I wrote a book! It was terrible. The book is not terrible. Writing a book, holy crap, that’s a lot. It has a kick ass cover:
Yes indeed that’s Dragula season 3 winner Landon Cider, I used to go see him perform in LA.
Its about drag! Theatrical gender-bending! Doing weird stuff onstage! Curse words!
More specifically its about how we talk about and analyze drag and how that just doesn’t cut it because of how diverse and broad the genre is. I get into stuff people don’t automatically think of when they hear the word drag—women performing femme acts, butch acts that aren’t male impersonations, sexless mythical characters created by civil rights groups—and explain why these acts are doing the same work as other drag acts. I also look at more conventional drag like variety and vaudevillian male impersonation to demonstrate how our conventional understanding of drag leads to oversimplifying their methods and impacts.
TL;DR: Drag is complicated! Our words and analysis have to be complicated too! Drag is cooler than we think because its weirder than we think!
You can also check my celebrity endorsements (well, academic endorsements, they’re celebrities to me!) and book synopsis and maybe buy one (or ask your university library to purchase one for their stacks) from Amazon and Indiana University Press!
Hello Saucy readers, great day right? Guess that depends on what you look like, where you’re from, who you love, what organs you have in your body, what your health is or was at any point in your life, what religion you’re connected to even in the most broad sense of the term, and if you need to get anything done or care about anyone.
You don’t need another blog article freaking you out because I’m assuming you’re already freaked out. Me too. Also, there’s a lot to be said and I’m not the person to say all of it. Instead my Saucies, imma furnish you with a few “toolbox terms” I’m teaching my students this week. These tools come from a set of lessons I initially wrote three years ago but I bet if you try reallllllyyyy hard you can connect them to current events. Like, really current events.
Let’s start with an easy one. Xenophobia is a deep and irrational hatred towards “foreigners” or an unreasonable fear of unfamiliar people and their cultural objects and traditions. A belief that qualities such as geographical linage, immigrant status, or forms of culture constitute an immutable interpersonal difference springs from xenophobia. The examples I use in class are the popular justifications for not accepting refugees into a country, especially if those refugees were like, Jewish or are say, I dunno, Syrian.
Let’s step it up. Cultural racism stems from constant images and messages that affirm the diversity of White people and the inferiority, singularity, or negative stereotypical qualities of people of Color. As Beverly Tatum says, “if we live in an environment in which were are bombarded with stereotypical images in the media, are frequently exposed to the ethnic jokes of friends and family members, and are rarely informed of the accomplishments of oppressed groups, we will develop the negative categorizations of those groups that form the basis of prejudice” (“Defining Racism” 125). The examples I use in my class are the constant stream of news images and stories depicting Black protesters as little more than dangerous rioters and scary looters. Perhaps you might be able to think of recent examples where whole populations are characterized in a singular and derogatory way and then that pervasive cultural image is levied to forward political campaigns or federal mandates? Just a thought.
Yer gonna love this one: sincere fictions. People’s negative beliefs about other groups (generally ethnic/racial but can be extended to identities like sexual orientation) are usually unfeigned (i.e. sincerely believed) because a person in power has presented culturally racist or xenophobic statements as if they were truth or fact. Sad to say, but we usually trust authorities/news sources to tell us the truth or at least work with an objective baseline of facts. We also usually assume people in power are smart and educated. Or at least that they are smart and educated enough to make sure that what they say is factual and provable. The example I use in class is a statement called the “The Marriage Vow”–endorsed six years ago by Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum–that said that “a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than [one born in 2008].” This statement is easily disprovable but some people believed it because two powerful politicians endorsed its validity.
Perhaps there are more recent examples where a prominent figure said [tweeted] something and people believed it, not necessarily because those people where malicious or dumb, but because they assumed the person in power was likely saying [tweeting] facts or objective statements, or at least fact-checking what was being said [tweeted]?Just a thought.
I don’t see how this picture is in any way connected to anything I literally just said
Just for kicks, lets do two more I threw into the lesson mix this week. Biopolitics: when social and political power (often the state’s power) is wielded over life through the regulation of bodies, human processes, and bodily freedoms/movements. Abortion is a great example because the government seeks to control the bodies and lives of reproducing populations in every capacity-not just if bodies can choose to have (or not have) an abortion, but also under what conditions (rape, incest, life of mother), and where/how (geography, timeline, tests or mandatory statements). Biopolitics is also strongly connected to who can access health care, which body practices are illegal or legal, and which people can move around freely versus which are detained. At say, airports.
