You'll Always Be a Prince to Me

Robin Williams has passed on.
I'm listening to his A Night at the Met album as I type this.  He's talking about the trouble with marijuana.  I know the jokes by rote.  When I was still working in theatre and was working alone on deck I would play this album and Weapons of Self-Destruction because listening to his voice ricochet through the space made me feel less alone.  It was like having a best friend to keep me company.

Last night a cry went out: a very real and public grief that spasmed across the Internet.  I'm still reeling. I keep thinking that if we remember hard enough, if we celebrate enough, if we sing "Friend Like Me" and quote Dead Poets Society and watch Aladdin and Robots and Fern Gully and Mrs. Doubtfire enough that we can raise his ghost.  Maybe it would be just long enough to give the man some peace, to pierce the fog of his depression and stay his hand.

Of course that's selfish.  What do I know about the man?  That he was a brilliant inspiration, that his was the voice that defined my childhood, that he named his daughter Zelda because he was a complete gamer nerd, that he struggled with depression and alcoholism and drugs.  What could I, a simple fan, have ever been able to say to him that his family and friends couldn't?  I know depression cannot hear love, cannot feel love on its skin, but Christ, I wish I could just sit with him, hug him, tell him he doesn't have to put up the front...
But maybe he already knew.  I don't know.

I'm left with a gap, a reminder.  The weird dissonance between memory and reality.  I'm sitting up and listening to a cyborg version of his voice, the same jokes bounding out of my speakers and zooming around me.  The album was recorded in 1986, a year before I was born.  The recording doesn't know that, 28 years later, the man joking about the absurdity of the male anatomy and humanity's mating rituals will be dead.  It blithely carries on.  Nothing has changed.  But it has: Robin Williams is dead!  There's a liminal space where his cyborg ghost is Schrodinger's Cat, both alive and dead, present and gone.

And I'm reminded...
Sean Logan.  Emily List.  Seth Bryant.
I don't understand.  I don't understand this space between memory and reality.  How their memory could seem so real but their absence couldn't be any more obvious.

Do we keep moving forward?  How?  How do their families continue on?  Their friends?  Us?  One foot in front of the other?  Do the days just become fine grains of sand on a vast beach, tossed about by the waves of daily life?  Do we get a few bright bits of sea glass, a sea shell, a perfectly preserved starfish corpse scattered throughout?  Do we remember?  Do we forget?  Both?

(An interlude from the album: My son looks at me sometimes, he comes up, gives me a look like, 'Well, what's it gonna be?' 'Hey, Zach [his son], it's gonna be fabulous - eep.  No.  I don't know, pal...umm, it's a crapshoot, I don't know.  
All I can think is, Zach, love, your dad is going to take his own life at 63...I'm sorry...)

I don't have an ending, a neat little tie-off with which to finish this post.  But I guess the title will have to do:
Y'all will always be a prince(ss) to me.  I love you.

Millennial Terror

An anxiety, a kernel, a seed in the back of my mind.

I need a job.  I've always been terrible at finding them, especially through more official means where one sends in a CV, lands an interview, and gets to work.  I'm used to the process where one shoots an e-mail, has a chat, gets the job, gets to work.  That's how it goes in some of the places I've worked for.  But I need a job and there's this creeping feeling in my stomach that I just won't be able to tough it.  I won't be able to chase up the leads, to land the interview, to keep the position once I've earned it.  I'm afraid to leave my insulated little bubble, even if it's not as stable as I'd like it to be.  

I call it my Millennial Terror because my generation is so often accused of refusing to grow up.  We crave, what, stability?  Safety?  Comfort?  Whatever it is that our parents provide, that layer of emotional and fiscal insulation between us and the rest of the world.  I know it's crap, I have so many friends who dive out into the real world and embrace the chaos every day.  Me...

I lie awake sometimes worrying about what I'm going to have to do when I finally finish my PhD.  Yes, I want to teach.  But what will I teach?  How will I teach it?  Will I even be a good lecturer?  Will the students roll their eyes and slump in their seats when I step into the room or will their eyes shine when I bring up a new point?  How will I even get to a place where such an opportunity is possible?  

I call it my Millennial Terror because my generation is so often accused of refusing to grow up.  I have no idea when or if I will truly be able to leave my parents' nest.  Can I find a job?  Can I hold it down?  Can I make enough money to stand on my own?  Will I always be this over-grown woman/child?  I don't know.  I really don't.  And I don't know where to start...  

Happy Father's Day, Poppa.  Your daughter still can't get her shit together.  

Conversion, Conversation, Classrooms

To the men on my Facebook and the women who are like them:

You know who you are.  You are the ones who speak to me as if every feminist quote and metaphor and rant I post is an opportunity to question me, to interrogate me, to make me defend my beliefs.  I don't simply get to rant or let off steam, I must make my Facebook wall/page/timeline/whatever-the-heck-it-is-this week an open classroom and you are my primary pupil.  I must convert you, convince you, watch my tone and mind my manners.  I must be prepared with iron-clad stats from quadruple-blind studies and I must forever have patience with you for not understanding or coming in on the conversation midway.  I am not allowed to lose my temper or let my frustration show.  I am the eternal teacher to my cause, a missionary with the patience of a saint.  I am good.

