A long question left in comments, so I’m promoting it to the front of the blog.

I was referred to this site after discussing image issues on the role-playing game website, Giant In The Playground. At that site, I started a topics of discussion regarding body image in fantasy art and RPG books, particularly involving the game Dungeons and Dragons.

The thread in question can be found here:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105473

One particular poster, whom I leave anonymous out of respect, said the following:

“Also, “heavy women are beautiful too!” is no less objectifying. That’s not the point! Women don’t exist to be attractive and sexual objects. It shouldn’t matter if they’re thin or fat or neither, ugly or pretty or neither, and there’s no real RPG art shouldn’t depict real people of both genders (and “conventions of the genre” are no excuse; I’m looking at you, superhero comics and superhero comics games). Holy hell, people.”

After responding to the effect that fantasizing is unavoidable, regardless of gender, he sent me a link to this blog, mainly for the reasons listed in the FAQ.

When asked by another poster “I’m sorry, how exactly is “heavy women are beautiful too” objectifying?” His response was thus:

“It’s “as objectifying as” “thin women are beautiful.”

It’s the idea that women’s attractiveness has any sort of inherent value or importance. Beauty as a value is a product of and a contributor to objectification. It doesn’t matter whether you say “thin women are beautiful” or “fat women are beautiful”, you’re still valuing them based on appearance.

By becoming aware that we are all taught to think like this – women and men both – and then realizing the idiocy of it, you can start to contribute, in a small way, to society being less objectifying.

And you cannot talk about people’s bodies without talking about people, directly or indirectly – especially in the context of western society, where the word “fat” automatically makes people think of qualities like “stupid”, “ugly”, “sick”, “greedy”, and so on.

Links again (because no, I am not here to educate, I am here to argue points):”

One of those links brought me here, and I’m hoping I could get some answers as to just what I’ve said that was offensive.

I have nothing against feminism (at least I don’t think I do), but I don’t know if I can avoid fantasies about them. Yes, I think heavy women are more attractive than thin women, but that doesn’t mean I judge women, or any other people for that matter, on appearance alone. I don’t allow my fantasies to get out of hand, or to hurt people. I just keep them to myself. Yes, I have sometimes roleplayed characters who conform to my fantasies, but that’s just fiction. It’s not real, and I’d be an idiot to think it was.

Can I truly be non-objective, even in my fantasies? Are my fantasies really that bad? How is asking the question “Why are there no fat elves in Dungeons and Dragons?” offensive to feminists?

Thank you for hearing me out.

I suspect that there’s more to the other person’s response than merely the question being asked. Just guessing because I haven’t had time to read the thread in question, but a slew of responses along the lines of “hell yeah fatties are sexy” would more likely be the culprit.

Can I truly be non-objective, even in my fantasies?

The problem is not so much that fantasies about particular phenotypes ever occur (women fantasise too), but that fantasies and objectifying are often the primary, indeed only, response to a woman entering a scene.

Women fantasising about men are swimming in a culture where every drama tells us about how men have complex reactions to events and their own personal goals that complicate interactions and that force compromises – objectification can only go so far in this cultural milieu. By contrast, men fantasising about women are swimming in a culture that shows women practically only coming to life when a man pays them some attention because he finds them physically attractive, and who either willingly abandon whatever time-filler pursuit they were involved in to support the man’s goals, or who object at first only to see the error of wanting a personal life – they become infatuated by his charismatic questing and then willingly abandon whatever they’ve been doing. Women reduced to puppets of narrative as a matter of course make objectification simple.

Feminists object to lazy writing and characterisation, and to fandom discussions thereof, that reinforce the cultural narrative that women are only there to reflect the objectives of men as an addition to the roster of trophies.

I know the site’s been a bit quiet lately – other things in life have been keeping me busy. Luckily, there’s still plenty of other strong feminist writing around, including this great series from Echidne of the Snakes:

If you somehow missed my six-part (so far) series on the need for feminism, you can still read it!

1. The Right to Go Out

2. Planet of the Guys

3. Our Father Who Art in Heaven

4. The Invisible Women

5. The Female Body as Property

6. The Longest Revolution

It’s pretty obvious from the structure of this site that there are some information pages that we wish people to read before they go on through the op-eds and FAQs contained in this blog-section. If you haven’t read the Introduction frontpage and the recommended links there before commenting on a blog-post, you will not be considered to be posting in good faith. Just some polite advice.

A quick explanation for anyone who’s a little confused by the site’s new page configuration.

Because I want people who stumble across this blog to read the introductory sections before getting stuck into the blog articles, I’ve changed the presentation of the site so that the Where To Start – Introduction is the frontpage now (it used to be called PLEASE READ THIS FIRST). Hopefully clearly marking the blog tab as BLOG should be enough for you all to easily find it! (If you subscribe via a feed-reader, the article title link should still bring you straight to the relevant blog-page)

Heretical is the annual magazine of the Women’s Collective at UQ (University of Queensland). This year it might not appear unless there is some rapid assistance from the broad feminist community. They simply don’t have enough submissions, and time is running out, largely because the collective’s time has been spent coping with hostility and harassment on campus targeting women’s groups and also LGBTQ groups.

The Women’s Room was recently vandalised:

From UQ-Women's Collective (click for many more pictures of damage)

If you are a blogger who is happy for a post or two of yours to appear in the magazine, please leave a note in the comment below with a valid email address, and I can pass your contact details on to the member of the UQ collective who contacted me regarding this. This is very very very late notice I’m afraid. Please help if you can.

Cross-posted at Hoyden About Town

I can’t deny, the timing on this has been a little awkward. Hoyden About Town (my primary blog) had a monster thread nearly two weeks ago about an op-ed written by one of the co-authors of this book, Monica Dux, where the general sense was aggrieved at some phrasing she used on the way to making a broad argument.

