Cute Bruiser Issue 3 August 2013
[04]
Kathleen Winter is Over Feminism
[12]
My Lack of Sexual Label
[18]
Oi! Fuck off with your unsolicited advice about how I should eat healthy, I’ve got bigger things on my plate. Both large portions of food and more metaphorical, deep and meaningful things like emotions and shit. So I don’t have time to listen to you tell me how I should be looking for a cereal with under 15 grams of sugar per 100 grams of cereal.
[22]
What’s Wrong with Being the Village Bicycle?
[28]
Is it Feminist? Pacific Rim
Cute Bruiser is an independent feminist zine made in Wellington, New Zealand. A cute bruiser is a small, often female character who fights like a bruiser. Bruisers tend to favour melee combat focused on punches and blocks. The cute bruiser shows contrast between appearance and strength, breaking the masculine stereotype associated with this combat style.
Cute Bruiser Issue 3 August 2013
[04]
Kathleen Winter is Over Feminism
[12]
My Lack of Sexual Label
[18]
Oi! Fuck off with your unsolicited advice about how I should eat healthy, I’ve got bigger things on my plate. Both large portions of food and more metaphorical, deep and meaningful things like emotions and shit. So I don’t have time to listen to you tell me how I should be looking for a cereal with under 15 grams of sugar per 100 grams of cereal.
[22]
What’s Wrong with Being the Village Bicycle?
[28]
Is it Feminist? Pacific Rim
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Kathleen Winter is Over Feminism Kathleen Winter
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Guts because feminism and Kathleen had a really good run together. It made her feel validated and gave her purpose. You always hear young people described as being ‘urgent’ but it wasn’t until finding feminism that Kathleen Winter felt a true sense of urgency. Feminism was like, “Here’s the reason a lot of things suck; the reason is patriarchy. Why not get rid of that” and Kathleen thought: “Heck yeah”. There’s the personal and the political, right. On a personal level K. Winter started to make a ton of progress. She stopped hating the way she looked and judging how other women looked. She realised hot damn she had misogynistic views and challenged them real hard. She started to understand why common social norms made her feel worthless and shit, and she refused to play along with them. And things got better. Personal = A+. I guess here’s the problem: Kathleen started to talk to other people about feminism. Feminism is so obviously a good idea. Feminism is the idea that everyone is equal. That’s everyone, not just ‘men’ and ‘women’. How could anyone disagree? No one is sexist or racist anymore, of course they’re all for equality, but they’re not feminists. Feminist is a threatening word, and Kathleen was scared to use it. And the sense of urgency increased, and let me tell you why. Feminism is an idea that has been around for a very, very long time. For the last hundred years people have been pointing out that ladies can do everything dudes can do, and can we please get rid of titles like ‘lady’ and ‘dude’ because
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they’re irrelevant and redundant. But we still live in a society where men are valued more than women. We still live in a society where people of colour are second-class citizens, where the disabled are punch lines and men who wear skirts are beaten up. K. Winter has slowly been acknowledging a horrible, horrible reality. She’s pretty definitely not going to live to see the end of Patriarchy. She will never live in a world where she isn’t treated differently for being a woman. Never. Never ever. Neither will you, d-bag. You who have contributed nothing. You who have done fuck-all to make social change. I don’t care if you come from a long line of decent, liberal folk, if you take women’s studies and sometimes reblog feminist quotes on your tumblr. You haven’t done enough. You haven’t done fucking anything.
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But we’ve made so much progress? Fuck you. I’m not happy that the marriage equality bill has just been passed in New Zealand. I’m furious. I’m furious that this happened in my lifetime. I’m furious that I was raised in a New Zealand that treats gay and lesbian relationships as other, as a sub-category, as less-valid. I’m furious that it has taken until Two-Thousand-andThir-Fucking-Teen for this bill to pass.