Except I'm not.  It's 3 AM and I'm not allowed to simply identify with a measly graphic and slap it up on my feed in a sigh of relief and a "HALLELUJAH!  SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS."  I have to defend it, to debate it, to pull up statistics and take the time to teach you.  I know this is the Internet and everything is public.  Letting off some feminist-related steam on Facebook is akin to skinny dipping in your backyard pool: the neighbors can still see you from their balcony.  But my "backyard" is one of the few places I can let off steam in the first place, the one place where I will find the largest concentration of supporters and sympathetic ears.  If I can quietly scroll past your graphics about God, gun-control, and Gears of War then I hope you can damn well do the same.

So listen, my loves, and listen good.  You are not my primary classroom.  None of you are.  Those of you who come to me with open hearts ready to empathise, ready to listen, ready to understand and ask me thoughtful questions so we can genuinely find a middle ground, this is not to you.  By now we have had enough conversations that you and I know how to reach each other and make ourselves heard.  The rest of you, the ones who ask me if I understand "objective" reality without first asking yourselves how to understand the reality in which I live (one where sexual harassment, rape, and gender discrimination are all too real), get out.  Now.  It is not my job to educate you.  Although I am an academic I am not responsible for the module that will open your mind, nor am I paid enough to take the time to teach you.
And the last thing I am is a missionary, knocking on your door to convert you to my cause with a frozen smile and a desperate plan.  I will not come to you with what I know, I will not spoon-feed you or tone myself down just because your feelings are hurt.  This is my feminism, hard fought and hard won: to the one particular group who challenge me for the sake of a challenge rather than seeking to understand, EITHER YOU STEP TO ME OR YOU STEP THE HELL AWAY.

Girls, Grrrls, Women, Womyn, Amazons, Feminists, Feminazis, and Ladies

Sitting up tonight watching Family Guy and [adultswim] for the first time in years and oh, good lord, no wonder it's been ages!  I used to think Family Guy was hilarious, at least from season four on to season ten.  After season ten you can tell Seth McFarlane is trying to juggle three "different" shows and it's just...lame.  But the first ten seasons, they're not too bad, right?  Who doesn't love Stewie and Brian's repartee or the witty-yet-random cutaway scenes that are staples to the show?  Who doesn't love to see the whole family pick on Meg?  Well, me, apparently.  In one scene Meg announces to her father that she will not have sex until she is married.  Her father responds that this is a terrible mistake!  Why? Because sex is healthy?  Because it shouldn't be feared based on the teachings of an outdated religious dogma?  NO!  Because she's a "practice girl" and teenage boys need to use her so they will eventually be awesome conquerors of the female sex!  I used to think this was funny!!  I just cringed!  I'm still cringing.  Seth McFarlane, you used to be awesome.  Now I just think you're an asshole.  Did I grow up?  Am I just being too sensitive?

It's been more than a year since I finally started calling myself a feminist and I'm still struggling with it.  I'm talking about it more, I'm noticing how much we need it in places I didn't (practice girls??), I'm slowly seeking out other feminist communities, heck, if I do this right and don't chicken out I'll be marching in the 2013 DC SlutWalk come August and I might have a poster or two to wave.  My first protest!  If I don't get a panic attack and bolt before the seething masses of people first.  Really, I should feel empowered and brave, like I can conquer the world, but I still feel like a squeaking little mouse.  Me over here in my corner of the blogging world, squeak squeak squeak.

Right, get to the core of it, love.  What are you really talking about?
Some feminists still scare the daylights out of me.  Okay, if you ask my therapist I'm scared of everything.  I don't know how I expect to be an incredible feminist commentator cum media professor when I can't even squeak out an order for a latte at Starbucks.  Not the point.  I love feminism with all my heart and I love what it stands for.  I love the women who stand up in Texas and North Carolina and shout out against slut-shaming and rape culture and misogyny in all of the nerd cultures but oh my god I am so not one of them.  I don't know what I am.


I am a people pleaser and I absolutely want everyone's approval.  I want my fierce grrls to be proud of me, I want my non-feminist friends to understand what feminism (my idea of it, at least) is and to not shy away from it, I want my government out of my uterus, and I want my society's gender dogma out of my head.  I want my freedom.  Oh my god, do I want my freedom.  I want my freedom to speak, my courage to roar and to not worry about the shouts and murmurs that will echo back to me.  As it is now I can barely get my voice above a squeak, especially when I'm at work and I'm working with a male boss or male superiors.  I don't know if it's fair to blame my nervousness and my muteness on a patriarchal society, especially since I'm just shy in general.  However, since I was very little I have loved and feared and needed the opposite sex in the worst way.  My mother, my best girl friends, random women on the street could tell me I was pretty, smart, talented, and amazing but I refused to believe it.  It wasn't until a guy came along and validated me with his affection and approval did any of those notions sink in.

I am not fierce.  I'm a feminist, but I'm afraid to be fierce.

