Signatures are no longer being collected, but if you can read Ukrainian, this open letter to the President is useful to browse nonetheless.
Basically, people are outraged that on the 8th of March, International Women’s Day, the President launched into a saccharine speech about how the ladiez are so lovely and admired by men… in a country where women are trafficked and rape is barely prosecuted. The undersigned believe that the 8th of March is there to first and foremost highlight the struggle for women’s rights, and that the President dropped the ball when he spoke about the “beauty” and “wonder” of women – while completely ignoring the actual daily struggles of Ukrainian females, struggles that the government refuses to fully address. And I agree with the undersigned.
It’s been pointed out to me that Yulia Tymoshenko, the current Prime Minister, actually made a speech that managed to be worse. Now, I didn’t hear the original, but was told that she said something about how the 8th of March is the “one day” in the year when Ukrainian women are not required to do housework.
Of course, Yulia is a billionaire who has maids to do her housework, and so I’m really not surprised. Rules are different for rich and poor throughout the world, but in Ukraine, this is especially true for women. And a female politician can revel in this on public radio on the 8th of March. And so it goes.
Anyway, I was really glad to see these women calling out the heads of state on their BS.
Ukrainians deserve better.
By the way, comments along the lines of, “omigod Natalia, how dare you go against the glorious Orange leaders, you moskal’ ” will be deleted. I am in no mood for BS myself.
Natalia A. 
This cements your reputation as a hypocrite, because you see nothing wrong with Ukrainian women reveling in their femininity (I have been reading your archives), but when the Ukrainian President revels in it, you get angry.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. People want to have their lives free of trafficking and rape… but doing something about it is beyond them.
I hope you are able to see the inherent contradiction.
It is sad that these thoughts are typical of a third-waver.
Oh, like the inherent contradiction in calling yourself a “feminist” and basically arguing that feminine women have no right to speak out against rape (have no idea how the undersigned dress, by the way, and do not care in the slightest)?
The words “MRA troll” hardly do you justice, “anonymist” coward that you are. Whatever sad little hole you crawled out from, you should have just stayed there.
It must be spring, ’cause the crazies are out.
Who said anything about men’s rights?
I comment here under an assumed identity because I have done real work in the field of feminism, and do not wish to be a victim of your slander and acid tongue. I will not risk to have the things I have achieved attacked by a bratty self-involved abuser who goes after fellow women for fun.
I used to think that Fillipovich’s brand of fun faux feminism was the worst that internet offered, until I saw your so-called writing. Jill is at least aware of the delusions she buys into, and she will probably grow out of them someday.
You are just shameless. You are against sexism when it suits you. When it doesn’t, you whine about cultural insensitivity and how much you love men and your high heels. You have no right to speak about sexism anywhere, in Ukraine, or the rest of the world.
For someone who’s farking obsessed with Jill, you should really take the trouble to learn to spell her last name.
Oh, and thanks for letting me know what I can and cannot speak about. Swapping Big Brother for Big Sister was never my idea of feminism, personally.
Whoever you are, you would be such a huge embarrassment that perhaps this anonymous thing is in the best interest of all. Though I can’t help but read this and think… troll troll trollin’ troll.
Dear Anonymist,
Please post your comments in their original language. If we can’t read them, we’ll use babelfish ourselves. However, your pre-emptive use of babelfish is most annoying.
Kisses,
EDC
Natalia, narrow-minded trolls who are impervious to reason aren’t worth getting upset over. Don’t take the bait. No one is going to gain anything from “discussions” of this nature.
It’s called third-wave feminism and you can google it, Egon.
Third-wave is colonized by selfishness and internalized sexism.
Megan, of course you think I am a troll. I speak the truth, and truth isn’t easy to digest.
Dearest,
I understood your terminology. I was referring to your sentence structure. I thought you were German. Apparently just an uneducated American. Which makes you so much less appealing. Nothing to tickle my Nazi fetish with now. Pity.
Wow, the housework comment there is pretty obnoxious. Sure, Ukrainian women are being bought and sold, but at least no housework on the 8th of March… It’s almost boggling.
Oh, and at least no part of the third wave tried to colonize and appropriate lesbian spaces and redefine what “lesbian” means.
“I comment here under an assumed identity because I have done real work in the field of feminism, and do not wish to be a victim of your slander and acid tongue. I will not risk to have the things I have achieved attacked by a bratty self-involved abuser who goes after fellow women for fun.”
Who’s the hypocrite here? The “bratty self-involved abuser” who writes openly using her real name… or the cowardly troll who lives somewhere in the nether-realm writing insults on their keyboard with one hand and the other on their genitals as they masturbate to the sound of their own laughter?
Wow… that was fun.
When Trolls get out of hand it’s generally best to start publishing their IP address(es).
