feminism

Let Me Take A Selfie

Ania Onion Bula, , , , , Leave a comment

A few years ago, I participated in one of the Facebook status games. The point of the game was to reveal something about yourself, something that some people might not know or that you think they should know. Among the list, I included that I struggled with fairly severe body image issues. A friend of mine responded that she was surprised to learn that because she always believed me to be very confident. Since I have a tendency to hide my body, even as a nudist, and a tendency to show discomfort around my appearance, I was quite surprised to learn that she believed me to be confident. I asked her why she thought so and she replied: Yours always posting pictures of yourself.

It wasn’t meant as a criticism of me, it wasn’t meant to shame me, and it was simply an observation. I post pictures of myself, I take several pictures of myself, so therefore I must be confident.

As a culture, we’ve created this idea that selfies are a sign of vanity, and we are terrified of vanity. So much so, that we have built an entire culture predicated on teaching everyone to hate their appearance. We create impossible standards and then tell everyone that regardless of circumstance we must achieve it and maintain it. We’ve so thoroughly pervaded our social bias towards people who fall outside the “acceptable standards of beauty” that we as a society no longer treat them as fully human. Perversely, in an attempt to avoid the appearance of vanity we have instead created a cultural obsession towards an obsessive hatred of one’s self.

Ultimately, that is all that vanity is. It is an appreciation for one’s own appearance. It is a love for what you see when you look at yourself. It is a comfort in your own skin. Yes, excessive vanity can be dangerous, just like excess in anything is dangerous. But vanity, by itself? It is an act of self-love.

But selfies? They’re not an expression of vanity, they are a lifeline that reminds myself that I am not worthless. That I am not hideous. It is what allows me to replace my internal image of myself from one of loathing to one of acceptance. Because I don’t love how I look. I hate it. I can’t look in the mirror without desperately wanting to cut off some pieces of myself. Without wondering how anyone can possibly be attracted to me, and wondering if every sexual interaction I’ve ever had was a lie. My body, my appearance, was the weapon used to cut at my psyche over and over and over again. I was told it was the reason I was alone.

Those words, those cuts to my self-esteem are part of the reason why I let myself be taken in by users and abusers when I went out into the dating world. It was the excuse for every negative interaction with people I was interested in. They’re the reason that I sat like this, to avoid my rolls showing up through my shirt, because then people would think of me as fat.

Ania at 14 sitting with her back arched so as to not show any bulges

It is what made me think for years that the girl in this picture was fat.

Ania at 13 standing in front of the Notre Dame

Then I figured out that if I was careful I could take pictures that highlighted the few things that I do like about myself. The contrast of my features against my sk

Ania in a black tank top
in, the darkness of my hair, the colour of my eyes, all things I could appreciate about myself. They were things that let me believe that I had value, that I was worthy of love. Especially in this world that goes out of its way to tell me the opposite. These pictures, these pictures that are used to mock my vanity, to mock the very hutzpah of daring to love even the smallest part of myself when I am so far from perfect. Because how dare I. How dare I?

Older picture of Ania
How dare I look to myself for validation when the world teaches me that I should rely on the approval of men, regardless of whether I have any interest in their approval. How dare I not be grateful for the compliment that men deign to bestow on me, regardless of whether I want them, or whether they make me feel unsafe and like a target. The one that tells me that I am never allowed to refuse an advance because I’m ugly and so they are doing me a favour my being with me and tells me I am not allowed to have standards.

So no, I don’t need you to tell me that I am pretty. Because I have my selfie, so that I can tell myself what I need to hear.

Because that’s what they are. They’re selfies, and they have nothing to do with you.

 

Let Me Take A Selfie
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Wibbly-Wobbly Gendery Bendery

Ania Onion Bula, Leave a comment

CN: Possible TMI and includes very private thoughts. Read at own risk. Comments will be heavily moderated.

It is funny how one little thing can make memories come crashing back. When Alyssa and I first got together, we spent some time sharing our deep dark secrets. Throughout the course of this sharing I told Alyssa that as a child I used to imagine that I had a penis. That one revelation began a process of bringing up memories over the next few years.

Suddenly I remembered that I didn’t just imagine this. I would lie awake imagining it. In fact I couldn’t fall asleep until I did.

From a fairly early age I was obsessed with sex and gender roles. A majority of the stories I made up as a child was of girls escaping the expectations of society by dressing up as a man. I would play at this. I desperately didn’t want to identify with what I saw of being “femme”. I hated pink, I bragged about my love for science. I took femmephobia to the extreme and was quite literally a chill girl that saw myself as a feminist. I wanted to reject all that was female about me.

