Bad Feminist

[Phoebe]

What kills me is that it would have been SO easy to simply invite Bernie to speak at any other time during this event, and reserve that place of honor for someone like Maxine or whoever else - hey, maybe someone whose national political leadership they'd like to promote for a future run? This would have had zero effect on the media coverage, attendance, enthusiasm, or whatever, compared to the negative effect they're now having. I wasn't on board with their leadership anyway for reasons that I won't go into here for fear of upsetting Bonefish needlessly, but I bet there are other people now turned off due to the choice. A lot of those Marchers were die-hard Hillary fans for whom the sexism they experienced as a part of the election still stings pretty sharply.

[mimekiller]

the HATE for Bernie, one of the most liked politician in the country, amuses me. He's probably going to give a great speech.

[Phoebe]

Where do you get this stuff? I love Bernie! But it's plain idiotic to have a giant women's march convention for the first time, and out of all the women you could have chosen to keynote, you pick this guy. He could be Jesus Christ himself and it would be almost as idiotic.

[mimekiller]

again, the Amanda Marcotte type feminists I see a lot of.

[mimekiller]

Friday the 13th is actually lucky & based around goddesses in folklore but patriarchy didn’t like it so ignore those suckers and thrive

[Phoebe]

Fitting. Just read an article - not yet clear if by a legit person or nutter - "Perimenopause: The Ovary’s Frustrating Grand Finale", lol.

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

Yet another reason why I make a poor feminist.

[Bonefish]

I mean, I actually understand the idea that Bernie as the speaker of honor at a feminist conference is a bit... odd. I mean, I understand the idea that "well, if feminism is about equality, why can't the speaker be a man". But on the other hand...Sometimes, when you are a man who supports equality of the sexes, you just shut up and stand in the back, and don't steal the spotlight from the sisters. It's not like men have a shortage of platforms to speak from.

[Phoebe]

I understand; see, now I feel bad and have to add it was about my displeasure with Linda Sarsour. I think we would disagree on that one, but it's fine. Let's not and say we did because I have like five red blood cells circulating right now to handle everything.

[Bonefish]

Yeah, I think we've already had that disagreement in the past. No need to redredge it, we disagree pretty heftily on it.

On a related note though, have you seen the womens march for peace in Israel? It's... interesting, to say the least.

[Phoebe]

Yes and yes. I do think we should try letting all the women take over everything. Yeah, women are violent sometimes too, but it's the one thing we haven't tried that also hasn't been ruled out along the way. Who's with me? It may not be a realistic plan but it might be a great one.

[Phoebe]

I am officially tired of hearing about Weinstein if all we're going to do is focus on him as some kind of superpredator in a sea of people whose crime was only to look away from or excuse his behavior. A lot of the coverage seems to be doing that. It's more like, one down, 45739586 to go. I appreciated the social media efforts to "me too" the scale up, so that people understand this is not a small matter that happened in one dark corner of a twisted movie industry. It feels like this one guy is being made the target for something that pervades ... the world. This is patriarchy - this is what it does - and to that let me add how many men are in on the "me too" response. This is not only about women; this is everyone.

The responses that include concern for the worried innocents just slay me. "Men now afraid to talk to women in the workplace or date anyone ever again." LOL. As if that has the slightest thing to do with what people are talking about here. The old truism that if you don't know the difference you might be part of the problem is probably accurate in this case.

[Iantha]

And Woody Allen's concern about this whole thing? There's another POS.

I just can't get on board with boycotting and being angry about Sanders. I think that right now we need to build as many coalitions and bridges with as many people as possible to get a more reasonable government back in place.

[poorpete]

I'll await Sanders' speech. If he doesn't admit he has Bernie Bros supporters and shun them, that on purpose or not, he benefited from sexism, then it'll be a failure. That should be in the first few paragraphs.

Yes to the men who have found themselves a victim, and in the slightest way possible, yes, "me too", but nothing at all compared to what others have faced. What's a few bad dreams and an uncomfortable workplace to what other friends and family went through? I'm proud of the bravery of every "me too" I've seen today.

Weinstein's news has gotten Trump's accusers back in the news, has gotten accusations leveled at Lars Von Trier (by Bjork) and Oliver Stone, and have led creeps like Woody Allen and Oliver Stone to make poor remarks that do not help their benefit-of-the-doubt statures.

The despair of Nov 2016 is now been morphed into righteous rage, and it all begins in-house. Maybe Nov 2016 will become analogous with Prop 8 in 2006. Prop 8 won by a few percentage points, was viewed as a low-point in the gay marriage movement, and it took less than 10 years from that to total victory. Maybe 2016, with a serial abuser racist becoming president, is a last gasp.

One can hope...

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

And of course by day 2-3 we start to see all the stupid hot takes, from Mayim Bialik - who starts off reaching for some good point about exploitation in the industry generally, before incomprehensibly concluding that the reason she wasn't harassed is that she was thankfully too ugly and didn't dress immodestly! - to all the millennial feminists who are so totally over hashtag activism despite doing activism by talking on the internet, or who think saying #metoo places too much burden of work on the oppressed. Ooookay.

Yeah, sure, it's very important to know a lot of people cannot publicly speak anything like this. Even a me too is too much. That doesn't mean they are not empowered by seeing all the people around them who are affected and willing to listen. If posting hashtags was the only thing people ever did, then yeah, that would be a problem. But this issue is a little different, because if you start to think that the critical mass of people is completely on your side, and all of your friends and family are going to be supportive if you ever need to take action about something, that's a big deal. The me too is not being posted for the benefit of some jaded 30-something feminist who has no problem owning her truths; it's being posted for the benefit of someone's 13 year old niece, and 60 year old cousin who never had the slightest support back in her day when these things were going on just the same. It's for the men who suddenly have an easier way to chime in on something they may feel massive pressure never to admit.

I have now seen several cases of assholes acting like the men cannot or should not say me too. Ooooooo is that nasty of them. There are lots of hot takes about how men are "supposed" to show their support. This is the kind of b******* that damages a nice thing.

[poorpete]

[Bonefish]

Somewhere there is a young boy, who has been sexually abused. He's struggling with all sorts of things. His abuser is almost without a doubt an older male, who without a doubt has some form of power, whether it's as a coach, a pastor, or, even, just an older boy in a group of younger boys. The young boy is confused, is he gay now, what did he do wrong? Will he ever be a man after this? His silence is likely kept by a subtle threat of violence, but also shame, that he could let someone do this to him. That he allowed this to happen to him. He doesn't know what to do, where to go.

He see's "me too", and for a brief moment, he has a flare of hope. I want to take this boy, and pull him to the side, and put my finger across his lips, and whisper, gently. "This isn't your time". Then pat the boy on the head, and push him back out there, to become a ticking timebomb.

I helped.