Maybe 6 months later

I wrote the above beginnings of an entry more than six months ago, when Wendy Davis went Mother-of-Dragons on Texas to stand against the horribly restrictive anti-abortion laws that Republicans succeeded in pushing through and women in North Carolina were fighting against similar laws.  I'm still tortured by the fact that, as an activist, I am not a shouter.  I didn't attend Slutwalk like I had planned.  I decided to take a work call instead, and that earned me some more money to pay for my PhD, so that's okay.  But you know the saying, "If it's important to you, you'll find a way; if not, you'll find an excuse".  I was too scared.  Like I said six months ago, I am so not fierce.  

But I am a talker.  And I can feel my confidence growing because feminism doesn't scare me anymore (some parts I take issue with, but that's another story.  Bloody TERFs.).  So maybe that counts as a sort of ferocity: I have enough confidence in my feminist beliefs that I no longer find myself equivocating my stance to appease the other person.  If I know they disagree with me on a fundamental level ("Women totally belong at home!  Their periods make them too crazy to have any power."), I walk away.  Hell, I won't date a guy unless I know he's a feminist full-stop.  So that has changed.  I'm proud of that change.  If I'm not a shouter and a protester I am slowly becoming a talker who stands for something important.  

So it's interesting to hear myself talk when a young woman tells me she is "all for women's rights but [she is] not a feminist".  I sputter and gape and I hear my heart break.  I feel the cogs in my head gearing up to try and open her mind because, to me, it's so simple.  Do you support women's rights and gender equality?  Yes?  Viola!  You are a feminist!  

I want to shake the girl who tells me this stuff and yell, "WAKE UP.  DON'T YOU SEE WHAT YOU ACCEPT AS NORMAL FOR YOUR GENDER IS UTTER CRAP?" but doing so would be incredibly alienating.  I am not out to convert people because that's not how activism works.  One must present others with the facts and allow them to come to their own conclusions.  Doing anything else would make me no better than the bigoted evangelical Christians that tell people they're going to hell simply for not being baptized into their particular faith.  It doesn't work.   

The reality is, we live in a feminist backlash.  After the incredible surge of women's activism in the 70s and 80s, people started thinking, "Whoa now, that's enough.  Men are no longer manly!  We must save our men from women's overwhelming new power!" (Okay, it wasn't so literal.  You get what I mean.). So people began saying the war for equality was won and those feminists who were still fighting, well, they were rabid and delusional, like they were attacking perfectly nice, kind men with their smelly arm pits or something. 

I grew up thinking this.  I still remember walking to school with a friend and saying, "I'm a humanist, not a feminist." (This was after I had spent an hour discussing the need for more information on female yogis and the discourse surrounding Draupadi and Sita in classical Hindu texts).  When I thought of feminists, I thought of Femme Fatale from The Powerpuff Girls or some insanely angry, man-eater that randomly harassed men on the streets for possessing a penis.  I still thought "feminazi" was a meaningful, relevant term to use because I didn't know Rush Limbaugh originally coined it to silence any sort of woman who wanted to leave the kitchen.  Of course I now know that I had it all wrong...

I'm posting this particular blog because I want to remember that I didn't always have the sort of confidence and awareness I do today.  It took many, many years and hundreds of conversations with friends, family, and fellow students for me to finally declare, "Hell yeah I'm a feminist!"  It may make me sad or frustrated or even slightly angry to hear "I'm all for equality, but...", but I have to remember: that was me at 18.  Heck, that was me at 24.  Everyone is different.  For now, all I can do is open my door to anyone who wants to pick my brain. 

That Cheezburger is Sexist (Gaslighting and Memes)

Evening everyone.

Looks like my feminist brow is knit in a furrow once again.  This time, oddly enough, it's not Disney!  This time I want to talk about gaslighting.  What is gaslighting?  When used specifically in relation to women it is a form of emotional abuse where people (often men) convince women that their very legitimate and real emotions are so far off that said women think they're crazy.  An  excellent article on the subject hit the Internet a few years back and I swear, the moment it did every single woman/girl/girl-identifier heaved a sigh of relief or at the very least did a double take, credulous that maybe they're not crazy after all.  

I know.  I'm one of those girls.  If nothing else, I feel like I've been gaslighted most of my life.  I actually spoke about it in an article for Geeked Magazine on yaoi.  You have to buy a copy to read the full article and you can get your hands on a PDF here.  In the article I discussed how I was subjected to a mild form of gaslighting: my dad won't talk to me or take me seriously if I was crying or flustered or angry; my one guy friend has always called me "dramatic", "too sensitive", or simply "loony" for one reason or another; when my woman's college went co-ed we were urged to be "rational" and "collected" otherwise our adversaries (our own school board who we entrusted to protect the institution and who ultimately betrayed us) wouldn't listen.  Heck, when I was 20 and studying abroad for the first time, I confessed to an old guy friend that I cried when I left my hometown because I wouldn't see it again for a full year.  I kid you not, he called me the "Führer of Drama" and told me to get over it - because expressing anxiety and sadness over leaving the comfort of your home and living in a foreign country for more than a month is totally like setting up a destructive dictatorship that wipes out six million people and invades Poland.  The real kicker to this story is I'm pretty sure he was just trying to cover the fact that he was going to miss me and that he'd feel the same way were he in my shoes.
I won't say that all of this stacked up to leave me emotionally battered or bruised or crippled in the same sense as a mistreated wife or girlfriend, but I'm aware of the effects.  Too often I ask myself: am I wrong?  Am I nuts for feeling this way?  Are my ideas legitimate?  Are my feelings legitimate?  I think I've started gaslighting myself, to be honest, because even now I feel like an insane, lunatic moron for claiming that I've dealt with gaslighting at all.  I don't have any real emotional damage, I'm fine, I'm being too sensitive, I'm not being rational enough, he was just kidding, I can't take a joke...

