosed as developmental disability is an indication of propensity for political dogmatism - the lack of descriptive accuracy belies the purported cleverness, and defeats any possibility of wit.)

I'm doubly careful when what I'm considering disparaging is a person, rather than an object/idea/activity - because even when someone is being a grade-A number-one dyed-in-the-wool asshole, they're still a sapient, feeling being. OTOH, assholishness doesn't get a pass; sometimes ya gotta say, "That sapient, feeling being IS BEING AN ASSHOLE."

So, yeah, to some extent name-calling, insult, and disparagement are natural and inevitable. But doing so inconsiderately (and I mean that in the broadest sense, without considering) is not. In particular, relying on the language of oppression - whether sexist, racist, ablist, ageist, looksist, classist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, religiously-biased, etc - as a source of names to call and insults to throw is not inevitable, it's intellectually lazy. Even - especially - casual use of common slang without considering (there's that word again) the *ism/*phobia in which it originated: the user may not intend offense, may even be genuinely shocked that s/he gave offense, but hir shock is a direct result of not thinking. Those sort of "good intentions" are well-known for their usefulness as paving stones.

Corollary lists of substitute insults aren't what's needed; compassion, a few brain cells and the willingness to use them, and a good thesaurus do a better job.

I'm spectacularly behind on most of my Webreading, so I have no idea whether this is The Furor Of The Week in the feminist blogosphere (there's always a Furor Of The Week), or has passed unnoticed, or somewhere in between. I ran across it in the less-appalling of my local newspapers, The Calgary Herald - reading hardcopy, the old-fashioned way. It peeved me, but I couldn't put my finger on just why until I'd let it simmer a bit (well, until I was playing solitaire on the 'puter - an activity I find wonderfully effective in bringing stuff to the surface).

I find there's a much longer article at The New York Times. It peeves me, too - as did pretty well everything I saw on the topic while digging up the Herald link.

I'm not really commenting on any of the articles directly - nor on Concordia University sociologist Anthony Synnott's study, which I haven't read, and which could easily be misleadingly sensationalized by the newspaper reports. It might be that the paper itself doesn't peeve me... except for one thing.

That'd be the coinage "uglyism".

First off, there's already a not-as-neo neologism in widespread use to describe bias based on appearance: looksism. I've never been crazy about it; it's a kludgy construction - tacking "-ism" onto the end of a colloquial word to make a more formal construct usually is kludgy. Today, though, I'm a big fan.

Y'see, "looksism" is essentially neutral (aside from the inherent and intentional non-neutrality of bias-related -isms; their very purpose is to raise the point of the bias' injustice). The colloquialism "looks", unmodified by adjectives, says nothing about how those looks are hierarchized.

"Uglyism", on the other hand, is, quite frankly, a loaded term, a looksist term, for looksism - it implies that there's some absolute, objective standard of what is ugly and what is beautiful. It doesn't say, "passing judgement based on appearance is unjust," it says, "it's not nice to treat ugly people that way."

The NYT article brings up the aphorism, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." There, it's mentioned as folk evidence that judging on appearance is known to be superficial, but that's not what it conveys to me; for me, it says that beauty and ugliness are subjective.

Consider other -ism words: sexism, racism, ableism, and so on. While the things they speak of aren't neat pigeonholes - they have nuance and fuzzy edges, and lots of room to debate how much of it is real and how much an illusion of social construct - there's an underlying objective (in the sense of a widespread similarity of perception) foundation. In the case of looksism, the underlying objective foundation is that, however superficially or unjustly, we do form impressions based on appearance. Not so much for uglyism, which - however unintentionally on Professor Synnott's part (I surmise that his intent may have been "an ugly word for an ugly deed") - implies that ugliness itself has/is an underlying objective foundation.

Uglyism suggests that those who experience the bias of looksism are in fact ugly - that the injustice lies not in applying one's subjective perception of appearance as if it was objective, but in how these poor unfortunates are treated.

One of my own biases is showing there - I've been treated like a poor unfortunate who couldn't possibly be attractive to any man really worth having. (There's lots of asininity about men, male tastes, and what constitutes "worth having" in that, too, but I'm not up for writing a whole book here.) My other bias on this topic is that I've never been able to grasp what "ugly" was, as a solely appearance-based concept - I've known plain people and funny-looking people (I was a funny-looking people; my nose is so not a teenager's nose, so I was definitely odd to look at - not necessarily unattractive, but odd - until I grew into it), but I've never known someone I could consider ugly based on their looks. It's a blank spot for me. (Non-appearance-based ugliness, I do get.)

So that's what has me so pissed off that I had to make a post about it: "uglyism" is pretty frackin' ugly.