Last one, and it’s a goodie. Necropolitics is a context where the choice or line between life and death is made by the state or those in social and political power. Necropolitics is more than just the state’s authority to kill (for example, through the death penalty.) It also involves the state’s authority to invoke contexts of living death (the devaluation of a person’s life to the point of death) like slavery, and to expose people to physical death (like putting people in a situation where their death is imminent, or not helping people out of a situation where their death is imminent).
The biopolitical regulations of bodies in the form of say, temporary detainments, can easy slide into the necropolitical regulation of people into say, concentration camps.
To give a name to a social structure of power is a critical first step towards contesting and changing it. So let’s see if you can see and then name these terms in action, perhaps by checking your Twitter feed for 5 minutes any hour or day of the week. Bet you can!
If she did, she would be saying “intersectional feminist movementS” and she would be wearing glitter. We all do.
The New York Times says we should want a bitch in the White House. Or, a little more specifically (and a little less clickbaity), writing for the New York Times opinion page, Andi Zeisler of Bitch Media proposes embracing the term that’s been so maliciously lobbied against Hillary Clinton. Zeisler’s argument is that Clinton’s called a bitch because she doesn’t put being likable above all else and because she has presidential-level tenacity and ambition. Zeisler evokes Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s 2008 declaration that “bitches get stuff done” and asks “what if that’s not a bad thing”?
I like where Zeisler’s going but, before jumping on the bitch bandwagon, I want to take a little stroll down language, meaning, and reclamation lane.
Most words are what we in the biz call sign systems or sign chains: they communicate complex and extended meanings. Take the term “public bathroom.” In the U.S., a public bathroom probably won’t have a bath but we all know what’s in there and what it’s for. Here’s another one: “9/11.” It’s just two numbers. But for those in the U.S. of a certain age, these two numbers immediately evoke images of death, destruction, fear, loss, and war. The meaning tied into those numbers is much more than just the sum of the numbers themselves. Here’s one more: “feminist.” It characterizes a person who has particular social and institutional views, politics, and goals. And yet when a person is publicly called a feminist, it might have little to do with her political leanings and everything to do with how she is perceived as shrill, unfeminine, opinionated, and man-hating. In other words, a bitch.
Some words are loaded with histories of abuse and degradation. Some words were created for the explicit purpose of dehumanizing and justifying oppression. You know that old kiddy rhyme “sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurts me”? That rhyme is BULLSHIT. Words can absolutely hurt. They can invalidate. They can belittle. And, very significantly, some words are used to incite and justify violence.
Reclamation is the project of taking the shitty part of a particular term and dispersing it, then replacing with more positive stuff. Reclamation has been fairly successful with the term “queer.” Sixty years ago (let’s get real, twenty years ago), queer was not something you could just call people. Or actually you could if you wanted to demean or belittle that person. Today, I teach for a Queer Studies program; in my classroom, the term is not only acceptable, it’s considered more appropriate than some other terms. Queer is now often used to give people respect and humanity, to create inclusion. My 69-year-old mother used to avoid using that term like the fucking plague, and she now proudly tells people her daughter teaches queer theory. Queer shows the power of reclamation.
Now let’s look at the N-word. That’s right, I’m not even gonna write it. That’s because this term has not been successfully reclaimed. Mass inhumanity and violence happened alongside this term and, while some have tried to bend it toward an inclusion and family meaning, it’s not been able to fully shake the filthy legacy. It’s unusable by ethical White people, and still controversial when used by Black people (see Larry Wilmore’s Correspondents Dinner speech).*
I don’t know exactly why some terms have a chance at reclamation and others just don’t. I’m guessing it’s an intricate balance of the histories and legacies poured into the word plus time, distance, and respect. My point is this: reclamation has a ton of potential but isn’t a guaranteed success. Some words never shake free.
