gonnagetmysoulfree:

New documentary “The Punk Singer” reminded me.

In reviewing The Punk Singer, Laina Dawes presents a thoughtful and relevant critique of riot grrls and race.  I have generally felt empowered and inspired by the Riot Grrrl scene — but this article provided a different, more critical perspective of a movement I, being born a good 15 years too late, have only been able to look at through the lens of hindsight.

I think that for the women of my generation, those of us following Gen X and scenes like the riot grrls…we have the torch now. & there’s a lot the riot grrrl scene can teach us — one of my favourite things is that they are angry and not afraid or ashamed of it. In the intro to “Double Dare Ya,” there’s this strong, self-assured holler: We’re Bikini Kill and we want revolution girl style now! 

We want revolution. Anger at society is still righteous. We still need to challenge bullshit -isms, from feminism to capitalism, and racism and clasism and the list goes on. We still need to do it by supporting each other, working together, and creating our own alternatives and validating each other. Those are all bits of the riot grrrl manifesto and critiques from Laina Dawes and Mimi Thi Nguyen tell us they didn’t get it quite right, but also tells us we can hopefully learn from mistakes. We can learn as much from the criqitues as we can the movement itself.

In the end, feminism that isn’t inclusive of all women, that puts privilege and ego above sisterhood, that doesn’t take into accounts the lives and experiences of wcacross boundaries of class, ethnicity, race, body type, age, etc, a feminism that can’t listen or learn… then that’s feminism that needs refining. 

BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.

-final clause, RIOT GRRRL MANIFESTO

I cannot express how angry this article makes me.

In the beginning, my first reaction was hey, here’s something in ELLE of all the places saying  it’s okay not to be conventionally pretty! And then I read through it, digested it, and it makes me feel sick. Walter Kirn is a douchebag, plain and simple.

In this piece, he vilifies conventionally pretty women and equates their personalities to unexciting milquetoast-y perfection. They’re boring with their salads and vapidity. Worst of all, they’re just disgustingly perfect, superficial  and lack a deeper self… and of course, interchangeable once they’ve dolled themselves up.

Oh, but those “plain” ones! There’s something just magical about their unassuming looks, those darling “barefoot Cinderellas” without pretty images to preserve! They aren’t fussy eaters even if it means they aren’t as slim, with a beauty that “obeys no formulas” who dare to enjoy life unlike those fussy pretty women. There’s something sexually provocative  a disciplined sexuality that just brings on the fantasies. Their secrets are exciting, unlike those bland pretty girls, and for both groups, their physical appearance is a direct reflection of their personalities.

Oh but wait, Kirn doesn’t really care about their personalities. He cares about their inability to entertain and excitement him. In one fell sweoop he objectifies them all, because in the end, it comes down to the emotional and sexual satisfaction of men. what does he say in thanks to these “plain women” who’ve been more than he expected and the conventionally beautiful ones who have let him down? thanks, women, for granting men a power they’ve longed for since they were teenagers to see through the layers to what really matters: the sexy center of a woman.

Mm, you know, I just feel so warm and fuzzy inside after reading this, so empowered and grateful to Mr. Kirn for this absolute gem. I mean, who cares what I look like? As long as I can grant men a secret exciting sense of power to see me for who I really am, at my sexy center, then that’s what really matters. Glad I have him to thank for this truly divine revelation about myself. 

“So I shouldn’t be surprised that the Mother’s Day Parade shooting has largely been forgotten. On Sunday, shots were fired into a crowd during a parade in the New Orleans 7th ward. Police said they saw three suspects running from the scene.

This is the largest mass shooting in the United States where the shooters were still at large after the crime was committed. Think about that for a minute. From Columbine to Virginia Tech to Fort Hill to Aurora, all the shooters were either killed or apprehended on site. But the person or people responsible for shooting 19 Americans are still free.”

drarna:

instead of learning from my mistakes i like to dwell on them until i have a panic attack