However, it’s important to separate the book as a whole from a short op-ed piece. Lauredhel and I were both interviewed via email for the book by co-author Zora Simic, so it’s not as if we are wholly disinterested in the message of the book, we want to know what others think of it. Here’s where the giveaway comes in: Melbourne University Press kindly sent me a review copy plus two copies to give away to readers here and at Hoyden. I haven’t actually read it yet, because I want to distance myself from the reaction to the op-ed first. But other people should definitely be reading it and making up their own minds.

So, this giveaway is open to any reader who has left at least one comment here before: the book will wing its way to the first reader who provides me with either a limerick or a haiku about the concept of the book – that young women are distancing themselves from the feminist label and that we need to understand why. There is only one condition – to qualify for the giveaway the poem must avoid buying into the fracas over the Dux op-ed. (Yes, I know that this leaves it open for those who don’t want a copy of the book but who do want to make a point – they can submit a more withering disqualifying contribution just because they can – do it if you must, but abide by the comments policy as you do, please.)

Apparently, sometimes readers see ads on this blog, and I never knew. According to the encyclopaedic Lorelle on WordPress, wordpress.com have been inserting ads onto their free blogs for a while now, but those who are logged into wordpress.com don’t see them i.e. the actual bloggers whose blogs are being used to display these ads don’t see them but their readers (those who are not also logged into wordpress.com) do see them. Has anyone noticed any ads appearing here?

The ads module is apparently in the experimental stages, so the ads have been intermittent, but soon they will be a more constant feature. As they work using keywords, you can see why this is a potential problem for a feminist blog that discusses controversial issues – I don’t particularly want my readers to be bombarded with ads touting inappropriate goods and services.

One can opt out of having the ads module display on one’s blog, but it costs US$30 a year. I appreciate the free service provided by wordpress.com, and 0.08c a day isn’t very much, but I’ll have to think about this. It’s yet another example of the WP team implementing new features which many bloggers will hate without any announcement. I hate that.

I am a secondary English teacher in Queensland and am trying to expose my students to some feminist poetry, particularly if it of the protest kind, but all the poems that I tried to pass by my P&C committee have been shot down as being too ‘adult’. I was wondering if you (or anyone for that matter) were able to give me a few suggestions.

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated. I want my kids to be aware of feminism and what it means, especially in a place where there is no exposure to it whatsoever.

Anybody got anything?

NB:
Seconday school – in Australia generally primary school is Years K-6, secondary school is years 7-12 (there is some variation between states, but it is minor)
P&C Committee = Parents & Citizens Association committee associated with a particular school

From my inbox:

Friends, help Women for Women International with your vote for our Members Project “Help Women and Children Survivors of War Rebuild”. With your support it could share in $2.5 million in funding from American Express. We need to get into the Top 25 projects by September 1 so please nominate this project for potential funding, go to Help Women and Children Survivors of War Rebuild.

Please click the link to the project and click Nominate. If you do not have an American Express website login, just click “Guest Member” provide a little information and you can then Nominate and vote.

Please show your support with a Click and Share this with as many friends as possible. We need at least 500 more votes in the next week to be in the running.

[link]

A few months ago I posted an events notice for a MichFest Women’s Festival event in NYC. I screwed up big time in that original post by not including any text noting the trans-exclusionary policy of MichFest, which has excluded trans women as festival participants for many years.

I apologise unreservedly for neglecting to highlight this as part of my original post. We did discuss the issue in comments, and I did amend the post after some prodding, but I should have challenged the trans-exclusion from the start, or better yet not promoted the event at all.

Here’s the promise: I will not give any trans-exclusionary feminist event any promotion here in the future. If I do unknowingly post a link to some event that is trans-exclusionary, I will delete it as soon as I am made aware.

I am aware that this decision is likely to affront some trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), but it must be said: marginalising trans women at actual risk from regularly documented abuse /violence in favour of protecting hypothetical cis women from purely hypothetical abuse/violence from trans women in women-only safe-spaces strikes me as horribly unethical as well as repellently callous.

I wish that I had fully realised the callousness much earlier instead of initially regarding the TERF position as simply a regrettably prejudiced yet rationally divergent opinion. I’ve also come to view the arguments put forward to bolster the TERF position as logically inconsistent.(I go into much more detail about this conclusion over on my primary blog, Hoyden About Town, please comment on that thread if you wish to discuss TERF arguments.)

I would prefer that this thread be trans*centred rather than cis*centred, so please leave links to your favourite trans*activist and trans*accepting blogs in comments below. Which blogs are safe spaces for trans* women and allies to discuss the trans* experience of violence and marginalisation? Let’s discuss the violence that is levelled at trans* women and how it intersects with misogyny, race and sex-work to cause people to murder them simply for being trans*, rather than discussing the politics of gender transition here (you may discuss the politics of transition on my other trans* post over at Hoyden if you wish).

If you are a cis woman with questions about the trans* experience either personal or political, you’ll probably find more and better answers by lurking at some trans* blogs rather than through asking trans*commentors to do Trans101 for you right here and now. If you don’t know the names Angie Zapata, Kellie Telesford, Rosa Pazos, Ebony Whitaker and Sanesha Stewart at this moment, I suggest refraining from discussion on trans* issues until you know about how they died and have read some posts mourning them as people, not just news reports that treat them as freaks.

Here’s a few links to start with:

An open letter to cis-feminists: a post about cis feminists overlooking violence against trans women in favour of arguing about gender theories
Radical Feminism and Cis Privilege: dehumanising trans* women is not a feminist act
Questioning Transphobia: a blog devoted to discussing hostility towards gender transition