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I’m furious that our parents aren’t feminists. How dare they live in this world and this society for forty + fucking years without recognising and supporting the need for social change. How dare they raise us with gender roles and sexual guilt and thinly veiled racism. I’m angry with our grandparents, too, and I’m angry with us. Because here we are doing the exact same things. Some people still don’t understand that sex and gender are different concepts. Some people still think you will ‘naturally’ be more nurturing and kind or more brave and intelligent because of your genitals. Your friends, your fucking dad, definitely your white male boss. These people break my heart and they break your confidence and sense of worth because there are a whole shit-ton of them and hell are they vocal. I’m angry with myself because I’m tired of fighting with them. Kathleen Winter helps organise, write and distribute a small feminist zine called Cute Bruiser. She writes under a pseudonym - so does everyone involved. If their names become associated with feminism people might look at them funny, might think twice before giving them a job interview, or a raise, or a chance to open their mouths. To be a feminist is to apologise. When you’re calling people out for sexist behaviour – friends, co-workers or relatives - you have to smile. You have to be apologetic. You cannot, cannot, be angry. Kathleen Winter writes a feminist zine with a couple of
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her feminist buds. Their friends often tell them “It’s great talking to you guys because you’re not crazy, angry feminists. You’re actually rational, y’know?” Kathleen has never met a crazy, irrational feminist. She has a feeling her friends never have either. But anger, that’s a different issue. Kathleen doesn’t trust people who don’t get angry about inequality and discrimination. If you’re not angry, you’re missing something. You’re probably benefitting from it in a number of ways. You’re probably comfortable and complacent. You probably think we have equality already. You’re happy with your ability to vote for a selection of old white men. Why are feminists so angry? Why can’t they be more rational, like you? I’m tired of apologising for being a feminist. We all are. Feminism is a movement fighting for equality. Feminism acknowledges that we live in a patriarchal society that discriminates against anyone who is not a straight, ablebodied cis-gendered white man. That’s a lot of people. That’s most of us. Even those who benefit from this inequality are trapped by rigid and ridiculous gender roles. How can you not want change? How dare you not be a feminist? I’m over feminism that’s forced to be secret and apologetic. Kathleen Winter and her fellow Bruisers write a feminist zine. We independently publish art and writing by male and female feminists and we distribute their work because we want more people to understand feminism, and to help us make change. I will no longer use a pseudonym
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because identifying as a feminist is not something to be ashamed of. Feminism is fucking hype, and we have so much more to do.
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My Lack of Sexual Label Claire Weiss
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The other day I was sitting with some people chatting, waiting for my class to start, or a bus to come. And an acquaintance said to me “But that wouldn’t bother you would it?” We had been talking about going to clubs - I was just back from Wellington and we were comparing the pros and cons of clubs in Dunedin and Wellington. We had broached the subject of how easy it is for a woman to get hit on by a man in a club. I relayed to him funny and amusing encounters with men hitting on me. He thought that he was making a friendly joke. “Hey good for you pulling in those hetero-sexed potential mates hahaha”. But what I heard was you dress feminine, act feminine, appear to be a female, and I’ve been told that therefore you must enjoy getting attention from men. I was kind of angry because he assumed that getting sexually charged attention from men would make me happy. That is a problem within itself... The other thing was he had assumed that I was a cis-female playing my role as the stereotypical female heterosexual. But, my truth is that I don’t have a concrete sexuality to label myself with. So when people assume one for me it makes me a little uncomfortable. For me the label just isn’t important. I simply don’t feel the need for one. If I’m attracted to someone, cool. I don’t feel the need to name this part of myself. I just don’t see how their genitals or gender is relevant to how I feel about them. I kind of wonder if the labels are necessary.