Back to the bitch. Zeisler acknowledges that people are never gonna stop calling Clinton a bitch (cause haters, also cause gendered expectations). So Zeisler’s like, cool let’s just fucking reclaim this term then. Let Clinton embrace her bitchness, let the term signal her get-things-done attitude and her ceiling-breaking pathway to the Presidency. Zeisler urges us to frame Clinton as “the bitch America needs.”
I found this by typing “Clinton bitch meme” into Google images. If I can give you one piece of advice today: don’t do this.
Great. Cool. I like it. In theory. But also, bitch is deeply historically and socially situated. It doesn’t just name a tough person who doesn’t fall into gender line, it’s systematically used to invalidate women by dehumanizing them, effectively reducing them to a breeding animal in need of control. Bitch is also frequently used to create an allowable context for violence, rape, and murder against women. That’s why every Law & Order creeper says: “the bitch got what she deserved.”
Not everything is equivalent, but let’s play the equivalent game. If mass publics were systematically calling President Obama a “porch monkey” (yes, I know some did and yes, I know, GROSS), I wonder how many articles would declare that he should embrace and reclaim the term because his Blackness is a strength and a valuable asset to his Presidency. I’m guessing that few people asked President Obama to channel his strength and value through a really disgusting racist term.
There’s power in flipping negatives into positives and simultaneously justifying behavior that doesn’t fall into stratified gender ideals. But I don’t know if we can just flip the script on bitch, or if Clinton should feel obligated to embrace this label as something that empowers her and validates her kick-assness. I’m not sure if bitch can be totally reclaimed, and I’m not totally convinced it should be.
But this is just one bitch’s opinion.
*rather than saying “the N-word,” some of my Black students will replace the term with the word “ninja.” I don’t know exactly why this happens, but it’s clever-as-fuck.
Barack Obama is a feminist. So says Barack Obama in a self-authored article for Glamour. This is big news, not just because he’s a man but because he’s a famous and powerful man: things that are rarely connected to people who identify as feminists. Ok, so he gets his cookie (even though, as a close friend reasoned, “all men should be feminists anyway”). But they don’t because masculinity or whatever. So cookie given.I’m not as interested in President Obama’s self-definition as a feminist as I am in what he thinks a feminist is. You see, those in the public eye have been notoriously bad at explaining feminism. At worst, feminists are characterized as man-hating women. At best, narratives follow that feminism is about the equal right of women to work as, say, sexy lethal assassins. As you know, every time a celebrity misidentifies postfeminism as feminism, a feminist media scholar dies (inside, at least).
Some public figures such as (my forever crush) Chimamanda Adichie accurately explain feminism as the work of people who acknowledge and address complex, interconnected issues including gender boxes, socioeconomics, sexuality, violence, work, parenting, race, culture, and domestic relations. But no matter how much Adichie slayed her “We Should All Be Feminists” TedTalk, it won’t get the attention or audience that a Glamor article about feminism written by a sitting male president will. So my question o’ the day: what exactly did President Obama tell us feminism is?
Here’s his article. Read it. It’s good. Ok, there’s a bit too much American exceptionalism and progress narrative. That’s those statements of, gee ladies, look how far we’ve come, you went from being secretaries and housewives to astronauts! There’s certainly some truth to that, but it’s a narrative that ignores issues and inequalities tied to race, socioeconomic status, and citizenship. Many Women of Color were barred from those secretarial positions, and some women didn’t have the socioeconomic standing to be housewives. A White, upper-class woman may become the next U.S. President, but deep and systemic issues around work and domestic opportunity still exist. You know that “women make 79 cents to the man’s dollar thing?” White women make 79 cents to a White man’s dollar. Women of Color, transwomen, and undocumented women make wayyyyy less.
I was prepared for a sitting U.S. president to give me the exceptionalism and progress narrative thing. What I was not expecting was the clear and thoughtful way he addressed masculinity, intersectionality, non-hegemonic identities, and privilege. These are critical aspects of feminist inquiry and activism. So, according to Barack Obama, who is a feminist?