As is my habit, I worked through a lot of this stuff through my writing. Even though my characters often dressed up as men, they often explored their sexuality as women. The ability to switch back and forth intrigued me, although always in a presenting way. My mind never explored the possibilities open in magic of being able to completely switch. It wasn’t until I met Alyssa that I was able to even consider that possibility.

In my own pretend games, I would often lead the games into situations where our dolls or characters had romantic partners. I would find some excuse to get to play “my character’s” romantic partner. On more than one occasion I employed stuffed animals, socks, and other methods to stuff my pants to indicate that in that moment I was male.

Eventually my characters, like myself, began exploring the possibility that one could be female and confound gender roles. I explored strong womanhood, and pride in womanhood. Looking at myself through the eyes of one of my main characters, Katsyandra, allowed me to embrace a part of myself that I had felt distant from: my womanhood.

Telling Alyssa about my old thoughts, brought them roaring back. I found myself masturbating to the idea of having a penis. After some time the thoughts stopped being a nightly thing, but they would crop up from time to time. I also began noticing that there were times where I identified myself male in some of my fantasies.

I didn’t know what this meant. I wondered for some time if I was really a trans man. I considered the possibility and tried on male pronouns in my head, but that didn’t quite sit right with me. I had no interest in giving up being a woman. Yes, I sometimes identified as male, but I also identified strongly as being female.

When non binary gender identities began to become more discussed in the communities I belonged to, something resonated. I knew I wasn’t agender: I identified too strongly with genders to think that I was genderless. I felt more like I had a surfeit of gender instead. When I heard the term bi-gender that felt a little closer to the mark. I felt like I identified with both genders. What seemed different however was that it wasn’t a constant thing. I didn’t and don’t really feel a connection with the pronouns They/Theirs, at least not all the time. I didn’t want to be called He/His, at least not all the time. I didn’t mind being called She/Her. But being called Cis didn’t feel right either. I spend too much time desperately wanting a body I do not have, feeling the need to connect with a part of me that I feel isn’t perceived.

So what am I?

I still don’t know. The best I can come up with is that most of the time I am a woman who feels she should have a penis, who is sometimes male, sometimes both male and female at once, and very occasionally neither gender at all. Functionally this doesn’t change much. I am still very much me, and with me barely able to understand my own gender, I am not about to ask anyone to call me pronouns I am unsure I even want yet.

I have been scared to share a lot of this information with people. I am terrified of being accused of being appropriative. Of having people tell me that I am just trying to be part of the cool club. Of calling me a wannabe professional victim. I am terrified that all this is me just trying to be special and that everyone goes through this type of worry and questioning. I am scared that I am lying to myself in some way to avoid facing a hard truth.

My identity right now is genderqueer and fluid, but a more accurate term might be that I am Wibbly-Wobbly Gendery-Bendery.

Wibbly-Wobbly Gendery Bendery

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Ania Onion Bula, , , , 1 Comment

On December 28, 2014, the internet was rocked by the final words of Leelah Alcorn who committed suicide. Leelah took her own life because after revealing herself as Trans to her family, she was systematically abused and tortured until she would give up her identity. Her parents refused her access to treatment that would have helped her body develop in a way in line with her identity. She was isolated from any systems of support and repeatedly told that what she was and who she was, was wrong.

Her final plea was to create a Trans inclusive world where others wouldn’t share her fate.

First a quick introduction to what it means to be Trans: Someone who is transgender was assigned the wrong gender at birth. They weren’t, as is sometimes said in reference to Trans women: “born a boy/male”. They were never boys to begin with. This is not to excuse refusing to accept a trans person’s own narrative. If they chose to speak about their own story in this way, that is their prerogative and not for you or anyone else to argue with.

They go through a process called transitioning where they seek to reclaim their real gender identity through various means. These means may include a change of outward presentation through the use of clothes and jewelry, hormones, surgery, and other such actions. A Trans person may use all, some, or none, of these means, and their use of them is in no way indicative of the “realness” of their identity.

Over the last several days many people have shared her story and there is a push to make the changes that Leelah was hoping for.

I have also seen, however, in the last several days, people sharing memes about how religion killed Leelah. Even a well-known organization, American Atheists, shared her image with quotes from her note. Specifically, only those listing how Christianity was used as an excuse for her torture and abuse. What’s more, while the photo gendered her correctly, there was no mention made of the fact that she was trans. The focus on the picture was entirely on religion’s role.

