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Text of the page (random words):
topping to check for ticks getting distracted by the wonder of my own skin under my hands the width of my hips the balance of my thighs and the globes of my breasts my freedom for me i accepted for a moment the land beneath me and all her gifts i am a daughter who claimed the sheer unlimited pleasure of being alive we spent a lot of time under this emerald canopy michfest closing ceremonies at the closing ceremonies one thousand women were given candles for the end of the candlelit service the only light had been dusk as it slowly turned into night the trees framed the acoustic stage and i stood on the edge of a bowl of women whose eyes faced the drums the guitars the piano and the dancing women i also hold that female sovereignty over our own bodies and lives is the first requirement for the new world we envisioned for one week in august it s a short way to refer to what we had begun to create but it is not the end i agree with many radical women who say that we d rather this truth be acknowledged and face the end of fest rather than compromise on this truth and see fest continue already the seeds of michfest are beginning to bloom in states and countries everywhere and the anticipation of this future fills me with excitement and a sense of being part of women s history the closing ceremony asked that we snuff our candles out as a signifier of the end i wet my fingers and closed them on the burning wick as women around me did the same then the mourning painful howls began we howled into the darkness wolf howls of grief of power of female sovereignty of home and of love so many howls whooping into the night then died down then from here to there began again as we walked to our separate destinations on the land tearfully we comforted each other through our presence together i treasure my candle the flame of michigan and the power of women symbolized in its flame as crys matthews sang this is just so long for now this is not good bye i believe it i hope for it we make it and we live it amazon women rise now in your town in your family your friendship your hearts we are women and we rise there are many emotions when it comes to women centered events by celebrating you i celebrate myself and reject patriarchal existence i find my place among sisters and become valuable just as i am thankful grateful and passing it on encouraging signs like these are posted all around the land this one is particularly inspiring to me drum circle fire pit at triangle after sunday s closing ceremonies we went to triangle fire pit which was cold there was no fire we waited a few minutes until women came and said that there was not any wood left to burn as the logs had all been used throughout the week but we could collect burnables and start the fire again if we wished so in my long blue sun dress with my ever dimming head lamp i hauled into the woods to knock down dead stumps and contribute logs for the fire i am a frequent camper so it was not an unfamiliar process but the importance of the circumstance gave me particular strength we needed fire and i can collect fuel so once i had contributed a share we sat around the deep dirt pit and the drums began more women came several women slapped their hands and arms on the drums together and a lovely naked woman danced as the fire shadows moved over her we began chants and songs and we sang rounds we clapped and we looked into one another s faces as women we felt the importance of the ritual we taught one another songs and we listened and learned and all participated i could have stayed there all night but we had to load out in the morning so reluctantly i left the sacred circle and went back to my tent one final night i couldn t believe it was ending i still don t feel that it has at the same time it s hard to believe it ever really happened it feels dreamlike because it was so different from the rest of my life it s been hard to write about fest because of this disconnect i don t really know how to use words to communicate my experiences but i am so so grateful i have had them this sign hung off a path near where we camped in bush gardens thank you all for reading about my experiences there are of course many more wonderful things that happened at michfest and i only opted to tell you of a few of them coming back to the airport after spending a week with women was jarring as it felt like what i had just experienced was dream like in a way it was women created an amazing place that lived for 40 years there is no where on earth quite like it i feel like i have been a participant in womyn s history it s hard to describe how wonderful it is to have been there and also how bittersweet i feel that it has ended i am sure it must be much more difficult for womyn who had the pleasure of attending for many years i do believe something else or many somethings will come out of this community in future as this sign says words to live by filed under uncategorized gaslighting culture november 5 2015 4 comments lately i am really coming to terms with the fact that patriarchy is a gaslighting culture and for the most part messages do not need to be true in order to be consistently believed by a large number of people or to be actively disseminated by the media in fact i d go far enough to say that truth is often considered irrelevant in the media i used to get angry when these messages veered so far off course from the truth but i m starting to see that as a feature and not a bug that is they never were meant to convey truths or reality they were meant as wide spread propaganda for example neo liberal culture frames personal individual negative impacts in terms of choice and consent rather than systems of power that constrain groups of people even though choice has very little to do with whether say impoverished inner city kids succeed in school the same is true with the hidden in plain sight fact about the toxic nature of masculinity and male pattern violence the fear of taking sides or being too radical by naming the problem shapes the thinking patterns of almost the entire world this is why for example you ll so often see suggestions like legalize prostitution it s just consenting adults as the most frequent opinion on the subject even though there is overwhelming evidence that prostitution is harmful to women it s libertarian individualism writ large but my specific point about gaslighting is related to the worldwide culture of misogyny that has near universal adherence even among feminists i m reading a book called sarah canary set in the 1870s that illustrates the gaslighting common at the time rape is referred to as an encounter with women s frailty that s just one example of the way that reality that is a man forcing himself onto a woman is seen as a weakness on the part of the woman being raped in another case a chinese man comes to a house the next day after a murder occurs he leaves town and is told that he can never come back as the town has pinned the murder on him even though he wasn t even present at the time of the murder that is irrelevant the fact is the racist town wants to blame someone who is not from there for the event those are just two examples in the book where reality is obscured through lies and gaslighting for a particular goal in these cases male and white supremacy respectively recently i saw an article on the miss representation page about how a young baby was being slut shamed for an image of her eating