Your penis is not a dowsing rod for uteri.

I bring this up because some douchebags who presume to write fiction will include woman characters who successfully disguise themselves as men, and then man characters will be Inexplicably Attracted, causing them to have a breakdown and wonder if they're really teh ghey!omgz. But of course they aren't! Because even though they couldn't tell at all, the person they are attracted to had a Really Real Uterus buried deep down underneath all those clothes, and that makes it heterosexual.

This is bullshit.

Dear "Straight" Man: Your sex drive does not magically know the True Sex of whoever you're looking at. If a woman is successfully passing as a man, albeit a pretty one, to the point where you would never ever question her sex, and you're attracted to her, then you're attracted to her as a feminine man. Period. If you're not attracted to her normally, but when she gets in a certain light she looks a whole lot like a woman and suddenly you're into her, then you're attracted to her as a woman. Otherwise, that inexplicable feeling you're getting is - as much as I hate to say it - just a little bit gay. But hey, good news! Being gay, bisexual, straight-with-exceptions or whatever you are is not a bad thing. It's not! It doesn't make you less of a man. It doesn't make you less of a human being. It just means that you sometimes like dudes.

Dear writers: See above.

In addition to the fact that you are essentially assigning psychic uterus-detecting powers to men's penises, this trope is deeply offensive because it implies that someone's biological sex is their "true sex" and always trumps the way they're presenting. This effectively de-genders all transgender individuals and undermines the validity of those who are attracted to them as their true gender.

Oh, and in honor of my asswipe family: no, the answer is not "pheremones." Pheremones play a role in attraction; they are not a fucking panacea. How do we know this? Because trans women whose bodies are currently fueled by testosterone have successfully attracted the attentions of heterosexual men who, upon finding out that the woman in question does not actually possess a vagina, throw a fit and kill her because she threatens their heterosexuality and masculinity.

Which is, in part, because assholes like you keep writing stories that perpetuate the "true sex" myth.

Threats to Western Femininity: as a matter of fact, they are.

A lot of things went through my head when I watched the "Women Are Heroes" trailer (source: Womanist Musings.) One of them was that, without a doubt, African women are a threat to the monolithic worldview that is white Western femininity.

The women in the video are not delicate. Many of them have prominent noses, pronounced brows, thick hands - features that, in the Western world, are not so much reserved for men as they are considered to be an intrinsic part of the "man package." They're not soft, like our women who often spend hundreds of dollars on moisturizers to maintain what men see as a natural trait. Many of them have crooked or brooken teeth and short hair - again, traits that the white man reserves only for the male of the species. Perhaps most shockingly to Western assumptions is their voices. The "soft lilt" that our men would have us believe is an inborn trait for woman is simply not there.

And yet they are real women. Their bodies (trans women aside; they were not featured in this video) and lives are a testament to that. Every day, from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed, they are real women. When they eat, they are real women. When they get dressed, they are real women. When they make faces for the cameras, they are real women. Contrary to local rumor, they do not stop being actual women just because they don't perform the elaborate act that Western femininity requires.

In other words, their very existence is a threat to our concept of femininity.

I think it was around this point in my thought process that I connected it to what I had been hearing from black women all along - every female of their race is a threat to white Western femininity. Not to the women, who would actually be better off if their genuineness of the member of the female sex didn't hinge so delicately on their ability to fit the construct, but to the empire. The female side of the kyriarchy. Just by being there, by being a real woman who naturally has some trait that white men have deemed "not natural," they are a threat.

With that in mind, I've poked around the Internet and found some photos of such women - beautiful women, real women, who challenge our ideas of what womanhood is just by existing every day. They are wonderful and deserve to be celebrated.

http://www.wtsp.com/genthumb/genthumb.ashx?e=3&h=240&w=320&i=/assetpool/images/090926101407_Helen-Hodges.jpg
(Helen Hodges, everyday Californian woman and victim of size discrimination. Via Dvorak Uncensored: "Big Fat Black Lady" On Receipt, Woman Upset)

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/9943850/2/istockphoto_9943850-pregnant-african-woman-smiling-in-traditional-attire.jpg
(Stock photo. A very happy, pregnant African woman.)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQD8rCVsW9jTb5YZSqW2_876DJGvGHs-meSsZglH6bJZagDaXkjJB3EQjnSSbaL8ORUs577W696VlJAZq8JImltY0eZtpb_MWKC8dCJCLwhIZFG87DOzIOjzTRmtWiXy-5UOClaPZ2BQVD/s1600-h/BlackWoman
(Naked, fat black woman with the writing "Too Old To Be In An Anti-Aging Ad." Via Telling Secrets: Fat is Still a Feminist Issue)