So given all that, you can understand the rumbles in my stomach when this appeared in my Facebook news feed:

I give you the Illogical Girlfriend meme.  I couldn't believe it then and I can't believe it now.  Do girls like this exist?  I mean, honestly?  Because most of the ladies I know are clever, thoughtful, sweet, silly, amazing human beings.  We have our tougher moments ("So...is there something about her you like that I lack?" "You know, you talking to your ex every night makes me uncomfortable.") but this meme seems to imply that only women have these moments.  Why isn't there an Illogical Boyfriend meme?
(No, seriously can someone PLEASE make me an Illogical Boyfriend meme?! It could have awesome captions like, "Spends every weekend with his bros - wonders why you're upset" or "Catcalls every girl on the street - wonders why you're jealous".  Okay, so clearly I'm no good at these, but you get my idea.)  What really got to me was when the guy who posted this image said, "This is why I'm glad I don't have a girlfriend" as if one absurd meme represented the entire female gender.  But I know this guy and I know this is exactly how he thinks.  The Illogical Girlfriend meme is how he sees women (I should know, I dated him).

I know this isn't really an "official" meme (and by "official" I mean I can't find it on Know Your Meme) but that doesn't mean this sort of gaslighting doesn't exist in Internet culture.  Overly Attached Girlfriend, Scene Wolf, College Liberal (aka Female College Liberal or Bad Argument Hippie), Liberal Douche Garofalo (College Liberal's forerunner), Idiot Nerd Girl, Annoying Facebook Girl, and Musically Oblivious 8th Grader are all very popular memes that generally depict young women as being irrational or outright stupid and thus invalid.  I tried looking for Irrational Boyfriend memes, actually, and came up with the Hopeless Boyfriend Meme (a meme where a girlfriend talks smack about her boyfriend every time he tries to do something nice) and Obsessive Boyfriend (there is a spin off of Overly Attached Girlfriend called Overly Attached Boyfriend, but it's not nearly as popular and isn't a confirmed meme).  I don't know about you, but I find it rather telling (and a little frustrating) that both memes are dead/inactive.

(Girls do this?  I've heard of it happening, but really??)

Silly feminist, you're just overreacting and you can't take a joke.  Idiot Nerd Girl has been redeemed and Overly Attached Girlfriend has evolved into Misunderstood Girlfriend.  Yeah, but doesn't it bug you that they exist in the first place and their male counterparts aren't very popular, if they exist at all?  It seems to me that guys got the better end of the meme stick with Good Guy Greg, Success Kid, and Ridiculously Photogenic Guy.  There are dozens more, but I think my point is pretty clear when the guys have "altruistic", "successful", and "so insanely good-looking the world stops turning on its axis" in their meme arsenal and girls get "stupid", "irrational", and "insane".
I mean, yes, there are memes where guys are portrayed as complete morons (Scumbag Steve for starters) but this doesn't seem to reflect poorly on their gender.  I don't see girls crying "This is why I don't date men!" on their Facebook pages over said memes.

It...it doesn't sit right with me.  As human beings men and women are capable of their petty, insane, ridiculous, illogical, stupid, dramatic moments.  Men don't have a rational cortex in their brains that automatically overrides their emotions and allows them to pass up those moments, thus making them more fit to function in society (sometimes they're more dramatic and irrational than the ladies I know!).  I wish they'd stop acting like it.

Right, night my loves.

Glitter and Dresses and Feminism(s) - OH MY.

So.  That happened.

On May 11th, 2013 Disney had the distinct pleasure of inducting Brave's Merida into the Disney Princess Franchise.  Whew.  At last - a feminist princess has been welcomed into the ranks.  Feminism's efforts on the cultural front can only succeed now that Disney: The Great and Powerful has finally accepted girls can shoot arrows and maybe they don't want to get married after all.  Merida has been canonized into the official line and will now enjoy that special sort of immortality that Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora/Briar Rose, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, and Rapunzel know so well.  Her face will be plastered over every consumer product imaginable, from bedding to flip-flops, and little girls everywhere will be able to purchase their very own Merida costume so they can play dress-up and shoot arrows from atop their sofas.

