And now for something completely different

Why do Americans hate cursive writing? (this is not about the reforms. typing is a more important skill than handwriting, and pretty much anything that’s quick and legible should be accepted as a valid form of handwriting. meaning, “cursive” shouldn’t be more than a single semester, to introduce the notion of connecting letters and minimizing strokes, and some practice. After that, no one should give a fuck)

Seriously, what precisely about the notion of a script designed to connect letters makes Americans be so passionately hateful about it, that they talk about fantasies of “ha, I told you so” letters to their teachers, now that there’s talk about discontinuing the teaching of cursive? And make them claim that they’ve never used it since 4th/5th grade (which is an odd claim. I checked all the notes, postcards, letters, etc. I’ve received from various Americans. None of them are in strict block letters)?

Is it that you’re taught some highly stylized, onerous version of cursive*? Is it that you learned it years after learning block letters (the constant references to 4th/5th grade intrigue me)? Is it that your teachers were all assholes? Is it that your school policies were “zero tolerance” of any individualistic deviation from the taught letters? what is it that’s so horrible about it? TELL ME! TELL ME NOW!!!!! I MUST KNOW!!!!!!!!

- – - – - – - -
*for reference, this is the cursive I had to learn. I immediately rejected the silly “z”, and later some other superfluous strokes, but overall that’s it.

assorted short thoughts

1)this being the last few weeks of school, I’m swamped with work and taking a blogging-break until mid-May

2)I was linked by a real-life journalist! yay! plus, the blogpost she wrote was very interesting, so go read

3)visual WTF of the day

4)verbal WTF of the day:

If the demand for land were only D4, land rent would be zero. Land would be a free good — a good for which demand is so weak relative to supply that an excess supply of it occurs even if the market price is zero. [...] This essentially was the situation in the free-land era of U.S. History

Visual Propaganda

we interrupt the regular programming for some Glenn Beck style “look, communist nazis!” comparisons (stolen entirely from here)

Exhibit A: the cover of the brandspankin’ new Teabagger Party Review

Exhibits B and C: the Communists and Nazis did it, too!

too bad no one is paying me millions of dollars to do this shit. It’s easy. Especially with a demographic that’s so devoid of self-reflection, they actually do use this sort of old-school emotionally emotive imagery. On purpose.

Merry Capitali…. err…. Christmas, everyone.

an image that expresses my feeling about the Christmas Shopping Season perfectly (except they put the wrong bovine on the picture):

Against optimism

It occurs to me that I shouldn’t write this post before reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Bright-Sided“, since she probably addresses the same points, much better and more thoroughly than I can right now. But it’s still something that bugs me, on so many levels.

Mostly, it bugs me at the fundamental level of things HAVING to have some positive outcome, as if it was some physical law that on balance, things must work out positively in human terms. The three versions of this that I run into most often are “I believe in America”*, “but still, life is/people are still good”, and the belief that progress is inevitable.

By virtue of living in the US and spending a lot of time on US dominated internet forums, I most commonly encounter the “I still believe in America” version. It seems most often to crop up as a last-ditch rebuttal of the problems people in the US are facing, as if it somehow is capable of refuting just how shitty America actually is, compared to other Industrialized countries (which is especially sad considering they came into the 2nd half of the 20th century well ahead of everyone else, by virtue of not having had a war fought on their soil, and therefore having some spare cash for investing into the future, rather than rebuilding from a pile of rubble). For example, some while ago I was arguing with someone on Pandagon about social mobility. Their argument was their son who, despite not having a college education, has made quite a life for himself in IT. I and others shored up a long list of reasons why this experience was exceptional and cannot be used as an example of American social mobility, while giving evidence for how social mobility and social wellbeing in the US is very low especially compared to many European countries. And that person’s last response in that thread? An indignant whine along the lines of “well, excuse me for still having faith in America”. My response was a rather snarky comparison of theoretical opportunities available to me in the US as compared to Germany, in which the US did not end up looking pretty.

