[watch this video] Tropes vs. Women: #6 The Straw Feminist

[unjapanologist]

Via Sociological Images, original Feminist Frequency post with extra links here. I want to keep a dedicated little video-playing device in my pocket just so I can show this to every person who utters the phrase "I'm not a feminist, but" or wants me to justify my calling myself a feminist because "most" feminists are, you know, you know?

Also, this line:

"Women lying about sexual assault is a grossly overused myth. Women generally don’t put themselves through the social shame of admitting assault for petty personal revenge."

The comments at both posts are worth a look. There's a bunch of people trying to discredit parts of the video by going "But here is a link to a self-identified feminist really saying that overblown thing", but the commenters talking about womanism and not insisting that everyone on the planet should identify with feminism make an important point.


Tropes vs. Women: #6 The Straw Feminist (Anita Sarkeesian)

On an unrelated note, when I went to grab the embed code, it turned out I'd accidentally set YouTube's interface to Dutch instead of English. It took me two minutes to locate 'embed'. I'm always amazed at the way familiar websites suddenly turn utterly bewildering when I view them in my native language instead of the one I'm used to viewing them in.

Comments

[angrymermaids]

That's an awesome video. I want it to be required viewing at my ridiculously conservative college.

Anyway, the Y The Last Man example makes a little bit more sense in context, I think (though I've only read the first two volumes). From what I've read, the Daughters of the Amazon were a tiny, weird fringe group before half the Earth's population died. But after the collapse of society, most of the members were looking for little more than a strong group to protect them and ended up getting brainwashed, essentially. So it may not be the most typical example of a pointless Straw Feminist. Buuuut I should probably find a way to read the rest of the series.

[unjapanologist]

Ah, that does make more sense. Framing is important, etc etc. Would you recomment Y The Last Man? I've been thinking of reading more comics again.

(Have I added you here on DW? I don't think so. Will fix.) (Oh wait, I did. Remembering things is hard.)

[angrymermaids]

I can recommend the first two volumes; they were quite excellent. I can't speak for any of the others since I haven't read them, though. The public library in my town is very very disappointing.

[foxinthestars]

Thank you for linking this!

(As a newbie to your DW, may I also just say that your userpic wins everything?)

[unjapanologist]

Hee, thanks ;) Though I doubt Ms Rice would like me creating derivative works of her pearls of wisdom. Welcome!

[sevilemar]

Hm, my definition of feminist was always more along the lines of "believes in equal rights and actively works to achieve it", which is why I didn't call myself feminist. But I guess "actively works to achieve it" can be interpreted in so many different ways as there are people on this planet, so, probably too vague? Have to think this over. Thanks for linking.

[unjapanologist]

There's about a million definitions of feminism, I suppose. For what it's worth, for me personally, it's always been about beliefs first and activism second. I've gotten the impression that most people in my environment seem to agree with that. Most of the time when I'm actively talking about and participating in projects that are clearly labeled "feminist" is online. Still, people I only interact with offline call me a feminist simply because I've actually mentioned feminism in a positive way a couple of times, not because they've seen me do anything "activist".