My Feminism Is Radically Inclusive
Sep. 30th, 2016 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingTwo days ago I posted a Peach/Bowser commission to Tumblr (and it's really cute). It got a few dozen notes, which is nice, but in less than 48 hours it's reached the point at which the note count is now falling, and the hit count for the piece on AO3 it's meant to illustrate did not rise at all. In other words, it's a small niche thing that makes no one but me happy, and that's okay, because I am very happy.
Yesterday afternoon I got a series of messages from a prominent femslash artist in the Zelda fandom who wanted to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I can't call myself a radical feminist if I promote "abusive m/f ships." Because I work ten hours a day and don't have time for this sort of nonsense, I didn't respond to her, but what I wanted to say is that I don't identify as a radical feminist. And this is weird, because my politics are fairly radical...
I also have radical views concerning dismantling the prison system entirely, naturalizing immigrants, setting up better infrastructures for public transportation and solar energy, regulating the lobbies surrounding the food industry, and establishing protections for queer, transgender, and nonbinary people.
When it comes to who ships what, though, holy fuck do I ever not give a shit.
Yesterday afternoon I got a series of messages from a prominent femslash artist in the Zelda fandom who wanted to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I can't call myself a radical feminist if I promote "abusive m/f ships." Because I work ten hours a day and don't have time for this sort of nonsense, I didn't respond to her, but what I wanted to say is that I don't identify as a radical feminist. And this is weird, because my politics are fairly radical...
- Capital punishment needs to be abolished immediately.
- Local police forces need to be demilitarized immediately.
- The sale of marijuana needs to be decriminalized immediately.
- The prison system needs to be deprivatized immediately.
- All political prisoners need to be released immediately.
- Undergraduate student loans need to be forgiven immediately.
- American subsidies to the Israeli military need to cease immediately.
I also have radical views concerning dismantling the prison system entirely, naturalizing immigrants, setting up better infrastructures for public transportation and solar energy, regulating the lobbies surrounding the food industry, and establishing protections for queer, transgender, and nonbinary people.
When it comes to who ships what, though, holy fuck do I ever not give a shit.
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Date: 2016-09-30 02:22 pm (UTC)Ps: let me repeat that i fully agree that OP was being rude, unless, idk, the art in question was posed as radfem art, which. It. was. not.
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Date: 2016-09-30 03:48 pm (UTC)Although this isn't an excuse, please understand that unprovoked personal attacks on Tumblr tend to put me in an extremely unpleasant state of mind that is not conducive to intellectual exchange. There is a time and place for productive debate, but the comments section of a 300-word post expressing my frustration with becoming an unwilling target of online "activist" aggression is probably not it, at least not for me. I'm extremely lucky to have an interlocutor like you, but goddamn the internet makes me pigheaded and nearsighted sometimes.
I do want to write more about the difference between "progressive," "radical," and "revolutionary" stances and their relation to contemporary feminisms in the United States, though. Basically, I had thought the positions I expressed above were merely "progressive," but after talking with a number of high-profile "radical" writers and activists over the past week I've come to realize that I myself am more "radical" than I had assumed. Obviously this deserves its own post, which I unfortunately didn't have time to write before I reacted in anger to the most recent drama on Tumblr.
My ongoing attempts to negotiate my personal relationship to the evolution of the self-applied label "radical feminist" as it exists in the specific context of online Tumblr fandom are an entirely different matter, though. Symbolic representation is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and it's bizarre and a bit upsetting to find myself at such odds with other feminists in what seems to have become an increasingly polarized conversation. Because this is an ongoing process for me, I should probably say for the record that such posts are probably not the best forum for discursive pushback.
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Date: 2016-09-30 09:03 pm (UTC):)
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Date: 2016-09-30 09:11 pm (UTC)Also: my somewhat curt comment via phone was a note of support-concern: even tho u went into ignore mode (I would have too) won't win an argument with ppl on that topic when your argument has an easy to refute thing they can hang on thus making it even more and more about their point rather than, u know, what in hell is that accusation even trying to do bc ... It was unasked for and just sorta rude. :(
And honestly, one can be a radfem and still work with power imbalances in fiction bc that's how some ppl unpack power imbalance in a safe (fictional, theatre) space. Anyhow, I am all about talking about how radfem and power play DO go together.
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Date: 2016-09-30 09:42 pm (UTC)Tumblr is satan's anus. No one deserves that brand of bullshit.