Ukrainian gender politics… sometimes it’s like watching a parody of 1976 America… like watching Will Ferrell and Christina Applegate in ‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’. I know things are changing for the better, even human and civil rights, because every mini-documentary I see about Ukraine shows young people saying all the right things about rights and responsibilities. Everyone elected in the past few years are, all of them, idiots and bigots and racists. That’s the generational problem with starting a Democracy where you’re forced to elect people who were educated under the Old System. It’ll take time, but eventually a new, more and better educated generation will take over… until then all of the racist, bigoted and sexist remarks the current generation of Leaders make must be laughed at, ridiculed and published so people can mock their ignorance.
I wouldn’t publish an IP address unless someone was threatening me or someone else. Having said that, FA, you are getting kind of tiresome with your “evil third-wavers took to the dark side of the Force” shtick.
Maybe you should get out of house and, you know, meet actual third-wavers…? Just a thought.
Oh my…I don’t know if I should laugh…or laugh really hard. I think option 2 is better. Not at you or your entry, Natalia, but at FA here. Who of course, has all the answers…oh, wait…hey, FA, when it comes to ending trafficking and everything that goes with it…What’s The Plan??? Or is it yet again some nebulous “Real Feminist” thing like “The Revolution” and the “End of the Patriarchy” that so many seem to preach about with no real solid series of actions? I mean, have you armed yourselves and are you ready to actually go out and fight the criminal elements involved in trafficking? Have you achieved a position of political power and are you prepared to turn that on the issue? Have you harvested a fortune that you can use to buy trafficking victims freedom?
Or are you just too busy complaining about Natalia’s high-heels and screwing up Jill’s last name and acting superior and imperious?
Because you know, self-righteous assholes with tits and vaginias are SOOO much better and wonderful for women than male ones!
Damn, I can see why people think you’re a troll, your words and accusations are truly snicker worthy.
FA, can you play “Melancholy Baby?
>>Dear Anonymist,
Please post your comments in their original language. >>
Careful there; Fuckwitanian in the raw tends to crash browsers.
Wow, what’s wrong with high heels, other than the fact that they are rough on your feet? Tattoos are rough on the skin, so what? If men wear high heels, is it different?
I don’t understand any of this! 😉
Fem Anon, you attack Natalia for attacking women, yet here you are attacking her. Aren’t you engaging in the same unfeminist behavior you are criticizing her for?
Damn….nice trolls you get, Natalia.
‘Yo, Fem Anon….don’t you have better things to do with your time than stalking third-wave feminists with your nonsense??
I assume that he wasn’t talking about Jill Brenneman, was he?? (Pardon my lack of knowledge of Ukranian politics, please…)
Oh….and since when did wearing high heels or loving men become the center of the Great Third-Wave Right-Wing Antifeminist Conspiriacy??? I guess that the Ukraine has far more of an monopoly on such traitorous behavior, then???
You’re fighting a losing battle here, Fem Anony…try quitting while you are still not so far behind.
Anthony
FA, your accusation of hypocrisy is really kind of a softball. There’s no contradiction in a woman reveling in her femininity among her many other attributes but still feeling that the Ukranian president should not patronize Ukranian women while ignoring any discussion of ways their lives could be improved.
That is like saying if Natalia had a post on her blog — an individual woman’s personal and political blog — with a cookie recipe, she would have no ability to question why a national leader would get up and talk only about cookie recipes?
In my distant recollection of radical feminist websites, I seem to recall posts focusing on belly dancing and owning horses. Therefore, those feminists would not have a legitimate gripe if world leaders were to focus their speeches on these issues?
Get a grip.
To octoglore:
Femininity is nothing like owning a horse. Femininity says, “here I am, laid out on a silver platter for your consumption.”
And then we wonder why the men consume so freely. Because we let them.
Of course, I will be compared to a Nazi for saying this. I already have been compared to a Nazi, in fact.
As for me attacking Natalia… She is not an ally. She pretends to be one, probably because it’s “trendy.” For the third-wave, everything comes down to trends. Rape culture is trendy? We won’t mind it!
As for having “a plan”, it is something plain and straightforward. Personally, I will work to continue changing people’s minds and converting more women, until men actually have to contend with our opposition, as opposed to casually brushing it off. You don’t need money for that. You need common sense and decency.
Of course, men will come out to defend Natalia. She’s the sort of “feminist” they like.
FA, on the contrary. Discussions of high heels or fashion are exactly like those of owning a horse or belly dancing. They are all fun activities for individual women. If they are not fun for you, you shouldn’t do them.
This is to be distinguished (by the rational among us) from a policymaker giving a policy speech about women.
And as for “the sort of feminist [men] like,” don’t kid yourself. Most of the so-called rad fems online are much more capitulatory offline than strong unapologetic and unashamed women like Natalia. Men who can rise to the occasion with women who have the strength of their convictions without the need to create cheap and easy “good feminist”/”whore” dichotomies are a select and elite group.
