KERRY WASHINGTON ON CELEBRITY AND ACTIVISM

feeling rebloggy

AS: Your activism is really inspiring. As a talented and hugely successful actress, do you feel that you have a certain role or responsibility in the movement for social justice? 

KW: No. I always say to people I don’t participate in the political process as a “celebrity” or person in the public eye. I come from a political family. Talking politics and social issues, it was at the dinner table. It was a part of how I was raised. Giving back and participating in our democracy is part of how I was raised. When I became of the age to vote, it was like a big rite of passage party. My parents took me out to dinner, we talked about who I was going to vote for, and how I was going to decide. I participate in my democracy because I feel really lucky to live in a representational democracy where my leaders only know how to lead if I’m in communication with them. I know how many people have died for me to have this right. I know that the original Constitution of the United States, according to that document, I would be 3/5 of a person, as a person of African-American descent. I know that women went to prison in petticoats for me as a woman to have the right to vote. I don’t take my identity as an American, as a member of this democracy, lightly. I feel that we should all be participating. I don’t feel a responsibility as a celebrity, I feel a responsibility as an American, as a person of color, as a woman. 

AS: What is your favorite thing about being feminist?KW: The term feminist is so inclusive now. There isn’t one way to be a feminist or to practice feminism, to exercise feminism. You can be feminist in lots of different ways because the point is freedom of choice.
I also want to say that I very much identify with the term womanist, but I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. I also identify as a humanist. I don’t think that either of those terms are mutually exclusive. 

AS: Who are your favorite fictional heroines, and who are your heroines in real life?KW:  Well my mom is one of my heroines in real life…Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Diahann Carroll. Oh god, there’s so many. You know, my grandmother...  

Oh, you know what, I have to say that one of my real life heroines is Barbra Streisand. I just think she’s never accepted anybody else’s limitations or definitions. She is such a hero of mine. She worked on stage, on film. She’s been an actor, a singer, a director. She’s written books. She’s so politically active. She has a family. She was told she doesn’t fit within stereotypical ideas of beauty at the time and it didn’t matter. She didn’t change...

Read More: http://feministing.com/2012/06/02/the-feministing-five-kerry-washington/

Kerry Washington is one of the black feminists that stood up to be counted for the #MuteRKelly section of the #MeToo & #TimesUp movements.

Happy 42nd Birthday To Her!

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THE GRADUAL REALIZATION OF A NEW NORMAL

A repost
2015

Last year or the year before that someone on the news announced that Rhoda, a character on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was might die of brain cancer.

I hadn't thought of Rhoda, played by Valerie Harper, in years, possibly decades. I couldn't believe it when they said she was over 70 years old. That brought me back to thinking about my own age.

Couldn't believe that either.

All this inability to believe started me thinking about how MANY things that I now consider "normal" simply weren't when I was born. No internet, GPS, or microwaves. As the list of things we didn't have as a kid got longer, longer, and longer still, I re-realized that I was born a decade BEFORE women could easily get credit in their own name!!! 

When I was a girl, I heard about this new law that made women able to get credit on their own. I can just barely remember thinking, "Well yeeeaah....of course!" I was shocked that an actual law had to be written to ensure this. I also remember being desperately glad that I hadn't been born a few decades earlier. 

It's not so surprising that I thought this way, I suppose. 

I grew up watching and listening to feminism in what I considered "common sense" slogans as well as slices of speeches from Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem etc. I thought all this "common sense" already existed. I guess I knew but I didn't REALLY know this "common sense" was...

--in the process of being born 

--in the process of being fought for, of being protected 

--and voted on. 

In the 1970s, when black women were almost entirely absent from television, I didn't know my "normal" was being created and then reinforced by the white women of television, such as Mary Tyler Moore and Sally Struthers, who played Gloria in "All In The Family". I simply didn't know that they were representative of a new way of life for women, a new option. 

I didn't know women making their own money, working at a career, and making decisions that a WHOLE person with equal rights tends to make, sometimes looking for another WHOLE person (a man) to walk through life with - was new. 

After all, my Mom did this for a few years before she married. A lot of black women did, maybe most black women did.

But Mary Tyler Moore's job was not a pit stop before marriage, like my mother's was supposed to be. Mary Tyler Moore's job was important to her and contributed to society like a man's does. She wanted to be good at her career, succeed at it. She wanted a relationship, maybe a husband, but all of her energy and focus was not on getting a husband. 

That was a very different choice to have, one that wasn't there for women of my mother's generation. Or if it was, it was seen as failure. A career was seen as consolation prize for many women and for the people who felt sorry for them.

More importantly, it was seen as a status symbol for a man if his wife didn't have to work -- what the wife did or didn't want, be damned.

