Years ago, a friend went to a party, and something bothered him enough to rant to me about it later. And it bothered me that he was so incensed about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. It seemed so petty for him to be upset, and even more so for me to be annoyed with him.
Recently, something reminded me of that scenario, and it made more sense. I’ll explain.
The party was a house party. One of those parties people throw if they’re renting a good-sized house in college. You know the type—loud music, Solo cups of beer, and somebody doing something drunk and stupid before the end of the night.
At some point, my friend had occasion to use the bathroom. When he went into the bathroom, he was disgusted to see that the hostess had left a basket of feminine hygiene products on the counter for guests to use if needed.
Later, when my friend told me about it, he wrinkled his nose and said, “Why would she do that? Guys don’t want to see that!”
When I suggested that she was just making them available in case a woman needed them, he insisted that they could be left in the cabinet or under the counter. Out of sight, anyway.
I wish I’d had, at the time, the ability to articulate what I can now.
To me, this situation is, while relatively benign, a perfect example of male privilege.
A man walks into the bathroom and sees a reminder that women have periods. And he’s disgusted. He wants that evidence hidden away because it offends his senses. How dare the hostess so blatantly present tampons and pads where a man might see them? There’s no reason for that!
A woman walks into the bathroom and sees that the hostess is being extra considerate. She gets it. She knows what it’s like to have a period start unexpectedly. The feeling of horror because she’s probably wearing something she doesn’t want ruined—it is a party after all. The sick embarrassment because someone might notice, especially if she’s wearing light-colored clothes, or worse, sat on the hostess’s white couch. The self-conscious, semi-nauseated feeling of trying to get through a social event after you’ve exhausted every avenue to get your hands on an emergency pad or tampon, and you’re just hoping to God that if you tie your jacket around your waist—you brought one, right?—keep your back to a wall, clench your buttcheeks, squeeze your thighs tightly together, and don’t…move…at…all—you might get through the evening, bow out gracefully, and find an all-night convenience store with a public restroom.
Or maybe she came to the party during her period, but didn’t bargain for her flow to suddenly get that heavy. Or she desperately needs a tampon, but her purse is in a room where a couple is not to be disturbed. Maybe she doesn’t know the hostess well enough to ask if she can use one. Or she doesn’t know anyone at the party well enough to ask. Or she figures she can make do with some wadded up toilet paper or something.
Whatever the case, she walks into the bathroom, and she hears the hostess saying “Hey, I know what it’s like, and just in case, I’ve got your back.” She sees someone saving her from what could be a minor annoyance or a major embarrassment.
The hostess gets it. The woman who just walked into the bathroom? She’s either going to see that the person throwing the party is super considerate, or she’s going to be whispering thanks to Jesus, Krishna, and whoever else is listening because that is a basket full of social saviors.
But to the guy who wrinkled his nose, it’s still offensive that those terrible little things are on the counter, reminding his delicate sensibilities that the playground part of a woman is occasionally unavailable due to a gross bodily function that he should never have to think about.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a tiny thing. It’s a tiny annoyance for the man, and a more significant but relatively tiny courtesy for the woman. After all these years, my friend has probably forgotten, but I never have. As a woman whose life is partially governed by a fickle uterus that can ruin an evening faster than a submerged iPhone, his story has stuck with me.
How can you be so offended by a small gesture that has zero effect on you, but could make such an enormous difference to the person who needs it?
It occurs to me now that this is a small but effective illustration of how men and women see the world. It’s part of the same thought process that measures a woman’s value through her bra size and her willingness to have sex with him—that everything about us is displayed or hidden based on how men perceive them or what he wants to get from us. Unattractive women should be as covered as possible, while attractive ones shouldn’t be hiding their assets from male eyes (or hands, or anything else he wishes to use).
A woman who isn’t smiling is an affront to him because it detracts from her prettiness, despite the fact that there might be a legitimate reason for her not to smile (or more to the point, that there isn’t a legitimate reason for her to smile). Her emotional state is irrelevant because she’s not being pretty. It’s the line of thinking where a man blames anything other than cheerful sexual consent on the woman being a bitch, being a lesbian, or—naturally—being on her period. Everything we do, from our facial expressions to our use of hygiene products, are filtered the lens of “how it looks to a man.”
It’s the line of thinking where a small gesture from one woman to another, an assurance that someone else understands and will help her without question or judgment, a gesture which could save a woman’s evening from being ruined, is trumped by a man’s desire to see an untainted landscape of pretty, smiling women with visible cleavage and vaginas that never bleed.
And people wonder why we still need feminism.
This is actually an amazing idea I hadn’t though of. (And apparently it has the bonus side effect of showing which of your male friends are whiny pissbabies.)
When we have friends over I always set a little basket of pads and tampons out just in case anyone needs some.
None of the men have ever complained about it, possibly because at most of those parties I’m also showing off my cool new axe.