Except...we've been here before (sing along kids!).  Disney has produced strong heroines (royal and non-royal) in the past.  Besides Mulan and Pocahontas, two characters who bucked their societies' gender roles to do great things, and Tiana (who just wanted to open a restaurant, dammit; Naveen was a side quest she didn't even know she was on), Disney has given us sarcastic yet tender Meg (Hercules), sharp Kida (Atlantis), brave Nala (The Lion King), adventurous Jane (Tarzan), glitchy Vanellope and brazen Tamora (Wreck-It-Ralph), clever Esmerelda (Hunchback of Notre Dame), hell, I'd even argue for Giselle and Nancy Tremaine from Enchanted since Giselle doesn't blindly marry the prince and Nancy is a business woman with a soft side.  Yet all of these lovely ladies have been cast aside by Disney's marketing teams.  Unlike the official 11, their products won't get as much shelf space and eventually they'll start to show their age.  They're mortal.

For Tiana, Mulan, and Pocahontas, things aren't much better.  Sure, they'll be remembered and young kids will continue to watch their movies.  Kids will have examples of women entrepreneurs, political leaders, and warriors that they can emulate.  Yet there is a price: homogenization.
I'm sure you guys have seen the redesigns that Disney released back in January.  In case you haven't here are the princesses you know and love:

And here is what they look like now: 

Drenched in glitter, all wearing poofy ball-gowns, most with crazy Victoria's Secret sexy hair.  Mulan has already been through several redesigns, and while her current image is closer to her true form in the movie, there's still no suggestion of her warrior woman self.  Pocahontas also got the "royal" treatment. Is it me, or does her skin look a little bit...er...paler?  A brief skim over the princesses' product pages at the Disney store (Tiana, Mulan, and Pocahontas) show they've all been reduced to that princess glamor Disney is notorious for.  Hell, Pocahontas hardly has ANY products, just a few dolls with an extra-shiny belt and a super-shiny jewelry set.  Not even official princess-hood can save her from the dusty back shelf.  

So when Merida's redesign was released, naturally there was an outcry.  She was too sexy, too slinky, too mature for the 8-12 age set she was meant for.  Just as Merida's character resists every feminine gender role that Disney has set out, so her supporters resisted Disney's attempt to shove her into the same glitter-soaked box as the other ten.  And in the outcry, there was another voice, the "What are you guys talking about??" voice.  On CNN.com Peggy Drexler wrote 

"The fact is that "babes" can be worthwhile role models, too, and no less so than those women whose looks are more rough and tumble. What's sexist, polarizing -- and most damaging -- is the suggestion that women can be only one or the other: pretty or powerful. Vulnerable or strong. Pink wearing or substantive. These are incorrect messages that serve to confuse and contain. Instead, the message should be about how these days, women can be many things. Girls -- and boys -- are listening." 

You can read the full article here.  Basically she's saying there's nothing wrong with the redesign, it's us "feminists" getting our knickers in a bunch that is detrimental.  And she wasn't the only one, a post appeared in my Facebook feed essentially arguing that just because Merida is more feminine and sparkly doesn't mean she's any less brave.  Make-up and glamor doesn't change her intrinsic characteristics and the feminists who believe that need to chill the f*ck out!  But they're missing the point!  The fight wasn't against Merida's newfound (or newly expressed) femininity - if that was the case feminists everywhere would be angry she was wearing a dress in the first place.  The fight was against Merida's homogenization, against her going the same route of erasure as the other "strong" princesses.

So finally I get to the crux of my argument, my real reason for perking my head up from behind my Netflix stream and getting on my soapbox.  I'm getting REALLY REALLY tired of people thinking feminists are a bunch of misandrist, femininity-bashing assholes who are out to conquer the world and enslave the male sex.  Seriously?!  Feminism isn't about women being better than men or trying to become women in men's clothing.  Feminism is about WOMEN NOT BEING SECOND-BEST.  THAT'S IT.  FINITO.  WHY IS THIS HARD?!

Feminism is all about embracing differences, about empowering women to be ANYTHING they want to be without judgement or harassment from men or other women.  To swing it back to the Disney Princess franchise: if I had my way Disney would redesign the redesigns one more time.  Merida would wear her green dress with her bow and arrow slung across her back, Mulan would wear the dress she saved the Emperor in (a hybrid of her Ping armor and her match-maker hanfu, a symbol of the synthesis of her feminine strength), Pocahontas would remain the same, Tiana might have a sparkly apron and her yellow dress (or whatever dress she wore when her restaurant finally opened), and the rest of them would keep whatever dress or outfit they wore through the majority of their movies.  Cinderella, Belle, Briar Rose/Aurora, Rapunzel, Snow White, Ariel, and Jasmine could keep their normal stuff sans glitter.  Or even a little glitter.  Goddess knows I sometimes wander into the Disney Store with a stupid grin on my face just to look at all of the glitter and the glamor.  "The sparkly!" I drool.  "THE SPARKLY!!!"

I'm making a direct appeal to my friends here, to those who have said to me, "I'm all for [aspect of women's rights/feminism that I asked them about] but I don't agree with the way feminists handle themselves/talk about these issues." Guys, do you realize that when you say you can't claim the "feminist" label because it's too rabid or radical you're participating in a kind of erasure?  Women, especially feminists, are gas-lighted, called hysterical, slut-shamed, have to deal with a rape culture, and have to fight too hard and too often for autonomy over their reproductive organs, and if we speak out against it we have guys calling us femi-nazis (because equal rights is totally like invading Poland) and sluts.  They try to shame us into silence and sometimes it works.  It works when rational women and men refuse to call themselves feminist for fear of being seen as rabid man-haters.