The “but still, life is/people are still good” is very similar to the “I believe in America” thing, but can be used both more broadly (i.e. when talking about non-American things), and more narrowly (i.e. when talking about a specific group of people/situation, American or otherwise). Mostly, I’ve seen it used when talking about something atrocious, like abuse in the military or even systemic problems caused by same(“but still, most soldiers are good kids”), or about the effect Western-centered capitalism has on the non-western part of the world. I’ve seen a combination of these two on an essay on ZNet by a soldier’s mom who first made an extremely long list of epically shitty things the U.S. military, the USA as a whole, and Capitalism caused (torture, war, environmental damage, etc ad nauseam)… and then she did a 180 and started talking about how, despite all that, life was still good, because she got to meet for coffee with neighbors, and a lot of other “little things in life” that were going well for her (and nevermind that because of the things in the first part of her essay, a very large portion of humanity did NOT have access to the stuff in the second part of the essay), and how that meant… something.

The third type is more a (subconscious?) attitude than an actual, formed argument, and it presents itself in many different, often very small and barely noticeable ways. A very obvious variant is the “technology will save us” response to AGW, but it’s generally the conviction that the future will definitely be better (or at least not any worse) than the past. This manifests either as the conviction that, in currently raging battles of the culture wars “time is on our side” and that we’ll automatically win given enough time**, or that the things that have already been achieved (8hr workdays and worker safety, abortion rights, gains in environmental protection, you name it) can’t possibly be undone.

I’m not quite sure why these self-delusions are so prevalent, but it seems people need them to function just as much as many people seem to need religion to function. I vaguely remember reading some article that said people with depression were often better at predicting their chances of succeeding at something, but I can’t remember what causal link they posited (or if they bothered at all), but no matter which way things go, it seems being positively self-deluded about one’s own chance at success is correlated with happiness, and being able to realistically predict ones chances in life is correlated with depression. Anyway, what I have noticed when people show these signs of unwarranted optimism is that they primarily do it to deflect acknowledging being part of a problem (pretty much anything environment- and/or capitalism-related) or someone else one knows being part of a problem (any single comment ever that defends the military by saying that soldiers aren’t evil***), or simply try to protect themselves from being crushed by the enormity of the problem (because, let’s face it, short of moving to a hippy eco village, pretty much everything I (and everyone else in the Western world as well as many people in other parts) do on a daily basis is making things worse: the electricity I use while typing this, the starbucks food I’m snarfing (mmm….cheesecake…wait, what was I talking about…?), the gas I used to drive to Bismarck, the plastic my grocieries come packaged in, etc.), and secondarily to give themselves a reason not to do anything much about the discussed problems. I suppose it’s just not human nature to want to go radical, so people instead react defensively (again, probably subconsciously) by either elevating the small things they do in the right direction to actual problem-solving *coughpriusdriverscough*, or by figuring the problem will solve itself given enough time (or if not itself, then at least with the number of people already being engaged being enough), or by simply erasing the magnitude of the problem.

People (and btw, that includes me, in case someone feels like complaining that I don’t do much either) seem to have an extreme need to be “normal” and not be radical too much and on too many things and in too many ways. And sure, it’s not physically possible for any one person to be part of a (radical or otherwise) solution to every problem facing humankind right now, but most people don’t even do what would be within their possibilities. And where this isn’t caused by sheer ignorance, it seems to be caused by fostering this sort of extreme, unwarranted optimism. So, i’m against this optimism that prevents people from realizing that things really could go to shit, and hope for maybe a bit more pessimism and realization that a good future needs to be vigorously fought for and defended against the assholes and idiots of the world.

P.S.:holy shit, this post is difficult to read. waaaaaay too many brackets. sorry :-p

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

*I should note that there’s a difference between a “believing” in America in the sense that it’s salvageable and worth fighting for and needn’t be run away from just yet, and a believing in it in that magical-thinking sort of way that seems to assume some magical properties for America that protects it from the historical fates of every other civilization past and present. I don’t necessarily agree with the former either, but it’s a perfectly rational position to take, and even has a certain bravery to it that I just don’t have in me. The latter is just complete bullshit.

**Most notably in the fight for LGBT rights, where the demographics do show that younger people are more ok with gay marriage than older ones; but these demographic changes aren’t “natural”, they’re the result of hard-fought battles for social acceptance fought in the past. and they’re no reason to stop fighting, since a trend like that can be reversed just as much as it can be created in the first place.