At 10 to 12 years of age, I hadn't grasped the fact that I wasn't considered as capable as or as equal to a male child either. (Well...most of the time I didn't) But somehow, I DID know that I was considered less-than as a person because of my black skin...by the majority of people in the country. 

Racism, somehow, I knew this practically from birth. 


As sheltered as I was in some ways, I had eyes. Newspaper headlines shouted white supremacy at me daily, no matter what my parents tried to keep from seeing. And I couldn't walk past a television, without seeing a white cop sic a big dog with huge teeth on black people or take a fire hose to them.

As far back as kindergarten those were the images that flashed in my head the day Show-and-Tell featured a white police officer talking about how 'a policeman is your friend' ('Oooh no-No-NO! not MY friend!!!' I thought to myself.)

The racism-sexism knowledge gap (read: chasm) is another train wreck for another time. The point I'm trying to make here is that I was taught nothing about the parallel issue of sexism.

As a girl-child born in the land of the free and the equal, I thought Mary Tyler Moore and the rest of these characters were representing "normal" people with "normal" desires. Eventually, a lot of people came to see them that way...having laughed a little by the end of each episode.


Maybe the writing was special, like some like to believe it was. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" made the new, more feminist(?) world seem mundane. I don't know for sure. I simply cannot remember what I was thinking at the time then rehash something I really didn't notice to begin with.

But when I heard that Rhoda was sick? Maybe dying? That was when I remembered that women didn't always have..

• the same ability to keep a job. A woman in her 20s could be fired because it was assumed she'd want to have a baby, soon or within a few years.
• the same ability to get credit, and before that - the same ability to own property
• the same right to vote.

These changes didn't just change by magic. 

It wasn't the "something special in the writing" of these television shows that created these changes in society. These shows only reflected what was already in the process of happening. But shows like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" blew little more air on a fire already burning, a fire that had been burning for more than a century

That air was important. 

But more important are the women that sacrificed and died advocating 'for women's rights on the grounds of that women should have political, social, and economic equality to men'--which is THE definition of feminism.

Did you know that some of the women who started one of the most important feminist organizations in the country, the National Organization for Women or N.O.W., were black?

I didn't until a few years ago.

A number of black women had a meeting after the meeting that was known as "The March On Washington" Why? Because black female civil rights leaders like Dorothy Height and Diane Nash were not allowed on stage to speak, deliberately not allowed to speak 

...by black men I was taught to worship as a child.

The story goes, having forgotten their be-seen-and-not-heard place, Gloria Richardson, Rosa Parks and other black female civil rights leaders were sent back to the local hotel in a cab. And they were in that cab while Martin Luther King was giving his "I Have A Dream" speech. They listened to it on the radio. (It was all Lena Horne's fault. Earlier in the day she had spent some time trying to introduce Rosa Parks to the foreign press.) 

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/27/civil_rights_pioneer_gloria_richardson_91





So, while too many people have let this word "feminism" be redefined by the status-quo loving / cowering-in-the-face-of-change opposition (and pro-feminist extremists too for that matter) I refuse to let anyone else redefine "feminism" FOR ME. I refuse to let them define it as something as silly as who should open the door for who OR something as ass-i-nine as "man-hater." 

-- in much the same way as I refuse to let some white people redefine "African American" as someone who is more loyal to Africa than America simply because the word "Africa" comes first. 

-- in much the same way as I refuse to let some blacks redefine "blackness" as being loyal to anything and anyone in black skin.

So I deeply believe in feminism even though: 

1) I do not believe in ALL the positions that the official feminist organizations believe in (Abortion as a form of birth control method no matter how far along the pregnancy is, is just one example. Time limits are a discussion female lawmakers need to have with one another) 

2) I do not believe the words "sexual objectification" are meaningless at the very same time that I do know women need more "sexual freedom."
3) I know that white feminists have put themselves first at the same rate of speed, or faster, that black anti-racists have put black men first. And in my patriarchy-soaked brain, women are supposed to be "better than that." 

4) etc 

And even thought I know all this heavy feminism baggage exists, what I ALSO know is that all of us ought to be grateful for "The New Normal." 

And I mean ALL of us, men and women. I know I am.


And I, for one, can't WAIT to see what feminism inspires next!

Can you? 

~DebLynn


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HALLOWEEN 2018

Hello...Is it me you're looking fooooor....

CHIMAMANDA ON STORY, IDENTITY, FEMINISM, AND BECOMING BLACK IN AMERICA

"Like many of us at INBOUND, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a storyteller.  

She has used her gift at weaving stories to ignite a global conversation about the importance of feminism to everyone, and to warn of the dangers of hearing only a single story about another person or place."

