Posts Tagged ‘sexuality’
This is the second post in two days written by me. Why? Because I am supposed to be writing a paper on not being born a woman and another on linguistics, and read two Raymond Chandler-novels. And as you may know by know: I am the queen of procrastination.
Right now I’m in the library with a friend, and I must say: I love Tromsø! This is the best library I’ve ever been in, and the view is amazing. But do you know what isn’t amazing? Writing essays.
I wish I could write this paper in a more humoristic way. Seeing as it is a paper on philosophy, and I am supposed to show my own opinions and views in the writing of it, I guess I could write it like that, but it is supposed to be in preparation for my exam, and I most certainly can’t do that when writing my exam, so I guess I should just get used to it right away.
My last post did actually get comments, so I guess I should write about radical faminism more often. So now I will write about it some more.
The Simone de Beauvoir quote that I ended last blog-post with is the quote I am writing an essay on. And it is found in her most famous book: The Second Sex. This is actually two books, published as one, with many parts and chapter. It’s huge!
I haven’t read all of it yet, and maybe I never will, but I am reading the chapters on gender vs. sex, and how girls are treated differently than boys, this resulting in the different qualities that are associated with the different genders. It is an evil circle of girls being made submissive by the society, and therefore the society continues to expect girls to be submissive.
I was never brought up to be like that. My mother, being the strong and wonderful woman that she is, thought me to stand up for what I believe in, and she allowed me to dress in the way I wanted to and play with the toys I liked. There was no question of forcing me to wear dresses and pink, I got Legos and toy-cars when that was what I wanted, and I climbed trees and had playfights without anyone telling me that it wasn’t “suitable for a girl”. For this I am thankfull.
This doesn’t seem like a very radical up-bringing, I am sure, but I am also sure that my mother and fathers liberal gender-views were important for me to become the woman I have become. No-one ever told me I couldn’t do something just because of my sex, and so I never believed it to be impossible for me to do anything. And yet many girls and women react to my way of being, and even become biased towards me because of it. Do I view myself as any less of a woman for it? No. I know that I’m a woman, I even want to be a mother someday, I just don’t believe that women are naturally more “soft and fuzzy” than what men are. Men are just as capable of love, wimsiness and care-giving as women, and women are just as capable of entrepeneurship, intelligence and sexuality as men. And yet these qualities are still by many linked to one gender alone.
I say to hell with genders, we are all humans. The only thing different between women and men are reproductive organs, hormone-levels and muscle strength. Doesn’t seem quite as important as the human qualities of feelings, intelligence and sexuality, does it?
-Frida
The weekend passed I spent in Oslo at the Rød Ungdom “Red Youth” film-festival, ProgFilm. I learned some, met some cool and nice people, some old friends, and two of our fellow-authors: Bjørn and Vegard. Huzzah.
The lecture I will focus this entry on was about feminism and sexual harassment. The movie was the sweedish “Hip hip Hora!” (Loosely translated: Hip hip Whore-ay!, but it’s more funny in sweedish…) and the speaker was Hanna Helseth, author of the book “Generation Sex”.
The lecture, and the book, is about sexual harassment, how young girls and women are expected to act a certain way, and how girls who have one-night-stands, or at least are said to have one-night-stands, easily gets labelled as a whore, of cheap. And it’s about sexual assaults, and how they are easily labeled as “reciprocal sex” if the girl/woman has a rumour for sleeping around.
These kinds of lectures always leave me thinking a lot, mostly about how terrible the world is. Middle- and High-school teachers tell their female students that guys pinching their asses is just a childish way of flirting, and that it’s meant tp be a compliment. And girls who dare speak up against it gets labelled as lesbian, “tight” (not in the good “ay, we tight, bro”-way…) and boring. Sometimes even a-sexual, meaning not having any interest in sex – Anti-sexual.
On the other hand: The girls who flirt with these guys, maybe even has a couple of boyfriends, or makes-out with guys sometimes at parties gets the blame for it if they get raped or assaulted in any other way.
How is this fair?
I believe in Simone deBeauvoir when she says that you’re not born a woman, you become one. I believe that society tries to shape girls and women to fit in the mould of “The Perfect Woman”. Not too flirty, not too out-spoken, pretty and insecure.
I have never fit into this mould, because my mother told me to speak my opinions, say no if I didn’t want it, say yes if I did want something, and just generally to be happy with the girl/young woman I am. To this I am thankfull, and I believe that it has made a lot of stuff easier for me. Guys learn quickly not to mess with me, I feel free (most of the time), and I wish that all girls could have this knowledge. A mould isn’t a good thing, because we’re all different, and we should let ourselves be different. And society should learn to accept these differences.
And most importantly: We have to respect ourselves and each other, in order for guys to respect us. Don’t call your girlfriends whores, or your “less-masculine” friends gay. Don’t speak down to a girl because she chooses to have sex, the same way you shouldn’t speak down to girls who chooses NOT to have sex. These are individual choices to be made my the individual person.
I think that was it from the soapbox for this time…
-Frida