***Interestingly enough, only soldiers in the US military are not evil even if the military does bad things (they’re feeding their families who depend on them and that’s why they can’t desert; or they’re doing the best out of a bad situation; or they were duped into joining by the “defend your country” trope and had to stick it out because desertion would have landed them in prison; or a million other reasons), but it never ever applies to German soldiers in WW2, even when they’ve never been within sight of a Concentration Camp and their reasons for joining/not leaving were the same as the reasons American soldiers often give now. But that’s a subject for a much longer stand-alone post which I may even write someday.

short thoughts

1)The Coffee Party is looking less and less appealing, and more and more spinelessly accommodationist. Most recent update was a link to an article that starts like this:

Before we call someone a racist, we should ask ourselves: are we moved to call someone a racist because we feel compassion for the victim or because we feel hatred toward the perpetrator?

Calling people racist shuts down conversation. Not that there isn’t racism is the world, but I believe most individuals do not deserve to be called that. Or, rather, many of us would deserve to be called that because we all have blind spots and very few of us have fully examined lives. It would be better to ask individuals to reflect critically on their assumptions and prejudices (which are really pre-judgments). And because we are human beings and fallible, we all have prejudices to check.

refusing to name the problem won’t help. Not that the sentiment isn’t very nice and all, but this sort of squishy stuff ain’t going to successfully push back against the unadulterated force of irrational fear and hatred that is the tea party.

2)UPS doesn’t ship to PO Boxes. Will someone explain to me again why these for-profit are seen as so much better than the good, old-fashioned US Postal Service? And on that note, a coffee company who uses socialism as a selling gimmick should use USPS instead UPS; it ruins the effect otherwise :-p

3)There’s going to be a teabagger rally in Washington DC on the 28th, the anniversary of the “I have a Dream” speech. Last time they descended on DC en masse, they ended up confused and frustrated with the public transportation system, so this time, one of their sites helpfully gave advice on how to handle the DC Metro. And it sounds like the sort of directions/advice my mom used to give me when I was eight:

If you are on the subway stay on the Red line between Union Station and Shady Grove, Maryland. If you are on the Blue or Orange line do not go past Eastern Market (Capitol Hill) toward the Potomac Avenue stop and beyond; stay in NW DC and points in Virginia. Do not use the Green line or the Yellow line. These rules are even more important at night. There is of course nothing wrong with many other areas; but you don’t know where you are, so you should not explore them.

here’s a map of the DC Metro, just to make this easier to visualize. Also note the fearmongering and willful ignorance displayed in the last sentence.

“I can’t be a terrorist, I’m human!”

One of the most consistent and disturbing aspects of the right wing is their demonization and dehumanization of their “enemies”. The poor are lazy leeches or other kind of vermin that needs to be kept from breeding, undocumented workers are illegals or aliens that need to be expelled or even euthanized, gays are abominations that need to be either turned “normal” or stoned, Muslims are terrorists that need to be bombed back to the stoneage, etc. For this reason, the most effective campaigns for civil rights are the many “Coming Out” campaigns that put human faces of neighbors, friends, family, etc. onto those vilified, up till then completely abstract and humanity-free groups. After all, even the most wingnutty wingnut, if he’s not a clinical sociopath, will find it harder to excuse the murder of an actual real human being.

What gets really interesting is when it’s the wingnuts that are accused of doing something bad. When the Homeland Security report on right wing domestic terrorists came out, a lot of teabaggers started carrying “I’m a domestic terrorist” signs to their rallies and protests, in a clear mimicry of the “Coming Out” campaigns. And similarly, on pandagon today there’s two threads about the fuckedup’d-ness and rottenness of libertarianism, and some troll decided to come by and talk about his personality, physical and personality attributes of some other libertarian he met at some libertarian conference, and how much human-like fun they had together (“he likes beer”, “there was free ice-cream”), and telling everybody who was criticising him and calling him an asshole that he’d buy them a beer, because then they’d maybe realize that he’s a sociable, nice guy.

And my reaction is, every time, “uh… ok… and that refutes the accusation, how?” The assumption by these right wingers that liberals don’t consider them human is pure projection, but more than that is going on. Because they themselves are convinced that terrorists and assholes and those they believe are working for the destruction of their civilization aren’t quite human, they assume that merely proving their humanity proves that they can’t be any of those things. Which just looks hilariously stupid, from this end of the problem, because liberals are usually quite aware of the fact that “terrorist” and “human” are not mutually exclusive. Liberals are quite aware of the fact that ruthless assholes have wives and children, and that terrorists have grandmothers* and pets and dayjobs**, and that both are, at least in principle, fully capable of “enjoying the small things in life”***. So putting a giant “domestic terrorist” banner on your bakesale stand, and posing with your octogenarian grandma and the golden retriever isn’t precisely any sort of argument; neither is saying that you enjoy having beers with people one. But they seem to really think that “I can’t be a terrorist, I’m human!” is some sort of valid argument.

