HAY LADIES! Turning thirty? Time to crawl into a hole and die.

I found this image by googling "fancy lady"

That is, of course, unless you have a man, a sexy bra, and tons of cash. That’s right! Ever helpful, Glamour and Huffington Post have teamed up to squish women down, down, down just a little further and reinforce heterosexism and classism while they’re at it.

Because what was popular and relevant fifteen years ago is important news today, Huffington Post has reprinted a list of thirty things that EVERY woman should have and know by the time they are thirty. The list was originally published by Glamour and apparently “became a popular chain letter” — because you know how popular is it for women to hate themselves! Not only will you never be good enough but you should share this vomitous list with all your best girlfriends so they too have thirty good, concrete, written-down-in-print reasons to hate themselves if they don’t measure up.

And because a “popular chain letter” wasn’t enough, they’ve turned the hate-yourself phenomenon into a book! From the description:

“Featuring advice, wisdom, and observations from an array of prominent and beloved women, 30 Things is an essential guide (and perfect gift) for women on the brink of thirty—and for those who are already there! Fifteen years ago, Glamour published a list of distinctive yet universally true must-haves and must-knows for women on the cusp of and beyond the age of thirty titled, “30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She’s 30.” It became a phenomenon. “

“Universally true”! Like evolution, purses are a universal truth.

In any case, the original list has experience a resurgence.

Did your friends share this on the interwebs? Because mine did. Were you baffled and appalled? Same.

In order to address and cope with the mass confusion that this list is either fun or useful and in case you don’t want to read through the yuck, I’ve created a  brief summary of the list. Let’s take a look all together now for the sake of mutual rage sharing:

1) Be heterosexual and obsessed with men.

First things first. Boyfriends make the lady. If you don’t have a boyfriend, you don’t exist. Also, your boyfriends, past and present, make you.

2) Invent class mobility.

If you aren’t middle to upper class by the time you’re thirty (because poverty and lower class status slip away with age), you are a huge loser. You must have new furniture, expensive things that you’ve bought for no reason, and outfits (to impress men with, of course).

3) Lingerie.

Apparently, because I don’t have a black lace bra there is something terribly amiss in my life. I’d always wondered where that empty hole in my heart came from.

4) Become a career lady! Carry briefcase. Erase and resolve all problems and life circumstances.

By thirty, you must have somehow have managed to establish yourself in a career (hey graduate students and folks who were too busy trying to get by to build the fancy-pants version of their resume!), have a perfect relationship (with a man obv), and have decided whether or not you want kids. After thirty it’s basically too late to do any of these things.

And there’s more. Stuff about “getting away with drinking and drugs” (which I can only assume is a reference to wrinkles and presenting one’s self as a proper lady) and having a skin-care regimen — but I won’t go into all that because it’s boring as shit. Just like this list wants you to be! Turning thirty means becoming a boring, conformist, privileged a-hole. Avec fancy suitcase.

Not only is this list one that excludes any choices that divert from the straight-up middle class, heterosexual, Western, prescribed norm – but this isn’t even the norm! Do we really need to know the name of the best tailor in town?? I get my pants hemmed at the laundromat next to the grocery store. Because it’s next to the grocery store. Eff off.

How about this, Glamour/HuffPo:  I keep drinking, try to avoid making my life revolve around the men in (and out) of it and not worry too much about my suitcase? I’m pretty positive that feeling bad about my income, career, relationship status, and lack of lacy black bras is never going to feel empowering. And do me a favour, folks - stop sharing this crap. If the world really looked the way Pamela Redmond Satran seems to think it should, it would be boring and oppressive. The fact that anyone thinks the world should look this way makes me feel like we have a lot more work to do.

Women will be a lot better off once we stop giving them lists of things they should be and things they should buy in order to count as successful women.

All that said, I’ve taken it upon myself to compile a more useful and practical list of things you should know (but, honestly, that I am still working at myself), maybe by the time you’re thirty, but really whenever:

1) Too small shoes will always be too small. They will never “stretch” — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Buy comfortable shoes.

2) Do your very best to ensure that your life doesn’t revolve around a man. Men are fine and good and sometimes great, just as women are fine and good and sometimes great. But you will be told, often, that your intimate relationships with men define you. They really don’t.

3) Value your friendships and put work into them. Friends are important. Make an effort.

4) It’s ok to watch TV. Don’t feel guilty about it. That’s dumb. Intelligent people can watch TV and be intelligent at the same time. It’s a fact.

5) Spend lots of time cuddling with dogs. Unless you don’t like dogs, in which case, don’t, but I really can’t alter this advice with any sincerity for people who don’t like dogs because dogs are what true love and joy and unconditional love look like.