Adichie speaks in detail on learning a single story of Black Americans from White American television and White American news -- and then having to unlearn it.

This was important to me, as I've met more than one African who did not take the time to unlearn the self-protective, white story of Black America.  I swear, there's not much more hurtful than a black face saying words that could come out of Trump's mouth.

It's wonderful to hear her speak, talk about Black American History as a black outsider. Hearing her talk on this before with Zadie Smith made me feel proud of how far  we, Black Americans, have come and how fast we've covered ground -- especially since our progress doesn't feel large and significant to us most days.

Seeing victorious ourselves through the educated eyes of black outsiders can hearten us, strengthen us, give us enough hope and fuel for the fight ahead. And with an overt white supremacist in the White House, there's definitely a fight afoot. 

45 minutes
Listen to in the background as you go about your day

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REVERSE HOTEPPERY

Warning: Sexually Explicit

FILE THIS UNDER: Baffle them with their own bullsh*t

FEMINIST GLOSSARY FOR THOSE WHO DIDN'T TAKE GENDER STUDIES

Feeling Rebloggy

Feminism: Belief in and desire for equality between the sexes. As Merriam-Webster noted last month: "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities." It encompasses social, political and economic equality. Of course, a lot of people tweak the definition to make it their own. Feminist activist bell hooks calls it "a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression." 

Patriarchy: A hierarchical-structured society in which men hold more power. 

Sexism: The idea that women are inferior to men. 

Misogyny: Hatred of women. 

Misandry: Hatred of men. 

Benevolent sexism: Less obvious. Kind of seems like a compliment, even though it's rooted in men's feelings of superiority. It's when men say women are worthy of their protection (off the sinking boat first) or that they're more nurturing than men (therefore should raise children). It's restrictive. 

Internalized sexism: When the belief in women's inferiority becomes part of a woman's own worldview and self-concept.

Commodity feminism: A variety of feminism that co-opts the movement's ideals for profit. Ivanka Trump has been accused of peddling this brand of feminism, using her #WomenWhoWork campaign to sell her eponymous lifestyle brand. 

Equity feminism (conservative feminism): Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is a champion of what she calls "equity feminism." In her view, "equity feminism" is focused on legal equality between men and women, while "gender feminism" focuses on disempowering women by portraying them as perpetual victims of the patriarchy. In the words of President Trump's advisor Kellyanne Conway: “I look at myself as a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances, and that’s really to me what conservative feminism, if you will, is all about.”

Read More: 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/03/16/feminism-glossary-lexicon-language/99120600/

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WOMEN IN POLITICS WORLD WIDE

Feeling Rebloggy

A GOVERNMENT OF OUR PEERS MEANS

      OUR GOVERNMENTS SHOULD BE 50% WOMEN

As of 2016, nearly 20 percent of the mayors in US cities with populations over 30,000 are women. Also, there are women at the helm of many of the world’s most important cities: Paris, Madrid and Barcelona, Rome, Tokyo, Sydney, and Santiago de Chile.

Why does it matter? 

The importance of women in politics extends beyond issues of proper representation and political visibility. It is also a matter of public policy and agenda setting. Several studies show that female politicians tend to be more involved than their male counterparts in promoting bills and policies concerning social affairs, health and gender equality. Therefore, the appointment of more women to key political positions is likely to result in the promotion of a variety of issues that otherwise might not be addressed.

In order to increase the number of women in key political positions in Israel, the government should consider introducing affirmative action measures. The adoption of gender quotas, for example, has resulted in a substantial increase in female political representation in France, Portugal and, most recently, Ireland. 

~SOURCE THE JERUSALEM POST

(too many advertisements for safe link)

IF ALL VOICES WERE VALUED EQUALLY 

(BY GENDER, RACE, AND ETHNICITY) 

EVEN IF IT WASN'T BETTER 

AND I THINK IT WOULD BE

IT WOULD MOST CERTAINLY BE DIFFERENT

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BLACK PANTHER'S OTHER MESSAGE IS CLEAR: TRUST BLACK WOMEN

Feeling Rebloggy
SESALI BOWEN at REFINERY29 WROTE 

I seriously haven’t seen this many people dress up for a movie since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2was released. What’s clear is that Black people have been anxious to see ourselves in Hollywood on such a major stage, and the proof is in the painted faces and berets. That Black Panther is such an excellent example of Black representation is only overshadowed by how it takes a fresh dive into themes that speak directly to the Black experience...

[W]hile T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the Black Panther, is obviously the protagonist of the film, moviegoers looking forward to a narrative that centers Black men and masculinity as the only eligible leaders of Black communities are also in for a rude awakening. 

Instead, it is a visual lesson in how Black men can and should lean into the power and aptitude of their female peers. In scene after scene of Black Panther, the message is clear: trust Black women.