Which is all sorts of fascinating, amusing, and really fucking scary, considering they don’t like atheists, liberals, feminists and foreigners much…

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
*most blatantly presented whenever the fact that Hamas offers to provide for surviving family members of suicide bombers makes the news.
**some of them even become dusty old college professors
***which is why the apparent insistence of the right wing do destroy, forbid or punish everything fun (sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll) is often so baffling to liberals, that they willingly swallow the often strange excuses the right wing makes for it (most notably in the abortion debates; it’s rarely ever about babies, it’s about taking the fun out of sex. But many people accept the “precious babies” narrative, because the alternative just seems fucked up)

The Coffee Party

Still suffering from acute thoughtlessness, aggravated by meatspace drama, but didn’t want the blog to atrophy entirely, so here’s a light post on the Coffee Party Movement.

I heard of them for the first time quite a while back, but didn’t look deeper into it, since it seemed like an act of inconsequential counter-stupidity to the Tea Party, but apparently it has recently grown into a full-fledged movement (they even have a convention in Louisville, KY coming up; if it doesn’t get canceled, it will already be more successful than the teabagger convention in Las Vegas, which was “postponed” from July to October just a few weeks prior to the scheduled date “because of the heat”; yeah, right), so it’s worth looking into at least. I still think that, being a counter-movement, it will dissolve almost immediately the moment the teabaggers disappear, but as far as I’m concerned that could be a win-win situation: either the teabaggers will disappear; or there will be a pretty liberal/independent counter-movement to balance out their utter stupidity with some actual democratic activism.
The most interesting article about the Coffee Party that I found while trawling the internet for information about is was this blogpost by a centrist and former participant in it. It was interesting for the inside view of the Coffee Party (for a localized, supposedly decentralized grassroots movement, there’s decidedly too much talk about the leaders and leadership of “Coffee Party USA”) on the one hand, and for the odd perspective on non-partisanship/independence of the writer on the other, which I think reflects the perspective of a lot of self-declared centrists and moderates: that “independent” and “non-partisan” always has to mean standing exactly between the Republicans and the Democrats; being even slightly (or extremely, for that matter) to the right or left of that dividing line automatically aligns one with one of the two parties. This of course would be news to Bernie Sanders, who is an Independent Senator and a socialist, but seems to be how America views its politics; I blame it on the two party system. The blogpost complains about a perceived non-centrism of the Coffee Party, but quite frankly, I don’t think the U.S. needs more “bipartisanship” and centrism; what it does need is a real counterweight to the teabaggers, who are yanking the Overton Window sharply to the right. whether the Coffee Party can be such a things is, of course, a separate issue. Anyway, centrist dude also notes the lack of astroturfing and Big Donors, which is good; and the lack of transparency and “leaders” not listening, which is bad. The “unorganized” thing I’m ambiguous about, since I can’t tell whether he really means it’s a mess, or whether (considering his obsession with leadership), he’s just having issues with the sort of “netroots” anarchic, pseudo-organized movement that something that started on fucking Facebook has got to be by default, at least at first.

That aspect of both being a netroots spontaneous organization on the one hand, and being so focused on the founders and the leadership (though, admittedly, that might have just been centrist-dude’s bias, combined with the standard media focus on spokes-people and founders) makes me wonder whether sooner or later, this whole thing will morph into a standard-issue liberal “special interest” organization, or whether it can actually be an independent, glocal cooperative-like movement of people actually organizing around their own interests and needs that would lack the useless top-down management of issues and priorities. Most likely the former, because that’s how things generally develop, which would be too bad. Also, reading over some of the stuff on the Coffee Party USA website, at least some of the members take a similar stance on “independent” as the centrist I quoted earlier, i.e. they have shallow, middle-of-the-road opinions and commit the fallacy of the golden middle a lot. I mean, really, WTF does “I am not for a smaller government or for a large government. I am for right sized government. I am not for no regulations for businesses nor am I for a lot of regulations to manage the businesses. I am for enough, but not too much. I am not for government to cut all spending nor am I for spending wildly, but to spend where it is necessary.” even mean? it’s completely pointless rhetoric that tries to score points on the “I’m not an extremist like those people” talking-point. meh.