6) Wine and cake?

7) Don’t believe people or lists that tell you that your life should look like some kind of dumb, imaginary rom-com life or that you should be married or have babies or have some kind of career or a certain amount of money or material things or anything else. Those lists of full of shit and will only make you feel bad about yourself which is a waste of time because the whole world already spends an inordinate amount of time trying to make you feel bad about yourself because you’re a woman which, according to dominant culture, means you are always flawed and that your life is less important than a zygote’s.

You want to talk victim-blaming? Ok. Let’s talk victim blaming.

The Toronto Sun published an article on March 11th entitled: “Helping Hookers Stay Safe” which looked at a project called the safer stroll project. According to the article, this project is an “innovative mentorship program…designed to educate sex workers to deal with high-risk and violent situations.”

The reporter interviews one sex worker for the piece, who describes various horrific situations within which she was subjected to violence at the hands of johns. This violence, it is fair to assume, is not limited to one individual but is something many women and, particularly, many prostituted women are at risk for. But rather than addressing this violence in the most obvious way, that is to go to the root, this particular article would lead us to believe that the solution is to teach women proper skills for avoiding violence to the best of their ability.

Feminism today is very much enmeshed in discourse, work and action aimed at putting an end to victim blaming. This work is extremely important – one of the number one rules we learn as feminists is that women are not responsible for their own rapes, their own assaults, and their own abuse. Men are accountable for their own behaviour and there is no particular skill set women can or should develop in order for them to avoid violence. Obviously.

Isn’t that obvious?

Apparently not. Apparently not when in comes to prostitution.

Apparently, within the newly popular harm reduction discourse, the very best we can do to  “keep women safe” is to teach them the proper skills to avoid being attacked, abused, and murdered. And no, this isn’t some deluded fantasy of the right wherein we are made to imagine that, if only women would behave themselves, men wouldn’t be forced to abuse them. No. This is what progressives are encouraged to support! That being harm reduction. Otherwise known as “the best we can come up with.” Otherwise known as “we accept that misogyny is inevitable so let’s teach women how best to cope with that reality.”

Hey! Here’s a newfangled idea! How about we, FOR ONCE, put the onus on the violent men. How about we even go so far as to blame men for the violent acts they commit rather than blaming the victim for “dealing with” violent men in the “wrong way”. How about, instead of learning how to be nicer to johns, so as to avoid being attacked by them, we teach johns that they won’t get away with being violent? What’s that? Criminalize the johns? Oh no. That’s crazy-talk. All women need is more “skills.” Skills will stop male violence, right?

In what universe is this rhetoric even close to feminist?

Why is it so easy for progressives to understand that victim-blaming is wrong, but blindly accept the idea that it is somehow the responsibility of women to control men’s behaviour if they are engaged in sex work?  Are we all expected to rally behind Slutwalk, which claims to fight victim-blaming and then close our eyes when reporters start talking about “safety strategies” for prostituted women? How would the Slutwalk fanatics react if someone wrote an article claiming that that young women should develop “safety strategies” for going to parties or, you know, going to work or going on dates or getting married or waking up in the morning or getting on the bus or engaging in any of those activities or going to any of those places women go wherein, sometimes, women are assaulted or raped or harassed or abused by men? Make sure you develop strategies for avoiding being abused by your partners, women! Be sure to be as polite as possible! Because, of course, polite women don’t get abused or raped. Never. Those arguments would never be accepted among self-identified feminists.

And yet harm reduction is the new progressive mantra. “Developing safety strategies” is now framed as potentially empowering for women.

Well excuse me while I stare awkwardly at this big, huge, gaping hole in feminist discourse.

If we are to understand that victim blaming – the new favorite catchword for third wave feminists – is unacceptable (and, without a doubt, it is unacceptable) and if we can all, supposedly, agree on the relatively simple idea that we don’t blame the victim of violence, that, rather, we blame the perpetrator, then how about this – JOHNS ARE NO EXCEPTION. Women don’t need to develop “safety strategies” – men need to stop being violent, horrible, entitled assholes. We need to stop protecting these men. Because so long as we keep protecting them, making excuses for them, and continuing to make violence against women the responsibility of women, men will continue to be violent.

“Harm reduction” and “safety strategies” for prostituted women effectively removes blame from male perpetrators of violence and does nothing to address the root of the problem. Does that sound progressive to you?

It’s hard not to heave a big ol’ feminist sigh on International Women’s Day. But, in many ways, I think that’s just fine. International Women’s Day isn’t intended to be a celebration, from my perspective. Rather, it is a reminder. A reminder that we still need an International Women’s Day.

