CUTE BRUISER 7 by Cute Bruiser

ISSUE 7

NOVEMBER 2014

CUTE BRUISER

We by

started saying

Issue

‘This

the

Cute

last

Bruiser

issue’,

and

finished with the line ‘Goodbye forever’. Tu r n s

out

that

was

big

lie.

There’s

still a lot more to be said and we want to keep saying it. Cute Bruiser remains Wellington Feminist

city’s

Zine.

Please enjoy.

xoxo The Bruisers

No.

Forever

most and

prime always.

CONTENTS

How To Be A Hairy, Angry, Man-Hating Feminist 4 Lessons From Winter 12 Artworks by Teresa Collins 15 A Poem 20 Monkey Ball Excerpts by Yulia Nemova 23 Why Men Shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Be Feminists 26 Is It Feminist? Ultimate Checklist 32

KATHLEEN WINTER

H O W TO B E A H A I R Y, A N G R Y, M A N - H AT I N G F E M I N I S T

So you’re a feminist. You believe in equality so you’re calling yourself a feminist. That’s great. But you’re not one of those feminists. Not one of those angry ones, the ones who don’t shave and blame men for everything. Haha. No way. Well that’s weak. That’s entry-level. It’s time to upgrade. It’s time to become 1) Hairy. There’s an art to this. You probably haven’t seen many women with natural body hair – you probably haven’t

seen your own leg hair since you were nine or ten. You might think that leg and underarm hair is gross and ugly – but only on women, of course. You’re going to unlearn this revulsion to your own body-hair, and that’s a very tough and personal journey. It can help to look at a lot of pictures of other women with natural hair on tumblr (I’m not even kidding) (hairypitsclub.tumblr.com) (dontneedtoshavetobebeautiful.tumblr.com). It can help to consider how much time and energy you – and so many other brilliant, intelligent, activist women – spend shaving or waxing. 10 – 20 minutes every day? A painful and expensive wax every few weeks? Plucking eyebrow and chin hairs, bleaching your upper lip. The constant monitoring – did you miss that spot on the side of your knee? How embarrassing. Oh the shame. Question that, because that is fucked up. No woman freely chooses to shave because it’s empowering – a self-serving patriarchal beauty industry has pressured us into it since we were children, and now we invest time, money and energy that could be used to change the world. Now stop shaving. This is just inaction. Just don’t do

anything, and you’ve succeeded. I made the mistake of growing my leg hair for the first time during no-shave November. In New Zealand, November is getting pretty warm, and I was wearing shorts. I was distinctly aware of my hair getting longer and other people could see it too, and what did they think? Would they laugh at me oh man. So I shaved, but I should emphasise that I never had a negative comment from anyone about my body hair. Beauty standards and norms are so ingrained that we police our own bodies. It helps to get used to seeing your own limbs covered in hair before you show other people. If you are strong of heart and spirit and can immediately walk outdoors with freshly grown leg hair that’s too awesome. If you need to work up to it, do what you have to do. But the feeling of solidarity when you see another woman with hair under her arms, or a dark moustache, is weirdly massive. Once you look the part, the part of a proud woman with a body and hair on that body, it’s time to get 2) Angry. So much feminist discussion involves throwing stats

around, and it’s easy to zone out. They’re just numbers, whatever. If we stop and listen to these statistics one by one, if we let the reality of each of these numbers sink in and consider that each is a real damn human being, that’s where the anger comes from. We should all be angry, all the time. Angry in an active and unrelenting way. Let’s get angry right now. According to UN gender reports, women perform 66% of the world’s work, produce 50% of its food and earn 10% of its income. Ten-per-cent. Also, we own 1% of the world’s property. That’s insane. That’s a pittance, a negligible amount. What does this tell us about the kind of work women are being forced to take on, and the ‘wages’ we are receiving. Having our own income and property are key components of women’s self-determination. We work more and we get less – not less, barely anything. Barely enough to survive, and often not even that. This tells us a lot about how women are viewed as a social class. Less worthwhile, less deserving. It’s no surprise that poverty is a feminist issue, as women make up 70% of the world’s poor. Women account for two thirds of the world’s adult illiterates. Women’s education is considered less im-

