my problem with mogai+ identities is homophobia didn’t end thirty years ago. internalized homophobia within the lgb community is still rampant. not everyone is ecstatic to find out they’re gay/lesbian/bisexual, so pushing the rhetoric that your “true” identify is just the thing that feels most nice and secure is, first of all, absolutely not true for everybody and second of all, allows closeted lgb kids to hide behind more vague identities and sets back their pride by years. sometimes that extremely specific identity feeling “right” just means compliant with your internalized homophobia.
Contrary to what some “progressives” claim on here, being exclusively same-sex attracted doesn’t imply you don’t care about personality. It simply means that being of the same sex is a requisite for your attraction, not the sum of it.
There’s no contradiction between a gay guy talking about loving dick and loving men for who they are.
Neither are lesbians doing anything wrong for expressing their love for vulva. She’s not hurting anyone.
When people claim that declaring our same-sex attraction makes being gay seem shallow or predatory, that’s not our fault. That’s their fault for perceiving it that way.
This might just be my radfem dyke hysteria here but I genuinely think putting a little kid in a dress is all sorts of fucked up if you’re then going to chastise her for flashing her panties to the world/not sitting properly/not showing enough restraint in her movements. Just buy her pants and shorts. Pick the pink ones and the florals if you’re that dead-set on your precious little gender roles. At least try making sure that she hasn’t internalized her status as a breathing decoration by the time she starts kindergarten.
it probably wouldn’t help your case to tell this to mothers who want their daughters to grow up to be beautiful, feminine women, but i’m pretty sure the reason i’m still uncomfortable in dresses and skirts as an adult is that i was never forced to wear them except on special occasions as a kid.
dresses and skirts, especially short ones, are uncomfortable! you can’t move or even sit without putting thought into how you present yourself. depending on the length, you might not be able to bend over or relax on a windy day. anyone wearing a dress or a skirt (maybe not maxi skirts) has to be vigilant of her own appearance and posture at all times.
if wearing dresses and skirts hasn’t been drilled into your daily life from a young age, it will feel uncomfortable because it IS an uncomfortable practice. if you don’t feel constantly aware of your own body while wearing a drss or skirt, you have probably grown so accustomed to them that the hyper-vigilance they require has become second nature to you.
sometimes i feel a bit bummed out because dresses and skirts can be very pretty and i wish i could wear one casually without it being a big ordeal, but at the end of the day, i would take my childhood climbing trees and rolling around in the dirt over wearing a larger variety of nice clothes in my adult life. i’m glad my mom didn’t put in the effort to force me into a dress as a kid and police my movement and posture all day on a daily basis.
i’m still bitter that she wouldn’t buy me clothes from the boys’ section at the age when girls’ and boys’ clothes were identical except for the colors, but someday i’ll get over that. someday.
As a child I was never “forced” in dresses, I was just put in them and never really questioned it. However, I have many embarrassing memories of being ridiculed for flashing my underwear. Not sure how young I was, but I’m pretty sure I was around kindergarten age, maybe even younger. In all of those memories, it’s an adult who makes fun of me – often times the very adult who dressed me like this in the morning, AKA my mom! – and I’m usually doing something that captures my entire attention, like playing outside with other kids or watching a movie.
In those memories, I’m a kid having fun with other kids, being completely unaware of my body and of its femaleness, and suddenly, my attention is pulled back on it by grown adults. I’m reminded that I’m not allowed to be innocent, to play freely, because I’m wearing a skirt. And boys don’t wear skirts. Only girls. Therefore, there’s something inherently ridiculous and stupid about being a girl, because only girls are made to wear ridiculous and stupid garments.
As soon as I was allowed to pick my own clothes, skirts and dresses disappeared from my wardrobe, only to reappear in adulthood. I can’t help but wonder if these early traumatic experiences are causally related to my teenage gender turmoils
I too rejected skirts in my teens, but now as an adult I’ve incorporated some back into my wardrobe, but really only long loose flowy ones bc anything else requires a great deal of thought, like she said. I occasionally wear short skirts and dresses, or tighter long skirts, but I really prefer long broom skirts bc I can wear shorts under them, plus the Aesthetic is excellent.
this might sound wild but having 1. sex 2. biological children is not a human right & women’s bodies should not be called upon to perform any kind of public sexual or reproductive function as if they’re natural resources
also this shouldn’t even need to be said but uh… if youre a man in your 20s or older, calling 14-15 year old girls “hoes” or saying they can’t “keep their legs closed” is seriously inappropriate.
High heels should absolutely be thought of in the way we think of smoking. It slowly kills your body, not just your feet. Your legs, back, neck, hips, blood circulation, tendons, everything. Just like a smoker, there’s incredible pain when you try to quit. Because your entire body had been moulded by them. The aching or burning white-hot pain in the back of your legs when you quit heels? That’s your shortened, atrophied tendons being suddenly stretched to regular length again. Unsteadiness/dizziness and back pain when walking in un-heeled shoes? That’s your gait adjusting to something more normal, everything from the movement of your ankles to the bob of your head.
