Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: feminism

Unmasking and taking off the bra

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I don’t wear a bra. Ever.

I think I might have autism.

Bear with me because I think these two things are related. Tenuously, maybe, but related, nonetheless.

I also think I have OCD traits. This, too, is related.

Let’s start with the bra thing. I hate clothing in general. It all feels so restrictive and I am allergic to manydifferent kinds of fabrics. Hell, I’m allergic to so many things in general. Let’s go over them, shall we?

Almost every fucking flower/weed under the sun. So many of the manmade scents–almost all of them, too. The last time I had the allergy test where they infect you, I mean inject you with all the different allergens in your thigh, like thirty diffreent allergens, my entire thigh blew the fuck up. It became one giant boil, basically.

I also didn’t know when I used to get allergy shots as a kid that they were injecting me with poison. It was so utterly miserable. My arm would swell up every time, and I would be hot and miserable. And, again, I had no idea what was happening. If someone had actually told me why they were poisoning me, I would have been able to deal with it better.

And did it work? No. I still have allergies. I used to envy my brother for not getting the shots. I found out a few years ago it was because his allergies were too far gone for the shots to be considered effective. Ironically, his allergies are pretty much gone now while mine are just worse.

I’m allergic to mosquito bites. To gluten. To lactose. So many allergies (none life-threatening) to so many things.

Let’s get back to bras. I hate them. I have always hated them. I had a traumatic fitting incidence that left me in tears. It also made me hate my body even more than I did. I found that fitters telling women* to wear really fucking tight bras that crushed your ribs was common, which was what I went through. I wore 38 D. They told me I should wear 34 DD. It hurt like fuck. When I said I ended up in tears, I meant it literally. And I will never, ever, EVER allow a bra fitter near me again. Even if I were to go back towearing a bra. Which I won’t.

Ranodm fact: There was a study that showed people who did not wear bras had perkier boobs than those who did, but that was not conclusive. On the other side, there is no conclusive evidence that wearing a bra keeps the boobs perkier, too. And because there is so much push for women to wear them, I always feel compelled to stand up for the other side.

Even if boobs sag, so the fuck what? If there is no medical problem with it, then who the uck cares? Also, if there is no pain. Look. If someone wants to wear a bra, I am most emphatically not going to stop them or lecture them about how they should free the boobs. I would just appreciate the same courtesy in return. But the fear that they project as they frantically defend the bra is amazing. And tiring. Just chill the fuck out, ok?


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Feminists are not the ones who hate men

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I was talking to a friend recently about the oft-repeated canard that feminists hate men. It gets spread around by the Republicans (and the Tories in her case) that we feminists are just grim-faced, no-fux, sexually-frustrated women (because in their world, only women can be feminists) people who hate the mens.

I have always, and I mean always, claimed that it’s the men  who said that men are dogs who hate men. I mean, listening to these men talk about men, it’s really quite horrifying. “Men are dogs who can only think about sex. They have no sense of autonomy to say no to a pussy that is in front of them. They are just hapless victims to their raging libidios. Boys will be boys, you know. You can’t expect them to act like decent human beings.

Which, I mean. If this is truly the case, then they should not be allowed in polite society. One of the things that we should be able to expect (yeah, I know) in a civilezed society is that someone who acts in a way that is threatening or harmful to others should not be allowed.

I love men. Not all of them. Not even most of them, but there are plenty of men I love–or at least, like. In many ways, i get along better with men in general than with men. My interests tend to run more masculine (typically) than feminine, and I have had so many women question my womanhood.

I will say, it’s more circumspect than in the past. These days, no one is flat-out saying that you HAVE to think about fashion and makeup to be feminine, but there’s still covert implication that this ist the case. There was a time when I was in my thirties that I thought maybe it was finally going to be ok to be a woman who didn’t wear makeup, care about fashion, and discarded the bra. But, no. We’ve done a full double-down on you have to wear makeup, a bra, and care about clothing to be a woman.

It’s interesting how many women say they don’t care if other women don’t wear makeup, but for them it’s X, Y, and Z. I view that in the same way I feel about women who say it’s fine if other people are fat, but not them. And there’s nothing like a woman who’s maybe five pounds overweight going on and on about what a whale she is.

Let me be blunt. If  you (general you) go on and on about how you feel so ugly or whatever without makeup on, I am going to make inferences about how you feel about makeup-less people in general. Which, fine. But it’s not gonig to make me feel warm and fuzzy.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I like men. A lot. One of my best friends is a man. The other is a woman because I’m balanced like that. I expect men to be better than they are, which is to my detriment at times. Here’s the thing. I don’t see them as dogs who are driven by their instincts and cannot control themselves. I believe that they can be friends with women and not try to get into their pants. Am I giving them too much credit? I don’t think so!