portant than men’s, and as a result we are less able to communicate with the world and with each other. In national parliaments, women make up only 17 percent of the total seats, and the majority of these oversee social sectors such as education and the family. Women have limited power to make widespread change through government. Women still face massive bias in elections and our concerns are dismissed as ‘women’s issues’. In Aotearoa, 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence at the hand of a partner in their lifetime. 1 in 4 women are raped in their lifetime. In July 2014, Christchurch’s only rape crises centre was forced to close because our government would not give it the $30,000 it needed to continue operating. To put this into perspective: $80, 000, 000 has been put aside to spend on redesigning the New Zealand bank note. 80-million-dollars. Women’s lives and safety are not prioritised. The right to abortion on request only exists in 29 percent of the world’s countries. New Zealand is not one of them. Women around the world are being forced to bear children to term, and to support them, and to raise them, regardless of whether they are financially, physically or emotionally able to. Of the 500,000 women

who die in childbirth every year, 99% live in developing countries. In other words, in developing countries, a girl or a woman dies every minute giving birth. Between 500,000 and 2 million people are trafficked annually into situations including prostitution, forced labour, slavery or servitude. There are more people living in slavery today than there have been at any point in history, and over half are women. This is a hard one to get your head around since most of us consider slavery to be a thing of the past. Human trafficking is still very real and very lucrative, and young women and girls in particular are disappearing in huge numbers. We need to stand up for each other and demand that someone be accountable. Okay you’re angry. You’re furious. The world is a dark and dangerous place, who is to blame for this? 3) Men. This is as real as it gets. Feminists spend a lot of time fighting against ‘society’, against ‘cultural norms’ and ‘problematic social attitudes’ and sometimes this is right. If generations of women have been taught that

their appearance is their #1 asset and measure of worth then we need to fight against that attitude. But who does this attitude help? Who benefits from our oppression in the workforce, home, and social sphere? Men do. We talk about violence against women when we should be talking about male pattern violence against women. We talk about rape victims when we should be talking about male rapists. The people committing these crimes against women are indisputably, overwhelmingly male, and no miniscule outliers change that fact. You’re already angry about the statistics, you already know that women all over the world are being raped, abused, killed. We’re not repeating this because we want to cast women as victims, we’re doing it to bring attention to the people who are making us victims. Men. We have to recognise this so that we can stop them. I know, I know, not ALL men. Your dad is really nice and even helps do the dishes sometimes. Your boyfriend is an eco-activist who loves ‘strong women’. But here’s the thing: a patriarchy means that all men benefit from women’s oppression, even if they aren’t consciously, actively contributing to it. Even ‘good men’ laugh at rape jokes, call women names like chick and babe, maybe

cunt and slut when they step out of line. ‘Good men’ sometimes stumble into strip clubs – just for a laugh, of course. Good men rate women who walk down the street, they laugh with their male friends and jokingly tell them that they ‘throw like a girl’ or are ‘acting like a bitch.’ These guys talk over women without noticing, they brush your opinions aside and they correct and critique you – even within our own movement. They stand silent when their fellow men are accused of assaulting women, of raping women. ‘But he’s such a good guy’, they say. Good men who do nothing in the face of oppression can go to hell. The feminist movement doesn’t need them and doesn’t rely on them. Recognise that we are fighting against a patriarchy and a patriarchy is built by, and benefits, men. There are many men who will not relinquish that power willingly, no matter how politely we ask, no matter how hard we try to include them. Our liberation is something we have to take, with righteous anger that is long overdue.

KASSIE HARTENDORP

LESSONS FROM WINTER

1. Anger is a powerful tool. Sometimes it can be the fuel that causes your survival. The hardest part, however, is aiming it in the right direction, rather than blowing up the ones you love most. 2. The weight of systemic violence is not yours to bear. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to control your empathy, but do not hold every injustice too close to your heart. It will swallow you whole and the war is long. Take a deep breath and let some stories of trauma and oppression pass through you, rather than allowing them to make homes in your throat.