Read More: 
https://www.refinery29.com/2018/02/191093/black-panther-ending-women-wakanda-feminist-message?



I've read some reviews written by a couple of black men who absolutely did not take that "rude awakening" well AT ALL.  More tomorrow. LOL

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ARIZONA TO DECIDE IF FEMALE PRISONERS NEED MORE THAN 12 MENSTRUAL PADS PER MONTH

Feeling Rebloggy

The Arizona prison system currently provides a maximum of 12 pads per month to all women inmates, forcing them to ration the way they manage periods, “free bleed,” or rely on unsanitary, solutions.

The bill introduced by Arizona state representative Athena Salman would change the arbitrary rules and enable women to access unlimited sanitary pads as needed — but first it had to pass the nine-man committee. Though they expressed their discomfort with some of the testimony, the men voted five-to-four to allow the bill to proceed to the House floor for a full hearing.

We need more women in positions of power. Women need to move out of the position of having to beg men to understand menstrual flow, sexual assault at work, and how sexual harassment is not nothing.

The only way to stop begging men to understand or "believe us" is to have 50% of the power in this country. 

~GLOBAL CITIZEN

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/arizona-inmates-periods-prison-women-wash/?

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Michael B Jordan on the #MeToo campaign

“I think it’s just a cleansing. I think it’s a power thing and that’s in all industries. I feel like whenever there’s power and men in power, there’s going to be an abuse of power, that’s just human nature… People that were scared to say or speak their truth now are feeling comfortable. People are going to be more responsible with the positions that they are in right now and that’s taught down. The assistants that are coming up, the producers, the actors coming up – everybody’s learning. You have to weed the motherf**kers out so the next crop that come up can learn the right way.”

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/black-panther-michael-b-jordan-cover 

COUNT DOWN: SIX DAYS TO BLACK PANTHER

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STRONG BLACK WOMAN, INFANTILIZED WHITE WOMEN, AND AZIZ ANSARI

I know I have this still have remnants of the strong black woman in the back of my head. I'm fighting her all the time. So, I know I am biased toward thinking women need to suck it up and keep stepping no matter what. But I still think I legitimately see that white women have the opposite expectation of themselves. 

From where a lot of black women sit, a large percentage of white women appear to be raised to believe that somebody is always going to take care of them, like a child. In the meantime, most of the black women I know were raised to never, ever believe that -- hence the Strong Black Woman trope which is just as false. 

Though the strong-black-woman creates a false narrative to follow as well, black women who worked side by side with black men in the field during slavery have always knew they'd have to pull their own weight as an adult, inside or outside of a marriage,

White women do talk about embracing their strength all the time, as if they do realize there's childishness to overcome. But white feminists in particular, don't ever seem to talk about how behaving like an infant benefits white women to a certain extent. 

Unlike black and brown women, some percentage of white women are married to the biggest oppressor in the land, white men. And a bunch of white women enjoy that secondary-power acquired through marriage just fine --temporary though it may be.

--which is why nobody but white feminists are confused as to why 53% of white women voted for the PussyGrabber-In-Chief. .

But the differing ways in which white women and black women are socialized is probably one of the reasons I'm having a hard time understanding how that little, fugly dawg Ansari Aziz wound up being central to any discussion about #MeToo and consent. 

MY  STORY

Most women have had an experience with a sexual aggressor. I am not an exception.

My job sent me to the east coast for a class. I met this guy that lived three or four states away in Texas.. I found him very attractive. We didn't really speak that much, but it wasn't long before I knew he found me attractive to 

Eventually, on his birthday, he invites the entire class to go out and have a drink with him. The two of us? We wind up flirting all night. He gets drunk. About half of the class is staying at the same hotel. I'm the one he asks to help him to his room as I simultaneously volunteer.    

I was going through a dry spell with men. But a couple of hours worth of flirting and my sexual-attention-deficit had been met. So we get half way to his room, and I ask him if he's okay. He says he is. We go our separate ways to our rooms. 

I'm feeling sexually attractive and desirable. I'm good. I'm going to bed

But then he calls me. He says a bunch of people are continuing the party, having a few drinks. He's easy on the eyes and I'm getting a charge out of being around him, so I decide to go. But it takes me a while. In the hotel, I'm using three towels a day: floor covering, body, hair. I need more for the next day. So it takes me a little while to get to the after-party.  

I get there and he's the only one in the room. I'm confused for a split second. I'm late, so maybe everybody left already or he's lied to me. And I'm thinking it's the latter. 

I'm attracted to him so I go in anyway. We talk for a while. Then he moves closer. After some benign chatting, he's aggressively kissing me. And when I say "aggressively kissing me," he has sort of squatted, straddled me on the couch. I'm trapped. I was shocked-scared for a second or two 

...but excited too.

