The Big Sister

The Big Sister is participating in The Young Feminist Blog Carnival. What a great idea and a reminder that THERE ARE SO MANY OF US! Whatever your definition of “young” and “feminist,” there are so many people in the world who want equality and happiness for girls, boys, men, and women everywhere. Badges with the “this is what a feminist looks like” slogan are meant to do more than identify you and your political leanings. They are also meant to demonstrate the diverse meanings that identity has….THIS is what a feminist looks like, but so is THIS. Those people, backgrounds, ideas, actions, etc. might be completely different. Thanks for doing this project, Shelly.

This piece by Danielle was first featured on Press Pause to Reflect, a thoughtful blog about video games.

After watching the demo of Bayonetta, subtitled First Climax, I did not come away with the feminist outrage I half-expected the game would inspire. The game seemed silly, pulling out old tropes about broken commandments and a femme fatale. I mean, the name of the demo is First Climax; it didn’t really seem possible to take it seriously.

Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean the game isn’t sexist – and here is where I point out that I have not played the entire game, so I cannot testify to any character development that may occur. Judging from the demo alone, Bayonetta uses her sexuality almost as a literal weapon, which I suppose does set her apart from her forebears. The femme fatale has for the most part been seen as a negative force, using her wiles to undermine the male hero. (The interest in retelling old stories that has soared lately has changed this somewhat; Lilith, after all, has gone from being a demon to being something of a feminist symbol.) In addition to all this, there is a heavy sadism theme in the demo. Bayonetta has “torture attacks,” one of which involves an iron maiden and another which has Bayonetta spanking her opponent before guillotining them.

The opening cut scene does nothing in the way of hinting at any personality beyond this, nor does it forward the plot in any real way. It features Bayonetta sashaying down the aisle of a train, into a metro station, and out to a garden. Then you’re right back into a crazy action sequence.

Speaking of fighting, I would be remiss if I did not bring up the hair. Bayonetta’s hair forms her outfit – which is actually pretty modest, all things considered. Her hair also forms her attacks, though, leaving our poor heroine unclad when she fights except for a strip of hair/clothes down her middle. Another attack creates a monster out of her hair, leaving her nude and covered with a swirl of hair circling around her. It is basically a drawn-out striptease, promising that if the player does well, he’ll get to see more. (I say “he” because, let’s face it, this is a market advertised to and dominated by men.)

It is easy to say that Bayonetta provides an unrealistic depiction of women, but it’s okay because the men are unrealistic too! The problem with this argument is that men are not held up to unrealistic standards presented in video games – or movies, magazines, television, etc. In fact, it’s easy to find examples of shlubby dudes who get the attractive lady in the end. Women, however, are held up to these standards. So every example of a woman like Bayonetta – even in a silly video game – is another standard of beauty being imposed.

I get that this sort of game is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Main character and sexism aside, I’m not super interested in fighting games like this. Honestly, it doesn’t seem all that much worse than other games that are out there. If anything, it seems a little sillier. In a time when the video game medium is rapidly maturing and becoming more mainstream, there is no reason to sacrifice character for crazy action sequences. In a mature field, there is simply less and less room for adolescent titles like Bayonetta.

The Big Sister would like to thank Tara…sometimes this stuff seems really basic, but if we aren’t changing our behavior, it obviously isn’t as basic as we might think. Here’s her piece:

I don’t like the term politically correct. I don’t like it because it implies that the way I choose my words is intended to placate certain interest groups. Rather, I contend that our language reflects our attitudes and assumptions. Further, the way you speak becomes a tool for your peers to judge your character. If you speak in a way which holds a group of people in a certain light, your peers will have assumptions about the way in which you regard those groups, whether or not those assumptions are true.

When I hear oppressive language, I am personally offended. I’m one of those people who will not use the “gay” as a synonym for uncool; “bitch” as a title for an assertive, aggressive, or stupid female; or racial slurs in any context. But recently I’ve become uncomfortable with a new word, and even more uncomfortable with the fact that I hear it coming from the mouths of mostly men. I’ve been hearing people throw around the word “rape” jokingly, especially in the context of competition. As in, the winner rapes the loser.