3. The city winds are piercing on the best of days. But they also work well to blast through your ribcage and sweep away any heaviness still weighing on your heart. 4. Emotional tears are said to contain leucine enkephalin, a natural painkiller. Instead of fighting an outburst, find a quiet space and have a quick cry if you need to. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better than it all coming out at the wrong moment in front of the worst person. 5. It is a characteristic distinct to certain brands of Western capitalist culture that tells us we are truly and completely alone. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop it being or feeling like reality, but know that it is not a universal given. Never give up on your connections to others, even if they feel like the barest of threads.

TERESA COLLINS

ARTWORKS

MILLICENT DOW

A POEM

I’m a diva, I’m a bitch, I’m a drama queen, a bridezilla I’m a slut, a slag I’m a prude, frigid As a woman I feel defined That straight away I’m guilty of something These words that I’m told straight away

These qualities of a woman that we are told ever since we are birthed and held in the arms of our mother, we will be These words stamped across my face it feels Dripping down my arms, falling tears Coming in the contract of a woman, accepting terms and conditions Must read all information, I need to know what to expect when I get mixed up with one of these creatures These words used against me, created to hurt me, created to define me I take them back

YULIA NEMOVA

MONKEY BALL EXCERPTS

KATHLEEN WINTER

WHY MEN SHOULDN’T BE FEMINISTS

We spend a lot of time explaining that we don’t hate men. Feminist or not, women are pressured to acknowledge men, to include men, to sleep with them whenever possible and defer to them whenever asked. For feminists, including men in our conversations has been a way of getting people to take us seriously. We’re not a bunch of old man-hating spinsters, look, here’s my partner Steven, and he’s a feminist too. People will take feminist arguments more seriously when Steven speaks them, and why not include men – after all, feminism benefits them too. I don’t mean to start with such naked disdain. The

question of men’s involvement in feminism has taken me a lot of time to consider. I want feminism to be widespread, a social norm as much as a social movement. Of course I want men embracing feminist theory, whatever. The first time I saw a ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirt, it was on a bearded white guy, and it was a weird experience. I was just discovering feminism and it meant a lot to me, everything was starting to make sense, but this didn’t. I thought I’d be pumped to see someone showing solidarity like that but it felt off. Maybe it was because this guy was an arrogant dick who had been making creepy passes at me all year. Feminism was my word and my movement and when I saw him wearing that shirt, saying that he was a feminist, I felt like he was taking it away from me. I felt like he had decided to speak for feminism and that people would listen to him, and what would he say? Radical feminists posit that men can be allies. They can support feminism, but they cannot be feminists. At first this sounds like an argument about semantics that makes no real difference - but I increasingly understand how important this distinction is. It’s the difference between being a part of the group and supporting the

members of the group. If you have the label ‘Feminist’, you are part of the movement – your voice matters as much as any others feminists’. This means you can lead the movement; you can critique it and change its direction and priorities. Men have absolutely no place doing this. Feminism is a movement by and for women and this understanding has been increasingly lost. Now we say that feminism is about equality; that ‘feminism is for everyone’. It isn’t. Feminists don’t want to make women ‘equal’ with men. We live in a capitalist society that is inherently unequal. To be equal with men is to exploit other groups – if white women are equal with white men, they will continue to exploit women of colour. If middle-class women are equal with middle-class men, they will continue to exploit working class women. We want to be liberated from this oppressive system, not to claim a bigger part in it. This revolutionary aspect (backbone) of feminism has been toned down, and men’s inclusion is a key reason why. Yeah, feminism does ‘help men too’. We’re fighting against gender conditioning that forces men to be masculine – strong, unfeeling, brutal and controlling. This

invented character is just as unrealistic as the feminine, but with a key difference. Feminine characteristics revolve around obedience – frailty, beauty and empathy. These aren’t the traits of a revolutionary class and it’s no accident that those gendered male are in the position of power. It’s a shame that men created masculinity because now they’re in a glass case of emotion where they can’t cry in public and also feel the need to abuse women to feel big, but like, I’m more worried about the women being abused than about men’s need to exist as fully faceted human beings and not oppressive stereotypes. Have you heard that metaphor: man will sometimes trip over the chain, but the shackle is attached to woman’s ankle. The ways that men can gain from feminism are minimal compared to what we desperately need, and their gains aren’t and should never be our focus. If a man insists on being called a feminist and on having a place inside the movement rather than beside it, we have to question his motives. For a long time I wouldn’t do this. I wanted men to be involved with feminism and to talk about it with us. But they can’t do that without inevitably altering the very shape of our movement, and this re-shaping is never

