Today I met a woman, whose age she did not mention because she is a lady, was buying a lot of Star Wars merch because we had it on sale. And she was telling me that she couldn’t wait to see the new one and how she was going to stay up and see the midnight release and take pictures of people in costumes. She was so excited, and then she leans in close:
“You know, all these young men at these conventions- they see me and they ask me trivia about this that and the other thing and I tell them- ‘Son, I went to see the first one in 1977 before you were even a twinkle in your daddy’s eye.’ If I don’t know the answer, its because I damn forgot.”
More older ladies in fandoms please
Feminism didn’t teach me to hate men, but it did teach me to stop prioritising them over women.
And it turns out a lot of men think that’s the same thing as hatred.
I said it once and I’ll say it again. Instead of claiming to not hate men, think about why so many people think you do.
This is literally an explanation of why.
Men grow up in a world where men are always more important than everyone else. Refusing to go along with this and actively prioritising women feels like hatred to men who conflate their unearned position of power with their identity.
Maybe instead of obediently supporting the status quo, you should put some critical thought into why so many men get irrationally angry when women want to be treated fairly.
doesn’t mod s call herself a feminist? she can’t be muslim and a feminist, islam is a male dominated religion, women have to be constantly oppressed. it’s disgusting how muslim women are treated
Well, first of all, I’m genderfluid, and agender today, but thanks for misgendering me, asshole. (I use they/them.)
You wanna talk about how Muslim women and DFAB people are treated? Fine, we can talk about that.
We can talk about how the Quran was revealed in 632 AD, saying how women are equal to men. (“And their Lord responded to them: ’…be you male or female – you are equal to one another.’” [Quran 3:195])
We can talk about how in the 16th century, western men were still debating if women had souls.
We can talk about how in 632, the 1st century, Muslim women (and all DFAB people) had the rights to choose who to marry, to divorce, to work, to educate and be educated, to have their won inheritance, to their own land and property, to have their own businesses, to participate in combat, to half their husband’s wealth, to have their own opinions, to have custody of their children, and on and on and on.
We can talk about Muslim women’s right to have a voice in government. Tell me, when did the USA give (white) women “equal participation in the political process,” or voting? 1920. Muslim women have had that since 632.
We can talk about how Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Turkey, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, and Senegal have all had female Presidents or Prime Ministers. How 1/3rd of Egypt’s parliament is female. How in the lovely USA, we haven’t even had a women vice-president yet.
We can talk about the hijab, niqab, abaya, and burqa, how they’re mainly worn to protect women from leering men, and to allow women to interact freely in public without people being able to judge their bodies or looks and only having their minds and personalities to make judgements off of.
We can talk a out how the Western world has twisted our clothing into “women have to cover up because they’re indecent!” and women and feminine-presenting DFAB people get attacked and have their coverings yanked off, either because of Islamophobic hatred or misguided attempts at saving us.
We can talk about how I’ve had my hijab ripped off twice, both times by white men, once outside my community’s masjid (the Muslim place of worship.) And oddly enough, my clothing didn’t stop me from breaking one of those men’s noses when he went after my sister. Just like it’s never stopped me from going to school, or playing sports, or doing anything a white woman or DFAB person could do.
We can talk about how outside of the masjid, where men and women are required to cover their heads, I’ve never once been made to wear a hijab.
We can talk about how the only people who have lectured me about dressing modestly were non-Muslim teachers and other educators.
We can talk about how people want to preach about how Muslims think women are indecent, when western schools freak out when a girl shows her shoulders.
We can talk about my cousin who once made a joke about women belonging in the kitchen and how out of thirty people in the room, the only person who laughed was his white friend. How his father immediately corrected him.
We can talk about how the first university ever, the University of al-Qarawiyyin, was founded in 858 by Fatima al-Fihri, a Muslim woman. How despite that, the summer I was thirteen and taking extra courses at the community college, an instructor praised me for joining even though “I know Muslim parents don’t let girls have higher education.” I had to look her in the eyes and ask who she thought was paying for my classes.