Across the world women are fighting for their rights. They are fighting for equality, for workers’ rights, for reproductive rights, they are protesting poverty and raising awareness about violence against women. Strangely, many Westerners like to imagine that we inhabit an egalitarian society. I’m not sure where they’re looking, but from where I’m standing, we still have a lot of work to do.

On Friday, Jarrah Hodge covered the Vancouver and District Labour Council’s annual International Women’s Day Dinner. Hodge quoted activist, feminist and founder of rabble.ca, Judy Rebick,writing:

“We achieved a lot, but we still have a way to go,” Rebick added, singling out particularly the struggle to end trafficking of women and to end a “rape culture” that blames victims for their assaults.

While there are, of course, many who do treat International Women’s Day as a holiday and a celebration, which is wonderful, because we certainly should celebrate women and women’s achievements, coupled with that positivity is a sense that, not only do we sometimes forget the continued need for the feminist movement, but that we, as third wave feminists, lack respect for the incredibly hard work women from previous generations did on our behalf.

The third wave, which is the wave I’ve found myself in (I was born in 1979 so I had little choice in the matter), seems decidedly marked by what could almost be viewed as a backlash against first and second wavers. Certainly it isn’t fair to paint the entire third wave as ungrateful, burlesque-loving, Slutwalking, post-modernists, as there has certainly been valuable theory and critiques to come out of this generation of feminism, but when I imagine us looking back at this particular wave, I am sometimes overcome by a sinking feeling that very much resembles embarrassment.

While radical feminists, bra-burners, and hairy, man-hating, lesbians (which, for the record, are super awesome caricatures, in my opinion) seem representative of second wave feminism, what we’ve been stuck with, in the third wave, are half-naked, stiletto’d, women and girls, stripping on-stage and calling it empowerment, or marching through the streets calling themselves sluts under the guise of “sexual freedom.”

Amid a culture that hypersexualizes women and girls, so much so that we seem to have lost  any understanding of the word “objectification,” are blessed with the ability to ignore the ever-increasing violence of the porn industry in favour of conversations of the “grey areas,” and seem overly committed towards engaging in desperate attempts to derail every conversation into one about the supposed existence of “feminist porn,” it can feel as though the third wavers are a somewhat confused bunch.

In the face of very serious threats to both individual women and the rights and freedoms of women as a whole, white, privileged, Western women are….Slutwalking? And framing stripping as empowerment? Really?

As Laurie Penny wrote so articulately in a piece published earlier today:

Women, like everyone else, have been duped. We have been persuaded over the past 50 years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean. Life may have become a little easier in that time for white women who can afford to hire a nanny, but the rest of us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution. Instead of equality at work and in the home, we settled for “choice”, “flexibility” and an exciting array of badly paid part-time work to fit around childcare and chores.

Sadly, she is so very right. Talk about oppression, exploitation, and objectification and, without a doubt, someone will throw the word “choice” at you as though it’s a weapon. Watch out, critics of burlesque! Some women feel individually empowered by taking off their clothes on stage! Criticize the sex industry or men who buy sex? Well, clearly it’s because you hate sex. Which is a bad thing, by the way. Sex-positivity preaches that women must like all things “sexy” in order to be empowered. The blanket of sex-positivity means that, suddenly, exploitative and sexist industries equal sexual freedom for women! How about that.

Don’t we have anything real to fight for? It sure feels like we do…Are we so unimaginative that the only thing we can come up with, in terms of fighting for women’s rights, is to take off our clothes? It just makes me want to cry.

We need to do better than this. We don’t need to fuck our way to freedom (but hey, feel free to fuck all you want on your way there if you’re into that) and if we think the only way to accomplish anything is by wearing lingerie and calling it feminism, I’ve got to say, I’m really ready for another wave, women.

International Women’s Day exists because women are not yet free. Because women are raped and murdered and abused by men around the world. It exists because sex sells, which means that people are making money off the backs of women. Like, at our expense, not to our benefit. If you think men and the media are going to get on board with Slutwalks and the strip-clubs-as-empowering-spaces-for-women messages and with hot, naked, lady protestors, a la Femen, well, you’re right. They will. Because none of those things challenge male power or privilege. This is the stuff privilege is made of. And you may well feel powerful with the eyes and attention of the world glued to your breasts, but I’m afraid I just can’t imagine how it’s going to make women any more safe from violence and I’m afraid I just don’t see stilettos and boobs as the things that, in the end, take down the patriarchy.