I stopped in the middle of reading my f'list, to make this post.

elorie has an excellent post up. The bit of it that made me stop reading and start writing was this:
"Not only is it possible to be a feminist and disagree with feminists, if you've ever actually followed what goes on in feminist organizations, it's almost a necessary condition."

Too often, women are deterred from identifying as feminists because they've encountered the idea that feminism requires strict adherence to some or another ideological orthodoxy. This isn't just some straw feminist that antifeminists have constructed out of hot air and blown out their arses. Feminists who use "Not a Real Feminist^TM" to shame and bully those who disagree with them into silence, alas, really do exist; the antifeminists didn't have to invent them. Though silencing is explicitly something we're fighting, and the tactic could be considered directly unfeminist, I'm not going to turn that one around; those who use that tactic may very well be, in other respects, quite legitimately feminist, and even valuable assets to the movement.

They are, however, assholes (I'm onside with Belledame here: I Blame The Assholes). They may be no less "real" as feminists than I am, but they're also no more real; no one died and appointed them Goddess, they aren't the arbiters of Feminist Orthodoxy, they don't have the authority to speak for all feminists or all women.

Personally, I think it's great that feminists disagree, that it's more accurate to speak of "feminisms" in the plural. I learn a lot more from intelligent and civil disagreement - which can sometimes be quite heated; "civil" doesn't mean "in soothing tones" - than from everyone nodding and smiling and going along with whatever the Orthodoxy of the Day is, and I believe the movement as a whole, a grand, diverse, lively, fractious whole, can learn more that way too.

The bit I quoted from Elorie, I believe, is vitally important; it should be said, as often as necessary and as loudly as necessary, until it displaces the idea that being a feminist means agreeing with other feminists. I commented just that, on her LJ, and then the implications of it struck me - so I stopped reading, and started writing.

That's "relationships" in the narrower sense, the sexual/romantic/stufflikethat kind. It's a take on jfpbookworm's phrase "feminist-positive sex".

I don't have much ruminating to do on the subject today, but I expect I'll have a good bit in future, because I have just such a relationship to ruminate about - the first time I've been in a relationship explicitly based on feminist principles. At this point, and for the foreseeable future, it's an LDR, since JFP and I have c2000 miles (it sounds even worse in kilometres, so do your own converting if you want that figure) and an international border between us.

This is also likely to lead to more polyamory blogging (which I want to do in any case) - I won't go so far as to say that I won't do a monogamous relationship ever, but I'd have to have pretty strong reasons. Fortunately, that's not a relevant concern in this case.

I won't do an extensive "this is JFP" introduction; the curious can follow the trail of linky breadcrumbs, But I will mention, because I know jenett will be interested, that he's about to start on his MLS, with an eventual plan of being a law librarian.

The "how this came to be" story is a post on feminist (at any rate, woman-with-agency) relationship development in itself, so I'll save that for another time.

I've really got to stop making long comments on other people's blogs instead of posting here. Or at any rate, I need to ruminate here as well.

Holly at The Pervocracy (adult content) has ruffled a few feathers of late. The real action is in the comments to her I Love Men post, where I refrained from further comment after the rufflees arrived, on the supposition that some seemed likely to be Trolls, and thus should not be fed. (Further observation suggests there are no true Trolls [or that Holly blocked the only one, an ill-mannered trollop who didn't notice the irony/hypocrisy of appearing out of the blue and accusing one of Holly's regular commenters of appearing out of the blue], merely ideologues and Utopians, since they're not commenting on any of her other posts.)

A further installment in the saga can be found in her Like sex?... post. (Do follow the trail of linky breadcrumbs to see the whole of what Twisty said - I'll make some references to that, as well as to what's at Holly's, but you don't need to bother with Twisty's commenters unless you're entertained by such things. Oh, except for the fourth one, by Nine Deuce, who talks about a "new" definition for sex-pos feminism. There may be others worth a look; should I decide to read more of 'em, and find any, I'll let you know.) That's where I made the lengthy comment that I'm sorta-kinda going to expand on here.

Y'see, apparently sex-positive feminists are all a bunch of irresponsible, hormone-driven twentysomething party girls who wear skimpy clothes, talk about "Girl Power" and derive a false sense of power from attracting male attention. Yep, that's me, young, gorgeous, lean-bellied, perky-breasted, wearing a baby tee and high heels, batting my false eyelashes at the men. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

(I'll pause for a moment while those of my readers who know me in person stop rolling on the floor, get back in their chairs, wipe their eyes, and regain their composure. This may take a while.)