We live in a boy’s world. Women are the weaker sex and we’ve got reminders everywhere we look: from how we trace our lineage to our government to our literature. Here we are taking self-defense classes and begging escorts at night with pepper spray in hand and 911 on speed dial, while the boys joke about our fears.

Since when did raping become winning? A very powerful and violent win, at that. We all know that rape is a terrible, horrible thing, but we’ve somehow let it become a casual metaphor for victory. And for extra emphasis, you can say “butt rape.” That’s even worse than “regular” rape in that it has the reputation for being the most defiling form of rape. It scares both men and women because either sex can be the victim. Winning or losing at sports or a game is not the same as forcing or being forced into nonconsensual sex. But no matter thecontext, laughing at rape completely trivializes the experiences of the victim. How can we stop rape when it’s a joke?

If you’ve ever experienced – or known someone who has experienced sexual violence or coercion, you can’t help but notice these kinds of phrases and cringe. And if you joke about rape, you are making yourself unavailable as a safe friend, as someone who is available to help or to listen. Joking about rape almost seems like a backwards step in the fight against the rape crisis, and we’ve got to move forward. So stop saying it, there’s got to be a better word.

So I’ve been reading a lot about queer theory in one of my classes so I’ve been thinking about sexual preference a lot lately. Today on facebook I saw an acquaintance’s status: “_____ is a straight ally. There are 9 days until National Coming Out Day and I pledge to have heartfelt conversations for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality” and it made me think…why do people have to specify that they’re a “straight ally” in situations like this?

I hear it all the time, “now I’m not gay but I don’t have anything against it.” I have a sticker on my guitar case that I got in highschool: “I’m straight but not narrow.” Even as a questioning teenager who was outspoken about progressive political issues, I didn’t want people to think that I was a lesbian. Why do people do this? Why are people afraid, if they’re supportive of gay equality, that someone (oh no!) might think that they are gay themselves?

When I went to donate my own facebook status to National Coming Out Day, it gave me the option to list myself as straight, gay, bisexual, or to leave it blank. I think people are afraid that even leaving it blank will imply you are gay. Why else would anyone leave it blank, the thinking goes. If you’re straight, what do you have to hide?

So if you’re a straight ally, I’m challenging you to not only speak out but also to leave the “straight” part out next time you have a conversation about sexuality. Let people wonder. Remember that some of the people you’re standing up for can’t ensure others that they’re straight without denying a part of who they are.

I recently read that the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto recently changed the requirements for inducting women. Men and women used to compete against each other for spots, but now every year, four men and two women will be inducted.

Bill Hay, the Chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame said, “The new voting procedures address the basic principle and general view among the Board of Directors and Selection Committee that men and women ought not to compete directly against each other for limited places of Honoured Membership. It creates fair conditions for all candidates while reinforcing that the existing basis for selection and requisite standards of excellence be applied equally to both genders.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about this at first. Some of the comments on the article I read about it thought it wasn’t fair. They complained that a really great male hockey player might never get in while a woman who wasn’t at all as good as he is would. I saw what this guy meant. And if a woman were inducted I wanted everyone to feel like she deserved it. I didn’t want people feeling like women needed special treatment to excel at a sport.

I’ve changed my mind though. It’s not giving women an advantage, it’s taking away the advantages that male hockey players already have. Women have a lot more obstacles to face than men do on the road to becoming a professional hockey player:

*A lot fewer women’s parents are likely to get their daughters involved in hockey at a younger age. A lot of professional male players have been playing since they were young kids, but women players are more likely to have to discover the interest on their own and start at an older age.

*I would imagine there are a lot fewer women’s high school hockey teams, so fewer women have the support and motivation to keep playing hockey that a team provides.

*Hockey is an aggressive sport. Men who excel at being aggressive are looked at positively…they’re seen as manly. Women are told they shouldn’t be aggressive though, and I’m sure many female hockey players have faced harassment for being too “tough.”

*Women don’t have as many or as easily accessible role-models to look to in hockey.