A feminist is a person who acknowledges masculinity is a construct too. In discussions about the constricting and stratified box that is femininity, we often fail to mention how femininity is constructed as a binary contrast to masculinity. President Obama names that dichotomy:“the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear. We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs.” He also articulates how masculinity is constructed via a particular type of “toughness” or “coolness” that forces men to be “assertive” (aka violent) and prevents them from “shedding a tear” or taking on full-time parenting roles. In short, gender boxes fucking suck. We’re getting marginally better at verbalizing those feminine/female boxes, but male/masculine boxes are just as stifling and damaging.
A feminist is a person who acknowledges that gender intersects with other categories of self. Both Barack and Michelle Obama are good at articulating this, but it bears repeating: gender does not exist in a vacuum and not all women are the same. In his article, President Obama notices and acknowledges that Michelle faces unique and specific gender stigmas and obstacles: “we need to keep changing a culture that shines a particularly unforgiving light on women and girls of color. Michelle has often spoken about this. Even after achieving success in her own right, she still held doubts; she had to worry about whether she looked the right way or was acting the right way—whether she was being too assertive or too ‘angry.’” The Combahee River Collectivewould agree.
Hey Girl, I acknowledge your overlapping intersectional inequalities.
A feminist is a person who acknowledges that, while all people are subject to the sex/sexuality binary, not all people fit that binary. Even very good social justice campaigns tend to employ discourses such as “men need to support their wives.” This presumes that people are cisgender and heterosexual (men and women/men marry women). I know, this is an overwhelmingly dominant and unquestioned belief about bodies and desires. But dominant and unquestioned beliefs are not always true. Actually, there’s a lot of variety in terms of bodies and sexualities, but that variety has been stuffed into those same fucking binary and dichotomous gender boxes. Twice in his essay, President Obama notes that “gender stereotypes affect all of us, regardless of our gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation” and “forcing people to adhere to outmoded, rigid notions of identity isn’t good for anybody—men, women, gay, straight, transgender, or otherwise.” As a queer studies scholar and a feminist, I’d like to see a whole lot more of this. But acknowledging this part of feminism is an important part of being a feminist. So it’s a start.
A feminist is a person who acknowledges their own positions of privilege.Audre Lorde says that when People of Color/women have to continually explain racism/sexism to White people/men, it saps their time and energy that they should be using on themselves/their own liberation. Peggy McIntosh says that people with racial or gender privileges have a responsibility to see and name their own privileges. Several times in this essay, President Obama notes his own gender privileges vis-à-vis Michelle. He notes that few people questioned his choice of occupation even though it took him away from his family for long periods of time. He notes his ability to support his family on his own time schedule, even though it meant his female partner had to pick up whatever slack was left. He notes how men such as him are congratulated for changing their child’s diaper because it is framed as an aid rather than a duty. In short, he notes how he was able to succeed in part because of institutionalized gender privileges regarding work and family.
I must admit that I avoided reading this essay for two days because I was fairly certain President Obama would articulate that glossy, surface, faux version of feminism that is so often the pop culture best-case-scenario. And he did that a bit. But he also hit on several key ideas that are not only essential in any compete definition of feminism, but also critical for informing the actions of any feminist. We should all be feminists, and I agree that that President Obama is one too.
*Game of Thrones spoilers. Also spoilers about if Donald Trump is sexist. Spoiler: yes*
A few days ago, Donald Trump responded to a comment Secretary Clinton made by emphasizing that she was shouting and shouting wasn’t womanly. This is sexist, obv. I’m sure Trump knew it was sexist because this thing about Clinton shouting had already come up and the media/Clinton supporters/Clinton had already explained why it’s a sexist thing to say. I think Trump said it precisely because it had already been vetted as sexist. That is, he said it to get a rise out of people and maybe appeal to sexist members of his constituency. Today I’m wondering this: are the producers of HBO’s Game of Thrones willfully ignorant of their continued sexism, or are they pulling a Donald Trump on me?
Let’s not beat around the bush: I enjoy Game of Thrones but it’s been pretty heavily criticized for it’s fucked up treatment of women. For every kick-ass Brienne or Arya scene, we get unnecessary shots of women’s naked bodies, often during scenes of sexual violence (I’ve argued here how dangerous this particular representation is). They’ve also transformed consensual sex acts from the books into rapes, denied they filmed a rape scene based on the very old and very tired “rape to consent” argument (see Steve Attewell eviscerate this here). And last season I wrote about how they manufactured a repeated rape and sexual torture of Sansa Stark plotline—just for funsies.