In that moment, while I'm kissing him back, I'm trying to decide if I want to go forward or not. Ultimately, I decide that I do. I'd been lonely for a while. And, living in a small, mostly white town, I knew that I could be lonely for a good while longer. 

I decide I don't want to miss it. 

The next day I didn't like how we're interacting and I felt bad. But I never once thought he assaulted me. And I've been sexually assaulted before. This wasn't that. 

There are times, such as when a woman is unconscious or drugged when she isn't ABLE to say "no" when lack of audible consent is definitely the basis for a sexual assault or rape charge. But I don't think every time a man pressures a woman for sex and there's no audible "no" means there's been a sexual assault.

In the real life scenario described above, my decision making process was invisible to the man who had trapped me on the couch. Things could have gotten really ugly if I had pushed him away and said "no." But we'll never know because that never happened.

Frankly, thinking of the unpleasantness that might ensue if I said "no" was a tiny factor.  But if I had decided that I did not want to have sex and the "no" remained in my head, if something sound he would NOT have had the obligation to read my mind.

I can't help but think that my attitude about "consent" is born inside my being raised to believe that I have to take responsibility for myself as an adult. I cannot even conceive of uttering a sentences like these when I'm accusing a man of forcing me to have oral sex.

AZIZ'S DATE SAID,

"...They walked the two blocks back to his apartment building, an exclusive address on TriBeCa’s Franklin Street, where Taylor Swift has a place too. When they walked back in, she complimented his marble countertops. According to Grace, Ansari turned the compliment into an invitation. 

“He said something along the lines of, ‘How about you hop up and take a seat?’” Within moments, he was kissing her. “In a second, his hand was on my breast.” Then he was undressing her, then he undressed himself. She remembers feeling uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated.

When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’”

She says he then resumed kissing her, briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same thing to him. She did, but not for long. “It was really quick. Everything was pretty much touched and done within ten minutes of hooking up, except for actual sex.”

....Ansari also physically pulled her hand towards his penis multiple times throughout the night, from the time he first kissed her on the countertop onward. “He probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times,” she said. “He really kept doing it after I moved it away.”

https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355

First of all, "Whoa....let's chill" means "wait" or "go slower." These words do not mean "no."

Second of all, context matters. For example:

• If a strange man walks up and grabs your hand and just walks beside you, that's assault in my mind. It's a mild assault. But it's frightening and threatening and should legitimately make the victim wonder what violent thing might happen next.
• If a blind date walks up and grabs your hand and walks beside you, that might be a little weird in the first few minutes of meeting someone -- implying an intimacy that isn't there yet.  This probably isn't even a mild assault
• If a man you're dating walks up and grabs your hand and walks beside you, hopefully, that's a good thing.

   By the same token...

• If a strange man walks up, takes your hand, and put it on his penis that ought to be called a sexual assault
• If a blind date walks up, takes your hand, and puts it on his penis right after he introduces himself and says "hello" that probably ought to be a sexual assault too. But  even if women become in charge of 50% of the world like they should be, I doubt that's going to get crime status.
• if a man you've gone on a date with once, then agreed to go to his home or room, then takes your hand and puts it on his penis, he's a dawg and an aggressive, nasty date -- but probably not  guilty of sexual assault.  And if you stay after having said "slow down" but not "no" and he does it again, I know it's not going to fall into the sexual assault zone.

The woman who seems to be halfway accusing Ansari of sexual assault in this scenario doesn't have to be a white woman, but she sounds like she's been raised like one. I simply haven't met a woman who wasn't white who believed this level of infantile behavior means a man assaulted her in some way.

ANSARI'S DATE ALSO SAID

Throughout the course of her short time in the apartment, she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was. “Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” she said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold."

Whether Ansari didn’t notice Grace’s reticence or knowingly ignored it is impossible for her to say. “I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.”

https://babe.net/2018/01/13/aziz-ansari-28355 

"Reticience." 

He's being accused of not noticing her reticence?

Really?

In the 1970s and 1980s feminists were taking rape statistics of 1 in 4 women getting raped or sexually assaulted very seriously. Affluent white feminists (class counts) were talking their girls to self-defense classes.

But then they failed to teach their daughters how to say "no" and leave when they are

1) not afraid for their life
2) not afraid for their livelihood.
Really?

This scenario is ugly and sexually aggressive. But Aziz Ansari looks like he weighs 100 pounds soaking wet. And not one word of this story that suggests that Aziz was physically forceful.