*Prime hockey playing age overlaps with prime child bearing age and that makes hockey a different kind of commitment for women. A male hockey player can easily be a dad, but a woman who wants to get pregnant has to delay or stop playing. It’s not like other careers where you can keep working until a few weeks before the baby pops out.

So I commend the Hockey Hall of Fame for their decision. Judging women separately is not giving them an unfair advantage. It’s simply recognizing that men and women become hockey players in very different conditions. The new rule judges people who face similar conditions in a similar manner.

What I Don’t Like About Porn
1. It perpetuates negative body image. When we see muscle bound men and huge fake breasts, tans, etc. in a context that we’re told is sexy, it’s hard not to feel like that is a physical ideal. It gives us unfair expectations about what we and our partner should look like and makes us feel bad about ourselves when we don’t look like that.

2. It perpetuates negative ideas about sex and gender roles. So much of mainstream porn is terrible about this. There are double standards (a scene with one man and multiple women will often portray the man as hot shit and lucky and the women as “sluts” but a scene with one woman and multiple men also portray the men as taking advantage of the woman being “slutty,” someone who “just can’t get enough cock.” A lot of porn also perpetuates the idea of exploitation as a pretty normal part of sex…the idea of “violation” is supposed to be sexy. I’ve heard the argument that this and the body image issue aren’t relevant…that they’re just like people saying video games encourage kids to be violent…that people separate porn from reality just fine. I disagree. If you continually expose or expose yourself to specific body traits or ideas and then reward yourself with a positive physical feeling (an orgasm), you’ll essentially train yourself to get off to these things. It’s called masturbatory conditioning.

3. It can be racist. Mainstream porn often plays into really ridiculous racist stereotypes. White men having sex with black women have “jungle fever” and Asian women play the stereotypical school girl parts. Interracial sex is portrayed as a fetish and some porn’s appeal is in violating or exploiting people of a certain race. Videos advertise their stars’ races almost as a commodity while simultaneously degrading them.

4. It can desensitize us. Pornographic images have gotten a lot more extreme than they used to be. People want to see more and more extreme images…it’s like in the old days when women wore full length dresses and a bare ankle was considered sexually risque. Now nothing is risque…we see completely naked bodies, gaping holes, etc. all the time, and porn has to push it even further to be taboo and exciting, and often this plays right back into the other issues…bigger fake breasts, more exploitation, more violent and objectifying sexuality.

5. A lot of the porn industry pisses me off. Yes, I’ve heard the statistics that women run a lot of it, and I’ll get into later the parts of that that I think are cool. But even if it’s women, porn uses some manipulative tactics. Sometimes they exploit people’s need for money. Because of a lot of the things talked about above and similar ideas in our culture as a whole, women often feel like being sex objects is a good way to gain value and attention, and they exploit that. Often people will end up in porn who have abusive pasts. All of this to make money.

6. Sometimes it just makes me a little jealous. This isn’t necessarily part of my big point by point look into the different aspects of porn that I’m doing here- this is more just my feelings. When I look at porn it’s not at all about the people in it. It’s about “hey…that’s sex and sex feels good…watching people feel good makes me think about what it’s like when I do things like that that feel good.”  And  I know that for most people, it’s about just that– watching stimulating images and not about having a desire for the particular people in the porn. Despite knowing this, sometimes I get upset about the idea of my partner getting off to the image of other people’s naked bodies.

What I Like About Porn

1. Porn sometimes encourages individual sexuality and masturbation and the idea that masturbation is ok for women too. When we talk about porn so much, we’re telling each other that it is ok to touch yourself– to want to feel good sexually, and to make yourself do so.

2. You may not be comfortable bringing up something you’d be interested in trying, or something you like to think about during sex or masturbation, but watching porn with a partner can provide a way to approach the subject.

3. It can give you ideas. Maybe you’ll see a position or a way to touch yourself or your partner  you wouldn’t have thought of on your own that feels really good. Even if you just end up laughing about it when you actually try it, it can be fun!