While there is something to say about the religious enabling that made the bigotry possible, the level of appropriation demonstrated in this picture is sickening and an insult.

While Christianity did play a role in this abuse, it did so as an excuse to justify bigotry not as the cause. Religiously motivated bigotry exists in a chicken-egg state. Which came first the bigoted opinion or the religion that justifies it?

In this case however, the question of which came first is irrelevant. Regardless of their religious affiliation, statistical likelihood is that they would have reacted badly to her coming out. It is true that they employed their religion as a tool for their abuse, but it was not the only tool available to them. Our culture is pervaded with transmisogyny and trans antagonism. Men in dresses continue to be a major source of amusement. Gender identity is still struggling to be recognized legally as a protected right/class from discrimination. The murder of trans women is not recognized as a crime in the court system, let alone as a hate crime.

Being non-religious doesn’t prevent you from being trans antagonistic or trans misogynistic. There have been many examples within our own atheist communities. You can be an atheist and be a bigot. The two are not mutually exclusive. The graphic borrowing Leelah’s words, while denying her identity and her ultimate goal, implies heavily that that is in fact the case.

This is particularly dishonest, since American Atheists recently made headlines over asserting publicly that being pro-life and atheist are not mutually exclusive.
The purpose of the graphic was to harness the outrage over Leelah’s death and point it instead at a goal of their choosing. A goal that is not the one that Leelah gave her life in pursuit of. They are taking advantage of her death to persuade their cause. They do so with no indication or proof that their goals in any way change the lives of trans people for the better.

Let me lay down a few terrifying statistics for you:

  • The Average Lifespan of Trans women is 30. The most common causes of death are murder and suicide.
  • The ‘trans panic defence’ is the defence used by murderers of trans people for killing trans people. The defense is literally: “They were trans” and that is deemed a good enough excuse for taking someone’s life.
  • Trans youth and Queer youth make up the largest demographic of homeless youth. In the US and Canada between 40-50% of homeless youth identify with at least one letter of QUILTBAG. That percentage is higher in more conservative states.

Making atheism more accepted in the mainstream, and possibly even encouraging more people to become atheists, in no way does anything to address those statistics. This is especially the case when the organization refuses to admit that social justice concerns have a place within atheism: to wit their association with known anti-feminists, their assertion that being anti-choice is not against “atheist values”, and other such examples from their own recent history.

(EDIT: I have been told that Leelah called herself an atheist in public.Here is verification. Even if true, it doesn’t excuse the rest)) What makes this an even more shameless appropriation of the outrage at Leelah’s death is the fact that there is NO INDICATION THAT LEELAH WAS AN ATHEIST! (We don’t know! Perhaps she was, but she could have just as easily been someone who maintained a faith in a god. This appropriation just gives her parents one more fucking excuse for what they did. Her community one more fucking excuse for their bigotry. It makes fighting her fight just that little extra bit harder.

American Atheists owes trans people, and Leelah Alcorn, their apology. In the future they should show their support for trans people not by stealing the attention away from where it belongs, but rather by devoting their own organization towards creating a safer world. Either put up, or shut up.

The End.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

"Dialogue"

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Imagine an abusive family. Imagine a family that at every opportunity does what they can to tear you down. To scream at you and tell you how everything that happens is your fault. Imagine that it gets to the point where you cut off contact with them, block them out of your life. You do this, because every time you speak it ends up with them screaming at you.  It gets to the point where you are afraid to answer the phone on the off chance that it’s them. You watch every word you say or write because you worry it will somehow get back to them and trigger another fight, even if what you are saying had nothing to do with them. They look for excuses to be angry. You have to yell to be heard, but when you raise your voice, you are attacked for being too angry, for not listening, for being too aggressive. You are told to shut up and stop yelling, all the while being yelled at.

You cut them off, except cutting them off doesn’t give you any peace. They manage to get in touch with you through someone else. Someone they have convinced that they want to talk to resolve things. The person urges you to make up with them. After all family is family and it is not good to be divisive. You want to agree; you want to hope that this time finally you can have an honest discussion about everything that has gone wrong, on how their actions have made you feel. You want this to be over. You want your anxiety to end, and go back to talking about the things you both care about instead of being called names. But you also remember the last time they promised to work things out, when the dialogue ended up being nothing more than an excuse to yell at you some more. To tear you down just a little bit further. So you ask for a show of good faith; something small, but something to show that they are sincere. Or maybe something not that small, but something that has to be done for any resolution to take place. But they aren’t willing to make that sacrifice. Because it is not about resolution, it is about further abuse. It is about getting the chance to yell at you and abuse you further, but in a new location; a location, where if you don’t show up, you are accused of being the unreasonable one. It is nothing more than an attempt to get at you again; to circumvent your attempts to cut them out of your life for the sake of your health, or peace.

