A Dyke A Broad #27 The Random Thoughts Edition
On women and books, and women and bikes, and an appeal to your feminist brain ...
Hello from Paris!
Where I’m delighted that someone took the time to draw my portrait, even including my new post-Covid eating habits!
Appeal to Your Feminist Brain
I’m thinking about writing A Brief Guide to Feminism. (Or Feminism for Dummies or Feminism 101).
I’d like to start by making a list of ten things people should know about feminism. What should be on it? I’m counting on your help.
So…? Your thoughts…? You can always email me if you’re feeling shy.
Rabbit Hole #1 Women and Bikes
After several summery days followed by freezing gloom we’ve hit the happy medium of chilly sunshine in which you still want to eat hot oatmeal for breakfast, but maybe with raspberries on top instead of apple compote. In other parts of France, farmers are lighting fires in their fields and vineyards to keep the delicate blooms from freezing—with varying degrees of success.
Every two or three days I hop on my borrowed bicycle and explore the nearby Paris bike paths, discovering to my horror that they suddenly shift from two-way to one-way, “RING-RING!” “Whoops! When did that happen?” (Glances around in befuddlement.) “Oh, I see. Shit.” You really have to be aware not just of traffic crossings, but signals that could be faintly painted on the ground, stuck on signposts to the side or above. Or not there at all. Like women bicyclists.
I mean, there are some, but there’s nowhere near parity. Because the yawning sex-gap is everywhere.
For women, it often has to do with how we travel, doing what they call trip-chaining to run errands. Which means you have to be able to deal with parcels, and children. And ease of parking. Not to mention safety as bicyclists and safety as women. To read more about why, check out Women love bikes—so why don’t they cycle to work?
I won’t even tell you the hours I’ve spent trying to identify a bike in my price range that will actually fit me. Partly because though I am an average height for a woman, I have short legs which in bike terms seems to translate into extra-small—which no one produces. Am I really gonna have to go for a kid’s bike? Or get stuck with an S which might be too big? Argh.
Rabbit Hole #2 The Female Man
I’ve also been putting the finishing touches on the reprint of the Lesbian Avenger Handbook: A Handy Guide to Homemade Revolution.
I keep being amazed by how practical, and forthright, and funny it is. I remember when activists used to be practical. And funny. Not because there was less at stake. Perhaps because so much was. And how else could you bear it? Or bear yourself? My own angry voice even bores me.
Thank god for snark, which this week came courtesy of a paying subscriber (See, there are benefits! Upgrade now to make your own request!)
Anyway, at her request, I’ve started (re)reading Joanna Russ’s, The Female Man.
It’s a very peculiar book with several shifting female narrators, one in the 1970’s present. Three others from alternative times and worlds. Time travel is a thing, and it is arranged that they visit each other’s realities.
The first time I dipped my toes in, a couple decades ago, I thought the book was boring, but also off-puttingly strange. I couldn’t keep track of the narrators. I also completely missed the satire in which Russ savagely spelled out the subtext of male and female interactions, underlining their codified (and artificial) nature.
Like in that scene at a typical New York City house party where the character Janet (from an all-woman world) refuses her male host’s demand for a good-bye kiss—because she didn’t feel like it. No matter that her local female guide told her it was customary and he tried to coerce her with insults and shame.
“What’sa matter, you some kinda prude?” he said and enfolding us in his powerful arms, et cetera—well, not so very powerful as all that, but I want to give you the feeling of the scene. If you scream, people say you’re melodramatic; if you submit, you’re masochistic; if you call names, you’re a bitch. Hit him and he’ll kill you. The best thing is to suffer mutely and yearn for a rescuer, but suppose the rescuer doesn’t come?
And when you resist, the responses are so clichéd the narrator remarks there must be a little limp blue volume they give out to boys in high school.
“WHAT TO DO IN EVERY SITUATION. “Bitch!” (flip flip flip) “Prude!” (flip flip) “Ball-breaker!”
When he keeps insisting Janet finally breaks his arm.
Sitting there out of context, this passage doesn’t seem so funny. It reminds me of that time I was saying goodbye to this straight guy I’d had over to our very lesbiany house for brunch along with his female partner whom I’d adored, and instead of a goodbye peck on my cheek, he grabbed me and stuck his tongue down my throat.
I shoved him away, but didn’t scream or protest or anything. Because nobody else noticed, and I was so shocked, still in hostess mode. And somehow ashamed. All I did was avoid him for a few years. Though even now I wished I’d punched his face, kicked his nuts, broken his arm. Some lesbian avenger I am.
Anyway, to get back to the book, it really is painfully hilarious in context—at least as far as I’ve gotten. Though I still can’t keep track of the narrators.
Rabbit Hole #3
Another paying subscriber sent me down a different rabbit hole, encouraging me to google things like "Gender presentation in relation to reproductive strategies.” Wondering if in fact there were any benefits.
The Google algorithm gave me as top response this gem from 2006 quoting a POS from 2003…
In a competitive market, high-quality males (with a healthy immune system) may find that they are in high demand and can potentially contribute less paternal investment, especially when considering partnership with a low-quality female. If a low-quality female wishes to secure a more genetically fit male's genes for her offspring, she could opt to settle for a short-term sexual relationship with him and sacrifice other benefits such as long-term financial support and paternal care for her offspring (Little & Hancock 2002; Penton-Voak et al. 2003).
Yikes. There are so many cultural assumptions in this one pseudo-scientific paragraph that my head nearly exploded, not to mention the phrase, “low-quality female”. Really? I know it’s from fifteen years ago, but that’s the best jargon you could come up with…? And to think it’s still being cited…?
I didn’t get very far with that pursuit.
There were just so many people in the search results excitedly making largely irrelevant comparisons between human trans people and sex-changing fish and yeasts and molds that I felt really sorry for them. The humans, I mean.
Not that there has to be a purpose to transness, just that evolutionary scientists often look at aspects of our behaviors like that to see if there is one. And my pal’s questions made me curious. I did notice this article though, about the idea of play. Evolutionary scientists have always speculated that it was useful in terms of development. Apparently not so much. Not everything is useful. Or should be.
Ultra Random Things from Twitter
That moment when a writer totally captures your reality.
And something that is pure pleasure, because, why not?
And Meet the Latest Member of our Family
Well, that's it for this week.
One last appeal for your thoughts on what should be included in a Feminism 101 type thing…
Disgruntledly yours,
“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest. But the frogs die in earnest.” The Female Man