4. Porn sometimes challenges my ideas about my own sexuality. It makes me think about what I find sexy and why. Sometimes I’ll see a scene with a particular act that I find appealing and it makes me think about what I find so appealing about it. It challenges me to think things like, “Hmmm…what do I like about the idea of a glass dildo?” or “Why do I get turned on by men touching each other?” Porn was also one of the first indicators to me that I might not be completely heterosexual. I enjoyed watching women have sex and began to think about it when I masturbated. I have never had a desire to have a relationship with a woman, a lot of which could be social conditioning. Because that desire was never there, I had never considered the idea that I might be sexually attracted to women until I viewed lesbian porn and liked it.

Conclusion

Porn is one of the big divisive issues among feminists. It seems like a lot of people try to draw a big line between anti-porn feminists and “sex positive” feminists, but it’s really not so black and white. Both sides have really valid points, but instead of ignoring the bad or saying that the bad outweighs the good, we could instead be trying to change porn as it exists currently to be both sex positive and a truly positive expression of sexuality. And that’s where number five on my list of “what I like” comes in:

5. There are some really cool women-made porn companies. These companies are all about showing real people with real bodies making each other feel good in a completely consensual and respectful setting. They are striving to make porn with all the things I’ve said I like minus the things I don’t like.

Being a feminist doesn’t mean you can’t watch porn. It also doesn’t mean you have to ignore the things that can be really messed up about it. The most important thing is to be aware of the issues…watch it consciously and enjoy exploring your sexuality.

I recently got and started using a sewing machine. At one point, while planning something I was going to make, I had a realization…my grandma is really cool. I think of d.i.y. and making your own clothes as really cool, and she’s been doing this stuff for 60 years!

I was a little uncomfortable at the idea of liking such “domestic” activities at first, but then I realized that the point of feminism is that I can like what I like, regardless of my gender. It would be different if I didn’t enjoy making things but felt like I had to because I’m a woman, or if I thought it was weird or wrong if a men liked sewing, but neither of these things is the case. Sewing things I can give to friends, wear, or use, makes me feel creative and accomplished. It’s awesome because I can make things exactly how I want them and not have to spend a bunch of money and because the things I make are unique…there aren’t hundred of others exactly like them. And I think the idea of men sewing is awesome too. I like the activity for the activity and not the gender role that is often placed behind it.

It’s all about choice. It makes me think of women who decide to take time off of work to stay at home and/or raise kids. People might think this is harmful to all the work feminism has done to help women gain equality in the workplace and elsewhere, but this isn’t the case at all. If a woman wants to work, I want her to have every opportunity a man has to get to the place she wants to be. And if a woman wants to stay home with her kids, I want her to be able to choose to do that with her life too. And just like sewing…it would be different if I thought a woman should stay at home or if I thought it was out of place for men to do so or to want to.

Don’t let gender roles stop you from doing things that aren’t traditionally feminine. But don’t let them stop you from doing things that are, either.

On another note, since I’ve started sewing, I’ve found some really cool crafting communities…places where people share patterns, ideas, projects they’ve completed, etc. Check them out if you’re interested!

We got the first issue of the zine up so you can see some of the artwork and extras that went along with the stories. You can access it by clicking on “issues” at the top of the site. You can download individual pages or the whole zine. Enjoy!

by Lauren (Warning: This article contains spoilers for the 6th season of the TV show Scrubs. Don’t read if you don’t want to know some big things that happen in this season!)

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of the show Scrubs despite its outwardly gendered characterizations of its cast. I’ve already mentioned the problem of Carla and Turk, how on their wedding day Elliot exclaimed to Carla, “Oh my god, you never have to have sex again unless you want to!!!” and Carla’s immediate disinterest in sex after the wedding (until of course she wants to get pregnant… then she becomes an insatiable sex machine).

Charlie, my husband, and I are just now nearing the end of season six: Elliot just got engaged to her boyfriend Keith, of course it was a huge to-do. After their engagement (pre-planned so that Elliot could have it “exactly the way she’d always dreamed”), she begins planning the wedding and introduces her “Wedding Binder” that she has kept since she was a little girl. It’s full of all the details, all prearranged: the church that she’s actually booked every July 19 for the past 10 years, the dress, the seating arrangements, etc. It becomes clear that she has been planning for her wedding ever since she learned to talk.