If you know young women, teens, or even tweens, tell them about the dangers of high heels. Tell them about how it can become painful to walk on the beach barefoot. How it can become impossible to play sports or even go for a run. We need to change the idea that high heels are harmless.
Kick the habit, it’s easiest before it starts.
This is fucking stupid. Yes they’re not good for you but you only have long term damage if you wear stilettos every day. Which most people don’t. It’s also not an addiction! Please don’t make actual dangerous addictions that can cause cancer and death into a post you can use to scare people into never wearing high heels! If you want to once in a while there is nothing wrong with that. Fucking hell.
Interesting take, Saint Moron. Could you explain what would be bad about ‘scaring women into never wearing high heels’? What harm would specifically come from women not wearing heels due to a tumblr post I made? Men seem to be doing fine without having to wear them ever.
While you’re at it, could you give a definition for addiction that wouldn’t include those who are only able to walk wearing high heels, due to atrophied tendons after years of use (hence full dependency– that itself being a synonym for addiction)?
Also, how are you able to say there’s nothing wrong with wearing them occasionally, when I’m sure everyone who’s ever worn them has had hard falls due to instability in heels? In the original post I focused on long term effects on the body itself, because the short term effects (Cost, clumsiness, potential for injury, inability to walk on certain surfaces, sex-based discrimination in uniforms and dress codes, etc. etc. etc.) are so well known among women that they could hardly be considered new useful information.
The fact that about 75% of feminist activism nowadays is threatening violence to women who don’t want to interact sexually with penises is, uh, bizarre, to say the least.
What do
Elton John, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ricky Martin and Nicole Kidman have
in common? The answer — happily reported by celebrity site Glamour Magazine — is
that all had babies with the help of surrogate mothers. And these
stories are invariably accompanied by photos of the couples holding
their babies and beaming with joy. Well, if you asked me, I ‘d answer
rather differently — they are all participating in reproductive
prostitution and child trafficking.
Surrogacy — or
‘contract pregnancy’ — involves a woman being either inseminated or
having an embryo implanted in her uterus. When she gives birth nine
months later, she surrenders the child to the commissioning
parents — and almost always in exchange for money. Since the 1970s, over
25,000 babies have been born in the USA via surrogacy. But the practice
is increasingly outsourced to countries like India, Ukraine, Thailand
and Mexico. In India alone, the surrogacy industry is valued at over 450
million USD per year. Countries all over the world are faced with the
question: ban or regulate surrogacy?
The
media mostly portrays surrogacy as a win-win situation: childless
couples can fulfil their dream for a child, and poor women can earn
money by helping others. Hello! magazine showcases Elton John saying that surrogacy “completes our family in the most precious and perfect way.” Vanity Fair features
Ricky Martin and his twins, declaring: “I would give my life for the
woman who helped me bring my sons into this world.” And Nicole Kidman
comments: “Our family is truly blessed … No words can adequately convey
the incredible gratitude that we feel for everyone … in particular our
gestational carrier.” Martin and Kidman conspicuously avoid the word
‘mother’ when speaking about the women who bore children for them. The
gratitude of the recipients of the surrogacy arrangements is paraded as
success, but ultimately disguises the inherent power inequity in the
arrangement: the parent is the one who pays, not the one who bears the child.
If
we turn to philosophers and sociologists such as Helena Ragoné, H.M.
Malm and Christine Sistare, surrogacy is seen as equally positive, but they describe it as a way to “break the biological paradigm,” to
deconstruct nuclear families and heterosexual norms and to “allow women
to transcend the limitations of their family roles.” These two
narratives seem to be in conflict, yet they both support surrogacy.
But
surrogacy is far from liberating. As a feminist and a humanist, I argue
that surrogacy is emerging as a new form of women’s oppression which
has more in common with prostitution than one might think. While the sex
industry commodifies women’s sexuality, surrogacy commodifies women’s
reproduction. As Elizabeth Kane (a US surrogate mother who became
opposed to surrogacy) has written, surrogate motherhood is nothing more
that the transference of pain from one woman to another. One woman is in
anguish because she cannot become a mother, and another woman may
suffer for the rest of her life because she cannot know the child she
bore for someone else. Surrogacy also turns children into commodities
and is, effectively, baby trade.
The
trade in pregnancy originated in the USA back in the 1970s. Following
the Supreme Court decision in landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) which
legalised abortion, the supply of newborns for adoption decreased
drastically. While many US couples turned to international adoption,
some did not want to adopt a child with a different ethnicity from
themselves. Soon, advertisements began to appear asking for fertile
young women who were prepared to be inseminated and then give up the
resulting child. These ads were often placed by the men whose wives were
infertile but still wanted children genetically related to themselves. Agencies sprung up in response to this new market, connecting childless
couples with young women, often from working class backgrounds. By the
1980s, this had grown into an industry whose unethical strategies for
signing up potential surrogates were revealed by investigative
journalists such as Susan Ince, who went undercover as a potential
surrogate.
The
trade in pregnancy originated in the USA back in the 1970s.
Agencies sprung up in response to this new market, connecting childless
couples with young women, often from working class backgrounds. By the
1980s, this had grown into an industry.