This week’s faux-feminist round-up is not so much a round-up of faux-feminism as it is a round up of feminist responses to a, now notorious, douchebag who pretends to care about the status of women. Like, beyond his own penis.

Steven Greenstreet, this list is all about you (is that your ego I hear exploding from your chest? Or just your tiny brain working overtime trying to figure out WHY O WHY THE LADIEEZ ARE SO GROUCHY!).

In reality, this list is more for my own referencing convenience, as well as for anyone who needs a convenient way to source the numerous explanations of the science behind the extreme ignorance, self-righteousness, and sexism of Greenstreet. The following links provide an excellent summation of the particular ways in which the Hot Chicks of Wall Street website and video are, in no way pro-woman and why Greenstreet is anti-feminist and anti-equality.

If I’ve missed an article here that you feel should be included, I apologize. Please do let me know if there is anything I should add and I will dutifully update! I am all for full comprehensiveness when it comes to douchebaggery.

1) The original: Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street at Feministe

2) A conversation at Salon: Is this video “Occupy Wall Street Gone Wild”?

3) The ‘Hot Chicks’ of Occupy Wall Street at SPARK

4) Carefree White Girl x Creepy Pervs at #OccupyWallStreet at Racialicious

5) My post on the way in which Greenstreet is *not* an ally to feminists despite his claims: A lesson in how *not* to be an ally

6) Steven Greenstreet proves he’s definitely not a misogynist by making rape jokes at Feministe

7) Hot Chicks, Cold Sexists and Occupy Wall Street at the Ms. Magazine blog

8) Greenstreet achieves official douchebag status at Bitch Media: Douchebag Decree: Douches of Occupy Wall Street

9) Steven Greenstreet Isn’t Sexist; He Just Loves Hot Chicks at WAM! Women, Action, & the Media

10) The Women’s Media Center critiques a writer at The Daily Caller for ranking her fav pics: Daily Caller Pushes Sexist “Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street” Pics

11) How Occupy’s (non) power structure enables sexism by Sady Doyle at Global Comment

I joke but, in all seriousness, these are the kinds of men who imagine themselves to align with progressive movements which purport to be working towards a more egalitarian society. They present an actual danger to women and to radical movements and are detrimental to the left as a whole.

The danger of such dudes is not only the in rage they inspire, but in that they try to disguise themselves as progressive men. These are the men who claim to love women, while they harass them, to respect women while they coerce them into sex, or who claim that objectification is empowerment. Sexism and misogyny on the left is nothing new, but it is about time we recognized it as such and it is about time our allies stop accepting this kind of behaviour.

The left has a responsibility to call these men out. Thank you to those who did.

Remember the douche-festival who created the ‘Hot Chicks of Wall Street’ tumblr and video?

Well, surprise, surprise! The dude (Steven Greenstreet) who thought that pointing out all the ‘hot chicks’ protesting at Occupy Wall Street was a great way to celebrate the “dedication and political strength” of women, is claiming that he has ‘empowered’ the women and refuses to apologize!

BECAUSE…wait for it….

He’s an ally, women! So shut up and listen.

You know how to tell if a man is an ally to feminists?

1) He doesn’t refuse to apologize when called out on sexism

2) He doesn’t defend said sexism by claiming it is ‘empowering’

3) He also doesn’t defend said sexism by claiming he chose to use sexist language because “it might catch more attention”

4) He doesn’t accuse feminists who call him out on his douchey behaviour of just ‘missing the point’. No, no, Steven, we totally get the point. You think sexism is fine and you think feminists ‘just don’t get’ how awesome sexism actually is (for dudes).

5) He doesn’t go with his ‘gut feeling’ when his ‘gut feeling’ tells him to go with ‘hot chicks’

And finally, most important of all:

6) He does not, not ever, try to throw his weight around by claiming that I WAS YOUR ALLY AND YOU’VE PUSHED ME AWAY WITH YOUR FEMINISMMMMM. *cry*

You are SO clearly not our ally, Steven. And we don’t want you as one. We don’t need men like you as allies, hokay? We need men who listen/hear. Not men who defend sexism on the grounds that it was just a ‘gut feeling’ or because it would get attention. We all know sexism gets attention. But yeah, you’re right, you are a marketing genius.

OH but OHHHH, are you SO “disappointed that these women are the face of feminism”? Do you think that is “such a shame”? Really? You know what feminists think is “such a shame” and do you know what feminists are “disappointed” in? That YOU, Steven, have anything at all to do with a progressive movement such as Occupy Wall Street and yet you are not progressive at all! You are just another entitled white man who absolutely refuses to believe that anyone could possibly have a perspective that is both different from your own and valid, all at the same time.