feminists online

Now Playing: L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. by Noah and the Whales (on my last night on earth I pay a high price to have no regrets and be done with my life)

One of my all time favourite YouTube channels is Feminist Frequency, hosted by Anita Sarkeesian. Anita is a feminist media critic best known for her 'Tropes vs Women' series, which discusses various tropes used in different mediums of popular culture that perpetuate harmful gendered stereotypes. Her videos aren't the funniest or most entertaining in the world but are highly researched, methodically laid out and easy to understand.

This year Anita is embarking on a very ambitious project to analyse the treatment of women in video games, a very, very touchy topic...as I've found out. In a video to raise money for the project the backlash was instantaneous and extremely intense - death threats, rape threats, the whole deal. It was...beneath contempt.

The third wave feminist movement is a broad and diverse church, and it has an increasing presence on the internet. There are the obvious feminists - Feminist Frequency and The Feminist Breeder are well known - and then there are the less obvious feminists; the WAHMs and SAHMs who have established businesses online, especially businesses for female-oriented niche markets, women discussing taboo, traditionally 'male' topics like sex and sexuality like Laci Green; even men. Dan Savage is, arguably, a feminist. We're everywhere whether you like it or not.

Our society is obsessed with silencing women. We do this in a variety of ways - the obsession with slim, small women is, as Laci Green points out, a way of physically marginalizing women and forcing women to take up less space and be a less authoritative personal figure. We maim women with impractical and uncomfortable clothing - even at the school I go to, Perth Modern School, female teachers are not allowed to wear jeans and male teachers are. And then we silence them by using onslaughts of abuse and threats of criminal behaviour to intimidate women into shutting up and not voicing their opinions.

I am attacked for being a feminist more than anything else - which is saying something, considering I am at the receiving end of racial slurs pretty much daily. It's mostly by the boys at school - which is why many of my friends ask me why my best friend is a boy at school, but hey, not all of them are assholes. I haven't done anything wrong - these people are just so intimidated by me and defensive against what I stand for. They hate that I have an opinion. They hate that I have the largest internet presence of anyone in our school. They hate that I have male friends and men who stand up for me. They hate that I'm right and they're wrong. 

Because the truth is, Anita and I have got it right. I've been saying it forever - for the most part, the treatment of women in popular culture perpetuates harmful stereotypes, encourages sexist behaviour and idolizes unrealistic and unhealthy body images. All too often books, movies and TV series reduce female characters to one dimensional cliches. 92% of Australians say that axillary hair on a woman is 'offensive' - body hair is natural on both sexes but only acceptable on one. If Ken was a real person he'd have a 1 in 100 body and not have any severe health conditions, based on his appearance. If Barbie was a real person she'd have a 1 in 1,000,000 body, be infertile, not menstruate, bedridden and suffer from chronic diarrhoea.

There's a site called Fat, Ugly or Slutty which posts offensive comments by male video gamers to female video gamers purely because they are female, and therefore are either fat, ugly or slutty and deserve to be treated with total disrespect. The sad thing is, it's not much different to the abuse I get from school. I have been accused of being a lesbian (honestly not offended by that), a slut, a whore, a prude (how can you be all three?), a man-stealer, a Jew (an Asian Jew? Really?). I've been told to my face that because I'm a feminist I'm undateable/deserve to die alone/get raped/be bashed/etc. When I'm in class in an intellectual argument someone will randomly bring up my sex or my race. The boys at my school think it's funny to hurl abuse at me, tell me to go 'back to the kitchen' and 'make them a sandwich' anytime I say anything that might suggest I have half a brain. If I was really so wrong and stupid and deluded you would have thought of a more coherent argument than 'you're a fat dumb cunt'. I've been accosted on buses by boys trying to hit on me and then getting quite scary when I ignore them. It's get hit on or get hit, it seems.

Boys my age think that it's funny to be sexist, and that people look up to them if they dare to say something blatantly offensive and misogynistic. They know that I hold gender equality dear to me - as I should - and use that against me. They're constantly trying to pull me down and shut me up because they can't bear the thought of an egalitarian society where having a dick doesn't give you the right to suppress women. They can't bear the thought that someone like me thinks that I'm above them because they're immature and sexist when they want to think that, because I'm not blonde or beautiful, I'm not worthy of them instead of the other way around.

When you identify as a feminist any tiny minute human mistake - from a brain fart to a spelling error or whatever - is immediately taken, exaggerated, and then used against you. It's humiliating and defeating and intensely stressful. I've also seen this in the racism I've experienced - if I've ever slipped up or done something inadvertently stupid the first thing I hear is someone whisper 'Asian cunt' or 'typical Asians'. Why?

I am proud to be a feminist. I've changed many people's minds about attitudes towards sex, gender and sexuality. I am empowered by my work as a blogger, promoting compassion and open mindedness and tolerance, and respect for all people of all genders, sexes, sexualities, walks of life. But the abuse is, at times, horrific, and a disgrace. This isn't part and parcel with being a woman, a feminist, an Asian. This kind of behaviour is not acceptable and the solution isn't for me to grow a thick skin and ignore it. People don't take that kind of attitude towards cancer, and that's what this is - a growing, disturbing trend that sexism is cool and the rise of feminism is somehow providing men with an excuse to treat women like dirt. We can't tolerate this intolerance anymore. Equality and treating the sexes as equal isn't about expecting women to 'man up' and accept any abuse that men hurl at them - it's about actively promoting the kind of mutual respect for dignity that is ignored and tossed to one side by a deeply misogynistic, patriarchal society that is reflected in the pop culture I and Anita and so many other feminists attempt to critique, only to get continually shot down.