When I was in college, I had many male friends. The guy I was dating at the time told me that all my male friends wanted to get into my pants. I accepted that at face value at the time, but looking back at it, I think he was wrong. And it wasn’t a very nice thing to say to me. It was pretty dismissive of me as a person for one and of the other guys in general.


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Even more alienated than usual

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I’m depressed. This is not new or unusual as I’m depressed all the time, but  I’m even more depressed than usual. Why? There are several reasons. One, obviously, Covid-19 and racism. Two, it’s summer. I fucking hate summer. Heat is the absolute worst. Three, I’m spending too much time online. This is my life in general. I tend to take negative opinions too much too heart, and it’s easier to do absence of context. I was reading a question on Ask A Manager, and it was about deliveries not being done correctly. The person asking (OP) wondered if she should go to management. She was very careful to say that she knew it was last resort and she didn’t want to get the person in trouble, but she wasn’t happy with the issues (not wearing masks, demanding she answered the door, etc.). Most people were pragmatic about it–talk to the delivery person through a closed door, put up signs, etc. But a small minority castigated the OP, calling her cruel and said that she was outsourcing her risk to others.

Now, let me be clear. They’re right. She’s paying someone else to take the risk that she isn’t. I know that I’m doing the same thing, and I’m profoundly grateful to the people who do my work for me. I’m not even taking issue with the ‘check your privilege’ attitude because it’s a good thing to recognize where you have privilege in order to decide what to do with it. What bothers me is that by throwing that out there, they are completely shutting down any communication that can be had on the subject. Scolding someone feels good in the moment, but it doesn’t really add to the conversation. I know I’m biased in this case, but I’ve always felt this way. Even when I’m the minority. Yelling at people about how awful they are isn’t going to get them to change their minds. I’m not saying don’t call out the issues, but name-calling and putting others down is not the way to do it. In addition, it can amount to bullying, which I see happening too often online.

In this case, some people pointed out that one person doing the shopping and delivery for a bunch of other people did cut down on the danger in general. They got jumped on, too. Again, I’m not disagreeing about the base point, but it’s more nuanced than that. In addition, the people typing angrily about privilege, well, they have it as well. They have something they are typing on, most likely a cell phone. Which was probably made in China and boxed by people at Amazon or somewhere similar. Places with miserable working conditions, and in some cases, the places had people jumping off the roof to kill themselves so they wouldn’t have to keep working.


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Diversity and Gaming; Progress is Slow

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back in black.
Come at me, bro. (SR IV)

I read an article about Anita Sarkeesian being harassed at a panel by Gamer Gaters, and it doesn’t surprise me at all. She’s become a lightning rod for all the problems hidden within the gaming community, and she’s dealt with a ton of harassment, much of it vile. She was targeted from the beginning when she announced that she was going to look at games from a feminist perspective because she loved games. That was it. It was enough to get the haters hating her, and someone made a game that allowed the player to beat up Anita. Before she even had one video, the hatred was intense, and it made me wonder why gamers’ egos were so fucking fragile. When her first video came out, I watched it. It wasn’t terrific, but she had a couple good points. I’ve watched a few more, and I’ve had the same conclusion every time. She makes some good points, but she’s overly broad (ha!) in her assessments. Also, she needs work on her presentation.

That said, there are a ton of problems with game and representation. Not just of women, but of any minority. Ian once asked me why I spent an hour customizing my avatar, for Mass Effect, I believe it was, when I can’t see my character as I play. It’s hard to explain why I do it, and I do it for every game when it’s possible. My favorite avatar is from Saints Row IV because she looks like me if you squint and as long as I keep sunglasses on her. I was so in love with her, I took dozens of pictures. Because of her, I liked the game even more than I normally would. Here’s the thing about representation. It does really fucking matter. Whether it’s movies or books or video games, seeing people like me makes a difference. Being invisible in media is a way of society saying, “You don’t matter. I don’t see you, and I don’t care.” It’s hard to explain if you’ve consistently had representation in media how alienating it is not to see yourself anywhere. I was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race on Netflix, and it would occasionally show an ad for one of its shows. I would say, “It’s white people doing white people thing!” Every fucking ad was predominantly white people. It’s 20 fucking 17, and I will not watch something without people of color in it. It’s really that simple. There is no excuse for it, and it’s just willful at this point.

Back to video games. It’s funny how the assholes bleating about special snowflakes (those of us who want diversity in video games) are the same ones who are upset when, say, Mafia III deals with racism in America. At the last E3 conference, there were three games coming out that I knew would piss off the Gamer Gaters. Gators? Whatever. Far Cry 5, Assassin’s Creed Origins, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The enemy in the first game is far-right Americans; the second is set in Egypt with mostly non-white characters, and the third is set in America in the sixties, and the leading character of the American resistance in a black woman with a big Afro. The minute I heard about the last game, I tweeted:

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