A teen girl's (late) response to "Getting Over Girl Hate"

As a teenage girl and obvious feminist, internalized misogyny is a very straightforward issue that is clearly damaging for all involved. So seeing an article titled “Getting Over Girl Hate” with the premise of advocating love for other girls and fighting female competition, I was pretty stoked (even though the article is from 2011). However, like with most even remotely mainstream publications trying to cover issues I care about, I was massively disappointed.

Aside from the article being written like it’s just about petty high school drama, the serious problem for me in the article was where she said: “Look: confidence is not a crime. It does not mean a girl is a bitch or a slut, or thinks she’s better than you. It just means that she likes herself. And personally, I don’t wanna live in a world where any girl with healthy self-esteem is labeled a whore.”

Does she not see the obvious, glaring problem with that sentence? Did she really not realize that she just participated in “girl hate” by using gendered, misogynistic slurs? By separating “sluts” and “whores” from “girls,” she’s participating in slut shaming, female competition and disrespect towards other women. She’s saying that “sluts” and “whores” don’t deserve respect like “other girls” do. This majorly disappointed and frustrated me.
There’s a real name for “girl hate,” Rookie. It’s called internalized misogyny, and you just participated in it.

If the writer had followed the statement with something like “The word “slut” is a patriarchal construction to shame women for their own sexuality, and to insure they are harassed for being remotely sexually independent” or even an immature but well-intended statement like “There’s nothing wrong with being a slut” I would have been okay with it. But she didn’t. Because she isn’t actually promoting “girl love” here. This is not solidarity, this is not empowerment, it’s even more “girl hate” covered up by the pretense of “feminism” and caring about other women.

So please, stop trying to co-opt feminism for your own crappy, slut-shamey, misogynistic beliefs. Just know that the real fighters, including myself, will always side with the “sluts,” the “whores,” with the ladies that you don’t consider part of your feminism or worthy of respect. Because we are worthy. We are all sisters. So if you’re going to pretend like you believe in it, either start acting like it or just drop the act. When you decide to actually walk the walk, I'll be ready to hear about it, but until then, keep your fake support.

In solidarity,

Brit-El

We need REAL queer advocates: why we need to disown FCKH8 and Dan Savage, and shed fears of getting “radical”

Quick fact about the LGBT movement: It’s not all about gay marriage. In fact, it’s not even all about gays. Contrary to what Dan Savage would have you think, we are not only fighting for cisgendered, white gay males.

We need to step away from the FCKH8 model of falsely edgy “support” for LGBT causes, like same-sex marriage, by using harmful stereotypes and throwing huge parts of our community under the bus. I’m not against swearing at haters for kicks—but not only should that not represent the movement, FCKH8 is actively disrespectful to people they should be supporting. Aside from blatantly stealing ideas from actual charities like Stonewall, it’s an outright scam: see links at bottom of page. It seems like all they do is use the “sassy black woman” stereotype as a prop, perpetuate the sexualized image of lesbian relationships (not the same thing as acceptance!), dismiss asexuals (see screencap below)

and focus on defending male homosexuality. Ultimately, they’re a massive insult and disservice to the community. So, why do we let these people represent our movement?

The thing with the approach that FCKH8 and Dan Savage take is that it’s barely even for us queers. It’s targeted at making straight “allies” feel like they’re awesome because they don’t bully gays. Sorry guys, but you don’t deserve a medal for being a decent human being. Can we move on to the real issues now? Same-sex marriage is a start, and it’s already pretty popular. Let’s keep going. How about trans/gender nonconforming recognition and protection? How about access to their appropriate school facilities and fair treatment in the workplace? How about fair access to healthcare for trans and queer people, and how about we address the fact that trans and queer people are more vulnerable to experience violence from family members and officers of the law? Addressing the violence and hatred queer and trans people experience from those they should trust the most has a quick answer—solidarity. 

