With Such Words
some and sundry things of interest
I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.
Isaac Asimov (via skinnybaras)
“Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”
True of many people I work with, really.
(via wallflowersperk)
One thing about Isaac Asimov: he loved to write mysteries but he wasn’t very good at them. If you ever want to feel clever, read an Asimov mystery. You can outsmart a genius.
(via alexandraerin)
I love this!
(via thedarkchocolatedandy)
(via madithefreckled)
There is consternation at Wikipedia over the discovery that hundreds of novelists who happen to be female were being systematically removed from the category “American novelists” and assigned to the category “American women novelists.”
[…]
The debate that broke out when Filipacchi’s opinion piece appeared is still running, and the issue appears to be more general and pervasive than most had originally thought. Throughout Wikipedia, in all kinds of categories, women and people of nonwhite ethnicities are assigned only to their subcategories. Maya Angelou is in African-American writers, African-American women poets, and American women poets, but not American poets or American writers. Many editors are saying that people need to be “bubbled up” to their parent categories.
(Source: , via gender-and-science)
This couple got wedding rings with the waveform of their own voices saying, “I do.”
(via icarus-suraki)
(Source: trugazi, via thewaroffivequeens)
The great thing about transmisogynistic feminism is that it’s really easy to build a movement that attempts to reduce women to genitalia. There already is one! It’s called “patriarchy.”
(via thewaroffivequeens)
Cersei Lannister is not a feminist, but is still interesting from a feminist perspective: a short essay.
Alright, full disclosure: I have only seen the show for Game of Thrones. I know, I know, bad fan. I need to read the books. Bear in mind that everything I’m about to say is based solely on my interpretation of the SHOW. Thank you.So, Cersei Lannister.
I’m going to start by saying that I LOVE Cersei. I think she’s super interesting, super complex, multi-faceted, and a wonderful example of how to write good antagonistic female characters without being gut wrenchingly sexist in the process. She’s not a good person, but she is a well written and often sympathetic one.
That being said: Cersei Lannister herself is not a feminist.
She basically says it herself. The gods have decided that men should rule the world. Cersei believes that. She accepts that. She simply resents the fact that she was born a woman. When we talk about “internalized misogyny”, Cersei is a textbook example. She truly seems to believe that women are inherently weak, and curses the gods for making her one of them. If only she had been born a man.
But this, of course, makes perfect sense for her character, and really says a lot about Patriarchy is Westeros.
Cersei was raised by men and around men. Remember that her mother died in childbirth with Tyrion. She had no strong female role models, no women to show her that women have strength and worth beyond all the sexist gender roles thrust on her. No one taught her about sisterhood, or supporting other women. She was a product of patriarchy alone.
No, she was raised by her father, surrounded by men, and raised to believe that all the gender roles pushed on her were inherent. Just look at how she and Jaime were raised. Here we have two kids who, as children, are nearly identical, and yet Jaime was pushed to have power, to be a knight. Cersei was taught to knit and to make babies. Cersei resents that. Of course she does.
Look at her marriage to Robert: emotionally and physically abused, compared to a dead girl, cheated on*. She is completely disempowered. She can not take power in the “normal” male channels because of her gender, unlike Dany, she has no dragons or armies to help her. And she does not recognize (like Margaery) how to cull power from female channels. Of course she is angry and struggling and manipulative, trying to grab at the power she can. How else can she protect herself from Robert and everyone who wants to see her and her children dead?
No one ever told Cersei that these gender roles are wrong, that they can be challenged. She learned them all, and then believed “But I’m not like that. I’m not like OTHER women.” Rather than seeing the flaws in the system, she saw herself as an exception.
This, of course, is a very relatable thing. I myself spent a good part of my teenage years thinking that I “wasn’t like MOST girls.” After all, I liked to read, and watch anime, and didn’t give a fuck about make-up. It wasn’t until college and an exploration of feminism that I was able to unlearn that misogyny.
Cersei hasn’t unlearned it yet.
She’s not a feminist, but as a feminist, I think she’s a really interesting character to watch. Here is the effect of patriarchy and internalized misogyny. Here is the outcome of women being taught and socialized to hate and distrust other women. And what a commentary that is.
What do yall think though?
You make all the good arguments, and I think that the only reason why Cersei is not a feminist, is because she doesn’t know the word feminism, nor is it a theoretical concept that exists in the world of GoT.
