Are these people just wishing something truly horrible would happen to Renegade Evolution?

Just so they can have their “I told you so” moment?

The fact that Ginmar is gleefully reporting that Ren had her nose broken 4 times as the result of her job, then accusing Ren of lying when she points out that this isn’t the case, makes you wonder. Few have called Ginmar out for blaming the victim, or for speaking over Ren’s experience (which should be READ, I agree), and Ren’s own response to Ginmar didn’t show up (ironically, people who claim that the wrong kind of woman invites assault on herself have no problems posting). {UPD} Ok, looks like there were moderation issues, and now people are talking. It’s a good thing too. I mean, not that everyone loves one another, but at least we’re talking.

I know people who express overt or covert hope that something horrible will happen to me as the result of living in the Middle East, people to whom I am a “whore” and/or a “sell-out.” I’ve had to socialize with such people. Ick.

So having had that analogous experience, I can say one thing about it: it hurts. I doesn’t hurt in the way that the perpetrators want it to hurt, it doesn’t make you go, “wow, I have seen the light. I am scum! Bless you, kind saviour, for delivering me from my abject stupidity! I shall kiss your nobly unmanicured toes and dedicate a shrine to you in my garage and sacrifice a sex pozzie sparklefeminist in your honour upon every Midsummer’s Eve (it being bikini season and all)! Oh, that I may wash away my horriible sins in the blood of the unrighteous!”

Rather, it hurts in the sense that you really, really feel another person wishing you evil. I don’t think thoughts are immaterial in and of themselves, and I think that when those thoughts are expressed into words, they become even more powerful. We know the definition of hate-speech. And what’s being expressed against Ren over yonder is pure hate.

Shouldn’t someone point out that, perhaps, it isn’t healthy to drag Ren and Ren’s various body parts into every single discussion that remotely touches upon dancers and sex-workers? I realize Ginmar’s been through some serious shit, but so have a lot of other people, and not all of them are busy slandering and slut-shaming and victim-blaming and speaking over another woman’s head. As I already pointed out, feminist in-fighting can be rather fun, but not necessarily for good reasons.

Personally, I’m not going to tiptoe around someone’s pain if the person in question is deliberately hurting others.

Ren was abused by another woman, which resulted in two of her injuries (the other two being accidents). Using a case of domestic violence to score a cheap point is not feminist, neither are any of the other behaviours I have listed feminist as well.

Once again, we’re back to this:

Some women are more equal than others. One woman’s pain is more valid and noble than another’s. A woman is never responsible for being raped or beaten… except when she is.

I breathe fire and doom upon you all!

First of all, what the eff?

I don’t like that entire thread, but when I got to the part about how evil sluts are responsible for men harassing nice, upstanding young ladies (and don’t give me that crap about how it’s really the men causing the bad women to cause the men to attack the nice women), I spilled my midnight delight of a beer down my shirt. Goddamit. Here I was, enjoying Chernigivske Sribne, and another lovely, windswept night in lovely, windswept Kiev, and my chi gets all messed up.

You people owe me new Juicy Couture. No? “Just wash it”? How will that cover the psychological damage I have endured?

It’s fairly obvious I’m going to have to post something utterly un-radfeminist to get my sweet revenge. Only click on the link if you dare face the unspeakable. Continue reading “I breathe fire and doom upon you all!”

A few thoughs on my feminism, and feminist cage-fighting

Everyone says that feminist in-fighting is a bad thing. Honestly, I wish more people could admit that it can be rather fun. Let’s face it, familiarity breeds contempt. And after the tenth person who tells you to “read more Dworkin,” you must turn said contempt into a farce, or else your head explodes, utterly ruining some innocent bystander’s expensive high-heeled sho… I mean, some innocent bystander’s totally practical Birkenstocks.

I also think that it’s human nature to savour the moment of tearing into another creature, especially a similar creature. I suppose I could spin some grand theory regarding some physical or metaphysical love of self-destruction, the attack on a mirror image, those two Madonnas dueling in that “Die Another Day Video” in days of yore (freshman year, for me). But… I’m just going to say that if you look at us closely, the human race can be quite creepy. Feminists are no different. We’re not gentle unicorns with ribbons in our luxurious manes, treading softly on rainbows.

“But Natalia!” You’re saying. “Not unicorns? You’re so dour.” Well yes, this is rather dour. But it also helps me be a better feminist, or so I’ve decided.

Here’s why: Continue reading “A few thoughs on my feminism, and feminist cage-fighting”

Ass-grabbing and Attraction, or Truly the Lord Works in Mysterious Ways

Most of my fellow pseudo-intellectuals think of “The Secret” as a big crock of steaming, unethical shit, but I found it interesting. I don’t know about this Infallible Law of Attraction & Universe As Agent Provocateur Catalogue stuff, but I do think that thoughts have an impact on our fates. I do not think that “The Secret” actively promoted chiding suffering people (SNL gave us the example of Darfur) for so-called negativity. While the movie was not clear on the subject, it seemed obvious that many of the people who had participated in it had horrible things happen to them in their lives, and the film did not make it look as though they were dumbasses who could have escaped plane crashes and abusive parents if they wanted to. If the filmmakers spent less energy on attractive packaging and promotion of personal wealth, and more on how we can overcome the many gruesome realities of our lives by refusing to let them rule our minds, it would have been better, but it wasn’t some terrible chimera either, and some of the pious wailing about it had irritated me way back.

Why exactly am I talking about this?

Well, check it out, while yours truly only graduated from college in 2006, in Ukrainian years, she’s practically a babushka. People are asking what is wrong with me: how come I still don’t have a ring on my finger? When am I planning on having kids? What do I mean by “career,” don’t I know that all career women are sexually unfulfilled evil witches with bad haircuts and secret underground freezers stocked with the phalluses of innocent men?

This kind of thinking I do not entirely subsribe to, but can’t help internalizing on some level nonetheless.

So earlier today I asked myself, “how come it’s been a while since I have been crudely sexually harassed in a public place in Kiev? Are people getting more polite? Or am I an evil witch with a bad haircut?”

Later in the day, I got my ass grabbed on the metro.

You can say what you want to say about coincidences, but come on. I spent three consecutive months in Kiev last year, and I was in a bad mood for a lot of it, and I think if anyone had even looked at me the wrong way, I would have beaten them to death with my handbag, eaten their heart, and hung them upside down from a tree as a warning to others. I’m a little less defensive this time around, and a little bit more concerned about holding on to my precious youth until it is washed away in a monstrous tide of hair dye and anti-cellulite cream.

So the universe, in its infinite wisdom, goes out of its way and says, “bitch, please. At the very least, you’re still hot enough for some near-sighted alcoholic from Krizhopol’ to risk getting punched in the crotch for.”

And that, my friends, is a life-affirming metaphysical experience right there.