I'm kind of a mute and I don't often try to raise a battle cry, but I'm making an attempt, just this once.  I'm asking you: call yourself a feminist.  The movement needs you, it needs your face, it needs your voice.  If you continue to say "I'm not a feminist" then your siblings, your parents, your best friends, your peers, might continue to capitulate to their fear that feminists are simply misandrists and they won't speak out against the gross inequalities many of you already recognize.  The idea that straw feminists actually represent real feminists will continue to persist.  I don't want that to happen.  It doesn't have to happen.

Okay, that's it.  Night, loves.

Disney's Gender Binary

*SPOILERS FOR WRECK-IT RALPH AND OZ:THE GREAT AND POWERFUL*

Oh god, okay.  Hi guys.

Few things make me feel ranty enough to just want to spew.  I prefer, if I can, to sit down with a cup of tea and mull things, to be rational like my daddy taught me - because if there's one thing the patriarchy hates, it's an irrational, emotional woman.  An irrational, emotional, foaming-at-the-mouth woman is merely on her menses and must be hidden away with all the other irrational, emotional, foaming-at-the-mouth women so the menfolk can go about being rational and ingenious and reinventing the wheel.  Right.  About that.  Screw that.

Those who know me are entirely aware that I have a certain penchant for Disney.  I love Disney.  The more I look at it the more I firmly believe that all those years of pretending to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid and making my dad do Sebastian's voice over and over really transformed me into some introverted version of Ariel herself.  I mean, I'm adventurous, bright, a pack rat, and I have an inhuman adoration for sea food; I also spent my adolescence and early adulthood trying to get the opposite sex to validate me so I could become a good little wifey and a good little mummy.  Now?  Not so much.  But I'm still curious as to what the hell Disney did to my impressionable little brain while I was growing up.  So I ran off and wrote an essay on the way the Disney Princess franchise molds and shapes gender roles for young girls in the US.  It was so good and I loved it so much that I'm planning on running off to do my PhD on that exact thing.  Goddess willing.
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So Disney and their portrayal of women...it's a thing with me.  It's not so much a thing that I'll flat out yell "DISNEY DISEMPOWERS WOMEN" because Disney made Mulan, Pocahontas, Princess and the Frog, and Brave.  All of the women in these movies are strong, capable, active, not obsessed with marriage, and independent.  Mulan saves China!  Pocahontas unites her people!  Tiana opens a restaurant!  Merida bucks the stability of her kingdom so she can keep her freedom!  What's more, Pixar let Merida buck Disney tradition entirely by steering her right clear of marriage.  She didn't even have a boyfriend or fall in love!  I can't think of another Disney princess, not even the forgotten ones like Kida from Atlantis, whose story didn't end with even the most tangential attachment to a guy.  So while Disney hasn't done women any favors since Snow White, dammit, the company is evolving.

I wish...I wish I could say that Brave's success at the Academy Awards (Best Animated Film for 2012) drove Disney and Pixar on to create more strong female characters, that women who can hold their own in a fight, are clever, and stand up for themselves are rapidly becoming the norm.  And Disney tries, oh, they've tried.  But they still can't totally get it right.