“women don’t know how much rejection hurts” i wasn’t allowed to play with legos or touch a football or look at sports. i wasn’t allowed to eat more. i wasn’t allowed to talk loudly, to laugh too much, to inject myself into male conversations. i wasn’t allowed to be good at science. i was told “oh sweetheart, have another college in mind, STEM fields are hard.” i got turned down from jobs in favor of boys where were less qualified. one boss told me he was hesitant to hire me because my last name is hispanic and i’m pretty and he didn’t want the “controversy.” i couldn’t take up space on the train. i would be talked over in public places. i couldn’t eat steak or drink beer, they were “boy” things. video games were off limits, i wasn’t allowed to ask if i could see more characters like myself in them. super heroes were all men, women were just love interests. i wanted shirts with wonderwoman, with black widow, with harley quinn, i found next to nothing. i wanted pockets and colors other than pink and clothes designed for warmth, not sexy, i got nothing. women change their name to be published nationally. i wasn’t allowed to be emotional, i wasn’t good at driving, i wasn’t in charge of my own body. i wasn’t allowed to show off my body, i wasn’t allowed to dress modestly. i had to be pretty, whatever it took, but my eating was constantly made fun of. “she’s, like, anorexic” was a punchline, not a disorder. “she’s fat” was a death sentence.
boys said no because: i wasn’t pretty i wasn’t small i was too loud i spent too much energy on being funny on because i wouldn’t shut up what a feminazi i wasn’t smart i was too smart for my own good i was always reading i was always busy i was too needy i was too independent i was not who you took home i was too much of a house mom i was perfect and it was scary.
women don’t know. women don’t know. never sat in a room and wrote angsty poetry about this shit. somehow both overemotional and not capable of knowing how much rejection stings. which one is it. which one is it. i’ll give you a hint: we’ve been rejected since the first time our parents said, “no, not the blue blanket, it’s for little boys to play with.” we are used to having “no” slammed in our faces. we got used to it. maybe the reason it seems so unnatural to hear “no” is because for your entire life, you heard “yes.”
“maybe the reason it seems so unnatural to hear ‘no’ is because for your entire life, you heard ‘yes.’”
let me tell you guys something that ACTUALLY happened in my screenwriting class last week
one of the female writers in our class is writing a feature about this gang of teenage girls who sort of become vigilantes and murder men who harass women (that’s a shitty logline of it but it’s actually fucking awesome and highly stylized and over-exaggerated like tarantino in a good way bc i fucking hate tarantino). ANYWAY their first kill is this guy named taylor. taylor is one of the girl’s boyfriends. it is heavily implied and the writer confirmed that he abuses and rapes her. not explicitly seen, but she has bruises, there are scenes implying it etc.
so. she wrote the part where they kill taylor. and one of my professor’s comments was about how he felt like he didn’t hate taylor enough.
to which me and my female friend were like um what?? we hate him. he fucking raped and abused her. wE HATE HIM. HE IS A HORRIBLE PERSON.
and my prof was like well yeah i hate him but i don’t HATE hate him. and we argued about it. so he took a poll of who hated taylor. ALL of the girls in the class raised their hands. none of the boys did. when he asked who didn’t hate taylor all of the men raised their hands. and me and my friend started laughing because of COURSE they did.
and my prof was like why are you laughing and the writer was like “i think they’re laughing at the gender difference in that answer” and my prof was like “well, from my male perspective, i don’t think i’m being sexist”
WHAT.
first of all did you hear that sentence at ALL do you understand how paradoxical it is?????
second of all, no. just no.
and then my prof went on to say “i feel like we need to see taylor be horrible. like bad solution, he kicks a dog”
evidently a man can abuse and rape a girl and not be hated, but if he kicks a dog then he’s PURE EVIL
I wore a red dress to work today. It has a zipper at either side of my chest that can unzip and reveal a thin strip of skin. A coworker, without warning, tried pulling at the zipper and when it wouldn’t zip, instead revealed a good portion of my collarbone and shoulder as well as my bra strap. An hour later, the same coworker came up and told me to not wear clothes with zippers because he’ll go right ahead and unzip them. I shot back that unzipping me without my permission is sexual harassment. Apparently a manager heard and berated my coworker. At the end of my shift, my coworker told me that my little comment got him in trouble and that he no longer feels comfortable saying anything to me other than “hello” and “goodbye.”
I am supposed to feel guilty for pointing out that he can’t lay his fucking hands on me.
Nope. Dude’s a back of dickwads and I would have fired his ass if I was the manager.
I don’t know if some of you have been to these live reads at LACMA, where a classic film is read live on stage by actors who just sit and read the script. We did one recently of American Pie, but we reversed the gender roles. All the women played men; all the men played women. And it was so fascinating to be a part of this because, as the women took on these central roles — they had all the good lines, they had all the good laughs, all the great moments — the men who joined us to sit on stage started squirming rather uncomfortably and got really bored because they weren’t used to being the supporting cast.