Abusers know how to make themselves look like the good guy. They convince everyone else that you are ungrateful, a liar. They trot out edited or incomplete versions of stories to explain how you are a troublemaker and really, they are the ones that are wounded and they are just trying to make peace for everyone’s sake. When you show other people the examples of the harmful things they’ve done to you, they insist it is out of context. They explain how it was all a misunderstanding and all you need to do is talk about it to make it all better. And there is nothing you can do, because it is physically impossible to bear your wounded heart. It is impossible to show everyone the scars that exist in unseen places; the anxiety, the depression, the despair. Even if they catch a glimpse of it, it is not the full story. Unless they have gone through the same thing, they cannot understand the pain and the hurt that comes with that kind of abuse and so they accuse you. They accuse you of being stubborn, divisive. For fairness sake, they grant that some of what might have happened to you is unfair, but they take “the middle ground”. All this, not understanding that there is no middle ground, because they compare an amputation, a fatal wound, to a paper cut and call you both equally injured.

Now instead of a family, imagine that this is a community. Imagine it is a group where you found acceptance for believing something different then everyone else. Imagine that this community talked about the persecution they faced for this common belief. They welcomed you and told you that they understood your pain. You felt so thrilled about the acceptance that you opened up. You talked about the problems you had because of your faith and they accepted you. You talked about the problems you faced because of people who denied reason and evidence and they accepted you. And then you talked about the problems that you have because of your gender identity, or your race, or your income level, and they shunned you. They shunned you and accused you of making it up. They yelled at you for being divisive when you point out how people in this very community sometimes treated you differently or badly because of things beyond your control. You think, they must have misunderstood, you don’t want to blame someone, you just wanted to offer suggestions on how to make this better.  But it didn’t matter. By bringing it up, you opened the doors. They no longer saw you as one of them and so they derided you. The screamed at your and harassed you. They sent others who thought like them to harass you. They screamed at you, they spread rumours about you and insulted you. While they did this they told everyone about how you had created a division in the group. They mentioned how you were spreading untrue stories about your oppression. They called you professional victim. They covered their tracks like abusers do. They smiled their way into people’s trust.  Then when you cut them off, when you finally said enough, they talked about how you were destroying the movement.  They convinced people that you were looking for attention. And then you insinuated that you would be willing to make up, to “have a dialogue’, for ‘the good of the movement’.

But this isn’t about dialogue. This isn’t about the good of the movement, or healing the rift. It is a chance to further harass you. To further show you that they can push you around and out of the movement, and still have everyone stay “in the middle”. If you try to defend yourself, you are blamed for being uncooperative, while their continued attempts are shutting you up are ignored or painted as childish pranks. What used to be your source of support is instead a source of anxiety. Your life’s work is mocked and ignored. But you are forced to put up with the harassment in the interest of discussion. Any show of faith you ask for is blown out of proportion.

When you point out that despite the beautiful promises of discourse, the harassment still continues, you are accused of being unfair. The other parties all want to be “neutral”. You are asked to ignore all the spiteful, hateful, in some cases illegal things people do to you in the name of “healing and dialogue”.  Maybe you were too harsh in telling people about your oppression. Maybe you didn’t have it that bad really. Maybe you did want the attention didn’t you, and maybe you exaggerated how bad things were just a little bit; for effect? They don’t realize that their neutrality is nothing more than silent consent, silent legitimization of the abuse you suffer. It is saying your black eye must have been the result of walking into a door at the same time that they ignore you being pushed down the stairs.

Albert Einstein said it best: “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Neutrality is not always the best choice. Not when neutrality means ignoring the suffering of others in favour of false unity. Not when neutrality is hurting those who have not found their voice yet and keeping them from speaking.

"Dialogue"

RANT: A Defence of Divisiveness

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As a movement, secularists and skeptics defend dissent. We don’t just support it; we encourage it in the name of truth. So what is the hypocrisy that suddenly when it comes to dissent in our own movement that we call it divisiveness?

Intersectionality Feminists are called divisive because speaking out about race issues, women’s issues, oppression, brings out the worst in some people. Those people then go out of their way to make people who dare to speak out feel unwelcome. They send threats, post cruel harassing comments, and in some cases release private information for the purpose of stalking and worsening the attacks.

When people defend themselves by calling out the abuse, the reaction is to accuse those self-same people of being divisive, of causing rifts within the movement.