In November 2012 Disney released Wreck-It Ralph, a fun, family-friendly romp that appealed to the nostalgia gamer in me as much as it appealed to my younger cousin's need for racing and fart jokes.  The hero, Ralph, is a villain in an arcade game, Fix-It Felix Jr.  Tired of being ostracized simply because he's the bad guy, Ralph decides to game hop so he can win a medal and eventually win his fellow game characters' respect and friendship.  Along the way Ralph encounters two very outspoken and well-rounded female characters: Vanellope von Schweetz from the game Sugar Rush and Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun from Hero's Duty.  Like Ralph, Vanellope is an outcast, not because she's a villain but because she's the racing game's glitch and glitches are best kept out of sight.  With candy haphazardly stuck to her hair and an obsession with farts, she wrangles Ralph into helping her construct a go-kart so she can be a playable avatar in her own game.  My hatred for Sarah Silverman aside, Vanellope is an excellent character.  She is a tomboy who transforms her disability - flickering and teleporting at random - into a strength.  Hell, Vanellope and her almost all-female Sugar Rush competitors are the reasons why Wreck-It Ralph passes the Bechdel Test (1. Are there more than two female characters? 2. Do they talk? 3. Do they talk about something other than boys?).  Believe it or not, the number of movies that can boast that is pretty low and only a small handful of Disney's princess movies past the test.
At the end of the movie Ralph discovers Vanellope isn't a glitch at all.  As it turns out, she is a major character in the game whose code has been corrupted, namely the princess of Sugar Rush.  When Ralph helps Vanellope realize this, she opts out of the confining life of a princess (and equally confining, ridiculous poofy dress) and chooses to be president instead.  Disney's Princess culture is a fact of life for so many little girls in the US, the fact that Vanellope outright rejects this almost compulsory aspect of Disney's gender coding is a bold, brilliant move.  I'm doing a dance just thinking about it.
But as the Nostalgia Critic points out, Vanellope's character design has an unfortunate flaw: Vanellope never has any real governing power.  In the movie Sugar Rush has a king, King Candy, but never has a queen.  Instead Vanellope is a princess, a Disney archetype that represents all things feminine.  Usually Disney's princesses are sweet, kind, loving, good cooks, etc. with all the privileges but none of the governing power that comes with being royalty.  This isn't to say that Disney never shows women as queens, they do: Snow White's step-mother, Aurora's mother, Simba's mother (The Lion King), Rapunzel's mother, and the Queen of Hearts (Alice in Wonderland) are only a few queens in Disney's vast movie canon.  However, the queens who are good usually do not speak and their husbands wield all or most of the political power (Aurora's mother and Rapunzel's mother).  The queens who do speak and rule on their own in Disney's movies are often evil, cunning, and cruel like Snow White's wicked step-mother or the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland.  The only queen I can think of that breaks up this silent good mother/vocal evil ruler is Queen Elinor from Brave who not only is a good mother to Merida, but is respected as a ruler as well.  She is the one who organizes her daughter's marriage in order to keep the peace among the kingdoms and the one who is able to break up a fight between her husband, King Fergus, and the other three clan leaders (yet another reason why I love Brave).  Sarabi, Simba's mother, also falls into this liminal category of "good, speaking female rulers" but she is defined more as "Mufasa's wife" and "Simba's mother" than a character that has any governing power in her own right.  She is never shown making decisions about how many zebras the pride should hunt that day (even if she is the one hunting them) and she does submit to Scar's rule when he takes over as king.
But even when queens are allowed to be be politically active in their communities, princesses are not.  Snow White, Pocahontas, Tiana, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, and Belle are never seen ascending the throne in the span of their own movies - they're never given any real power.  Nala from the Lion King is an exception: you see her go from falling in love with Simba, to helping him win back the Pride Lands from his Uncle Scar, to her son's christening as the new prince of Pride Rock.  However, like Sarabi, Nala's royal status is only because she married the king and her only job is to produce a royal heir.  The only princess that ascends the throne, rules alone, and is portrayed as "good" is Kida from Atlantis.  Kida, Nala, and now Vanellope all fall into the "forgotten Disney princess" category, the princesses that Disney didn't induct into the official Princess franchise and will ultimately be eclipsed by Snow White, Cinderella, Jasmine, Tiana, and the rest.

So that's Vanellope.  But really, Vanellope's "princess-not-queen" issue is small compared to my problems with Sergeant Jean Calhoun.  Like Vanellope, I love Sergeant Calhoun.  The character alone is excellent and worth of several fist-pumps.  She's the leader in the "boy" game, Hero's Duty, bossing around burly men twice her size and leading them to fight the evil, evil cybugs.  She's tough, she's smart, and she's vocal.  I about squealed when I first saw her on the screen.  But it's what Disney does with her character that bugs me. Because even though Calhoun is tough, brave, and smart, Disney felt they had to normalize her somehow.  Her intensity isn't her fault, a soldier says, she was programmed with the most tragic backstory possible.  And for a woman solider, what could that be?  A family member dying?  Her whole platoon being eradicated by the cybugs?  Nope.  A cybug killed her husband on her wedding day.  Calhoun can't be a strong leader in a "boy" game because that's who she is, she has to be an anomaly explained by the fact that she lost the man in her life.  I don't know about you, but this tells me that a woman solider (or any woman that participates in the "male" sphere) is a powerful, alien force that can only be produced by a freak accident.  What's more, Calhoun is a powerful, alien force that must be captured, normalized, and re-integrated into socially acceptable gender roles in order to be socially acceptable.  In the course of the movie she teams up with Fix-It Felix Jr. to find Ralph and somehow the two just fall in love.  Actually, Felix compliments Calhoun, the compliment reminds Calhoun of her deceased groom, and then they fall in love.  Because women are that tractable.  *sigh*  Regardless, Calhoun and Felix fall in love and get married and the movie ends.

So, yes, in many many many ways Wreck-It Ralph demonstrates that Disney has come a long way in depicting less strident gender roles in their movies.  Vanellope is a glitchy tomboy who turns down being a princess and Calhoun is a smart, brazen soldier who could knock down ten men twice her size in one hit.  But the fact that Vanellope doesn't become queen and Calhoun's story arc is defined by the man she marries...the strides aren't so great after all.  I still feel like Disney thinks women are not meant to have agency or power, that somehow these sorts of women are dangerous and must be tamed.

Yes, I know, earlier in this post I was doing a jig over Merida, a smart, positively portrayed young lady who doesn't have to get married at the end of the movie.  She has all the agency and power many of the previous official Disney princesses lack.  But Brave is a girl's movie with a girl's heroine.  The intended audience is little girls who will buy the dolls and wear the costumes for dress-up.  Wreck-It Ralph is a boy's movie with a boy's hero.  The intended audience is little boys who will wear the t-shirts and run around the house yelling, "I'm gonna wreck it!" all day.  Comparing the movies side by side it seems that Disney wants to teach its girls they can have power and freedom and don't have to get married, but then whisper an aside to its boys, "Oh, no, they're just silly little girls with silly little visions of agency.  The real power still lies with you."