Also, I’m now getting their updates on facebook, and they’re strangely naive. Complaining about Murdoch Media offering infotainment? That’s… weaksauce. Real information sources exist, but expecting the mainstream media to be any good at it, especially in the face of shrinking profit margins and the downsizing on correspondents, investigative reporters, etc. is “political outrage 101″, so to speak. At the same time though, there’s some encouragingly effective activism going on, and at least, it provides a convenient set of activism tools for beginners, which is something I always thought was sorely missing. How to be an activist seemed to be one of those arcane skill sets one acquired by latching on to other, experienced activists (where one would find these experienced activists has of course also been unclear; not like they advertise in the Classifieds section of the paper). Now everybody can figure this stuff out, at least at the basic level.

So, as a whole, the Coffee Party is pretty weak brew (sorry, bad pun), but probably an excellent starting point for newly engaged/enraged people who want to become more active in their own democracy. If this becomes a mainstream-ish movement, and if even a small fraction of Coffee Partiers continues their journey into Advanced Activism, that will be a pretty good result, I think.

Toxic Masculinity hurts children, too.

Just read an article about a sniny new study about gay parenting, with a conclusion that probably shouldn’t be surprising, but still kinda was, at least to me: children of lesbian couples do better than than children of straight couples. The article makes the obvious point that women still do more housework, and still are raised to be nurturers, while men are actively discouraged from showing interest in, learning, and performing those skills. Hence, two mommies are better than one, because more people actually do the parenting. This is bad for the children. It is also bad for the fathers; I can’t imagine that all of them are callous assholes who don’t want to be good parents. Instead, they want to, but don’t have the skill; or feel they can’t express their feelings towards their children; or they don’t even know that they aren’t as nurturing and close to their kids as they could be.

What the article above misses though is not simply that women are still raised to be better nurturers. Modern women are taught to be both “mommy” and “daddy”: they will both teach you how to ride a bike, help you with sport practice, [insert other traditional daddy thing here], and kiss your knee better when you scrape it and cheer you up when the other kids are mean to you. Modern men OTOH are still subject to toxic masculinity which deprives them of the “mommy” skill set completely; and the more of the “daddy” skill-set women adopt, the more toxic masculinity will push men out of those as well. Men are thus deprived of what they should be entitled to just as much as women are: the lessons on how to be a well-rounded parent, and the right to not be ostracized or attacked for being a caring parent.

And on average their children would benefit, too, if their fathers were on average as well-rounded and well-trained at parenting as their mothers on average are.

Toxic femininity

So, I’ve noticed that I wrote a lot about Teh Menz in my feminism category. And while I think that talking about changing male culture and creating healthy ways for men to relate to themselves and to women is important and needs to be talked about, it would be neglectful to do so to the exclusion of talking about female cultures, their toxic aspects, and how to transform it into cultures and systems that allow the most women to feel confident in being themselves, without double standards and discrimination.

So I’m making a post about toxic femininity, as a counterpart to toxic masculinity. So, while toxic masculinity is part continuation of good oldfashioned patriarchy, and part newly created backlash to feminism, so toxic femininity can also be described as part tradition part backlash. And just like toxic masculinity defines itself by what it is not (female), so toxic femininity defines itself as not-male. Both are gender-essentialist and stereotypical, ignoring individual variation and preferences; and both are inherently based on gender inequality. Now, the problem is that the term isn’t really well defined anywhere, and is often simply used by people who don’t like the existence of toxic masculinity pointed out to them. But I think in modern culture, I can identify three developments that can rightly be described as a form of toxic femininity: 1)A backlash against feminism by women, resulting in re-adoption of strict patriarchy; 2)Adaptation to the current culture of toxic masculinity by creating a corresponding femininity to coexist with it; 3)A backlash against toxic masculinity resulting in anti-male femininity.