The reality? I'm middle-aged, and have a figure very similar to that of my witchy avatar (but with less-perky tits - years on a one-gee planet have an effect). I rarely bother with makeup (when I do, it's goth paint), and haven't worn heels since my sister's wedding almost 13 years ago. I have hairy legs and hairy 'pits (okay, not very; my body hair is fair and fine - but not by any effort of mine), and my primary sartorial consideration is comfort. I don't look like a Spice Girl, I look like a former hippie.

It appears that the confusion lies in assuming sex-pos feminist = "sexy feminist", and further assuming that "sexy" means "enhancing one's appearance to conform to media-promulgated standards of sexually-attractive femininity". BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!

I'm definitely and emphatically a sex-positive feminist - the exploring I've been doing has strongly confirmed that, in all sorts of unexpected ways, that modifier is the right fit. Whether or not I'm a sexy feminist depends entirely on what the observer finds sexy - if one's taste runs to a strong-willed, outspoken, opinionated, obstinate, well-read, geeky woman with an excellent command of the English language, a snarky wit, and a mind like a steel trap, then I'm sexy as hell, with very little reference to media-driven conventions. And, bloody hell, if being able to be sexy in one's own, unique, individual way, entirely independent of conformity to some hypothetical standard, isn't part of what we've been fighting for, I'm in the wrong movement.

It seems to me that those assumptions require an underlying assumption: that there is a universally-applicable, prescriptive, definition of "sexy" - that sexiness necessarily refers to female attractiveness, to men, and that all men are sexually attracted by the same qualities - and, further, that this posited universal definition is, in fact, the one found in mainstream advertising and entertainment. If a woman doesn't fit, or chooses not to fit, that standard, then she is, by definition, not sexy. (I'm not certain whether the implication in the other direction is that men can't be sexy, or can only be sexy in homosexual contexts, or it's an entirely separate and unrelated issue.)

Evidently those holding such assumptions know different men than I do - or have not troubled to find out what the men of their acquaintance prefer, or suppose their male associates to be exceptions to the otherwise-unrelieved monolith of - wait for it - Class Man.

Yep, gender essentialism rears its mentally-lazy head - that same thoughtless homogenization that underpins prescriptive gender roles, and without which misogyny, hostility to women as a class, possible.

I'm not accusing any individual of gender essentialism, much less of misandry; I'm just following the chain of logic as I see it. Perhaps there are links I've missed; perhaps there are individuals who have adopted the surface assumptions without considering what underlying assumptions they led to. Perhaps those who hold all these assumptions really do know different men than I do, men who really do fit that picture. It's not like such men don't exist; I've known plenty of them, too. They're not only a significant part of why I've remained feminist (I truly don't ever recall a time when I was aware of feminism but thought I wasn't one - I was pondering the pros and cons of committing arson on training bras a good four years before I owned one*), they're a significant part of why I'm a sex-positive feminist: because I damn well want positive sex, not the mediocre exercise in friction offered by those particular individual men. (And, I inadvertently lied in my Intro entry; I will post rants about particular men who have strengthened my feminist resolve - no names, no pack drill, but plenty of snark.) But there are quite a few men who have rejected that Procrustean bed, and a whole lot more who've discovered that it's uncomfortable as hell but haven't yet figured out how to get out of it.

Is it possible that the "sex-positive feminism" label is being co-opted by horny young women as a way to compete in the Girly-Girl Olympics (in two "events": in the Traditional Program, whoever gets and keeps the most high-status man gets the gold; in Freestyle Catch-and-Release, it's whoever gets the most men) and still pretend to have feminist street cred? Possibly, although most of the Girly-Girl Olympians I've met don't want to be feminists (which they think requires them to be humorless and implacably hostile to men) - and the few that do are perfectly happy with the "sexy feminist" identity. Hell, plenty of young women who are outright militant about sexist crap are rejecting the feminist label (but that's another post). And it's not Holly who's co-opting - her blog makes it amply clear, to those who bother to read, that it s a sex blog that sometimes discusses feminism, not an attempt to construct a feminist ideology out of sex.

Nevertheless, yep, making sure sex-positive feminism is well-defined is an excellent idea - since there are clearly those who will happily redefine it if we don't. Contrary to Nine Deuce's supposition (mentioned above), though, it's not a new definition - well before (media-driven) "Girl Power", there were the Sex Wars of the '80s, wherein radical feminism schismed bitterly. Those who disagreed with the prohibitionist approach - to sex work, to erotica/porn, to kink, to overt expression of female sexuality, etc - are where sex-pos feminism came from.