a frozen treat this is gaslighting because it implies that she was eating the treat in a way that disclosed her slut nature a child the article should have been pointing out that she was being sexualized in a sexist manner or turned into an object of pedophilic desire in no way should she have been described by a feminist organization as a slut that depiction is false and feeds patriarchal narratives about the promiscuous nature of women and girls nowadays that gaslighting has just morphed into new forms women are still well hated and we are not seen as people i ll include two incidents from this past week an event set up to normalize the varied embodiment of women s external sexual organs through whimsical representations on cupcakes is derided as somehow violent to trans women specifically it s obvious to anyone who hasn t been brainwashed on transgender issues in 2015 that this is a laughably hyperbolic statement and yet this is the level of discourse we are working with in another recent cupcake kerfluffle it was said that you are killing trans women with your beliefs and the only good thing about terfs is that they don t have feelings so its ok to kill them whenever you want as purple sage fem says it is so idiotic to claim that snack foods are oppressing people i am just shocked that people are making this claim with a straight face the only way you can truly believe you are being oppressed by cupcakes is if you are privileged enough that you have no idea what oppression actually is but this is gaslighting patriarchy so of course if vulva cupcakes are killing people and a transwoman told you that you had better listen up women are being bullied out of discussing our complicated relationships to our bodies we are even being told that we may not display feminine hygiene products in the women s room our realities are considered of secondary importance to what transwomen want we aren t even allowed to discuss our own pregnancies as mothers we are now pregnant persons yes really another situation from this past week is much more horrifying and is discussed here by hypotaxis this past week supposedly feminist jezebel hosted on their site an interview with a convicted child rapist murderer and corpse desecrator who says he a transwoman has been victimized by terfs for disclosing true facts about a horrific murderer he committed the interview is full of statements that the murderer is a feminist how can an feminist publication print such lies while omitting the name of his victim and the nature of the crime he committed as one of the commenters stated how ass backwards do you have to be as a feminists to promote a child rapist and murderer on your site jezebel but that is gaslighting culture thankfully some are waking up a houston initiative that would enact gender identity laws meaning anyone could claim the gender identity of woman and be allowed in the women s room was defeated using videos like this one to state what the impact of the bill would really be while it is unfortunate that conservatives are the ones who are seeing through this nonsense at the moment and are large perpetrators of gaslighting culture themselves remember guantanamo bay i say radical feminists should use any exposure of the truth to our advantage it is so rarely seen in these dark days filed under uncategorized tagged with feminism gaslighting culture hero jezebel gaga feminism january 14 2015 12 comments content warning pedophilia i ve recently had the misfortune of reading a particularly bad post modernist book entitled gaga feminism the author is judith jack halberstam who can be reached on twitter at jhalberstam halberstam comes from a queer theory background and uses this framework throughout the book within the first few pages susan faludi author of the insightful book backlash is bashed for not incorporating the latest female erasing queer theory analyses into her projects within the first fifteen pages however we see an incredibly worrying passage halberstam recommends civil libertarian judith levine s twitter here brave and controversial book harmful to minors the perils of protecting children from sex from wikipedia levine suggests liberalization of age of consent laws in the united states and the conception of minors as sexual beings which levine argues is extant in western europe levine argues for weakening most united states laws governing possession of child pornography the access of abortions to minors and conduct classified as statutory rape conservative commentators have heavily criticized her work this content is pretty concerning to me as a feminist who is opposed to the sexual exploitation of children halberstam states levine by asking impertinent questions about children and sex like why label a child a victim if she doesn t feel victimized or why presume that all sexual conduct between adults and children is unwanted by the child or that all sexual activity among kids under the age of ten is pernicious has pushed back on one version of feminism that sees women and girls perpetually as the victims of unchecked male sexual aggression and has pushed forward with another that understands children as sexual parents as erotic figures and sexuality itself as the pursuit of pleasure by casting harm in terms of the judgments adults pass about child sexuality rather than in terms of exposure to inappropriate material levine went gaga and began a much needed public conversation about the folly of imposing sexual regulation on children and the wisdom of making more neutral assessments about what children want indeed levine proposed when we really don t know or understand what children want or how they may feel about something we could always do something wacky and crazy like asking them to let us know what feels good and what feels intrusive or wrong p 15 let s unpack a few of the statements included in this quote halberstam uses an interesting device in this in need of editing passage the rhetorical question this way halberstam gets away with saying offensive and dangerous things by phrasing them as queries rather than statements for example why presume that all sexual conduct between adults and children is unwanted by the child the phrase begins with the assumption that most people make generalizations about the participants in a particular sexual practice and stands as a corrective to those generalizations it frames the generalizers as out of touch prudes who just don t understand what children want meanies who won t let children play with their favorite toys in fact however the rhetorical question is doing the opposite of what it purports to do while it means to stand up for the rights of children to enjoy all facets of their lives it s actually making an excuse for pedophilia by claiming that some children actually enjoy sexual contact from adults adults are responsible for setting appropriate boundaries with children and children s feelings towards inappropriate behavior are entirely irrelevant to whether the behavior should be engaged in halberstam s re framing of sexual violation as a potentially enjoyable pastime for children is a repellent reversal i asked halberstam about this quote and the response was to change the subject to child on child sexual behavior halberstam first prevaricates on the term child the way that many child sexual abuse advocates do when they suggest that perhaps pedophilia may not be okay but hebephilia or ephebophilia are this changing of the goal posts...
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