Except… WHEN THEY DON’T.

That’s right: Our long national nightmare is over. Behold, the triumphant return of Sexist Beatdown! In which the incredible cross-blogging G-chatting team of Amanda Hess (of the lovely new site TBD — bookmarks, bookmarks!) and Doyle are reunited (but not in a Marshall & Kim Mathers kind of way) to discuss the breaking issues of the day. OR, whatever we’re not sick of talking about lately. And hey, speaking of…

ILLUSTRATION: Who’s stoked? THIS GUY’S STOKED.

SADY: Well, hello! Are you prepared to resume THE GREATEST G-CHAT RELATED CROSS-BLOGGING CULTURAL EXCHANGE OF ALL TIME?

Second: Even if any of this information were new and exciting, none of it would make any sense. To you, the breathing-and-cognition-deficient, anyway! Information, when you are this state, does not spark new associations and/or insights and/or outrage. I spent fully half an hour reading AV Club commenters talk about Katy Perry’s “titties” and also what a “whore” she is, and I felt… nothing. Nothing! (“Internet Comment Sections: You Always Hope None Of The Dudes In Them Are Secretly Your Boyfriend!” Like I said: The news, it is old.) Information, in this state, lands in your mind with the dull, wet smack of a dead fish on a snare drum.

AND SPEAKING OF FISH.

No: We are not going to be visiting any of these years-old controversies today, or dignifying them with the assumption that these latest iterations are somehow new and exciting. What we are going to do is to talk about the Real Issues of our time, issues so global in their import that it will soon make all of our gender warfare seem pitifully irrelevant. The Real Issues of our time include: The Giant Squid! THEY’RE LEARNING.

Okay, so what they are learning has to do with “simple concepts” and “spatial reasoning” and “thus far more or less coconut-shell-based tool utilization,” and also, for some reason, “this article pertains mostly to octopi and not THE DEADLY GIANT SQUID WHICH YOU’D THINK WE’D WANT TO FOCUS ON, what with their established murderyness and drastically under-researched potential to construct nuclear weapons or whatever.” But it is a grim, cephalopod-centric future ahead of us, kids. And for some reason, I don’t think any of us will be worried about the subtle nuances of the condoms-in-porn debate when we have the wet and vengeful tentacles of Professor Squiddington locked in a death embrace around our faces. (This will actually be part of how he gets tenure, for some reason. Don’t question Professor Squiddington’s research methods! Professor Squiddington has a career to look out for!)

Although, you know, maybe some of you will? Care, I mean. In which case, keep fighting the good fight. I’m going to go lie down.

Hey! Who here is in the mood for some navel-gazing? AGAIN??

SPOILER: Turns out it’s me.

As you might be, by this point, really painfully aware, I have been, um, THINKING about the Internet Feminism lately. What it can do, what it can’t do. More specifically, I have been thinking about the Tiger Beatdown. And the Sady Doyle. And what, if anything, those two creatures are worth in the long run. What they started out to do, and what they’re going to do, and how those two things might be different. Because honestly? I don’t know any more.

Lately, I’ve been asked to tell the origin story of this blog. And, as with most things in my life — I am not a talented autobiographer! — I can’t remember. I have about four stories which seem to tell some part of the truth; coordinating them all would take the a dedicated historian, or maybe just one of those ESPN documentary crews whose job it is to wander around interviewing professional football players who have been hit in the head for a living 9,000 times and make their musings sound witty and insightful, with the aid of dramatic music and archival footage. The way Tiger Beatdown started, I am telling you, had to do with one or more of the following things:

1. I wanted to Become a Writer.
2. I was pissed off at dudes.
3. I made a joke and it came to define my life.
4. I wanted to impress a dude.

Part One seems sort of semi-correct. I hadn’t written anything in years, and I wanted to make myself write again. I registered a Blogspot domain, started typing a little bit of something every day, and then people started to read it. Part Two seems fairly semi-correct also. I had just ended a really long relationship, and for some reason when I started to interact with dudes other than my personal former dude friend, and to consider that some large part of my future might be affected by them, I was shocked — SHOCKED! And ANGERED! To find that sexism was a very large part of the picture. I dove into the feminist theory hardcore, because for some reason I thought that would solve the problems of my intimate life (see? It’s already funny. Becomes much funnier later on, trust me) and when I made myself try to write every day, that theory and its day-to-day application was what I wanted to write about. Part Three is a smaller story; I told my best friend that I was going to start a “blog about dudes.” She asked what its name would be; I paused for a moment, was like, “so what is the worst pun I could make in this situation,” and said “Tiger Beatdown.” A name like “Tiger Beatdown” becomes its own content-determiner, eventually, I guess is my point.