So when 9D says the "new" definition should "revolve around women demanding that their sexuality be acknowledged to be independent of male sexuality and that their sexual needs be met," there's nothing new about it. One of the interesting things about that approach is, individual sexuality and sexual needs are, well, individual - when your feminist discourse involves frank discussion on the subject, it becomes impossible to ignore diversity. (You can despise it, if you must, but you can't ignore it.)

In my long-but-much-shorter-than-this comment at Holly's, I found myself doing a seat-of-the-pants definition, not because of 9D (I think I hadn't seen her remarks at that point), but because of somethingorother somewhereorother that I can't find now, that I construed as a complaint that sex-pos feminists were vague about their actual stance, and as part of my point that "sex-pos" doesn't inherently stamp everyone else as "sex-negative": "sex-pos feminism emphasizes the positive aspects of sex and sexuality as a core issue, and strives to address the negative aspects."

There are things I deliberately didn't explicate there - acceptance of transfolk, f'ex, which would've opened a can of worms that'd likely derail the debate altogether. But I'm mentioning it here, because it's part of that running theme of individual diversity.

I have lots and lots more to muse related to Holly's brouhaha and to (my observations of and ideas about) sex-pos, but I've been writing for hours; expect Part 2 in the next day or two.

(N.B. ON COMMENTING, just in case the brouhaha pays a visit here: I'm not shutting off anonymous-to-LJ comments, because they can be productive and I'd rather not lose that. But if you're not on LJ or not signed in, please sign your comments. Feel free to disagree with me all you like, provided it's rational, civil, and engages what I actually wrote. I reserve the right to delete for incivility, obvious flaws in reasoning, and ideological haranguing, if this gets too lively; I like debate, but dislike brawling, and it's my damn journal. F'list folks, and people I know from elsewhere, don't get a free pass, but I will cut 'em more slack than I will for strangers. Identifiable Trolls will be shot on sight.)

(* Can't go without closing my footnote. Yes, I know that no bras were actually burned at that protest, nor is there any record of literal braburning elsewhen/where. But I didn't know that when I was, what, eight or something.)

I've done this post in HTML, so I could include usable links. It should work; if it doesn't, I think I'll go kill something by bare-hands dismemberment.

It's not altogether accurate to say that I'm planning a series of entries on feminist issues.  It's more that they're in me, and want to come out.  Some have been waiting for more than 30 years for me to have the life experience, the cohesion of thought, the shape and frame of words, to do them justice.  I can't blame them, now that I have these things, for getting a tad impatient.  "Planning" comes into it mainly in keeping their emergence organized.

Rest easy; you won't be reading any man-bashing rants.  You may, though, read some rants about those - feminist and anti-feminist - who present feminism as a philosophic monoculture opposed to men.

Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of the English Language, in the edition distributed as a companion to the 1959 (note the date) Encyclopaedia Britannica, says, "feminism n  1.  The doctrine which declares the equality of the sexes and advocates equal social, political, and economic rights for women."  (Def 2 is medical, and irrelevant.  There is no def 3.)  While there are quibbles that can be made about that definition (and, being a word geek, I expect to do so in some later entry), it makes, IMO, an excellent baseline.

That's about all the "philosophic monoculture" - what feminists all agree on - that there is.  Feminists disagree, often vigorously and sometimes virulently, about what that means, how best to accomplish it, how much or little has already been accomplished, whether men can be feminists, and what time to adjourn for lunch.  (Not unlike Pagans, or SF fandom.)

Personally, I don't see a damned thing in that definition that excludes men qua men (or includes women qua women, for that matter).  And if I get too hungry, I'll make the motion to adjourn; if the motion is defeated (or bogged down in interminable consensus-building), I'll slide out the back door and go eat.  Which, jesting and snark aside, says quite a bit about what kind of feminist I am.

If the idea of many kinds of feminism, some at loggerheads with each other, is new to you, I recommend Wikipedia's article on the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism).  It may not be accurate in all details, but it's certainly accurate enough to give you a solid notion of the diversity involved - that is to say, it'll probably confuse the hell out of you; feminism really is that diverse.  (Also not unlike Paganism, or SF fandom.)

I'm not an expert on feminism.  I've never taken even one Women's Studies course.  I haven't read anywhere near everything I "ought" to have read - and have read quite a few things that I "ought not", by some feminists' lights, to have tainted my mind with.  (I'm a Heinlein fan - that's like having a lifetime membership in the Acrimonious Debate With Certain Feminists Club.)

These posts are just what one feminist looks like, and thinks about.

Incidentally, of the "schools" of feminism listed in the Wikipedia article, I probably identify most closely with sex-positive feminism.  This will show in my entries (both in this series, and not), sometimes explicitly.  When that occurs, I'll use cuts with content warnings.  Minors are advised that the laws of their land may opine that they're not supposed to know about such things.