We need a community that cares about ALL queers, not just gay men and lesbians. And that community needs to take care of its own, starting with supporting each other on a basic level by empowering queers of all identities, working ensure access to healthcare for transgender people (especially youth), and fighting police corruption/targeting of LGBT people, to start with. That’s a few steps we need to take. That’s what charity should be going towards—not some obnoxious FCKH8 rep’s pocket. (Did I mention they’re for profit?)

There’s also stigmas in our own community we need to fight—negativity towards genderqueers/agendered people, denial of pansexuality, etc. We need to stop disrespecting each other. 

We need solidarity and community, and we need to stop caring about being accepted by mainstream media, industry and politics. We don’t have the time to care about them. This is about us, and we need to advocate for everyone in our community. The time is now.

FCKH8's scam-ness:

http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.fckh8.com

http://24.media.tumblr.com/a6929ebd5d5c67b7ade0767d8c6114fc/tumblr_mwfl25R53J1qa37hco1_500.png

The charity's merch from which FCKH8 stole their ideas: http://web.stonewall.org.uk/public/shop/default.aspx#Clothing

Assassination Market

Assassination Market. It sounds like a punk song. But for the past four months, it’s existed—serving as a sort of Kickstarter for the murder of politicians and other government figures. As someone who took the ending of Fight Club as political inspiration (more like revenge fantasy), as crazy as this is, it excites me. You know who's on the list? NSA director Keith Alexander, President Obama, Ben Bernanke. 

Funny enough, the man with the largest bounty on his corrupt-ass head is Bernanke, for $75,000. Personally, I hate that guy. Would I kill him? I dunno. Probably not. Ask me offline. But the fact that people want to says something, and that something is exciting. 

Just as exciting is the intention of the website. "Kuwabatake Sanjuro," (the name of the samurai protagonist of a Kurosawa film) creator of the site, hopes to enable enough assassinations that politicians won't have the guts to hold office. He wants to "destroy all governments, everywhere." He ultimately aims for

“…a world without wars, dragnet panopitcon-style surveillance, nuclear weapons, armies, repression, money manipulation and limits to trade is firmly within our grasp for but a few bitcoins per person. I also believe that as soon as a few politicians get offed and they realize they’ve lost the war on privacy, the killings can stop and we can transition to a phase of peace, privacy and laissez-faire.”

It’s bold. Unrealistic, but bold. Some might feel that political assassination attacks democracy, and I disagree. For one, we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a republic with petty attempts at maintaining the illusion of caring about the people. But regardless, this stuff doesn’t attack “democracy.” Politicians attack democracy. The joke that is the presidential elections attacks democracy. And I’m pretty sure we did not vote for Ben Bernanke. So pipe down, yall. And as much as I admire the initiative behind this project, the potential impact of it all seems rather dubious. Being driven to this point says a lot about the current state of affairs, and you never really know what could happen—but a Second Coming of cypherpunk and cryptoanarchy is more than ok with me.

Sources:

http://www.thebitcoinchannel.com/archives/tag/assassination-market

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/11/18/meet-the-assassination-market-creator-whos-crowdfunding-murder-with-bitcoins/

Setting the tone

Although I constantly use Facebook in the hopes of keeping people in the loop about things I find important, it's been a while since I actually wrote in an organized, journalistic manner. So as a way of introducing myself on a new platform as the queer punk feminist yall love, here's a bunch of songs to set the tone for this blog. Enjoy!

"Rise Above" - Black Flag

"Deadly Rhythm" - Refused

"Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine" - Refused

"The Fight Song" - Marilyn Manson

"Take The Power Back" - Rage Against the Machine

"Architects" - Rise Against

"A Wall Against the Wind" - Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman

"Children of the Grave" - Black Sabbath

"Township Rebellion" - Rage Against the Machine

You can listen to them all on a single playlist here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTsfZ_HHjRDad1987MbdHzhfpDSCee-RX