And Part Four was that I did start dating again, and this dude was way more accomplished than I as a writer, and was maybe the first person I’d ever met to share my radical politics, and I wanted to have something to hold his interest. So I made something to hold his interest, and I did hold it for a while, until we moved in together and both of our lives started to fall apart and we turned on each other and we broke up.

I’m not interested in talking about the how or the why of it. Mostly because I may never actually figure it out. These things happen. This one happened very painfully, for both of us; it took us both so long to figure out that it wasn’t going to work that, by the time we had, we’d managed to rip open every gaping psychic wound the other one had possessed. One of those things where you figure out that Dad will never stop drinking and yelling and telling you it’s your fault he’s so unhappy, and you’ll never be able to do what it takes to make him stop, and that’s because you just can’t do anything right, because if you were good he would be nice to you, because when he’s happy he’s so nice; one of those things where you realize that Mom will never be less vulnerable, and you will never be able to fix all her problems or protect her from the world, and for some reason the things you say and do just keep making her cry, and that’s because you just can’t do anything right, because if you were good you could help her, and you’ve tried and she’s still so sad. Except not really. In reality you are two grown-assed people who need very different things, and the things you need are so fundamentally opposed that you actually fit perfectly together; every place that you are capable of being hurt lines up with every part of him that is capable of hurting someone, and vice versa. It’s no-one’s fault and it’s everyone’s fault. It’s beyond the question of fault. What it is, primarily, is really fucking sad.

The point is, by the time it ended, I was no longer sure that I knew anything about myself. At all. I’d been telling you about myself for well over a year; I had crafted this cute, happy, strong, funny persona that just knew everything about everything, and all the while the world was ending. I was constantly giving these high-minded lectures on how men and women were supposed to relate to each other, and as my own life had made painfully clear, I didn’t know a goddamned thing. And, at any rate, my very meaningful project of using feminism to figure out my intimate life (I TOLD YOU IT WAS FUNNY) had blown right the fuck up in my face and scarred me for life. It was some Harvey Dent shit going on with me, is what I am saying. And after a while, I figured out that there was no pushing a reset button on it: I didn’t know who I was, or what I knew, and I could just stay with the sadness and tell myself how terrible and wrong and fraudulent I was forever — and I did; long after I’d started to put my by-this-point-way-more-OK life together, I couldn’t let go of those things, couldn’t stop repeating the tape loop of feminist and personal failure that I’d installed as an apparently permanent feature in my head – or I could be this new girl. New ambivalencies, new doubts, new sadness. New angers. New plans to kill the Batman! Which I hope you’ll all enjoy, and support!

But here we are. Tiger Beatdown is about to be two years old. I know! If this were a Tumblr, I would be getting some sort of cupcake graphic! And it’s changed, and I’ve changed. The question that has been killing me, and sort of crippling me with unholy doubt, is that I no longer know exactly what this space is capable of, or what I’m capable of. I’m no longer sure that I’m doing anything right. This isn’t whining; I’m not bemoaning my lot. This is what happens to people. (Especially people who are almost entirely self-taught.) (And if anyone has perchance heard of what exactly it is I’m doing or not doing correctly, and would be willing to tell me about that: Lines are open! You can tell me right to my horrible scarred villain face!) And, you know? That’s exactly where Tiger Beatdown started.

You guys, this blog is an experiment. It always was. Whichever origin story I’m telling, the point is that I started this space because I was learning. Because I wanted to record what I was learning every single day. Figuring out that I didn’t have everything down, that I wasn’t the smartest person in the world, that I was still capable of fucking things up, and that there were parts of me and parts of life and parts of being a Strong Independent Feminist Woman (who starts a feminist blog to impress her boyfriend: THE LAUGHS, THEY DO NOT CEASE COMING) that I not only hadn’t figured out, but that I hadn’t even known I needed to figure out in the first place… that is just not a bad thing. Because it means that, no matter what else happens to me, I have plenty to write about. I’ve been to Netroots, but I’ve never been to me.