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1436/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1436R-252672.jpg
(Stock photo. Young, fat, black woman posing.)

http://www.costume8.com/images/Funny/A1141-Fat-Boy-Disco-Hat-in-Black-Sequins-large.jpg
(Hat model, via costume8 - no link because I'm not pleased with some of their products.)

http://www.fashionfame.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Gabourey-Sidibe.jpeg
(Gabourey Sidibe, best known for her role in "Precious," rocking a dress so gorgeous that even I'd be tempted to wear it.) Via Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as Mammy)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzuRg9OaDnOOKEYuTy8uTthpOAeQSdGSk6Nwnk3B8g5eiRiuM7qd8az4BlFV0r9BhwNGa3KnI_DqMTo9E9yXdLejQx0Y-RmInu-A3LhBJ4CG__VNPURXCBxrkQDWIu3UWEhZmEQn47ZKP/s1600/obeseblackwoman.jpg
(Obese black woman. Via Acting White: Black Women Series - Weight, Body Fat and Attractiveness)

http://www.fantastikresimler.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sisman-zenci-kadin-resmi-fat-black-woman-picture-234x300.jpg
(Unsure origins. Fat black woman in a black velvet dress.)

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2011/03/laquitablockson.jpg
(Dr. Laquita Blockson, the "Business Renaissance Guru." Via Your Black Woman: Professor Laquita Blockson Studies the Black Female Entrepreneur.)

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/11/donnabrazile2.jpg
(Donna Brazile, CNN commentator. Via Donna Brazile: Young Voters, Black and Latina Women Can Shape the Future)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes5/beautifulandfat.png
(Black woman with her back to the camera, being fat and beautiful. Via Shakesville: Happy-go-Lucky.)

Africa Page: Beautiful Black Women On Parade
(A collection of various black women. Some of the photos seem on the exploitative side; I'm not sure about this one.)

Be they fabulous, scholarly, happy, disgruntled, famous or completely unheard of, every one of these women is just as real, just as female, as Angelina Jolie or Marilyn Monroe or Natalie Portman.

The Two Paths, Retort Edition

'Cause you KNOW you wanted to see this. For your reading pleasure and GNARGNARGNARG, here's the original.


I realize I'm treading on dangerous territory here. There's a lot of sentiment in some circles that staying home and raising a family = oppression, while staying single and joining the "official" workforce = liberation. After making this, I realize that it's further problematic by contrasting motherhood with employment, because motherhood IS employment. And it's a damn tough job.

HOWEVER.

Forcing women to get married and bear children is not okay.

Pretending that you're NOT forcing them, by telling them that getting married and having children is "virtuous" as in the original image, is not okay.

Young women and trans men, that stuff that your parents are calling "bad literature" is probably the key to your liberation. Read it.

And sexual promiscuity is not the big, bad beast that the fundies say it is. It's risky, like driving a car, but it probably won't cause premature aging and it CERTAINLY won't stop you from having a happy and fulfilled life.

That's all, folks.

Quote of the Day

A comment on the Womanist Musings post "There Are More Sites Of Oppression Than Gender":

I'm a WOC, and when I look at gender in movies,I don;t get to neatly parse out where gender ends or race begins. Cos they exist simultaneoulsy. Cos yknow, WOC EXIST.

Intersectionality. It's a tough one. It's easy to get it into our heads that we can break down the ways that we are oppressed into easy-to-categorize boxes, but you can't. Just like I couldn't leave a comment (on a post about class privilege) about my class disadvantages without mentioning all of the non-class factors (religious beliefs, education, gender identity, etc.) that have a very real impact on how desperately I need the money for my own safety as well as how much money I will have to spend for it.

Intersectionality means that we are more than the sum of our parts. A black woman is not just black + woman; she is a unique individual that suffers a unique set of stigmas and stereotypes. For instance, she may be expected to erase her race from her hair for the sake of beauty - something that neither white women nor black men are expected to do. Likewise, a trans gay man is not just gay + man + trans. People may assume of him, if he has a vagina, that he wants to be the "bottom" in a sexual relationship. This isn't something that happens to cis gay men OR to trans straight men (though it happens frequently to trans and cis women).

Intersectionality is one of the hardest facets of oppression to learn, because you can't just learn the rules for each category of oppressed persons and then stack them up like Dominos to figure out what each person is suffering from. Which I think is the point - an identity isn't just a list of labels. It's a melting pot that uses all of the ingredients put into it to create a person, and a set of stigmas for that person, that will taste similar in some ways to those who share ingredients but also has a taste of its own.

That may or may not make any sense.