Katze mit Wut

I have a 4 gig USB stick
it's exactly the right colour
to go with my skin tone
and it has a little ring
so I can put it on a silver chain around my neck
let it dangle just above my breasts
I wanna store my soul in it
just in case
I wonder whether 4 gig's enough for a soul

As you see from the picture, I was going to write about this NHS campaign that says that 1 out of 3 women who were raped (by men) were intoxicated at the time, trying to imply that alcohol made you unsafe, but really only saying that you're twice as safe drunk as you are sober. This neglects to ask what the rapists were on, and fails to acknowledge that if all women stopped drinking that would just mean that 3 out of 3 women who were raped (by men) were sober — this would again imply that you're safer drunk. Using a fraction rather than an absolute number of cases is rubbish. Much more so when you cannot prove that that 1-in-3 state or lack thereof had any bearing on the event anyway. (All rapes already do have one well-known common denominator though: the presence of a rapist!) Consequently, this seems more about diverting the attention from the rapist and towards "better ways of blaming the victim." Way to go.

But as you see, many clever women beat me to it, so you'll get a best of various articles review instead. So sioux me.

Twisty has a good article on an article which tries to pit a sexy-fun woman against a "no sex till marriage" "feminist" that points out that they're not really opposites since, you know, they're both still defined in terms of sex. I don't think there can be a more succinct illustration of the concept of a sex class.

But first, there's my Don't hate me because I'm beauti-- er, thin — reloaded (and, alas, in German), wherein happens much blaming and questions such as, Why are people so concerned with whether young women pick skinny models as, well, role-models, when the question is why they choose models at all? are asked. Part of the problem of course being that as a member of the sex class, you do not get to opt out of the hawtness contest entirely. More so when these days, you exist to the degree that you exist in the media and your primary currency (as a member of the sex class) is self-pornification.

When the white male is the default human being, the standard, you're set up to fail at that standard. When by those standards the only thing males aren't supposedly better at is "female hotness", the results are somewhat predictable. In the same vein, twisty has this on feminity:

Behold the neat trick. First, you make women act like simpletons, broodmares, janitors, mannequins, and sex slaves before you grant them social approval. You call this behavior “femininity” and explain that it is their essential nature, and that any deviation from the program will be punished. Then you infantilize and ridicule the ones who get it right, and vilify and abuse the ones who get it wrong (you can also vilify and abuse the ones who get it right, because, let’s be honest; the world is your oyster).

With so much riding on it, whether femininity is performed right or wrong is an issue of enormous concern to women. That’s where the Empowerful Pink Marketing Juggernaut comes in.

and

Femininity is a set of practices and behaviors (boob jobs, FGM, "beauty"™, the "veil"™, the flirty head-tilt, pornaliciousness, BDSM, fashion, compulsory pregnancy, marriage, et al) that are dangerous, painful, pink, or otherwise destructive; that compel female subordination; […] that are overwhelmingly represented by ‘girly’ feminists as a ‘choice’; and that are overwhelmingly represented by [conservatives] as ‘natural instincts’. In fact these practices and behaviors are nothing but inviolable cultural traditions in abject compliance with which comfort, contentment, and personal fulfillment are [available], and from which deviation is discouraged by the threat of ingenious punishments ranging from diminished social influence, to unemployability, to ridicule, to imprisonment, to rape, to murder, to the policing of feminist blogs. […] The flipside […] of the concept of femininity as-self-policed-subordination is femininity as-survival-skill.

Another fallacy is to assume that just because the feminine role is problematic, the masculine role isn't. Patriarchy hurts everyone — just to different degrees, depending on your intersection of privilege (based on race, sex and gender, wealth, age, …).

I think transcending those (false) dichotomies may be a good way to an epiphany or two.