It was fascinating to feel their discomfort [and] to discuss it with them afterward, when they said, “It’s boring to play the girl role!” And I said, “Yeah. Yeah. You think? Welcome to our world!
—Olivia Wilde crushing it when she talks about women in Hollywood. (via leanin)
At about 2pm this afternoon, I was in the middle of explaining Kafka’s Metamorphosis to a tenth grader of my acquaintance, when suddenly my phone started BLOWING THE FUCK UP. I took a second to look at my phone and saw that I was getting Twitter alert after Twitter alert in response to a tweet by Noelle Stevenson.
I check out her tweet and it’s a screencap of a blog comment calling her a feminazi (sidenote: hey, dudes, if you use the word “feminazi,” literally all you are doing is telling me two things: 1) you don’t know anything about feminists and b) you don’t know anything about Nazis), but also embedded in that comment is an oblique reference to me being really mad about how ladies used and abused my comic book knowledge?
Look, trying to understand this comment with zero context while at the same time answering questions about how Gregor Samsa’s physical condition reflect what was happening to him spiritually was not super easy. (Another sidenote: look, I’m not trying to grammarshame someone or whatever the fuck, but this comment would have been WAY easier to understand if this dude had had less ideas about how women should act and more ideas about where periods should go.)
Anyway, I finally got home about half an hour ago, and I’ve finally read the blog post on which the comment was made, and at last I understand that my name wasn’t pulled out of obscurity at random as an “internet person”; rather, I was mentioned in the post specifically because of my “Batman for the Uninitiated” post.
And so now I know the comment meant this: I would be mad that a woman used my advice on how to get into comics and then complained that it’s hard to get into comics.
If there is any ambiguity on the matter, allow me to clarify:
I do not in any way agree with that shitlord’s opinion.
The VERY REASON I wrote a “Batman for the Uninitiated” post (and a Superman one &c.) is because there are numerous barriers to entry in comics, not only within the continuity itself, but literally in the physical act of walking into a comic store and buying a book, especially if you are a woman. I feel like that is clear in the subtext—if not the text—of the post itself; there’s a reason I try to warn about books that feature sexual violence and talk about the ready availability of digital comics.
I WANT women reading comics. I WANT women making comics. I WANT women starring in comics. If you don’t, you’re a piece of shit, and I’m not sorry for saying that.
(Sidenote: so what if she got into Batman via the Christopher Nolan movies? There are, what—optimistically—500k regular comics readers? The Christopher Nolan movies made LITERAL BILLIONS of dollars. Statistically, they are going to be someone’s introduction to Batman. That’s mathematics, fake nerd.)
If I may borrow from Chris Sims, whose name also got invoked in this discussion: “keep my name out of your mouth, son.”
Don’t make me the arbiter of who’s a fake geek.
Changed my mind. DO make me the arbiter of who’s a real geek and who’s fake.
All right, all you adult women who are just getting into comics and like to cosplay, line up on the left. All you dudes who think these ladies should have to pass some kind of superhero LSAT to wear a cute Batman outfit, line up on the right. Now, everyone who’s a real geek, step forward.
Not so fast, guys on the right.
If you have, as this guy claims, “dedicated a lot of time and money and actual effort to study and dedicate [your]selves to comic books,” and the lesson you took away from a lifetime of Superman, Batman and Spider-Man comics is that it is a cool idea to make someone feel like shit, you don’t know ANYTHING about comic books.
“If you have, as this guy claims, “dedicated a lot of time and money and actual effort to study and dedicate [your]selves to comic books,” and the lesson you took away from a lifetime of Superman, Batman and Spider-Man comics is that it is a cool idea to make someone feel like shit, you don’t know ANYTHING about comic books.”
Boys, on average, spend two fewer hours doing household chores per week than girls do (they play two hours more).
If they live in households where children are compensated for doing chores, boys make and save more money.
A 2009 study conducted by University of Michigan economists found a two-hour gender disparity in responsibilities per week in a study of 3,000 kids.
75 percent of girls had chores, while just 65 percent of boys do
This disparity in chores and free time continues into adulthood all over the world. According to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), men “report spending more time in activities counted as leisure than women. Gender differences in leisure time are wide across OECD countries.”
The problems women face with unequal pay and housework duties actually start in childhood.
The fact that boys’ chores appear to be more profitable makes the childhood chore gap even more disturbing. Turns out, parents tend to value the work that boys do more.
Gender stereotypes dictate these patterns.
men who grow up with sisters do less housework than their spouses and are also significantly more socially conservative.
Just had to bold that bottom point there because of the amount of misogynists who claim that because they have women in their family, they can’t POSSIBLY be sexist ever.
Question of Smoke 