Small feminist acts

[Jeanhatchet]

Discussing this with a friend the other day. We don't all have the capacity/time/health/money to do big activism.

But feminist women help each other all the time in small ways. Tiny things can be feminist acts. Listening to a woman who is in pain . Bunging her a fiver when she can't feed her kids. Looking after her kids so she can go for a walk. Chucking money into a homeless woman's lap instead of a man's. Consciously finding out the woman to help.

Or choosing to read books by women not men.

Watch films with female leads and female focused themes.

Listen to music by women. Go to an art exhibition by a woman. If you can find one.

Retweet women not men. Read their articles. Post their articles not men's.

Reject conditioning. Try not to look at the women you encounter today and judge their weight, clothes, make up etc. We have been taught to be critical of each other by men and their media and their comments to and about us.

Instead flip your gaze as soon as you feel yourself conforming to that ... onto a man. Judge him. Does he look like a good man? Does he look like he treats women well or beats and rapes them? Or buys them for sex? You can't tell of course. But it moves the game away from women. It is a conscious feminist act not to play the game men have taught us.

I don't buy trashy magazines and we don't watch kardashians TOWIE drag race and other anti feminist trash on TV
have raised a lovely daughter who has great self esteem

Yes women will put down other women but isn't that just part of the 'pick me dance'? Aren't girls traditionally raised not to be competitive, not to stand out, except when it comes to looks? When you are valued only or mostly for your looks and you are given an unreachable (airbrushed) standard by the media, isn't it likely that you will run down the nearest competition in order to look better, and try to please the overlords men. I praise my girls on their intelligence and their kindess much more than their looks, and as a pp said, I don't have trashy 'womens' magazines in the house.

we have a female handy lady.
she's great!

in work meetings I put topics presented by women first.

Edit a wikipage.

Look behind the wiki pages and see what contributions people (usually men) are making.

Sorry, can you explain that one, WrathofnamechangeKlop?

(I'm familiar with editing Wikipedia, and in its early years contributed to discussions on diversity and how the profile of the contributor pool was determining content. I just don't get your post.)

Love this!

I’m a lawyer and lots of contracts etc use ‘he’ to mean ‘either he or she’ but I refuse to do this and always say him / her etc. I also consciously make myself think of imaginary professionals as women instead of defaulting to men.

talk to less men, talk to more women

LilaJude thank you for that!

Default use of "he" for "either he or she" is one of those things that infuriates me.

Yes, I get that alternatives are clunkier. I'll live with the clunkiness, or with more imaginative solutions ("she" for "either he or she"? Alternating?) rather than be spoken to as though "he" is the default human and I'm just a "he" manquée.

I also don't see what sex has to do with editing Wiki pages btw. Wikis are meant to be about facts backed up with sources, it's not about the contributer's own views based on how they see things

There were significant issues at Wikipedia in the early days because, as with all voluntary efforts, those who show up get to make the decisions.

Being new and an online format which was popularised among techies, early adopters were IIRC statistically much more likely to be male. They were certainly more likely to live or work somewhere with very good internet connections and continual access to a connected computer. In those days, this narrowed the worldwide field rather!

Look at the edits on the 4th wave feminism page and you'll understand.

Oh an edit war? Yeah, I don't need to look to know there'll be one of those going on. Can suggest plenty of other pages I'd expect to find one, too.

We're living in an age of information wars. Wikipedia is a front in these wars for every conceivable party, just like Twitter, Facebook, MN... Has been since it started.

Sorry, so are you suggesting WrathofnamechangeKlop's post was just to alert people to that? Yes, agree it's good to remember caveat lector.

The Jack the Ripper museum wikipage has been edited by an interesting character.

Just sayin.

I love this thread and will admit that I sometimes find it hard to think of tangible acts I can do as an example to my DD. There are lots on here that I can do, thanks everyone.

I was chatting with her a few days ago and after years of really liking Little Mix she's really getting into Dua Lipa and I asked her why. She says that when she watched the videos it's easier to hear her singing and hear the actual words (don't worry its radio edits she sees/hears as I know DL lyrics aren't all angelic) whereas when it's L Mix on it seems all about their looks.

Whilst I was pleased by this observation I am also v aware that bands like LM are often "slut shamed" and that isn't on, I worry that as their music is totally aimed at the male gaze their shelf life is limited because of that IYSWIM?

So in summary of that rambling it was good to hear she wants actual good tunes from her music.

Grabs coat and takes detail on way out.

@PerkingFaintly

I really like the idea of 500womenscientists but on their page it says "Self-identifying Women Scientists — Sign up to be a resource" and I am afraid that gets my hackles up these days. Is there no sex based qualifier to join and if so doesn't that defeat the purpose?

500womenscientists.org/who-we-are

Is this a female organisation or a consumer of kool aid?

I no longer step aside for men, I also don't do small talk any longer for their ease and benefit - they don't like it. Happily I am switching from people pleaser and enabler to observer of entitlement, it worries me a lot less than I thought it would and my self esteem is increasing.

Also I did not renew my vogue subscription.

Well, as far as I can see, the rules are:

1. If it means joining forces with anti-abortionists or cheerleaders for men accused of rape, but can be anti-trans, then that's fine, we should definitely do that.

2. If it means promoting women's voices or promoting women themselves in immediate and practical ways, but there could be a trans person involved anywhere, then we should definitely kill it all with fire.

Or we could we could shrug and say, if eg 5% of the people on scientists lists are transwomen, and 95% are natal women, then the lists can still provide significant improvement on where we were regarding female voices representing science.

And we can deal with other issues separately rather than allowing them to kill the project.

Strangely, this was pretty much what MN Tory voters said (the ones who bothered to reply) on a thread about whether trans issues would cause them to abandon their party – which was in power at the time and actively discussing passing self-id laws.

This of course being the standard required of Labour and Green voters.

Consensus seemed to be that posters weren't keen on self-id, but it wasn't important enough to make them not vote Tory, as they liked the rest of the package.

Great thread - joining for more ideas. I have implemented a rule at home with DH where we alternate between watching films with male leads and then ones with female. It's incredibly hard to find female-led ones that he is prepared to watch, let alone enjoy. So many are 'chick flicks'. It's been a real eye opener but made me all the more determined to continue and do similar things such as read books, go to exhibitions etc by women.
I get invited to attend all sorts of events & conferences through my work. I make a point of responding to the organisers and complaining if there are significantly fewer women than men on the agenda (I work in a male dominated field). Always get a lame excuse back but I'm glad to have made the point!

KarBB, would you mind sharing any of the films with female leads you've enjoyed?

The Bechdel Test Movie list might also be useful, Mother.

bechdeltest.com

The Bechdel Test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule is a simple test which names the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.

Actually one of my small feminist acts is that I mentally score films like this all the time now.

The truly shocking thing about the Bechel Test is that any film fails it ever (unless set in an all male POW camp or the like).

Oh I see. Perking is here to educate and fling shit at the ideologically unpure. And say it's fine and dandy if only a very small percentage of dedicated women's support is taken by men.

Funny how when women are putting women front and centre and using any available platform, thinking of the bigger picture is totally wrong. But if it's women nudging up to make space for gender non conforming men, then we should roll over for the greater good.

@MotherForkinShirtBalls Difficult to answer as we generally end up with 'lowest common denominator' films which while away a few hours rather than inspire - but we recently watched the latest tomb raider which was just about okay and I really enjoyed the female ghost busters film. Will try and post some others as I think of them...
Little Miss Sunshine and 'Wild' are pretty good ones..