I hope you’re still going to be around for that. I hope that the process of figuring things out is as good, this time around, as it was the last. No matter what else it is, it’s necessary. It’s necessary, is what I’m learning: To fuck up, to fall down, to embarrass yourself, to change without thinking you’ve betrayed yourself, to believe two contradictory things until you figure out that they’re the same thing or that one thing is wrong. That’s the whole point of this project. Feminism used to be referred to as “The Woman Question.” That’s still what I think it is. What I don’t think, these days, is that I have the answer. I don’t, and I never will. What I have is a blog.

[Yes, a blog! A blog you can support -- she wrote mood-killingly -- with donations! So please: Give a click, won't you?]

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I took a girl on our third date to see The Kids Are All Right. Because what other summer fare might make sense for a couple of reasonably young bisexual women than a breakout indie hit about lesbian motherhood, sperm donation, and a very raffish Mark Ruffalo?

Yes, for those (very few) of you who haven’t heard, The Kids Are All Right feature Ms. Bening and Ms. Moore as Nic and Jules, married parents of a girl named Joni and a boy named, improbably-if-this-wasn’t-California, Laser. The plot of the film charts the consequences of Joni and (sigh) Laser contacting Mark Ruffalo’s Paul, a restaurant owner who was the anonymous sperm donor for both children. (Each woman gave birth to one of the children, and somewhat predictably, OB/GYN Nic’s daughter is tightly-wound and high achieving while New-Agey Jules’ son is a slacker.)

I’m going to get to the consequences of that contact in a second. Because they are interesting, though maybe not the way they were intended to be.

First, let’s talk about the cast.

We are beyond, I hope, the idea that straight actors playing gay parts is somehow “courageous” or that they have a responsibility to play their characters in paradigmatic ways. The long-suffering closeted gay man or lesbian of good virtue overlooked have been retired from our cinematic vocabulary, for the most part — although their replacement by the gay man who takes up the Barbara Bel Geddes bitchy friend role, and the lesbian horndog busy with her home improvement projects (or even more groan-inducing, earth-mother devoted to her vegan cookbooks) may not exactly be a tremendous step up. Still, we seem to be emerging into a world where playing a gay part is no longer a big deal for a straight actor, and may even be seen as a feather in the cap, not because of “courage” or “empathy” but because it means that they are accepting in a groovy kind of way.

There are, however, a couple of dangers still lurking like U-boats beneath our waves of good intentions: and those are the erasure of Honest to Goodness Gay Actors, and a process I call the “Huffmanization Effect.”

This, of course, being a reference to Felicity Huffman’s performance in Transamerica. I bet at least some of my gentle readers are probably surprised to discover that I’m not an especially huge fan of Transamerica. “But C.L.,” my imaginary interlocutors might say, “it was a movie about trans acceptance! And Felicity Huffman was great! So…courageous. Oh.”

Yeah. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve loved Felicity Huffman since I saw reruns of Sports Night, and I’m glad that Desperate Housewives has made her enough money to build a guest home out of bricks of $100 bills; she is an actress of fierce intelligence, moral strength, and brilliant comic timing. And her Bree was a fucking disaster. I could list the cliches, mistakes, contrivances, and distortions, but that would would take a depressing length of time. (Well, okay, one: if I had a therapist tell me I had to make contact with someone I’d had no relationship with for 20 years, even if it was my kid, in order to transition, I’d have a new therapist within 24 hours and a letter would be on its way to the relevant Ethics Committee. The psych exam for transition isn’t to determine if I’ve fixed up all my emotional problems, just to determine if I’m capable of making an informed and rational choice. Or at least it should be; ask a transsexual sometime if you want to hear how much OMMV.)

And yet Bree was eaten up by critics and hell, even praised by some trans folks, because there was enough verisimilitude to real trans experiences (yeah, I had Andrea-This-Is-the-Voice-I-Want-To-Use James’ voice DVDs too) to make ignoring the brutal caricature almost palatable. Of course, they could have gotten past that by, say, using an actual trans actress in the part — why yes, they do exist! and no, RuPaul dose not count! — but then who would have given them money to make the movie, unless they, say, descended into brutal exploitation?

And that leads me back to my first point. I think it’s great that the movie got two actresses of the caliber of Bening and Moore, but…were Portia DiRossi and Cynthia Nixon unavailable? You know, two honest-to-goodness lesbians? (Perhaps the idea of the two of them making out was just too unbelievably hot. At least it is in the Cinema of My Mind.)

