lierdumoa:

coffee-cigarettes-and-anxiety:

shitrichcollegekidssay:

k but makeup isnt “war paint” and pressuring women to wear makeup to be “feminist enough” is like u know shitty? and u know … materially no different from simply pressuring women to wear makeup in the first place … which is like you know what our patriarchal society does lol??? if u wanna wear makeup thats fine but like dont fuckin… pressure other women to do it. goddamn.

The amount of pressure placed on trans women to wear makeup in order to “be woman enough” is utterly ridiculous as well. Not even to “be feminist enough” but to be seen as a fucking valid woman in this hellscape of a country/world.

Look, I just watched Hidden Figures a couple weeks ago. It’s about three black women who straightened their hair every morning to fit white feminine standards, and wore skirts below the knee to fit white acceptability standards, and put up with a thousand other sexist and racist indignities because they knew that if they made those compromises, it would put them in a position to lift up the next generation.

They made those compromises so the generation following them would not have to.

So fuck yeah, they had every right to call their makeup WAR PAINT.

The reality of war is that it inevitably requires those waging it to commit moral compromises and suffer indignities in the aim of a larger goal. People wage war in different ways. 

1. direct defiance
2. strategic compromise 
3. subversion

In the first category we have the people who wage a full frontal attack

In the second category we have the chess players, who make sacrifices to get themselves in positions of power.

In the third category we have the double agents and spies, who sneak behind enemy lines in an attempt to disrupt the system from within.

Femininity can and has been used by women and girls as an effective subversive weapon against patriarchy at numerous points in history.

Consider for example Kawaii culture in Japan. When Japanese schoolgirls first invented Kawaii culture their was huge backlash against the movement. Teachers tried to ban them from using hyper-feminine, cutesy handwriting in schools. Japanese men hated Kawaii fashion because they wanted women looking graceful and sexy, not frilly and cute. Men invented slurs to describe women who used cutesy high voices and dressed in frills. They called these girls’ fashion and behavior “fake” and “affected” instead of recognizing it for what it was – a legitimate counter culture. [ultrafacts source] [wikipedia source with additional sources listed in footnotes]

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts like this lately.

Posts claiming that if you see strategic value in subverting certain aspects of patriarchal culture, rather than defying them directly, that you are a traitor to the movement – that you are in fact oppressing other feminists.

And to me, that reeks of swerf rhetoric.

It implies that any woman who slaps on makeup or chooses to work a job that services men or makes any number of compromises in order to survive, or to improve her quality of life, and the life of her children (if she has them), is oppressing/betraying the women who are unable to or who refuse to make those same compromises.

War is waged and won on many fronts. You can fight patriarchal culture by directly rejecting it. You can also fight it by subverting it. You can also choose not to fight certain aspects of patriarchal culture in order to get into a strategic position to fight other aspects you deem more immediately important.

.

My point is, there is more than one way to be feminist, just as there is more than one way to be a woman.