Hitting Women: Thoughts about complaints about Feminism online

About a month ago, a video of a black woman being slapped by a man on a NYC subway went viral. In the video, the woman and her friends were taunting and bullying a man because he was wearing an 8ball jacket. She was making fun of him right in his face and she hit him with her high-heeled shoe. Shortly after, the man slapped her. Lets just say she was not expecting him to hit her at all. After he hit her, a brawl ensued with another man on the train. It sparked the debate of whether or not it was wrong for a man to hit a woman. Many people firmly believe that men should never hit women. However, many people argued that the girl on the subway deserved to get slapped because she was bullying the man for no reason and hitting him first. Now after watching the video myself the day it was posted and again this week, I’ve noticed many comments from people on YouTube about the hypocrisy of feminism. I found people’s comments about this issue really interesting because I found myself seeing these kinds of comments every time I looked at the comments section of the video.

Here are just a few examples of the comments on the video that I am talking about:

“Feminism is just another excuse/reason for women to act like sluts.”

“Its not just black woman but woman in general. They go around spamming the word feminism and think they are queens. We are all the same, so if you think that if you’re a female and cannot get hit then you are mistaken. If you think you we have to hold a door because your female, you are mistaken. We do it out of respect, courtesy, and proper manners.”

I personally do not believe that this video has anything to do with feminism but I find it interesting that men on the Internet believe there is a connection between the two. Is feminism hypocritical? Is it something that is even remotely related to the topic/issue of men hitting women? I don’t particularly think so. When I first saw the video, I thought to myself that she did deserve to get slapped because she was talking trash to a man who wasn’t doing anything to her and he was minding his own business. She kept coming up to him and hitting him. I think once she hit him first, he had every right to hit her back. While I do not condone violence in any way, I personally feel that if a person hits me, whether it is a man or woman, I have the right to hit that person back. I also think that this girl kept taunting him and hitting because she didn’t think he would retaliate against her. I just think that this woman learned a lesson. Many have argued that it is a lesson that all women today should learn of. The lesson is if you are a woman and you hit a man, or bully him do not expect that he will not hit you back. But is this a lesson that all women in today’s society should learn? We do not live in chivalrous society. I think what it all comes down to is respect and that all men and women should respect each other.

I think about this class at the bar… is that weird?

Bars are weird places for bodies, especially for me and my female body. In most other places there are standard rules about how it’s okay to touch someone, what to say to someone, how to interact with someone. But when it comes to the bar it seems as if this all gets jumbled, thrown in the air and mixed up. Of course people have different thoughts about what is okay when it comes to touching their body especially when drinking. But the bar is this weird social environment where things get a little tricky. There’s dancing, it’s crowded, there’s alcohol… and things seem to go wrong… a lot

I was invisible, but I am not that girl anymore

I have to write once more for this blog for my grade. I’m highly motivated by grades, so despite feeling as though I have nothing to say, here I am, typing. I thought maybe I’d write about how we adjust to our unique bodily abnormalities (I don’t love this word, but I’m at a loss for another). I thought about sharing my husband’s experience of processing the bodies of fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the forced emotional detachment he took on as body after body found its way on a table before him, waiting to be readied to head home in a plain wooden box, back to the states and no doubt a family that would never recover their loss. I thought about sharing the moment my friend, whose son died an hour after birth, told me she can’t bear to hold sleeping babies because it feels too much like holding a dead baby, and how that statement, so matter-of-fact for her, knocked the wind out of me and ripped a hole in my heart for her, right beside the one that grew as her belly swelled with the baby we both knew wouldn’t survive. Somehow, none of these felt like things I wanted to share. And as I stared at the screen, thinking, “I have nothing to say,” I recalled (with the help of some online diary entries) a time in my life when I had the reverse problem: so, so much to say, and no one to listen. And I knew. Despite how very little (very, very little) I want to share this story about myself, I need to. I owe it to my own slow recovery, the future of my children, and the potential readers who’ve maybe been here too. So, here we go.

*Deep breath* *Deep breath*

I don’t generally ascribe labels to myself (they are relentlessly negative), but most people who know feel comfortable placing “emotional” over my picture. It’s a fair assessment. As long as I can remember, I’ve been an emotional girl/woman. I cry a lot, sometimes for justified reasons (see above), sometimes because I’m easily overwhelmed by emotions. I hurt a lot, and for me, emotional pain is easily manifested physically. In times I’ve had my heart broken, I have felt an ache in my chest that made it hard to breathe. It is this essential truth about me that led me down the path of self-injury. And this truth that kept me under its weight for over 10 years. If you need a trigger warning, consider yourself warned. There won’t be images, but this will probably hurt. 

The nonpliment – “Oh my gosh, you lost so much weight!”

Sitting in my “to-read” list for a bit was this article.  It caught my eye because of what we have been talking about in class for our fat studies unit.  Now that I read it, I am SO glad I did.

During our conversation last week, we talked about the really important idea of keeping the lives of fat people at the center of our analysis.  One of the other points from class that really stuck with me was that it’s not just enough to focus on loving our own bodies and encouraging people to love their bodies, but we also need to respect and love other people’s bodies of all shapes, to accept, to affirm, and to abandon size-judgement.

I Know This Pretty (Slutty) Rave Girl…

Jamming onstage to Doctor P during Stacked: Miami. RIP blue hair.

If you’ve ever heard me talk about my musical interests, you’ll know that I’m a massive basshead. I love everything about the Electronic Dance Music community, from the art of making heartfelt kandi bracelets and the secret handshake used to trade them, to the PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect) motto, the flow arts (hula hoop dancing, poi, and flow wand) performances during a show, the ability to walk up to anyone and potentially make a new best friend, to the infectious energy radiating from the crowd. Being introduced to the EDM scene allowed me to express myself with reckless abandon, whether it be through dance, hooping, kandi-making, or interesting costume-like getups. But there’s one thing I don’t love about this community- the amount of slut shaming in response to girls wearing rave outfits that attempt to be both cute and comfortable.

TW: Sexual assault, death mention, slut shaming, drug mention, rape culture

Deceased “Etiquette”

The media heavily covered the death of legendary singer Whitney Houston.  There was much speculation about the circumstances surrounding her death all of which were reported on in the media.  The latest story about the singer’s death is the National Enquirer publishing a photo of the late singer in her casket.  There is an article on Celebritology on the Washington Post which reports on this latest media frenzy.  Where do we draw the line when it comes to respect of the deceased?  Is showing their body in a casket appropriate, especially when her family did not authorize such a photograph to be published let alone taken? 

The singer’s entire life was in front of paparazzi as is any other celeb’s.  But is this same extreme invasion of privacy acceptable after death when the star is no longer her to be a voice for herself?  The media feeling the need to publish such a picture is extremely indicative of  how we view bodies.  Whitney was famous mostly for her voice, however the voice went with the face and body.  At one point in time she was a model, however her notoriety came from her vocal skills and stylings.  So following death people do not separate the two?  The deceased corpse is no longer able to produce the angelic sounds that it once did, however there is such a focus on the body. 

In my opinion it is extremely disrespectful of not only the celebrity but her family as well to post pictures of her body in a casket.  Why does the media feel such a need to be so intrusive into the lives of people?  There should be more of a line drawn between reporting on what needs to be known or what is of interest and respect of the privacy of those being reported on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/national-enquirer-publishes-photo-it-alleges-shows-whitney-houston-in-casket-has-a-line-been-crossed/2012/02/22/gIQAjrrnTR_blog.html