Men and women communicate in non-verbal ways before, during, and before they have sex again. But when things grown folk don't like start happening to them, grown folk use words like, "Get out of my way. I don't like this. I'm leaving,"

By this woman's own account, nothing like this happened. And she didn't once hint she was afraid of him. And all of her non-verbals seemed to communicate what she said aloud, "slow down." So, I'm trying to figure out how she figures she didn't tacitly agree to give him oral sex etc. and stay there more of the same treatment.

Furthermore, the way the predominantly white press and some --not all- white feminists have been handling this story and the Larry Nassar story, it seems most people see white women and white children as equivalent in personal responsibility.
Or is the real problem that Ansari didn't treat his date like a princess while not failing to be white himself?
Even if I remove from my mind the possible racist element in this complaint(?) and believe every word of this woman's story-- and I do believe her--there's still too much of her own decision making missing from the story to really know the whole story.

And we need a whole story that's more like Lupita Nyong'os, Salma Hayek's and mine, in order to figure out if Ansari is more than just disgusting and sexually aggressive. The decisions Ansari's date made during every moment of that encounter matter and are part of what happened...contrary to popular belief(?)

"BELIEVE WOMEN" DOESN'T WORK FOR ADULTS IN ADULT SITUATIONS

Some women who have been definitely been assaulted want to give testimony about having been assaulted without telling us any of details or without making the details of what they've said make sense. Some women want to say "He attacked me" and "believe me" and let that be the end of it.

But real life doesn't work that way for adults, not even when you've been raped.

The problem with the #Believe Women section of the #MeToo Movement is that most of what we're identifying/mis-identifying as sexual harassment was never really about lack of belief. Men just said it was. A lot of workplace sexual harassment, sexual blackmail, and sexual assault was based in oh-who-cares more than lack of belief.

Ben Affleck squeezed a woman's breast knowing he was on camera. His brother, Casey, was accused of encouraging men to expose themselves while working on his movie---and likely blew this off as "it was just a joke." According to Ellen Page, Brett Ratner talked about hearing a woman's vulva flapping as she walked by on some sound stage or other.    

More importantly, a bunch of people ALREADY knew what kind of pig Harvey Weinstein was -- and they knew long before the scandal broke

A comedian made a public joke about Weinstein's forcing actresses to pretend they liked his sexual attention until they won an Oscar or Golden Globe and got some power. And none of the stars that heard about the joke said "boo" ...because they all knew.

The rapes and near-rapes at work were happening in the dark. But a lot of the sexual harassment was out in the open. Therefore, #BelieveWomen is not the issue. Believe sexual harassment and sexual assault is a big damn deal is the issue.

White women, having taken over and making #MeToo's next step #BelieveWomen (rather than the more accurate #TimesUp) have inadvertantly made women's goals dovetail with the goals of male run corporations and congress.

Under the guise of *believing women* more than a few high profile men have been fired and/or told to resign quickly so that government bodies and corporations could save face and/or avoid damaging their brand.

For example, I STILL don't know the details of what Senator John Conyers did. I don't know the details of what Charlie Rose did either. What I DO know about these two men being fired sounded like sexual harassment but not necessarily career ending sexual harassment. 

However, I strongly suspect male run congress and male executives at PBS know a lot more than they ever told the public. 

But what looks like a rush to judgement ultimately undermines #MeToo

There needs to be detailed PROOF of wrong doing
THEN creation of laws
so that some of these men can have more
than a lost job on their record.
Keeping in mind that blackmail always involves
a kind of coerced-cooperation, we need to change laws
so that some of these men can go to prison
where they belong for what I call "sexual blackmail."

The #MeToo movement has re-revealed that men blackmail women for things other than money. Men blackmail women for sex. It's time that the laws catch up with the realities of powerful men working with, more often than not, less powerful women. Men, anybody, who blackmails another person for sex needs to go to jail for a blackmail charge.

And some of the people, men and women, who help blackmailers cover their tracks need to be at risk for going to jail as accessories. 

to be continued

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

DID I JUST SEE A WONDER WOMAN MOVIE OR A FEARLESS GIRL MOVIE?

I'm glad there's a finally a superhero movie with a woman as the central character because

1) I am a woman 

2) I love superhero movies.

And I'm glad a woman director directed Wonder Woman because more than 80% of what Hollywood puts out is filtered through the male gaze. That is, if a documentary I watched last year is correct, then more than 81% of the movie studio owners, movie producers, and directors are men. (With independent movies, women do better)

That's a less obvious problem than an estimate 90 - 95% of images being white -- less obvious because you see women on screen. You see women on movie and television screens but you don't realize that men do most of the drawing and shaping of these fictional women

-- the drawing and shaping of ideal woman in the American psyche? Don't think our fiction doesn't impinge on our reality.  