As someone who is a feminist, but doesn’t consider herself part of a feminist “movement” (I learned about feminism by growing up and educating myself by listening to women, not through lectures at college; I actually have a few issues with college feminism), I don’t think feminism belongs just to those who call themselves feminists.
I think feminism belongs to ALL women.
Yes, Cersei is a textbook example of internalized misogyny. I just learned that apparently in the fourth book of ASOIAF she even sleeps with a woman in order to know “what it’s like to be a man” (whose pocket can I vomit into, please?).
I would say, however, that the pure wish and her personal fight to be considered equal to men—regardless of HOW she approaches this—makes her a feminist.
She knows the concept of oppression, and she knows that she’s oppressed because she’s a woman. She knows about how fucked up the gender roles in her society are. She wants to break out of that—not for all women, just for herself. If she’d get the chance, she’d climb on the iron throne herself in a second.
I don’t think it’s fair to hold her up to standards of a world she doesn’t belong to, and will never belong to. She’ll never get the chance to read up on feminism. But if given the chance, maybe she would go the same way Brienne did. She did say she wanted to be raised like her brothers.
And bear in mind that Brienne didn’t have a real choice, either. It was either being an ugly wench for the rest of her days, or trying to make the best of what her body will get her. Same goes for any other woman on the show. They all don’t actually choose. Not even Dany, whose first sexual encounter was rape, and whose knowledge about power is that only violence will get her anything.
My understanding of feminism is that I always have to ask: How free is our will actually? How were my personal choices shaped by misogyny/sexism? Am I the product of my experiences? More often than not I have to come to the conclusion that free will stands on very wobbly feet when sexism is everywhere.
So, while you make some good points, I don’t think you can apply our understanding of feminism (as far as “our” exists in that context) to women who live in a different time, in a different universe.
College education is worth shit in a world in which college doesn’t exist.
Is Cersei Lannister a feminist the same way I’m a feminist? No!
Is she less of a feminist because she deals with the shit she’s given her own way, and tries to keep herself and her children alive while navigating through a misogynistic world that will KILL her for any misstep?
No!
Characters can be feminist without knowing what feminism IS. I was an existentialist long before I knew the word.
I think the difference in our reading boils down to “what is a feminist.”
For me, Feminism is about dismantling the scaffoldings of oppression that support gender inequality in our culture. Feminists are people who choose to challenge that system of gender inequality and want to dismantle it. The belief that “the system is flawed” is central to this.
I don’t see Cersei trying to do that. She doesn’t seem to find flaw in the system. The “gods see fit” for men to be in charge. Cersei sees the flaw with HERSELF. She was born a woman, and that isn’t fair. She’s “different” from other women in her own view, and that isn’t a feminist sort of belief.
She contributes to the sexism against other women (like Sansa.) And yes, she understands oppression and how she is disempowered for being a woman, but I don’t see her challenging the system.
She doesn’t want to see the system changed, she wants to be the exception to it. Not all women who think THEY should be an exception are really feminists in my opinion. To take a real with example: Margret Thatcher was super anti-women in her policies, despite being a woman who was ‘an exception’ and in power.
Cersei fights for her OWN power, but not in a way that makes her a feminist. YES, a wonderful, strong, interesting, complex female character. But you can be a wonderful, strong, complex, interesting female character without being a feminist.
Cersei is not a feminist by simple virtue of the fact that she does not care about anyone but herself. In Cersei’s mind, it’s unacceptable for any man to subject her to physical or sexual abuse, but other women deserve to be raped because she dislikes them.
Calling her feminist is the height of degradation of the feminist movement, because Cersei does not other women to have power. She wants herself to have power, and lacks the basic empathy that is the core tenet of feminism. She’s as much of a feminist as transmisogynists and racists: which is to say, not at all.
(via thewaroffivequeens)
Okay, so I’m not sure why but for some reason there are a ton, a TON, of Princess Batman costumes, possibly more than the standard Batgirl costume. They come in 2 different flavors, bumblebee and hot pink. So, I’m just making one big Super Princess Batman compilation post (alternatively Ballerina Batman since those fluffy skirts can be ambiguous).
Don’t ask which Robin that is because I cannot keep track of all the dang Robins at this point… “Stephanie Carrie Graydrake-Waynetodd”
Source of all photos:
deantrippe, girlslovesuperheroes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), sparklysushi, donkeysalright, cosplayingwhileblack, little white lion.
my-stereo-heart-beats-for-you:
THIS IS THE BEST RESPONSE TO ONE OF THESE ICEBERG THINGIES
(Source: fuckyeahviralpics, via madithefreckled)
