If I haven’t already outed myself as a “fandom old” with the title, I’m about to right now: There was a point within the last 10 years when femslash was such a minority and so frequently dismissed by het and boyslash fans alike that ship wars within F/F fandom were actually rare. Likewise, femslash’s demographic was unique. It was mostly populated by queer women, whereas both M/M and M/F were populated by predominantly straight women.
As a result of the dynamics mentioned above, you had a lot of overlap between femslash ships, even within fandoms for a single show. People got along, and often multishipped, because 1) OMG more than two girls?? 2) social media hadn’t become the haven for trollish behavior that it is today, and 3) there was minimal investment in seeing their readings of the text reflected onscreen.
… fandom as the indefinite mass of people who gather around a piece of
media to share their enjoyment of it? Tell stories about it? Spin legends out of it?
That fandom’s real strength has always been its ability to not care
about whether or not the establishment thinks it’s legitimate; to give
the middle finger to canonicity.
*pretends i was actually sent this on monday* Oh man, I am so late replying to this, you know how tumblr is with eating messages! Ahem. Right. GMOs, genetically manipulated organisms, this got a lot more complicated than I thought it would, real fast.
So initially I thought it was only about GM foods, right? And I think Astra’s perfectly fine with those, encouraging if nothing else; you take something nature offers and you improve it, why wouldn’t that be a good thing? Provided we actually execute it properly, that is, which I don’t know, because I’m not a Kryptonian. Or a scientist. Of course Astra would know all about whether these processes are harmful to either nature or ourselves in any way, but if we’re doing it wrong I think she’d try to correct us before she’d try to stop us.
But then I looked at the actual wikipedia page and discovered this transcended plant life and went into actual living organisms, including humans. That is where it gets complicated, and you are evil for asking me this. Fuck you, I love it.
So when it comes to living beings, we run into the fact that this is exactly what Krypton did with the birthing matrix and the codex and all that jazz; genetically manipulate the people to be perfect. Which would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that as a twin, Astra was not considered perfect. Let’s not pretend like she wasn’t the protagonist of a dystopic story in a ‘perfect’ world. Her experience with this is absolutely horrid, and her lack of faith in people doesn’t help at all.
But she is 1) intelligent af and 2) indoctrinated by the same ‘perfect’ world. Much as it absolutely did not work out well for her, I think she does believe in the methods. I don’t think she believes their system was flawed (weak and willfully ignorant people aside), if anything I think she started to consider herself an abomination. Case in point: the immense self-loathing.
So, in conclusion? More so than simply supporting it, I think she considers it a standard for an advanced sentient species. You probably won’t hear her encourage people to GM people, but you might hear her muttering about how primitive we are without it.
I’m getting fed up with this whole “feminism as an identity” thing. Time for “feminism as an action.”
So instead of asking “can a feminist do x?” ask “is doing x a feminist action!”
Can a feminist take her husband’s last name? Mu. Null. Question un-valid, please un-ask question.
Is taking your husband’s last name a feminist action? No it isn’t. It doesn’t challenge the patriarchy in anyway, it is the status quo thing to do, it is what is expected of women, and it carries a lot of historical baggage about ownership and shit like that.
But that’s okay, your life choices don’t have to be 100% dictated by your politics unless you want them to. And it’s okay to really want to take his name while recognizing that you also want to do the feminist thing and keep your own, and it’s okay to feel conflicted and have a hard time making the choice. But no more of this enabling “as long as I made the choice myself it is a feminist choice” -bullshit. Own your choices, even the ones that aren’t informed by your feminist politics. You are still a human being and people do shit that contradicts their politics and even interests all the time. Just stop pretending that everything you do is feminist because you are a feminist, that’s not how it works.
When you make feminism an identity, the identity becomes the ideological excuse by which you tacitly support the institution you are seeking to change.
This is part of the problem with white feminism.
This is part of the problem with liberal feminism.
When you differentiate action as feminism, your feminism moves beyond the ideological and it becomes possible to exist and live within the institution without tacitly supporting it.
Question of Smoke 