I'm not so glad the first female super hero with her own movie is WONDER WOMAN. 

Compared to other super heroes I think he powers are kind of boring.  Once the X-men came along with STORM and ROGUE, I never thought about WONDER WOMAN again.

Of course the first female super hero with her own movie wouldn't be Halle Berry's STORM though the X-men franchise has been out...like forever.  I know I live in a country that is 2/3rds white people and I'm not crazy. So, I knew the first female super hero would be white. 

The Avengers' BLACK WIDOW wasn't a good first option either -- despite that character being more familiar to us at the movies-- because she's almost an anti-hero. The BLACK WIDOW character could be good or bad given the right provocation -- and that only works "good" with male characters like THE HULK and PUNISHER. 

Men, the gatekeepers in Hollywood, don't like women that are complicated and capable of impure motives for violence. And it's men that are more than 80% of the movie producers and movie reviewers, so BLACK WIDOW is a no go.

So Wonder Woman it is because WONDER WOMAN is the biggest comic book hero of the white female persuasion. 

I enjoyed the movie. And I thought the opening of the movie was kinda great. I can't figure out why other than the strongest actresses were in these scenes (Robin Wright and    ) And, I liked seeing Diana's mother (WONDER WOMAN'S mother) wrestling with keeping her daughter safe via coddling her versus allowing Diana to be taught the ways of the warrior like every other woman on the island.

You just never, ever get to see such scenes with women.

I was entertained by WONDER WOMAN, never actually sleepy and bored wanting to go home. But I thought the rest of the WONDER WOMAN movie was B- at best.

And the reason I probably feel that way is because I expected to see Wonder Woman not Wonder Fearless Girl.

In general the genesis stories of well-known superheroes tend to bore me because I think people can read a paragraph about how a superhero came to be super then go to a movie with a completely unknown, new story line. But, I guess I've been out-voted in the movie making world.   

I did not want to see how Wonder Woman moved from the island to "the real world." 

  
After I got over that, it took me some time to realize that what I really had a problem with is how white people view femininity.

White men, white women, even white feminists  seem to have this pre-occupation with seeing women as strong little girls. 

WHITE WOMEN AS LITTLE WHITE GIRLS I

Last year, a company put up a little white girl statue on Wall Street that's facing down a bull. And that was supposed to be representative of some sort of protest. It was supposed to be commenting on the women's lack of representation among the movers and shakers on  Wall Street

 WOMEN'S lack of representation in business was supposed to be represented by this image.

FEARLESS GIRL STATUE

But how so?

I do not get this. And I don't mean I disagree either. I mean, I don't understand the link between the concept and the statue.

   This is what the concept was supposed to be:

On the eve of International Women’s Day last Tuesday, State Street Global Advisors, which manages some $2.5 trillion in assets, signaled its solidarity with the day’s demonstrators. The company installed a roughly 50-inch-tall bronze statue of a defiant girl in front of Wall Street's iconic charging-bull statue. The reaction to the statue, which was designed by artist Kristen Visbal, was immediate and powerful.

The statue is a powerful symbol, but there is also substance behind it. Fearless Girl is part of State Street’s campaign to pressure companies to add more women to their boards. The firm followed up the installation with a letter to the thousands of companies that can comprise the Russell 3000 index on Tuesday asking them to take action to increase the diversity on their boards. There is room for improvement: State Street says that roughly a quarter of the 3,500 companies it sent letters to have no women on their boards.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/fearless-girl-wall-street/519393

When I saw this image without words I had to go look up what it was supposed to mean. And the article above is what I found. If I had been given 100,000 guesses as to what this statue was supposed to mean, I would not have landed on the empowerment of women.

A few white women writers commented on the inappropriateness of this statue -- but only a few.

I think my being black (or just not-white) has something to do with my inability to see a little girl (even a little black girl) as an empowerment symbol for grown ass women. Black women don't roll like this, in my experience. I don't think most brown women do either.  FEARLESS GIRL seems like a pure Becky thing to me --like baby talking during sex. 

WHITE WOMEN AS LITTLE WHITE GIRLS II

I could be wrong to see this as related, but earlier this year, to protest Donald Trump as a misogynist, white feminists seemed to put together a march without any black and brown input at all.

It seemed that this "feminist march" was in actuality a white feminist march because of the lack of focus on race and therefore intersectionality. And you could visually see the lack of intersectionality in that these white feminist women chose a hot pink pussy hat as their symbol.

And when I say "pussy hats" I mean I actually saw photos of white women with giant hot pink vulvas sitting on their heads. This is problematic in a number of ways, not the least of which is it seemed childish.

While I'm glad black and brown women, especially the young ones, don't feel like they have to be dignified all the time -- as their mama's and grandmama's definitely did-- they still don't go in for this little girl thing nearly as hard as white women.

