The Anarcho-Feminist

The following day, I attended a workshop about preventing gender violence, facilitated by Katz. There, he posed a question to all of the men in the room: “Men, what things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?”

Not one man, including myself, could quickly answer the question. Finally, one man raised his hand and said, “Nothing.” Then Katz asked the women, “What things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?” Nearly all of the women in the room raised their hand. One by one, each woman testified:

“I don’t make eye contact with men when I walk down the street,” said one.
“I don’t put my drink down at parties,” said another.
“I use the buddy system when I go to parties.”
“I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my direction.”
“I use my keys as a potential weapon.”

The women went on for several minutes, until their side of the blackboard was completely filled with responses. The men’s side of the blackboard was blank. I was stunned. I had never heard a group of women say these things before. I thought about all of the women in my life — including my mother, sister and girlfriend — and realized that I had a lot to learn about gender.

Anti-femme culture (and feminists aren’t immune to this) thinks the effort put into femme presentation is a waste of time and energy – or, at the very least, time and energy that could have been spent doing something more important. Anti-femme culture thinks “pretty” probably means “dumb” even when struggling against a culture obsessed with an impossibly narrow beauty standard. Anti-femme culture thinks you can’t do math AND do your nails.

We are humans! We contain multitudes! I do not think it is a problem that teenaged girls are interested in experimenting with presentation via fashion; I think it’s ridiculous and misogynist that they are ONLY encouraged to do that – and that boys don’t have the same freedom of expression.

We’re not surprised that a woman would wear pants, but a man in a skirt or dress — that is, a man openly performing femininity — is still unusual in our culture and violates the cultural norm that masculinity might be good for everybody, but femininity is just for women:

Gender essentialism is the assumption that women are naturally like this, while men are naturally like that, and nature made it so and anyone who deviates from that pattern is a freak. Most commonly it comes in the form of “women are naturally submissive and men are naturally dominant”.

This is an absolutely unprovable statement. It is an opinion, not a fact. Look at the amount of gender conditioning we receive from infancy: different colors for girls and boys (in some cultures), commercials proclaiming boys like toy guns and trucks while girls like dollies that pee. Throughout life, we are punished for deviating from our cultural gender norms, and yet very few people find it easy to avoid those deviations.

If it’s so natural, why all the conditioning?

People don’t necessarily know what they want. That’s okay. Sometimes you don’t know! Even about things as fundamental as sexual orientation, it’s okay to identify as questioning. I think a lot of people feel pressure to be like “I’m a pansexual monogamous dom with a foot fetish!” when the actual answer is “I dunno. I think I might like feet.” You always have a right to be uncertain, to try things, to do something once and decide you hate it and never do it again, to go through phases, to change your mind.