Femininity is nothing like owning a horse.
I’m guessing you also think “owning a horse” while railing against capitalism isn’t insipid, then.
Femininity says, “here I am, laid out on a silver platter for your consumption.”
“Femininity” when it is defined as necessary and absolute, yes. “Femininity” as defined by a patriarchal culture, sure. Why not allow people to choose their own definitions as valid, say huh? Choice isn’t the boogeyman you would like it to be.
until men actually have to contend with our opposition, as opposed to casually brushing it off.
Mr Daisy laughed his ass off at this one, and wonders if you know what being married to a feminist is REALLY like? hahaha! 😀
It ain’t no cakewalk, he would say.
He has “contended with my opposition” about nearly everything.
“If she didn’t want to be raped, she shouldn’t have dressed so provocatively.”
What was that you were saying about Natalia supporting rape culture?
Also, belly dancing? Very feminine.
I don’t buy into the idea that rejecting femininity is fighting the patriarchy. I think it’s more like capitulation, surrender. You’d rather all women give it up than be safe with it, which doesn’t strike me so much as a desire to end rape culture as a desire to hide from it. Even so, anyone who’s studied rape knows it’s about power, not about sexual attraction – women who don’t look and act traditionally feminine are at as much risk for rape as women who wear miniskirts and high heels.
I’d rather that society get over its femmephobia, its hatred and contempt at femininity. You’re just encouraging that hatred and contempt.
wooo, she shouldn’t have worn a short skirt!
I don’t say this often, FA, but you’re fuckin’ pathetic. What’s wrong? Natalia smarter, wiser, prettier, more powerful than you? Funny, I’m not sorry about that. Fuck, you can’t even outline “The Plan”….and god, goddess and all the little demi-gods think for A SECOND that a hetero woman dress “sexy” because she, herself, is interested in screwing a male of the species! Woo No, we’re too “good” for that.
You’re the type that would tell a girl in a short dress and heels who had two drinks that she brought it on herself…yet at the same time, in the proverbial steel cage, would last all of about ten seconds with a woman who knows her way around men.
Yeah, option two, laughing really hard, that seems about right.
Anonymist,
Darling. I understand your problem now. You just don’t read anything. I wasn’t calling you a Nazi. I was saying that your sentence structure seemed German. Which tickled my Nazi fetish. Yes, as a German Jew, I’m allowed to have a Nazi fetish. Or maybe that’s just “internalized anti-Semitism” in your alternate universe. I dunno.
There’s an old Catholic saying — a man who hasn’t read the bible isn’t an atheist, he’s an idiot.
By the same token, you’re not a feminist. You’re just an angry, ignorant *fee-fee* words changed to protect the children. Think of the children! – Natalia.
For the love of a dead Jewish carpenter who was retarded enough to think his mother was a virgin, use your brain. Just once, to see what it feels like.
yours,
EDC
P.S. I’m sure NA thanks you for increasing her readership.
It’s kind of ironic that a so-called feminist will castigate the part of feminism founded by women of color which seeks to give voice to women silenced previously within the feminism movement as “trendy”.
If supporting women who aren’t white, mainstream, and middle-class or above is “trendy”, sign me up for the trend.
Bwahaha. Anyone wondering why I haven’t banned FA should know that I find this amusing… in the way one might find a pinata amusing.
Oh, and Egon, drinking the blood of Christian children in my comments section has never been more hilarious. I did remove the “most terrible word in the English language” (lulz) from your comment. Because that’s what people like FA want. To be called the most terrible word in the English language and then run off to their “progressive” kaffeklatsch and bemoan civilization as run by perky-titted third-wavers like me.
Um, yeah, FA? You are, once again, justifying rape. You’ll never see it. At first I thought it was willful ignorance, but now I’m beginning to suspect that there is some sort of cognitive barrier that’s impossible to cross. Kind of like the Balrog in Moria.
Dunno if you’ll get that reference or that it’s just too “trendy” for you.
Oh, and you don’t “need” money? I hate to piss on your parade, but everyone needs money. And I’m sure that you know this. You just want to cover up the fact that your real “important work” is all about sitting around and bitching about them evil trans people and women of colour ruined your pristine movement.
Femininity is nothing like owning a horse. Femininity says, “here I am, laid out on a silver platter for your consumption.”
well, not unless you ask the horse! you think it asks to be saddled and ridden all over the place? 😉
Guffawing mileage out of FA still running…
“…until men actually have to contend with our opposition, as opposed to casually brushing it off,”
made me think of Lysistrata, naturally.
Perhaps the extensive work in feminist rhetoric she’s referring to deals with a NEW fiddled version of its particular type of protest.