Game of Thrones has been blasted for these representations by the mainstream media, by bloggers, by fans that refuse to continue watching. So there’s a pretty palatable message out there: your treatment of women can really suck. Now, after watching the season six premiere, “The Red Woman,” I’m truly wondering if producers are willfully clueless or if they’re actively trying to push a misogyny angle.
What’s my Saucy beef with an episode unusually free of rapes and gratuitous nudity? In answer, let me tell you a little story about George R.R. Martin’s vision of Dorne. Like everywhere in the GRRM A Song of Ice and Fire world, bad shit goes down in Dorne. But unlike every other place in the books, the Dornish don’t ascribe to the ol’ gender hierarchy lineage bullshit. Women can be in charge and, if the oldest child is a woman, she’s the ruler. There’s more gender equality in Dorne, which is probably why there are so many hard-core female political players in Dorne. Arianne Martell and the Sand Snakes actually want to help Princess Myrcella claim her birthright to the Iron Throne, which they believe has been stolen from her by sexist Westerosi gender laws.
Yea it’s a political snake pit, but at least we don’t have that 79 cents to a man’s dollar bullshit.
HBO’s translation of this world: Arianne is rolled into Ellaria Sand. Ellaria wants to kill Myrcella as a fuck you to Cersei, even though it’s a terrible political move. The motivation for this is, of course, a man (sorry Bechdel test, not today). After Ellaria succeeds in revenge-killing Myrcella, she then kills the ruler of Dorne, a very sweet, gentle, disabled, protector of children. She stabs him in the heart. Why? Apparently he is a WEAK MAN (because he won’t revenge-kill a child) and WEAK MEN WILL NEVER RULE DORNE AGAIN HAHAHAHA. The Sand Snakes then butcher their sweet and innocent cousin Trystane JUST TO GET RID OF THAT WHOLE MARTELL MAN LINE HAHAHAHA.
Take that Dr Bashir!
Game of Thrones took strong political players who do rational things based on feminist-eque principles and made them into straw feminist caricatures. The straw feminist is a fallacy of a media representation, it’s a figure who calls herself a feminist but she’s not a feminist; she’s an irrational, man-hating shrew who wishes to suppress male power and men at all costs, give herself power over others, and hates all women who don’t follow her lead. She’s mean, loud, and generally out of control. The point of the straw feminist trope is to show how grotesque powerful women are, and how dangerous and destructive their irrational desires for equality and self-governance can be.
Game of Thrones has made Dorne into a place where powerful women 1) get into petty and ultimately really harmful cat fights and 2) do totally irrational things like murder their family/royalty for the sake of hating on and castrating “weak men.” It’s a sexist representation, and it’s a harmful one.
So thanks Game of Thrones, for an episode without gratuitous and sexualized rapes. Here’s your cookie. But also, fuck you for your construction of a very recognizable but also very empty and pejorative representation of Dornish women, and a twisted depiction of what women would do to a society that recognizes their equality and sovereignty. This representation is so blatantly twisted from its original intent, from George R.R. Martin’s own characterization, I just have to wonder… it is because not one writer or producer on this show has taken even an introductory level Women’s and Gender Studies course, or are they Donald Trumping me?
Let me tell you a story. I woke up. I checked Facebook. A friend posted Taylor Swift’s new music video, Bad Blood. I watched it. I went on Twitter. Media-scholar-extraordinaire-turned-Buzzfeed-reporter Anne Helen Petersen posted about Bad Blood. Behold the exchange:
That’s a lot of academic class/pop culture sass packed into 140 characters. So let me take it back a bit. Taylor Swift is one of those “I’m not a feminist oh wait I just learned what feminism is and I’m a feminist” kind of feminists. This is great. We need more feminists defining themselves as feminists (I’m looking at you, Shailene Woodley). In fact, Swift attributes her understanding of feminism and evolution of feminist self-identification to pal Lena Dunham. So what is Bad Blood? It’s a music video full of badass-looking, dangerous-cool fighter women, played by many of Swift’s big Hollywood friends: Cindy Crawford, Mariska Hargitay, Selena Gomez, Jessica Alba. And yes, Lena Dunham.*
To recap: Swift is a woman who has publically minted herself feminist. She makes a video filled with famous powerful women known for playing powerful or feminist characters. All the female characters in the video are cool as fuck and dangerous as hell. BY GOD THIS VIDEO IS FEMINIST. Oh wait, no, its not. It’s a “postfeminist girl power montage of skinny girls who think ass-kicking in high heels and big earrings is not a poor idea.”
