He said

Last Saturday evening I went to a contra dance. I changed into a skirt but kept the shirt I'd worn to work– a plain old unisex cotton t-shirt with an image of a cupcake on the front.¹ The cupcake has a single candle and First Night Austin written on top. During the break, a middle-aged man approached me, staring at my chest, and said "Hey, cupcake." Then "Haha, I bet you're tired of hearing that," and then an attempt to start a conversation– his name, my name, do I regularly attend BIDA dances, etc. I was minimally polite, but disengaged as quickly as I felt I could.

Rape culture says: Don't wear that shirt any more. It's too tight; it draws attention to your breasts, which are too big anyway.
Feminism says: That interaction was not okay. His inappropriate behavior was not your fault. You shouldn't have to feel uncomfortable like that, ever, and screw you rape culture anyway.

I hate the fact that, though I've been consciously, intentionally living and thinking about feminism for longer than I can remember, the voice of rape culture is still the stronger of the two in my mind, and sooner to speak.  

¹I still have to remind myself that it's because of rape culture that I even want to write that this shirt is shapeless and high-necked. Insisting that I wasn't inviting attention is just another way of saying that some women are, and "inviting attention" is just another way of saying "asking for it." No one is ever asking for it.

self-experimentation, sloppily

In theory, I'm going to be vegan for the month of February. What this is going to mean in practice is: not actually vegan. But I'm writing it down here for the record, and in an attempt to cement it in my own mind.

So, the exceptions, which I suspect will be embarrassingly legion:

I'll quote a woman paraphrased in an old NYT article that was quoted in an old Feministe/Yes Means Yes post by Jill Filipovic to suggest a reinterpretation of the NYT article's argument that aligns with something Emily of The Dirty Normal says insistently and often. (Basically, you should go read all of them instead.)

For women, “being desired is the orgasm,”... it is, in her vision, at once the thing craved and the spark of craving. 

Filipovic asserts "that when women are raised in a culture...that positions the female body as an object of desire, and that emphasizes that being desired is the height of female achievement, women will see sex as a process primarily centered on male attraction to women, and will get off more on being wanted than on wanting," which rings true to me. The achievement, and thus the focus of satisfaction, is in succeeding at the process that the thoroughly-inculcated American woman knows she's supposed to care about: making a (male) partner desirous, and then satisfying that desire. Not exactly a reassuring insight for a bicycle-eschewing fishy sort of feminist. Can't I make myself feel good autonomously, rather than relying on someone else's response?

I also think there's another, perhaps less discouraging interpretation, though: A partner's desire as "the spark of craving"? That isn't a description of narcissism. That's a description of responsive desire.


References, somewhat shoddily
"What Do Women Want?" by Daniel Bergner, published in NYT Magazine 22 Jan 2009. Quoted in "Shorter NYTimes: Girl-parts are weird, girl-brains are weirder" by Jill Filipovic, published on Yes Means Yes blog on 27 Jan 2009. First quote in my entry from second paragraph of second blockquote in Filipovic's essay; second quote from the paragraph directly following the blockquote.