We can talk about how in one of those courses, LGBT rights came up and I mentioned I was dating a girl. And someone who was almost twenty-three (ten years older than me at the time) came up to me after that class, and said “I bet your Islamic God doesn’t mind you being a d*ke, cause he gets to watch.”
We can talk about the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w.) who denounced all forms of enslavement of women, and assisted women in issuing their rights to exist freely.
We can talk about people who rush to condemn Muslim men for hurting the “defenseless” girls, then turning around and making jokes about raping and hitting women.
We can talk about the “saviors of Muslim women,” talking about how they’re so oppressed, they don’t get to make their own choices.
We can talk about how these people completely ignore anyone who says they’re wrong and call them brainwashed. Because of course millions of women have been coerced into believing in a tradition that views them as subservient, what other explanation is there?
We can talk about how patronizing and infantalizing this is, how it denies Muslim women and DFAB people agency and puts our “saviors” on a pedestal. “We need to be their heroes! Because obviously they can’t fix their problems without the aid of white people!”
We can talk about how it’s true that Muslim women suffer from misogyny. How there are Muslim men who think of women as lesser, how some Muslim women are forced to cover themselves and marry. Because guess what? There is no culture that is exempt from misogyny and sexism, gender discrimination is a problem everywhere. But Islam is not inherently misogynistic, it never has been.
We can talk about how somehow there’s this incredibly untrue idea that Western cultures have “progressed forward, and sexism doesn’t exist here, only in other countries and cultures.”
We can talk about how if people want to help Muslim women, all that is needed is for them to listen to us and follow our lead.
We can talk about how Muslim women and DFAB people do not need white people to save them. We have always been capable of helping ourselves.
There are a lot of conversations to be had about the treatment of Muslim women and DFAB people, if it’s something you want to discuss.
But the thing is? People who talk about how oppressed Muslim women are generally don’t.
You want a deflection from your misogyny, “You think I’m bad! You should see how Muslim girls are treated.” You want an excuse for your Islamophobia, “We need to criticize Islam, they treat women awfully!” You want justification for western imperialism, “These wars are necessary! We need to save the poor girls!”
You don’t care about Muslim women and DFAB people.
Stop pretending like you do.
– Mod S
It really says something that I always have to fucking reblog this.
What I didn’t know at the time was that this is what time is like for most women: fragmented, interrupted by child care and housework. Whatever leisure time they have is often devoted to what others want to do – particularly the kids – and making sure everyone else is happy doing it. Often women are so preoccupied by all the other stuff that needs doing – worrying about the carpool, whether there’s anything in the fridge to cook for dinner – that the time itself is what sociologists call “contaminated.”
I came to learn that women have never had a history or culture of leisure. (Unless you were a nun, one researcher later told me.) That from the dawn of humanity, high status men, removed from the drudge work of life, have enjoyed long, uninterrupted hours of leisure. And in that time, they created art, philosophy, literature, they made scientific discoveries and sank into what psychologists call the peak human experience of flow.
Women aren’t expected to flow.
men who interrupt you when you’re reading
There’s an article over at Jezebel about this eternally infuriating phenomenon, and the comments are about what you might expect. Because it’s Jez, the commenters going YES, THIS, PLEASE FUCKING STOP DOING THIS outnumber the BUT I WAAAAAANT TO commenters, but it’s still subject to Lewis’s Law.
One of the but whyyyyyy commenters raises the question “what if she’s reading in a bar.” I would like to address this particular situation with an example to support my argument, which goes “SHE’S STILL READING, YOU DELIBERATELY OBTUSE FUCK.”
I read in bars. I read in bars because I read everywhere unless I’m with another person and talking to them. When I read, I am able to block out whatever is happening around me to a large extent, so reading while in a crowded noisy environment like a bar is relatively easy for me. When I am reading a book in a bar I am reading a book, and I don’t want you to interrupt me there any more than I want you to interrupt me in a library.