I think we’ve too long let harassers frame the conversation by letting divisiveness be seen as a bad thing.

What is divisiveness but a move to extricate and separate oneself from those who would abuse, harm, or persecute? It is dissent and an unwillingness to accept the status quo. In other words, it is what we as secularists and skeptics do!

It ignores the fact that we as a movement are already divisive. When we identify as atheists we are being divisive. We are dividing ourselves from those who have faith with no evidence. When we identify as evidence-based skeptics we are being divisive. We are dividing ourselves and dissenting against those who would peddle woo and false miracles.  Divisiveness exists with every label. It is not something to be ashamed of and sometimes it is necessary.

Our movement is no longer so small that we have to tolerate abusive elements just to maintain some quota of membership. No longer to we have to grit our teeth to accept those whose morals and values we do not agree with in order to have the support of numbers on our side.

It is time for the atheist, skeptic, secularist movement to decide who we want representing us. What values and morals do we want to be our message to the world? Do we want to be represented by those who would be a force for equality, or do we want to be represented by people who see nothing wrong with threatening women with rape? Those who stand up for other’s whose voice might be silenced, or those who try to silence those self-same voices?

Boycotts are essentially voting with your money and your feet. Everyone has a right to do so, and if enough people do it encourages change.

The difference between someone saying they won’t go to x conference because someone like PZ or Watson are speaking and calling for boycott is honestly just branding. When known harassers raise money to go to conferences to continue their campaign of harassment, or when they are unable to go, call on people to avoid conferences with those self-same speakers, they are doing the same thing. We’ve allowed them to frame the debate however by making it seem as though they are standing up for free speech.

 

RANT: A Defence of Divisiveness

Don't Confuse My Anger for Hate

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“Feminists are just a bunch of man hating bitches. They just think every cis het white male is a terrorist. There go those social justice warriors calling everyone a bad person just for existing. Jeez if you hate humanity that much just go away. Urgh, they just want everyone to be victims just like them.”

If you run in social justice circles, heck, if you’ve ever seen a social justice themed post of any kind, you will probably see some variation of the comments above. The prevailing opinion is that social justice activists hate the world because we call people on ableism, on sexism, racism, transphobia and transmisogyny, on privilege. That we see everyone as a bad person and that’s why we don’t believe that intent matters, because we think everyone is guilty. That our anger is the same thing as hate.

But that’s not the reason for the anger. We’re not angry because we hate the world. Even when we joke about hating the world, it is not actually what we feel. We are angry because we think more highly of the world. We think that human beings, that we, have the capacity to be better. And like someone who really loves someone, we want humanity to be the best them they can be.

I fight so hard, I scream, and cry, and argue, and burn myself out over and over again not because of hate but because of love. I am like a mother fighting for her child. I see all these thing trying desperately to weight down my baby, and I am fighting because I know that they can fight off these weights and become great. I fight because I truly believe that one person can change the world, and that you, every one of you, has the ability to make a difference. That you can make the world a better place. That you have it in you to change everything.

My anger when you refuse to see the things holding you back. The things that even as they make you treat others as less than worthy, as not deserving of dignity, you let the world do the same thing to you. Because when you allow yourself to believe that there is ever a reason for a person to be treated as lass than a human being, you justify every single person doing the same to you. Every time you accept that premise, you add another chain to your wrists.

 

I don’t hate humanity. If I did, I wouldn’t try so hard. I wouldn’t believe that you could be better. I wouldn’t sacrifice my well-being for you.

When you see me stop trying. When you see me give up and accept things as they are. That is when you will know that I hate the world.

Don't Confuse My Anger for Hate

Hate is not a Dissenting Opinion

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The other day, a woman protesting an MRA event being held at Queens University was violently beaten by a man who knew her name, but was otherwise a stranger. The fact that this attack came right after she received several threats related to her protest of this event has created speculation that the attacker was in some way connected to one of the many MRA groups attending the event.

The event featured a professor who was “revealing the double standards in feminism”.  This is the same professor who was quoted as saying “I don’t believe in equality” during her talk, and was apparently completely unable to see the irony of a woman who became a professor complaining about feminism. The event drew the attention of MRA organizations like CAFE and AVfM. For those unfamiliar with it, AVfM was added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of known hate groups.

The MRA movement is one that is inherently violent. On the surface, it brings up legitimate concerns including the tendency of men to be less likely to be granted custody and the lack of support for male victims of sexual assault. In fact those two issues should be given more attention and are frequently discussed in feminist circles (including but not limited to my talk at Eschaton 2012).