1)This one is closely related to the mechanism that created modern fundamentalism as a backlash to an increasingly secular society, and it is indeed often closely tied in with religion. It seems at least in part also a reaction to the fact that feminism in no way magically solved all of women’s problems, but rather created an interim period in which women were both housekeepers and wageearners; most women react to this by demanding more help on the homefront from men; some women however were lured in the other direction, into the mythical idyll of getting stable, calm, worry-free homes full of children and people who give a fuck about you personally. instead of having to get yelled at by a boss, having to worry about finances, having to have your marriage fall apart because you can’t be a perfect wife and a career woman etc This desire to escape modern reality is probably best shown in The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality written in 1985 by Mary Pride, who turned from a childless feminist activist into a evangelical christian SAHM who homeschooled and shunned birth-control. This mentality is now best represented by the Prairie Muffins and the Quiverfull movement, in which femininity is defined by motherhood and submissiveness to the males in the family (father/brothers/husband)

2)This is probably the most common variety, as it’s basically the default in Western Culture, which is, to a lesser or greater degree, steeped in and dominated by toxic masculinity. It’s also easily the most confusing, since modern culture sends mixed signals to women as to what they should be to be feminine and valuable as such. At its core is of course the acceptance of the core-issue of toxic masculinity, i.e. that females are worse than males; and while men lose points for being tainted with femaleness, women can gain points by having maleness rub off on them. The confusing and contradicting messages our culture sends out result in different stereotypical strategies that girls and women are presented with to gain access to men and therefore have their attention and proximity validate them and elevate their status. What all of these strategies have in common is that they define femininity as something that exists for the pleasure of men, put women in vicious competition against each other for the attention of men, and that none of them actually leads to men accepting women in their entirety, rather than partially in their particular role, be it “sex-object”, “one of the guys, not really a girl”, “nice girl” or whatever. On an individual level, women in that situation are generally somehow expected to play all these roles at once and are punished when they fail; which they will, because the stereotypes are all mutually exclusive.

3)the third option is radically different from the other two and wouldn’t usually get listed in a lineup of versions of “toxic femininity”, but I feel that it still fits in here. Basically, it can be summed up as the movement by feminists who have come to the conclusion that toxic masculinity has corrupted the left and especially sexual liberation (basically, turned it from the patriarchal model of ownership of female sexuality to the Bill Maher version of liberation: “it’s good because it gets me laid more”), and that men are in fact incorrigible, worthless assholes. This version of toxic femininity is separatist and basically based on misandry. In more moderate versions of separatist feminism (especially heterosexual feminism), this meant simply refusing to deal with men and male-centered issues while focusing on women-specific issues, creating female-centered communities, and strengthening the community and dialogue to improve women’s lives in general. But it has evolved in some instances into the belief that women are humans and men are parasites. This is a sentiment especially strong within the lesbian separatist movement. Especially in the form of Political lesbianism, which claims that sexuality can be a choice, it can be toxic because it denies female heterosexuality as a valid and healthy lifestyle and advocates that women, if they really want to be free of the patriarchy, need to sever ties not just with men, but also with women who refuse to give up on men, sexually, or otherwise. Some of the most toxic examples of misandrist separatist lesbianism can be found at FSTDT here and here.

Anyway, the reason I find that all three of these fit the bill for “toxic femininity” is because they, like toxic masculinity, pretend like womanhood has a very specific look and feel that should be followed. Also, all three seem more like coping strategies which may or may not work fine for some women, but are not a viable, healthy option for all women. And because of that, they’re exclusionist and set women up against each other in a competition to perform the specific version of femininity they advocate. And they’re definitely no solutions to the problem of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, but rather strategies for coping with it. There’s no means at improving the situation for everyone anywhere in there.

A healthy definition for womanhood would have to be one that both accepts individual preferences, and acknowledges that we’re by a large degree shaped by our cultures, which can be changed as a group but not defied by all women all by themselves. Healthy womanhood would allow women to draw value from within, from themselves and their own definition of themselves, not from their relationship (or lack thereof) with men; and it cannot base their feeling of self-worth on denigrating others, be it non-conforming women or men. Because of that, a healthy femininity would have to be less precise and well-defined than the examples above, while at the same time more rigidly establishing the rule that all women are equally worthy regardless of how (or whether) they choose to express their femininity; it also needs to enshrine “enthusiastic consent” into all actions and interactions, be they with other women or men, and not just in the sexual context. Just like fighting toxic masculinity and establishing a healthy alternative means removing the pressure from men to be and do things others have decided they should to be respected as men and people, so fighting toxic femininity and establishing a healthy alternative means removing the same pressure from women, so that they don’t have to feel the pressure to become the perfect SAHM, the perfect sex-object, or the perfect man-free feminist to feel that they’re Real True Women, and real, valuable people.

In that sense, the main job for feminism, from my perspective, is to uncover and destroy the social, economic, and legal inequalities and barriers that deny women their right to self-expression, and do so without establishing new ones.