Example: Some years ago, I am sitting at a bar, drinking a beer and reading one of a stack of books I just got out of the science library. The titles of these books are along the lines of Archives of the Roentgen Ray, The History of Radiography, and a facsimile edition of Roentgen Rays and Electro-Therapeutics, with Chapters on Radium and Photo-Therapy. These books are old. These books are heavy. Some of them have gilt edging on the pages. They are full of amazing information and frankly terrifying practices and I am doing the internal equivalent of rolling around in them in gleeful delight, sort of like a cat in catnip. Cue a dude and his friends sitting down riiiiight next to me, closer than I would prefer. I can feel his eyeballs like tiresome little searchlights playing over me, and I just wait for it. I don’t have to wait long.
Dude: Hey.
Me: *reads*
Dude: *louder, leaning closer* Hey. Hey.
Me: *reads*
Dude: Hey, whatcha reading?
Me: *pauses, lifts book up and turns it so that he can see the cover and spine, holds it for a beat, returns to previous configuration, all without making eye contact*
At this point he and his buddies have seen that this encounter is not going as well as they might hope, so he switches over from just trying to get my attention to actively trying to get a rise out of me, complete with snickering and mutters.
Dude: What’s that mean? Is it good? Is it a good book? Do you like it?
Me: *still not looking up from my page, deadpan* No. It’s absolutely dreadful.
Dude: *not sure how to take that, goes for snickering some more* So, like, do you read a lot of books? Do you like reading books?
Me: *sighs, sits up, turns to face them, sufficiently irritated to unload* Yes, I do like reading, and I do read a lot. Right now I’m trying to read this book on the history of radiography. Did you know that in the early days of diagnostic radiography an x-ray exposure could take up to ninety minutes? And that in those days the apparatus relied on a spark gap run off either a Ruhmkorff coil or an electrostatic generator, and that the walls of the tube might fluoresce green when in use due to cathode rays hitting the glass? Imagine sitting perfectly still for an hour and a half while the tube glowed and the coil buzzed, or the discs turned, and the spark gap crackled, and the room smelled of ozone. Would you like me to draw you a diagram of a Crookes tube? *bright smile*
Dude: …ooooookaaaaaaaaay. *finally turns his attention elsewhere*
I shouldn’t have had to take the time to do that. He should have picked up on my lack of interest in the potential interaction around about the first non-response to his “Hey,” and definitely should have got the hint when I showed him the book title without speaking.
It happens no matter what. I could be reading Fifty Shades of Dreck or whatever Jonathan Franzen is putting out and I’ll get the HEY HEY HEY WHAT ARE YOU READING IS IT GOOD DO YOU LIKE IT treatment; I could be reading Hiding the Bodies of Importunate Fuckheads–For Dummies! and I’ll get the same thing. Guys, I don’t know why you think this behavior is acceptable, or why a woman owes you her attention when she is clearly focusing it on something else, or why you can’t take a goddamn hint when it is doing the equivalent of jumping up and down in front of your face, but please could you try to internalize the idea that interrupting somebody when they are reading is rude as fuck?
How about this: If you wouldn’t do this to a dude – if you would not interrupt a dude in public and then get pissy when he doesn’t want to interact with you – do not do it to a lady. And don’t hide behind the I’m Bad At Picking Up On Social Cues thing either. You can pick up on social cues perfectly well in all other areas of your daily existence; you just don’t want to when it means you don’t get to demand a woman’s attention.
Next time a dude interrupts my book to ask me what I am reading and whether it is good and whether or not I like it, I’m just going to turn to him with coldly offensive incomprehension and ask “what is it that you want me to say?” Then repeat whatever line he answers with, follow it up with “great, we can now consider this encounter concluded” and go back to what I was doing.