WHITE WOMEN AS LITTLE WHITE GIRLS III

And at the risk of shaming a certain kind of body, black and brown women aren't trying to make their bodies be as close to a little girl's as possible -- then put a bikini on a stretched out version of it. 

Gal Gadot in one of the  FAST AND FURIOUS movies
Part of what's wrong  here is probably a bad swimsuit choice for her body type
But she's anorexic thin.

Black and brown people value curves and variety in bodies a lot more than white people do.

If black or brown women had been in charge of any part of stoking the anticipation of the Wonder Woman movie by cross-advertising, I kinda doubt they'd have looked at actress Gal Gadot and thought cross-advertising the movie with THINK THIN products was a hot idea. 

But that's exactly what the predominantly white folk creating WONDER WOMAN 2017 did.

This cross-promotion is full of the mixed messages of unrealistic standards women have forced upon them their whole lives. We’re supposed to be as strong as Wonder Woman but also expected to “think thin,” to keep our bodies small and unimposing, preferably to the point of having no body at all. Hopefully the movie itself does a better job of promoting representation of a stronger, unapologetically impressive sort of woman.

https://www.themarysue.com/wonder-woman-wants-us-to-think-thin/

I think movie execs thought twice about this after this THINK THIN ad made a negative splash on twitter. But the words "think thin" next to an image of Wonder Woman isn't the core issue.  To me, the core issue is the fact that the Wonder Women actress chosen, Gal Gadot, is so bony that she truly is A NATURAL CHOICE to cross-advertise with THINK THIN products.

And if the movie executives in charge of advertising see Gal Gadot as a natural choice for a THINK THIN ad campaign, then little girls who are watching the movie can see it too.

Let's add a little more fuel to the body image fire. Why not? 

They tried to disguise her being hipless in FAST AND FURIOUS with a weird sash thing on the bikini bottom. But she looks like she is a lot smaller than Halle Berry (who plays STORM in the X-MEN series). And she looks like she is half the size of Scarlett Johanssen (who plays BLACK WIDOW in the AVENGERS series)

And neither one of these other actresses is big by any stretch of the imagination. They're just shaped like women and overstretched little girls

To me, choosing Gal Gadot to play Wonder Woman makes the same kind of sense as choosing FEARLESS GIRL to stand in front of the bull statue on Wall Street.

Gal Gadot did do a lot of exercising for the movie (see that 1/16th inch rise on her bicep).  Her thighs look to be a good size in promotional posters but I think the posters were photo shopped. 

In the movie itself?  She and her thighs were still THINK THIN material. 

The costume, unlike that ridiculous swimsuit of the 1970s, covered a lot more of her body and created some curves up top. But when Gadot is signing autographs for little girls on the street, are they going to think of her body as a goal, think that her body represents female power? 

I believe a variety of bodies are beautiful including some thin ones. And I believe in different strokes for different folks and all that...But it's time to stop holding super-thin up as beautiful.   

 White women wanting to be bony thin little girls for white men is why white girls have so many eating disorders as compared to other groups.* 

 Body image being a serious issue among girls and women, I'm glad the movie execs hid Gadot's thinness with angles, costuming, and photo-shopping. But, as you may have guessed, it bothers me Gal Gadot was chosen to play WONDER WOMAN at all.

The actress' body didn't have to start off looking like this

Or this

But WONDER WOMAN'S body, for damn sure, shouldn't have started here

Gal Gadot  

in one of "The Fast And The Furious" movies

If Wonder Woman was meant to be powerful in mind, body -- instead of just sexy in the eyes of white men -- the actress (and her body) would have been chosen in the same way the actor was chosen to play Superman.

I don't know what Henry Cavill's body looked like before he needed to be SUPEMAN. But I know he did not look like the guy on the right.  The movie executives did not say to the guy on the right. "It's okay, go work out for a few weeks and we'll work with what we've got."

Gal Gadot was chosen as Wonder Woman because that's what white men who dominate this country and the movie industry see as beautiful -- before she added one ounce of muscle.



If it wasn't for the white male love of the little girl body, a Prima Ballerina body like Misty Copeland's would have been seen as appropriate for Wonder Woman. A body like Michelle Obama's would have been seen as appropriate too.  

Misty and Michelle have bodies that are still in the "cookie cutter" mold of beautiful that's still required for Hollywood. But their sexy is strong and strong looking.

A body like Misty's wouldn't have looked like FEARLESS GIRL, but taller and holding a sword.

Part II: FEARLESS GIRL WONDER WOMAN ENTERTAINING BUT FLAWED  
http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2017/07/fearless-little-white-girl-as-wonder.html

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