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I can understand why people do it. I do it myself. It’s possibly just human nature to want to categorize things. When we place a label on something we can predict its actions. It’s comforting being able to predict someone’s or something’s actions; it feels important. If I look at a jar labelled arsenic and I put a teaspoon of it into my coffee and expect it to taste as sweet as sugar, I’m going to be heavily disappointed, as well as dead. If I see a man with pink highlights in his hair and a rainbow accented belt, I can reasonably assume that he is going to want to be in bed with another man at the end of the night. If I see a woman with a flannel shirt, baggy pants and a flat-back cap, I can assume that she prefers sleeping with women, because those are the rules that society has us follow. But the human mind and expression is more fluid than that. I don’t think that it makes sense to follow a strict guideline to help others in making their decisions about you. Does it make sense to try and get rid of sexual labels altogether? We would be rid of the implied ‘certainty’ that comes with it but also the restrictions and problems that occur. If there were no labelled sexual orientations then would it be possible for the LGBTQ community to stop being harassed? Would it be possible for people to blindly careen their way through a social encounter with fewer social hints and cues? Can people just fall in love with people and be done with it? Is it imperative that our sexual labels define and restrict us?
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We are a long way off before our culture heads in the direction of open acceptance and the vagueness that may come with that. I think worrying about those advances years and years before they start to happen is a waste of time. For now, floating along with people’s assumptions is the path of least resistance, but perhaps it’s worth the awkward talk with a quasi stranger. Maybe sharing your ideas will be able to help expand theirs. Maybe questioning your assumption about their small mindedness will help change what they assumed about you.
strangelykatie.com
Katie O’Neill
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Lots of people tell me what to do and these are my thoughts on that. They’re slightly unruly, slightly uncouth, and all angry at the things. It is called‌
O u h I o p m a l S l I a g g
Oi! Fuck off with your unsolicited advice about how I should eat healthy, I’ve got bigger things on my plate. Both large portions of food and more metaphorical, deep and meaningful things like emotions and shit. So I don’t have time to listen to you tell me how I should be looking for a cereal with under 15 grams of sugar per 100 grams of cereal. Aaron Pyke
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I don’t need your unsolicited advice I don’t need you to tell me to avoid saturated fats My mind is saturated with hatred I’ve got bigger things on my plate I’ve got pies, I’ve got missing limbs I’ve got lasagne, I’ve got that nagging feeling that I was wrong I’ve got high fructose corn syrup, I’ve got an empty pit of despair that is not my stomach even though oft I think it is I don’t need you to tell me to avoid trans fats I transcribe the back of food packets Etched on the transmission of a Ford hatchback My mission is translucent, clearly I don’t understand You’re just trying to help You’re seeing how my life Spans time and space I’m trans-dimensional, I’m trans-spotting, and I’m delusional I don’t need you to tell me to avoid salt Don’t tell me to harden up Then say my arteries are already hard enough You’re boring
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So I’m boring holes in the back of your head Oh shame! You can’t burn calories when you’re dead But I can burn your flesh I can make amends I can make and mend friendships and battleships A stevedore on Death’s door Content in the contents of his guts I don’t need you to tell me to avoid cholesterol Eating sausage rolls is how I roll I’m happiness wrapped in pastry I don’t need you to tell me It’s unhealthy I’m quite smart I nearly have a degree Before I dropped out but the point is I’m smart I went to school, I walk past health food shops I understand how calories work So I don’t need you I don’t need the fine line between well-meaning And well… just… mean I don’t need to think that on a day when I’ve just had muesli and fruit That I haven’t done enough Basically, just fuck off!