A closer examination of the movement shows that they do not actually care at all about sexual assault victims, and the men who consider themselves deserving of custody are actually violent abusers. One of the founders of the movement, Tom Ball, for example (who later committed suicide by setting himself on fire in front of a courthouse) would talk about how “All he had done was smack his 4-year-old daughter and bloody her mouth after she licked his hand as he was putting her to bed”. To many proponents of the movement, beating a child or a woman is no reason not to get custody. Clearly any man who hits his children hard enough to draw blood is just being unfairly discriminated against by the court system.

Male victims of sexual assault fare no better. Many who have gone to the sites in the hopes of finding support and resources often find themselves being denigrated and their manhood insulted.

In fact what the movement’s main actions seem to be are frequent threats of violence and rape against any woman who dares bring up issues of inequality, perpetuation of rape culture through campaigns to shame victims of sexual assault while denying that rape culture and victim blaming exists, and misrepresenting statistics to make it seem as though discrimination against men is taking place.

The movements main goal seems to be to bring us back to the “good old days” when women didn’t have the vote, weren’t allowed to work, and where men made all the decisions (as opposed to just most of them like they do now). The movement uses different forms of violence to achieve their ends, from microagressions, to rape and death threats, to revealing private information that was at times illegally obtained to the public (ie. doxxing). All of these employ psychological violence to achieve their end, and the escalation to physical violence is but a small step.  What’s more, studies show that even relatively benign behaviour, like jokes, legitimizes and encourages violence. If your movement is built on violence you will attract violent people and encourage violent behaviour even if that is not your intention. When your movement includes avowed abusers and admitted rapists that becomes a guarantee.

The underlying error of the MRA movement is that life and society are a zero sum game, where the only way that women gain anything is by taking something away from men. This is only true if we consider privileges like treating a segment of the population as property and objects and not as person’s within their own rights a human right.  The fact that the movement is made up predominantly of middle class to well off libertarian white men who also support and espouse racist, ableist, and homophobic ideas, shows that this is not a movement that cares about defending a population’s human rights so much as a bunch of whiny privileged assholes who are complaining that they are no longer the presumptive betters in our society.

While it is possible, though in my opinion unlikely, that the person responsible for the Queen’s student’s assault is not affiliated with any of the MRA groups, these organizations still bear a large part of the responsibility. Any and all universities, including Queens and Ottawa U, should think twice about their association and thus their implicit support of any and all persons who promote their ideology. In giving them a platform, they too bear responsibility of their hate speech and violence ideation, and the results thereof.

The MRA movement is nothing short of a hate group and should be treated with the same lack of respect as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, or any other organizations whose purpose is to promote the hatred of vulnerable populations. This is NOT a valid response to feminism. This is NOT about celebrating men in the way that feminism celebrates women. This is NOT a reasonable other side of the debate. This is a terror organization that promotes fear to the extent that women attending a university event feel the need to use pseudonyms when asking questions, and feel the need to go to absurd lengths to protect their physical safety.  That we do not call them terrorists is in my opinion due to a societal bias that violence against women is somehow more acceptable than violence that includes male targets.

*If universities used to have 100% male attendance suddenly allowed women to attend university and increased their class sizes, then the fact that the male university attendance is 50% doesn’t mean that spots were taken away from men. That is not how percentages work. If University had 100 attendees all of whom where men, and now has 200 attendees of whom 100 are men, and 100 are women, you have 50% men but that 50% still amounts to the same number of men. This is just one example of the way in which MRAs misrepresent statistics.

Hate is not a Dissenting Opinion

Sticks and Stones

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I hate that old saying “Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt me”. It is bullshit. Bones heal, but words cut you inside. Words stay with you forever. They become that little voice inside your head that undermines every single thing you do. They become that seed of doubt that makes you scared of being a failure, that makes you see everything you do through a dirty lens.  The wrong words are like parasites, burrowing their way into your brain and leaching your life of confidence, joy, esteem, laughter, sense of self.

The idea that insults, slurs, and more are not painful or not worth noticing has to do with our society’s idea that emotions are worthless. That emotions exist on a binary scale with rationality and that one who experiences one cannot participate in the other. Emotions are not irrational. They exist for a reason. They let you know what your boundaries are. My boundaries might not be yours but that doesn’t make them any less valid. If I say that doing this thing is something I am willing to unfriend for, you DO NOT FUCKING ARGUE WITH THAT. If you care to be my friend you listen to it, and if not then leave me the fuck alone. Or better yet, do us both a favour and unfriend me.