Think I'm delusional?  Not too long ago my will to remain calm was tested to its limits when I had to sit through all 130 minutes of Oz: the Great and Powerful, directed by Sam Raimi.  Even before Oz hit theatres in early March, the trailer  showed little more than three women fawning over this strange new man and crying out that he is the one to save them.  The outright misogyny is enough to make the most mild of the "Women are pretty cool" brigade's head spin, so to keep from having yet another aneurism I'm going to list everything out and then go lie down.

1) Conman magician, Oscar Diggs, gets swept out of Kansas by a tornado and dropped in the middle of Oz, a magical land where three extremely powerful lady witches are quarreling over the throne.  Diggs is hailed as a prophet and a powerful wizard who will save the land, despite the fact that he doesn't have any powers and no real brains.  Instead he uses his "magic" so he can rule over Oz and claim all its gold and riches in the royal vaults for himself.
Let me repeat that: non-magical man crash lands in a magical world where three magical, incredibly powerful female witches are competing for the throne.  All three of these ladies could destroy him with their wand, their fingers, or their fire-balls of death but they don't.  Instead they hail him as a magical prophet who will deliver their war-torn land to a world of peace and freedom.  Oh, and this power vacuum was left when the king died.  Because there's no way a woman could lead, not even the king's daughter.
2) The first witch we meet, Theodora, is entirely obsessed with Oscar.  The moment he lands in Oz she practically pounces on him, announcing that he's the man they've all been waiting to save them and that she's absolutely in love with him.  Theodora's obsessive infatuation is entirely manic and she insists that they will rule as King and Queen once he delivers Oz from the grip of the evil wicked witch without once wondering what Oscar might have to say about their "relationship".  When Theodora believes the great wizard loves someone else she goes on an angry, tear-stained rampage that destroys all of Oz.  Essentially Theodora is every bachelor's nightmare, their most infantile fears of women and long-term commitment come to life to destroy their care-free playboy lifestyle.  This might be extreme to say, but I think Theodora's behavior in this movie only serves to confirm these fears and reaffirms the idea that there is something inherently wrong with women; that somehow we need men to be our rational, better halves to survive and we are utterly, dangerously irrational in the face of that need.  Also, I think they CGI'd Theodora's ass into those tight, shiny riding pants.
3) The second witch we meet and Theodora's sister, Evanora, isn't as obsessive or naive when she meets the great and powerful wizard, thankfully.  She realizes Oscar is a bit of a greedy hack and sends him out to test his skills before she hands over the royal coffers and the throne.  Later we discover that Evanora is the true wicked witch, bent on conquering Oz and dooming its inhabitants to a dark and miserable existence.  The worst part about her character is that her evil nature is tied up with her cleverness just like every other vocal, ambitious woman in Disney's canon.  A woman can't be strong, independent, and ambitious without being inherently evil.
4) The porcelain doll.  When Evanora sends Oscar out to destroy the wicked witch, Oscar finds a little porcelain doll whose legs have been broken when the wicked witch attacked her home.  This little doll follows Oscar for the rest of his journey to defeat the real wicked witch, Evanora, and has enough screen presence to make her a major character in the movie.  Yet somehow, for reasons I can't fathom, she doesn't get a name.  Not even in the credits.  She's just "Porcelain Doll".  Why?!  Why is it that one of Oscar's best allies in the movie doesn't deserved to be named??  The implications of her character, that little girls are delicate and need to be fixed by the great amazing men wizards of the world, make me want to puke.  I spent too much of my life convincing myself that I wasn't made of glass and that I didn't need a guy to "fix" me for Disney and this wizard to come along and negate all that.  What's more, when Oscar tries to tell her she can't help him kill the wicked witch she stamps her little porcelain feet and screams and cries until he finally gives in.  Right.  Because women are incapable of making rational arguments or asking for what they want in a mature way.  We always scream and cry like spoiled little children until our daddies cave and give us what we want.
5)  Glinda the good witch.  Again, like Theodora and Evanora she has her own magical powers and is more than capable of claiming her late father's throne and bringing Oz to peace.  And again, like the other two witches, she hails him as a savior.  It's incredibly disappointing, then, that Glinda knows Oscar is a feckless conman with no leadership capabilities and no physical power.  Yet she still massages his ego and coaches him into leading the denizens of Oz into a bloodless battle so he can claim the throne.  She is the king's daughter, filled with her father's wisdom and courage and power!  It should be her throne!  But no, a man has to save them all.  [/aneurism]

But do you see what I mean?  With Brave Disney tells our daughters and our own inner children that we can be free and shoot arrows and we don't have to get married.  We don't need men to support us or save us or validate our lives.  But with Wreck-It Ralph and Oz: the Great and Powerful the company tells our sons and men's inner children that this simply isn't true.  Women are irrational, volatile, delicate, dangerous creatures who are unfit for any sort of power and need a man to step in and save them from themselves and the big, bad, scary world around them.  When Disney fixes that, when Disney allows its heroes to recognize its heroines as equals, then I'll be happy.  Until then, Disney, you and I need to have a serious conversation about women.