positive. Notallmen plan for this to happen, notallmen mean for it to become all about them. But I have seen it happen too many times. I have seen women corrected and even silenced by male feminists and I won’t allow men to claim that place again. I google ‘male feminist’ and I get some blogs run by some dudes calling themselves feminists. One has written a big ol’ post about why he continues to call himself a feminist despite opposition from “self-proclaimed feminist women”. He says; “For those who think males have no place in the feminist movement, I hope they are willing to rethink this stance, I hope they are willing to reach out and talk to those who disagree.” He simply brushes it off. Other women agree, so why can’t you? Men aren’t used to being told that they can’t – can’t be part of a group, can’t speak up, can’t label themselves however they want – and especially not by women. Their sense of entitlement is disgusting, the patronising tone is disgusting, and male feminists espouse this bullshit constantly. I’ve seen this quote on multiple male feminist blogs: “Sexism doesn’t just hurt women, it breaks our very humanity.” Because feminism has to be about more than just women to matter, because

hurting woman isn’t the same as hurting humanity, not until ‘the rest of us’ are involved, and we all know that means men. Men cannot be feminists but they 120% can absolutely be feminist allies. Being a male ally means listening to women and telling other dudes to shut up. When men do say good feminist stuff they are lauded for it – even if it’s basic 101 feminism that women have been yelling for decades. We need to respect women’s voices and this means allowing them to speak and sharing their words. This means sharing their messages without adding your own two cents. Talk to other men about feminism but recognise that while you support the movement, you are not part of it. All men should have feminist values, but no man can tell a woman what to think or how to fight for her own liberation.

IS IT FEMINIST?

U LT I M AT E C H E C K L I S T

Men: No. Women: Yes. Slut shaming: No. Using the term ‘Slut shaming’: No. (This is another example of white feminists trying to reclaim a slur (slut), and applying it to other people without their permission. If you are a self-proclaimed slut, if you love the word and really feel it, go for it, tell people to stop slut-shaming you. But you can’t apply it to another woman without also calling her a slut. Jennifer Lawrence had naked pictures of herself stolen and distributed, and voices called for an end to

her ‘slut shaming’. What? This doesn’t build solidarity bro. Have you seen that picture of a skinny white guy at slut-walk holding up a sign that reads ‘free hugs for sluts’? Pretty perfectly encapsulates the failure of that reclamation.) Taylor Swift: No. (But it’s okay to be a secret fan.) Playing Lead Guitar: Yes. Playing Bass: Yes. Playing the Drums: Yes. Playing the Violin: Yes. “I’m with the band”: No. Supporting women artists: Yes. “I just like male writers better”: No. Marriage: No. (Really, no. Never, at any point.) Beauty Pageants: No. Woman politicians: Yes. Woman revolutionaries: Yes. Voting for National: No. The vast majority of media you will ever encounter: No. The majority of people you will ever meet: No. The people most worth hanging out with: Yes.

Health Goth: Maybe. Norm Core: No. PlayStation: Yes. XBOX: No. Stripes: Yes. Polka Dots: No. Diets: No. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Healthy Eatingâ&#x20AC;?: No. Eating lots of Vitamin C: Yes. Meat: No. Meat you personally slaughtered and prepared yourself: Maybe. BDSM: No. (Sexualising violence and emotional abuse is not feminist, especially when so many women in society are currently being abused, especially when most BDSM mimics this abuse. Domination is not feminist.) Kink Shaming: Yes. Sex Positivity: No. (This phrase implies that there is such a thing as sex-negative feminism, and this makes no sense. No feminist is against sex, what we are against is pornography, the exploitation of women and girls and

the creation of a culture in which we are considered objects. We’re against women feeling pressured to do sexual favours, to put out, to do degrading shit so that their spotty boyfriend won’t dump them. We’re all for sex but you know what, feminist porn isn’t a real thing. And if you think that being anti-porn means you’re anti-sex, you need help.) Supporting Trans people: Yes. Supporting Intersex people: Yes. Supporting everyone who ain’t straight: Yes. Equality: No. Liberation: Yes.

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