The viewer is not surprised by this; Dr. Elliot Reed is an anal-retentive, control freak workaholic that lives half her life in an aristocratic fantasy world. But are we to take her pre-planned wedding arrangements as just an extension of her personality, or is there something else at work here?

Nobody, real or fictional, lives outside our decidedly gendered society. TV writers are no exception, and the characters they create are extensions of this. Sadly, we cannot believe Elliot’s reaction to her engagement is simply a comedic element of her character. We just can’t, especially when you consider how common this kind of behavior is. Elliot’s actions are exaggerated lampoons, sure, but the truth is women are taught from a very young age to dream of their future weddings, before they meet the person they are to marry, even before they can even begin to understand what love is!

Fortunately, we have the media to feed us ideas of what love is supposed to be. From Disney movies to folk tales to coloring books and dolls, young girls are taught from the get-go that their wedding will be the single most important day in their lives, so they’d better start dreaming now. And it’s amazing how many young girls actually do plan their weddings, or at least have some concept of how they want it to go, by the time they reach middle school. This is before they start dating, before they can possibly grasp the concepts of commitment and partnership, before they even know what they’re doing! Their dreams are hardly of love and partnership, but instead of capitalist, heterosexual fantasies that permeate the mind as girls develop into women.

Being one woman who definitely was a slave to her wedding day dreams at one point in time, I can attest to this: young girls imagine lavish weddings similar to those we see in fairy tales. And boy do we dream. We get together with friends and choose our dress styles, bridesmaids colors, flower arrangements, the works! (The popular game MASH comes to mind here.) While I am glad to say that I definitely grew out of that wedding fetish by the time I actually got engaged, and my wedding was nothing like I’d ever imagined (and thank god because my “dream wedding” was probably really tacky), that doesn’t make me any less concerned for young women today.

I started thinking about the times I was actually prompted to think about my wedding. One time I can remember was at ballet camp, where our teachers let us loose in the costume room and told us to pick out a “wedding dress,” choose a song, and make a dance we’d do if a ballet was made about our special day. It’s no surprise I remember everyone choosing a the same sequined white costume that we had to trade off and asking the teacher what the wedding song was in Sleeping Beauty.

You could write for pages and pages on the class implications of this activity. How many of us actually would have a wedding like Sleeping Beauty? Most young women do realize the “fairy tale” wedding is outside most of our families’ budgets by the time we actually start planning our own; even so, it’s no surprise every single detail of the traditional “big to-do” wedding reflects the fairy tale weddings we dreamed about as little girls, at least on some level.

It also made me realize how hard it will be if I have a daughter; I have to remember that simply keeping her away from Disney Princesses and Wedding Day Barbie is just not going to do the trick.

And this is a problem, especially when you consider the kinds of activities our male counterparts were doing while we were off in the corner writing our vows. They’re making believe they’re magical wizards, or sports stars, or adventurers, or some sort of animal, and we’re practically planning for the day when these wizards/ sports stars/ adventurers/ animals grow up and become princes. We’re thinking “some day my prince will come” before we even have the emotional and biological development to recognize what our individual “princes” (or “princesses!”) will be!

What sort of dreams would young girls have if we were taught to do anything but dream of becoming an upper-middle class, heterosexual bride? Many of us become successful human beings regardless of our wedding fetishes, whether we were ever able to shake them or not, but we must ask how things could have been different if we’d spent our childhoods playing explorer instead of house and dreaming of changing the world instead of our weddings. Where would that leave us, and better yet, where would that leave patriarchy?? You can say these gendered elements of our childhood are harmless normalities, good fun for little girls, and that Elliot Reed’s pre-planned wedding is simply a comedic element meant to entertain. But when you get right down to it, women today are selling themselves short, and it’s these very socialized elements that reinforce our behavior. If we don’t start encouraging our young women to think beyond the wedding, no one ever will. It’s not profitable, it’s not heteronormative, and it sure as hell does not sustain the controlling forces of patriarchy on which society profoundly depends…

When I was 12 or 13 I turned on the television. It was late, probably midnight or one. That doesn’t seem so late to me now, but I should not have been awake when I had to get up and go to middle school the next day. I flipped through the channels. I did this a lot. I liked being up while the rest of my family was asleep and the house was quiet. I felt grownup and independent.