Our skin is unprotected from this fire backdrop. But we look amaz
So what does this 140 character Tweet mean exactly? Let’s break it down… 140 character Tweet style!
Postfeminist: 1) There was historical gender inequality but, because of past activism, we no longer need feminism. Needed it, did it, in post world. Yay?
2) Women’s educational and professional barriers are not systemic and so can be overcome with individual hard work. Work harder, ladies!
Girl power: Female empowerment exemplified via independence, self-sufficiency, and physical strength/violence/ass-kicking. Sisterhood here somewhere too
Montage: A film sequence of pretty pictures that speeds up time and is generally without substance.
Skinny girls: Postfeminist woman’s power is tied to the physical ideal: she has a hard body, skinny body, feminine body, light-skinned body. Hairless too:
Ass-kicking in high heels and big earrings: 1) Postfeminist woman’s power is tied to the social ideal: she is sexy, desirable, consumer of $$ products, and has a “cool girl” attitude.
2) Impractical crime fighting accoutrement:
Saucy Scholar conclusion: Bad Blood could be worse. And it could be better. See, Bad Blood exemplifies a very surface and superficial understanding of feminism. An ideology that women are empowered when they can ride motorcycles and throw knives, and wear latex outfits and high heels while doing it. This is not feminism. This is postfeminism. Because, sure, Swift is empowered. She’s rich as fuck and famous as fuck and she’s White and skinny and pretty. And yes, she’s called a slut because of her dating practices and people write sexist things about her because her songs are about her personal relationships. But she can overcome this with her money and her celebrity and her hegemonic looks. And all her skinny, pretty, wealthy celebrity friends who populate the video can too.
But this type of postfeminist sensibility doesn’t exemplify and doesn’t even begin to address a range of feminist issues. For example, women who don’t have the socio-economic status to consume products that would allow them to look awesomely cool. Or bodies will never achieve the hard, sexy, light-skinned ideal, not matter what they do. Or the systemic issue of portraying a woman’s sexuality as an object for entertainment and consumption rather than an expression of her own embodied desires.
I don’t think Bad Blood is harming anyone. Actually, I think it’s kind of fun; I’ve watched it like six times (ok, two of those times were to make GIFs). And Swift has taken what is basically a terrible song and made it into a hit. Bravo. But we shouldn’t think of Bad Blood as anything more than those things. It’s not feminist. It’s just some postfeminist eye candy.
And just FYI, if you take my Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies class, this is what you’ll encounter during week ten:
* Actually, my favorite part of the video was Lena Dunham: she didn’t appear in uber-feminine dress or makeup, and was only shot from the shoulders up, smoking a cigar.
Today I taught Pamela Aronson’s article on why many women believe in gender equality but really don’t want to identify as a feminist. Its because feminists don’t love men.
Besides awesome classes like mine, where do people get ideas about feminism? That’s right, it’s your friend and mine: the media. Gone are the days when youngsters listened to Rush Limbaugh’s disgusting rants about “feminazis.” Nowadays, we enter the cult of celebrity through young Hollywood: Miley Cyrus. Lorde. Lena Dunham. Beyoncé. Taylor Swift. Jennifer Lawrence. Emma Watson. All individuals who have all weighed in on the F word. Not only if they identify as feminists, but also what feminism is.
Hold on, why do we care what celebrities say about feminism? Well, celebrities are public figures, so what they say has a national and international forum. Celebrities are also fancy and sparkly, and we idealize their bodies, their jobs, their romances. This means we give more weight to what they say. We’ve all seen young celebrities berated for not living up to their “role model” status. Like it or not, what comes out of celebrities’ mouths has the power to influence.