Emotions are a “sixth sense”. Not in the colloquial sense having to do with some sort of predictive power, but rather like touch, smell, feel, they are a way that we navigate and experience the world. Without emotion we lose a way we relate to the world and it is as much a disability as losing one’s sense of hearing or sight.

Words do not have just the power that I give to them. Words have power all on their own. They do not exist in a vacuum. If someone calls me fat, yes in that one instance I can choose to decide not to be upset, but that isn’t going to change the fact that I live in the world where people can treat me differently and badly because of that word. It doesn’t stop becoming a word that can be applied to me just because I choose not to be upset. If you grew up being told that gay people are evil, sinful, going to hell. If you live in a society that feels like they can refuse you your rights because you are gay, that gives the word “F*ggot” power regardless whether or not you choose to be offended by that word.

Words have a history that is not irrelevant. Being called a “r*tard” carries with it every single punch, every single instance of being discriminated against for having a mental illness. It carries with it a memory of every single person that has been called a retard. Every child that was killed for being autistic or being sick in some way. It may be just one time thing or it may something you are called every single day. It doesn’t matter. Those words will hurt, and they will stay with you.

The power of words is not just negative however. Words can also do great good. Those familiar with the anti-communist movement Solidarnoscknow that words played an important role. One of the main things they did was read all the literature that was banned by the Soviet government. And that’s the point. If ever you doubt the power of words, all one needs to do is look at the fact that all of the most authoritative and corrupt powers are so afraid of words, that they spend countless hours and resources on censorship. Words matter.

Sticks and Stones

Rant: Internet Harassment is a Big Fucking Deal

Ania Onion Bula, , Leave a comment

I just don’t have the energy to be eloquent anymore. I don’t have the energy to come up with ways to make what should be self-evident arguments sound polished.
I am so sick and tired of this bullshit argument that the internet doesn’t matter. That the harassment people face online is somehow not as bad as if it were happening through some other medium. That it is less dangerous, less personal, just less. What’s worse, is when I defend the validity of the paint and terror felt by victims of internet harassment, I am accused of somehow saying that stalking is somehow less serious or even not serious at all.

Frankly I am fucking sick of it.

To ignore the importance to the internet in our society is essentially to ignore our society. Our entire lives are dictated by the internet. It is where most of us get our news, how we keep in touch with friends and family, most of our work involves the internet in some way.

When I was working for law firms, and real estate agents, people’s cases, closings, purchases, sales, depended on my ability to access the internet. On my ability to be able to check my email, to be able to send emails.  While working, a significant majority of my day on the computer and most of that on the internet (if only with my email open and frequently refreshing).

When I came home I would also spend the majority of my time back home on the computer, talking to my friends,  writing on my blog and promoting my writing to help build my writing career, promoting my businesses which took place almost entirely online.

Since having to give up work due to disability, I still spend close to 12 hours a day either on the internet directly or connected to it in some way. Especially when my ability to interact with people in person and go out is hindered, the internet can be my only connection to the outside world. When (as it is now) my ability to pay my bills and buy groceries was hindered by my ability to work, it was the internet that came to my aid by donating money. When I needed help funding the ability to write my book it was the internet that did so. My connections with other writers who will introduce me to publishers happened entirely through the internet.

We rely on the internet, but it can be a tool against us as well. When harassment occurs through the internet it can feel more personal. The barrage happens in your own home, in your place of business, anywhere and everywhere where you have an internet connection. Even if you block everyone at the first hint of harassing behaviour, that first hint still has to occur. With the ease of creating accounts, your harassers can keep coming after you even after you have blocked them 3, 4 even 20 times.

If your harassers have access to your email, you have no choice but to browse through the endless tirades and hate messages. Even if you never open and read the emails, the previews give you an indication of their content. If they are using your work email, you may not even have the option to read and delete those emails.

When harassers doxx their victims, they are revealing private and identifying information. They give perfect strangers information about your phone number, your address, your place of business, and a variety of other identifying information.  They release this information on public sites where the information is accessible by strangers. This information is a where and when guide to stalking you.

You don’t even need to be in the same city to stalk someone anymore. With access to their information you can call their work, their home, you can email them, leave comments on their blogs or pages they frequent.

If like me, you operate online businesses, harassers can destroy your business without ever leaving their home; or worse, from their phones. Fake reviews, reporting false violations, all of these are simple for anyone of a mind to destroy someone.