I stopped on Howard Stern. I had seen his face before and I knew he was known for his raunchy shows. I was intrigued and I decided to watch. He had a woman on and was talking to her about her vagina. She had just had something called a labiaplasty. They showed a picture of what her genitals looked like before. Her inner labia, the inside lips of her vagina were large- they extended beyond her outer lips. She then pulled down her pants to show “after.” Her inner labia had been trimmed, almost all the way. They were barely even visible. Everyone complimented her on how nice her new porn star look was and she grinned into the camera and talked about how great she felt.

I sat there for a minute, not knowing what to think. My labia looked like the before picture. I had convinced myself when I was younger that I had made them that way by touching myself. I had figured out that this was silly, but now all of a sudden I had a reason to be self conscious about them again. My vagina was ugly. How had I not known?

I remained self conscious about my large labia for years. I felt like a freak, like it was something only a few people dealt with, and that it was something to be taken care of. It wasn’t until I mentioned this offhand to a partner when I was about 16, and he said it wasn’t weird at all, that I looked into it.

I found out that labia come in all shapes and sizes. I even found sites dedicated to people who LOVE large labias.

An increasing number of labiaplasties are being performed, though. Plastic surgeons are playing on girls’ and womens’ insecurities and encouraging them to have the procedure to “improve” their genitals.

An article at womensenews.org says:

Labiaplasty was once the domain of sex workers, nude entertainers, nude models, swimsuit models and the occasional woman who needed her labia reduced for medical reasons such as infection or pain. Not anymore. Doctors have reported that women from every walk of life and from ages 15 to 75 are having labia and cosmetic vaginal surgery.

Many doctors who perform the surgeries say while there are some women who opt for the surgery because they are unhappy or their labia has caused them physical discomfort, the bulk of the women getting this surgery are ultimately being pressured by men who want them to conform to a idea of beauty most often seen in the porn industry. Doctors say these women request the procedure because they are afraid of having “old looking” vaginas. Doctors Loftus and Young say feedback from male partners is the number one reason women request the surgery.

“The most common reason we hear is that they have had a negative comment made by a male sexual partner. Women are made to feel that they are not perfect the way they are and often it’s the partner that sets this off,” Loftus said.

This is not ok. Women need to know that their genitals are normal and beautiful, regardless of the size of their labias.

Even if you do experience discomfort, there are steps you can take before resorting to surgery. GoAskAlice suggests:

• wearing looser-fitting clothing or even skirts with nothing on underneath
• sleeping without underwear, in only a nightshirt or in the nude
• wearing only white, 100 percent cotton underwear and avoiding wearing undergarments made of nylon, acetate, or other synthetic fibers
• washing your vulva gently with plain warm water
• avoiding feminine hygiene sprays and deodorants, oils, bathing products, and/or talcum powder
• using non-deodorant tampons instead of sanitary pads during your period
• using plain, rather than flavored and/or scented, lubes, condoms, and/or dams
• talking with your health care provider about vaginal moisturizers

If you still experience problems like rubbing during sex or everyday activities, speak to your doctor about solutions. Be sure though, that you are talking to someone who is genuinely concerned with your wellbeing and not out to capitalize on your uncertainties about what society tells you your body should look like.

I am 22 now, and I still get self-conscious about my labia sometimes. I have to remind myself that there is nothing “normal” about having someone cut up my genitals, and that there is nothing abnormal about the way I look naturally. Like many issues of body image and self-esteem, it is an ongoing battle. I hope this article can help you with yours.

These are just a few examples of different ways that labia can look. These are drawings that were done by a woman named Betty Dodson, modeled after real women.