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What’s Wrong with Being the Village Bicycle? Morgan Wisheart
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It often happens, in media of all kinds, that someone needs insulting. For the purposes of the plot or characterdevelopment, I mean, not as some kind of moral imperative. The English language is well-equipped for this task; pick any undesirable personal attribute, and you can be pretty sure that someone has turned it into an insult. Now, I don’t approve insulting people in the first place. But notice: When it happens that the someone who needs insulting is a woman, seldom do we utilize most of the myriad terms we have at our disposal. Instead we use “bitch”. And, more topically, we use “slut”, and “whore”, and any number of similar terms. The use of the word “bitch” is an entire other can of misogynistic worms, in which we have no time to dig squishily around today. Suffice it to say, for now, that “bitch” is used to denigrate women in-particular, and stereotypically feminine traits more generally, and that this is unacceptable. “Slut” and “whore” are different matters. Most of the time users of these terms do not just mean the more technical definitions, related to promiscuity or prostitution (not that this would be an improvement). Instead they mean something like “you have sex with a lot of people, and that is a bad thing!” This insinuation is what I want to talk about, because it is bullshit. I challenge anyone to come up with a reason why having enjoyable, consensual sex with a variety of people is intrinsically bad. Certainly, one can produce numerous examples of bad-ness associated incidentally with having numerous sexual partners. Let’s look at a few:
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Unprotected sex with strangers can result in the spread of sexually transmitted infections. Thoughtless promiscuity can hurt the feelings of those partners who anticipated a more monogamous relationship. Persisting in sexual advances towards an unwilling potential partner is harassment, and a prelude to rape. Hurt feelings, estrangement, unexpected pregnancies. All of these problems can involve or result from sexual encounters. But, and this is the important bit, the sex is not what causes the problems. It’s the other bad stuff which is doing that. Perhaps, because of the common misunderstanding that correlation necessarily implies causation, people observe such problems, notice the sex, and conclude that sex by itself is what causes the problems. Perhaps humans are just so naturally obsessed with sex that wherever it is present we put a spotlight on it. It also doesn’t help that prominent western religions which have dominated our culture for centuries espouse some questionable policies with regard to how acceptable it is to have sex. But these considerations are beside the point. It doesn’t matter why people blame the sex. It matters that there is no good reason to do so. It matters that this practice can result in needless psychological harm. When someone doesn’t like someone else, the fact that the person happens to be promiscuous is seen as grounds for legitimising that dislike. Sexual behaviour becomes the subject of criticism rather than the genuinely objectionable factors which it happens to be associated with. Not only does this draw attention away
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from the actual, non sex-related causes of some serious problems, but it irrationally stigmatises those who are promiscuous. Why is it acceptable to make people feel bad simply for participating in an activity which they enjoy, with no objectionable ramifications? So far I have not suggested that this issue affects women specifically. However, there is a readily apparent doublestandard when it comes to men who have a lot of sex versus women who do the same. You’ve probably heard the complaint before. When a woman has a lot of sex she’s a slut, a whore, a ho, a skank. When a man does the same he’s a stud, a player, a chick-magnet. And this is only the most obvious form it takes. Of course, depending upon the social context, a man may also be disrespected for his sexual proclivities. I remember the odd term “man-whore” being thrown around during high school, and you can be sure a promiscuous lifestyle will draw criticism from certain kinds of people no matter what your gender. But I think we can safely assume that girls and women have a generally harder time with this issue, without denying that it also affects their male counterparts. So, what courses of action do I advocate? First: Don’t call anyone a “slut” or a “whore”, generally speaking. You can bet a lot of people find these terms hurtful, and there’s no need to subject people to them. Second: If you are personally offended by the sole fact that someone has a lot of sex, don’t go telling them about it. It’s none of your business. Third: If
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you are aware of someone whose sexual activities are causing a genuine problem for you or someone you care about, don’t just fling derogatory terms at them. Have a conversation with them, like a civilised human being, in which you discuss the problem and try to devise a solution to it. And make sure you address the actual causes of the problem rather than just pointing to the fact that sex happens to be involved and yelling “sex is bad!” Finally: If you want to have a lot of (consensual and responsible!) sex, regardless of the number or gender of your partners, then do it. And don’t let anyone make you feel bad about it. If someone tries to, particularly by using words like “slut” and “whore”, ignore them or let them know that they’re wrong! And look on the bright side: They’ve just made it super easy to figure out that you don’t want to have sex with them.
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Is it Feminist? Pacific Rim Kathleen Winter
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No.
Cute Bruiser is hanging out for your contributions. We’re keen for any feminist content ranging from media analysis and legal discussion to personal experiences and visual art. Hit us up at cutebruiserzine@gmail.com and check us out online at cutebruiser.tumblr.com — ♥ the Bruisers
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