I know there’s a danger there — of pigeonholing gay actors into only playing gay parts — but then again, parts for gay folks (I won’t even bring up trans folks) are often hard to find, or only possible by playing straight (hello, Nathan Lane’s-early-career!) And so while I’m glad that a lesbian domestic comedy was made by a lesbian woman, it remains a sad commentary that the only way to get the movie made involved not having any lesbians in it.

And maybe a bit ironic. Because the central message of The Kids Are All Right seems to be one of normalization, perhaps an artistic extension of Harvey Milk’s dictum that “if they know us, they don’t vote against us,” a docu-drama argument against Proposition 8′s absurd premise that gay love is drastically different than straight love. Actually, argues Cholodenko in the movie, it’s just the opposite: they’re both fucked up in largely the same ways. Joni accuses her mother of using her to prove that a lesbian family can raise a child just as well as a straight family, and maybe she has, but not the way Joni is thinking of it. Nic has just as tangled a relationship with her teenaged children as any straight parent does, and about the same issues: Control, autonomy, respect, and the horrid fear that both of you are turning into your mothers.

I can’t close without talking about Mark Ruffalo, and not just because this is his best performance in a long time. His Paul is an immature man who seems to have drifted from situation to situation before coming to rest as the owner of an organic, localvore restaurant. Presented with what looks like a ready-made family, he soon insinuates himself into it. Maybe with some good intentions, but largely pursuing his own pleasure, the pleasure of stress-less parenting, and later, of Jules’ bed. And while I’m sure there is truth to that situation–lesbians do sometimes sleep with men, and bisexuals do exist (hello out there, world) — something rings a little oddly about their relationship. There’s something just a bit contrived, just a bit too plotty, just a bit too helpful to the marketing of the movie. The acrobatic sex scene between Moore and Ruffalo stands in rather marked contrast to the frustrating, under the covers scene between Bening and Moore; and while I get that one of the points here is about how any long-term relationship can fall victim to a rut, and maybe there’s even a sidelong glance at lesbian bed-death, still…something is odd.

What is good is the way the discovery of the affair plays out. There isn’t an explosive scene at the first dinner Paul gives at his house for his ersatz family; that takes place later, behind closed doors, the way most people (trust me on this one) deal with it. The family splits harshly against Jules, but then she was the person who betrayed the family; the mixture of love and loathing directed at her is touching, and even her big set speech at the end manages to not feel too contrived, but something people might actually say, down to the dying fall of “…and I hope that you can forgive me.” (Bening’s tearful reaction is also pitch perfect.)

At the end of the movie, Paul has been literally shut out of the family, the door slammed in his face, his children turning their backs on him. Forgiving reviewers in the New Yorker and the New York Times have pondered that maybe he was sinned against as well as sinning, A. O. Scott going as far to say that “the filmmakers forgive him even if the other characters cannot.” Well, maybe. But call me a Second-Waver and say that I’ve sold out and gone all Mary Daly on you (well, that’s unlikely), but I’m not so sure. After all, this is a family designed and predicated on not needing a father. They were doing just fine without one, at least in that they were no more screwed up than any other family, and his presence merely distorted and disrupted their relationships. (And indeed, not until he has been decisively excised does the healing between parents, spouses, and children begin.) Maybe it’s a rebuke to Prop 8 again, by pointing out that the biological parent can just end up screwing things up even worse; or maybe it points to the subversive idea that a familias can get by just fine even without a pater, and that proves a distraction to some viewers.

Both my date and I felt that the movie ended on a little too upbeat a note; we’ve both survived relationships involving betrayal, and sometimes there’s just no coming back from that. But maybe, like Agora, it’s not so bad to have a few myths of our own, a gay love story that ends just as falsely and soppily as any straight movie. Anyway, it will have to do, at least until Anna Paquin makes that bisexual movie we’re all waiting for. Especially if it stars John Barrowman.

[Yay, the kids DID turn out all right! Sort of! In the end! At any rate: If you love the TBD, and you want this sort of hot bisexual movie-reviewing action to continue, please do donate. Or, for an even sexier, less hassle-ish option, you can click this here subscribe button (click through, anybody?) to set up an automated payment! Imagine never clicking again. IN YOUR LIFE. What freedom! What ease! Wheeeee.]