Imagine everyday finding endless threats of bodily harm, of life, of safety, or of one’s ability to support oneself. Imagine these messages coming at you through your twitter, through your Facebook, through your email, left as comments on your blog, sent to your friends and coworkers when they cannot reach you. Imagine that the same people who harass you and/or your friends show up at conferences that you help organize or at which you are speaking. Imagine that your harassers donate money to the legal defence of another harasser who is suing his victim for speaking out about her harassment.

Imagine that your harassers make trouble for you with your online store, or through your websites.

Imagine that the companies you work for facilitate that harassment by siding with the harassers in public statements. Imagine that when you speak out about the devastating psychological impact that the constant harassment has had on you that people demand, DEMAND, that you release your private medical information to prove that the psychological consequences are real. That when you rightfully don’t want to release your private medical information to complete strangers that they accuse you of lying. That they make up lies about you and claim you are a professional victim.

Imagine that after releasing private information, or making you the target of their harassment, that they claim no responsibility when someone who is a stranger to you decides to assault you while knowing your name.

If you still think that internet harassment doesn’t matter or is no big deal, you can seriously fuck the fuck off.

*The scenarios presented are a composite or several different occurrences and not targeted or related to any one specific event.

** I have no interest in debating this or tolerating any abuse on this post or anywhere else. If I don’t like what you have to say I will block you and you can complain about how your rights to Freeze peach were violated by some big bad feminist on her personal feeds.

Rant: Internet Harassment is a Big Fucking Deal

Where Ableism and Fat Shaming Collide

Ania Onion Bula, 2 Comments

Earlier SpasticFantastic posted a great article calling out Takei on sharing an ableist joke for which he later apologized. The joke centered around a picture of a woman standing from a wheelchair, with the caption “A miracle has occurred in the alcohol isle”. SpasticFantastic did a great takedown of the problems associated with the image including the idea that lots of folk use mobility devices who don’t have complete paralysis, who may only use it occasionally, etc.

I am one of those people. My arthritis on most days manifests as stiffness and soreness, but otherwise doesn’t impact my ability to walk (I say walk and not mobility because I do have hindered mobility always). Other days however, every step sends a shockwave of pain up my body. My hip feels like it is dislocating every time it bends. On those days, at the very least I need a cane to maneuver and at worst I require a wheelchair.

My decision about whether or not to use an accessibility device should depend only on whether or not I need to at that moment and nothing else. Unfortunately, because I am also a fat girl, the decision also has to take into account how much fat shaming I am prepared to handle that day.

I’ve written about my anxieties surrounding my weight, and the way in which fat-shaming overlaps with my sexual assault. My weight has also been intimately involved with my disability. For many years, my condition was ignored on the pretext that it was caused by weight. The fact that symptoms persisted even at my lowest weights never seemed to register. Later when my various illnesses manifested themselves fully, I was left in a difficult position when it comes to managing my weight.

One of the medications I take frequently is a steroid which causes weight gain. My joint damage rules out any intensive forms of exercise, and my Crohn’s rather than my weight dictates what I eat. That said, despite my weight and my disabilities, I have healthy habits. Most of my food is made from scratch and uses little sugar or fat. I eat a healthy diverse diet. But that doesn’t matter ultimately because fat-shaming isn’t actually about health the way those who engage in it claim. It is about feeling superior to someone else and reminding women in particular that their bodies are public property.

Whenever I take steps to accommodate my disability, I find that I have to fight hard to assert my right to do so in the face of public scrutiny and judgement. I hear the snide comments and mocking laughter, I can see the smirks and not-so-hidden looks of disgust when I have to take the elevator one floor up. It doesn’t matter that stairs are painful for me, because obviously I am just being a lazy fat girl. The judgement makes me feel as though I have to perform or rather exaggerate my disability in order to get approval. This might mean highlighting my limp, or making obvious pain faces while rubbing my hands across my lower back. I have to put on an act in order to be granted approval for self-care.

The need to do this is encouraged by a social perception that bodies are public property and that society has the right in that case to grant my disability legitimacy. They, without any information about my pain levels, my daily struggle, get to decide on appearance alone whether or not I am “really disabled”.

Among these people are the folk who believe that my disability must be the result of my weight. The people who think that maybe I wouldn’t be so fat if I just walked instead of using a wheelchair at the grocery store. The idea that I am fat because I cannot walk never seems to enter their minds as a possibility.

And so knowing these judgements are being made about me every time I go out, every decision about whether or not to take advantage of mobility devices is painted with the difficult decision: which disability is more pressing today: my physical one or my mental one. And that is a choice no one should have to make.

Where Ableism and Fat Shaming Collide