When
custody battles started taking place after a number of surrogate
mothers such as Mary Beth Whitehead in 1985 changed their minds after
giving birth, many US courts declared surrogacy contracts invalid. They
said the rights to a child could not be handed over in exchange for
money, and the birth mothers were found to have righteous claims to
their children. But the surrogacy industry devised new ways to get
around the courts. The intended parents would now also hire an egg
donor, so that the surrogate mother would carry a child that was not
genetically related to her. This became known as ‘gestational
surrogacy’, and in cases where the birth mother changed her mind and
wanted to keep the baby, courts would state that she was not the mother,
only a ‘carrier’. Embryo implantation also enabled the industry to move
to countries such as India — an Indian woman could now carry a
Caucasian or Japanese child for a much cheaper price. As Indian
surrogate mother Salma tells researcher Amrita Pande:
“Who
would choose to do this? I have had a lifetime’s worth of injections
pumped into me. Some big ones in my hips hurt so much. In the beginning I
had about 20–25 pills almost every day. I feel bloated all the time.
But I know I have to do it for my children’s future. This is not work,
this is majboori (a compulsion). Where we are now, it can’t possibly get
any worse. In our village we don’t have a hut to live in or crops in
our farm. This work is not ethical — it’s just something we have to do
to survive. When we heard of this surrogacy business, we didn’t have any
clothes to wear after the rains — just one pair that used to get
wet — and our house had fallen down. What were we to do?”
Last
year, the Indian government banned surrogacy for foreign singles and
gay couples in an attempt to stop the country from becoming a haven for
reproductive tourism. This has led to discussions of morality, sexual
identity and definitions of what constitutes a ‘real’ family. Critics of
surrogacy are called conservative, moralist and anti-gay. As a
feminist, I think surrogacy should be discussed not on the basis of who
the intended parents might be, but on the basis of what surrogacy itself
is. My questions are: Is surrogacy reproductive prostitution? And: Is
surrogacy baby trade?
The
first question startles many. At first surrogacy looks like the reverse
of prostitution: it is reproduction without sex, not sex without
reproduction. We see images of cute babies and happy families, not of
seedy brothels. The ‘holy uterus’, not the vagina, is put on the market.
The archetype of the benevolent Madonna, not the whore, is projected. Yet in spite of these differences, they are both about selling a part of
the female body. They both perpetuate the ideology that women’s bodies
exist for the purpose and purchase of others. We are told that women
need to offer sex to men who are single, disabled or have special
needs — as if sex were a human right. We are told that gay couples,
single men and infertile women need children — as if having children
were a human right. In both cases, women are obliged to surrender: to
have sex without wanting it, to give birth to babies without getting to
know them. Women are turned into factories: have sex for the purpose of
others, have children for the purpose of others. In both industries,
women are used as tools, not as human beings with feelings of their own.
Swedish
intellectual Nina Bjork has written that one sign of an affluent
society is having difficulty distinguishing desires from needs: we learn
to desire the things we don’t need and to call these desires needs. And
our so-called needs become ever more specific: the longing for children
becomes the right to use another woman’s womb for our own purposes.
Behind this slippery logic stands the forceful, violent logic of
profitability which makes it all too easy for the wishes of economically
strong groups to be transformed into self-evident rights.
The forceful, violent logic of
profitability which makes it all too easy for the wishes of economically
strong groups to be transformed into self-evident rights.
The
second question concerns the children. This is where surrogacy differs
from prostitution. We are no longer speaking only of a buyer and a
seller but also of a third party: the child. In commercial surrogacy,
the child is de facto turned into a product. A few thousands dollars are
paid to the mother when she delivers the newborn baby. This, by all
definitions, constitutes baby trade. It is the buying and selling of
children. But even in altruistic surrogacy, there is a drastic change in
the way we look at children: as products to be exchanged through
contracts. The children are denied the right to be with the mother who
carried them in her body for nine months.
Lately,
American children born from the early wave of domestic surrogacy in the
1980s have begun to speak up. Thirty-year old Jessica Kern campaigns to
outlaw surrogacy and said to the New York Post: “Like I would choose this for myself? When the only reason you’re in
this world is a big fat paycheck, it’s degrading.” ‘Brian’ writes on his
blog Son of a Surrogate: “Yes I am angry. Yes I feel cheated … It’s a
shame and it sucks for me. Hell it sucks for all of us.”
Do
all children born of surrogacy feel this way? Of course not. But the
stories of Jessica and Brian should make everybody stop and think twice
about surrogacy. We are dealing with an industry that, if we don´t stop
it, will grow as big as the prostitution industry. In both cases,
capitalism is expanding into the most basic structures of what it means
to be human. What is being commercialised are our origins themselves. The surrogate sells not a ‘thing’ she produces, but her own body and her
child. In another unfortunate mirroring of prostitution, we are seeing
reports of women being trafficked into Thailand and China for the
purposes of surrogacy.
No
matter how much we might feel for Elton John, Ricky Martin or Nicole
Kidman, we must ask ourselves the question: are there some things in
life that should not be bought and sold? Such as the most important
thing: ourselves, our origins, our bodies? If the answer is yes, I call
on everyone to help stop the surrogacy industry before it is too late.
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