When asked in a May 2014 interview if she considered herself a feminist, Divergent star Shailene Woodley confidently explained “No because I love men, and I think the idea of ‘raise women to power, take the men away from the power’ is never going to work out because you need balance. With myself, I’m very in touch with my masculine side. And I’m 50 percent feminine and 50 percent masculine […] And also I think that if men went down and women rose to power, that wouldn’t work either […] My biggest thing is really sisterhood more than feminism. I don’t know how we as women expect men to respect us because we don’t even seem to respect each other.” According to Woodley:
Feminism works to elevate women above and at the expense of men.
Feminists are not balanced between masculine and feminine?
Feminists hate men. At the very least, they don’t love ’em.
Feminists don’t respect other women. Those bitches.
nice try buddy
First, a lot of that shit doesn’t even make sense. TAKE MY CLASS, WOODLEY! Second, a lot of that shit is what Aronson calls the “I’m not a feminist, but…” response. Women advocate for feminist goals—like treating men and women equally and with respect—but don’t want to associate those goals with feminism. Third, a lot of that shit is what we in the biz call the “straw feminist trope” (Feminist Frequency has an amazing video on this.) See, the straw man presents an ideological standpoint in such a way so as to be easily discredited. So the straw feminist embodies all extreme or ridiculous aspects of what people think feminism is: feminists are man-hating. They want to attain power at the expense of others. They are shrill and illogical. They are nasty or ugly and or otherwise socially unpleasant.
But Saucy you say, I know for a fact that some feminists hate men, want to take power away from men, and are mean or whatever. Let me break that down for you, like I do for my students.
some people are assholes.
some assholes call themselves feminists.
this does not mean feminists are assholes.
case closed.
It’s not just Hollywood ladies getting in on the action. Self-identified feminist (but media identified “male feminist”) Joseph Gordon Levitt explained in an August 2014 interview that feminism means “you don’t let your gender define who you are—you can be who you want to be, whether you’re a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, whatever. However you want to define yourself, you can do that and should be able to do that, and no category ever really describes a person because every person is unique.”
nice try buddy
No, that’s not what feminism means.** I know we want to give Levitt some cred for being an ally and calling himself a feminist. But he doesn’t get a pass either, because his explanation in no way addresses how gender intersects with race, class, sexuality, or ability. He’s not talking about how institutionalized racism or sexism might prevent someone from “being whatever they want to be.” He’s not talking about how socialization indoctrinates us into gendered expectations and behaviors. Or how femininity is stiflingly connected to beauty and sexualization, and masculinity to success and violence. He’s not talking about hegemony (who holds social power and how they maintain it). He’s not talking about gendered ideologies tied into romance, marriage, domestic work, childcare. He’s not talking about very real dangers queer and trans* people face when they diverge from normative sex, gender, or sexuality. He’s not talking about the privilege some people have to not see how these issues affect the lives and opportunities of individuals.
In class, I screen a video that identifies feminism as the study of—and efforts to combat—multiple and intersectional social issues. Its Chimamanda Adichie’s speech “We Should All Be Feminists” (You probably know Adichie because Beyoncé sampled her in “Flawless,” but you should know her from her literature and her incredible speech “The Danger of a Single Story”). Not only does Adichie model the range and breadth of feminist concerns, she models feminist behavior by grounding her talk in her own cultural knowledge and lived experiences.
Loyal readers, let me leave you with a bit more on what exactly feminism is and does. Feminism is a lens for seeing fucked up shit that we’re so used to seeing, it’s become invisible to us. Feminism is a tool to scrutinize how social systems work and to name how social inequalities are rooted in our ranking of difference. Feminism is a way to identify ourselves as active thinkers and doers. Feminism is a way to reclaim politics around stratification, discrimination, and inequality. We should all be feminists. F is for feminist. F is for fuck yes.
**“But Saucy, why can’t celebrities define feminism however they want? They’re just expressing their opinion!” Yes, they are. It’s an uninformed opinion. I might have the opinion that the earth is flat. This opinion does not change well-researched, empherically proven, and mutually agreed upon definitions. Yes kids, social science is actually a science!
I’m not as interested in President Obama’s self-definition as a feminist as I am in what he thinks a feminist is. You see, those in the public eye have been notoriously bad at explaining feminism. At worst, 
Meredith Heller 