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RDCA, an academy of martial arts, released some ads encouraging parents to get their boys to karate lessons if they start acting like girls. What marks the Sexual Revolution of the 21st Century? Blowjobs, said Brea Malacrad, a University of Alberta researcher. A West Bengali woman was forced by to walk naked for six miles and sexually assaulted for having an “illicit love affair with a man from another community.” Argentina was found to underserve the medical needs of women–despite its relatively good laws.

Popular comic strip Cathy outlived Jesus. Ack ack ack!! jokes will live on forever, though. Dr. Laura Schlessenger dropped the N word like a million times while trying to make a “philosophical point.” A lot of teenagers are using Botox to… it’s hard even to say why.

Tonya Hunter, a Cleveland marriage and family counselor, was murdered after local police failed to serve two warrants for her abusive husband’s arrest. A Tallahassee woman was forcibly hospitalized and made a ward of the state because she didn’t want to quit smoking while pregnant. Echoing her co-star’s sentiments, January Jones seemed to appreciate the gentlemanly sexism of days yore.

A few weeks ago Kat Stacks, a woman known for hooking up with celebrities, was attacked. The official story was that she had been attacked for commenting negatively on the size of the rapper Bow Wow’s penis. At the news of her beating the Internet CHEERED. Twitter immediately went into a frenzy of slut-shaming. As usual. She was savagely beaten? But she insulted his dick! He raped someone? BUT HE PLAYS THAT SPORT WE LIKE. These people always crowd into the discourse, screaming “Nothing to see here!” at the top of their lungs when we attempt to discuss rape, or intimate partner violence, or stalking. Some of these people are women, which makes me want to randomly mash my keyboard like the kids do when they want to tell you they’ve just fuckin’ given up.

This is exactly what happened when Rihanna was attacked. Instead of focusing on Chris Brown’s behavior and what he did and how we could best go about scrubbing him from our collective memory, all the attention immediately went to her. What in the fuck is this chick’s deal? Why did she stand in front of PUNCHES? Why doesn’t she know those aren’t good for her FACE? Hasn’t Chris Brown been through ENOUGH? But Chris Brown never made a sincere apology for savagely beating Rihanna. He essentially issued a press release of an apology and jumped directly into trying to reform his image. And then he cried some fake tears and the Internet went “He’s back!” And I was like WHAT THE FUCK?

Internet, we need to have a conversation about comebacks. The following people WILL NEVER BE BACK:

• Michael Richards
• Ben Roethlisberger
• Mel Gibson
• Chris Brown

I never want to hear another fucking word from any of them. I don’t want to hear about their public redemption because there are too many talented people in this world for me to waste my time with human garbage. Or people who defend human garbage. Like Whoopi Goldberg, who has been on the longest campaign to get me to hate her this summer. And I don’t want to hate her! I don’t want to hate the woman who made Jumpin’ Jack Flash! But asking what the victim could have done differently is just the wrong thing to do.

A music video came out this week, one that deals with intimate partner violence. It begins with a close up of Rihanna’s face, with her fucking fierce hair and her 500$ dollar eye shadow. It cuts to Megan Fox sleeping with some skeezy dude on a dirty bed, which is EXACTLY what I’d be doing if I were Megan Fox. Then back to Rihanna. She’s singing in that gorgeous voice of hers, and for a moment I think “Maybe this won’t be so bad.” A few seconds later, the recording fails and “I Love The Way You Lie” turns into a rap song. By Eminem. Who is literally the last fucking person I want to hear singing about intimate partner violence.

To me, Eminem will always be ‘97 Bonnie and Clyde, his song about taking a trip to the lake with his daughter to dispose of her mother’s body. Eminem has spent his entire career depicting women as treacherous, disposable punching bags, and nothing he has ever done changes that. Especially that Elton John duet, because apparently there’s not a goddamn thing Elton John won’t do for money.

Eminem sings that rage feels like “a steel knife on my windpipe.” He compares hate to huffing paint.  “Who’s that dude?” he asks before admitting he “laid hands on her.” “I guess I don’t know my own strength.” He’s distancing himself from his behavior after the fact. Making excuses. Promising to change. Exactly the way abusers do. While he’s doing this we see Megan Fox’s relationship with her boyfriend, played by Dominic Monaghan. (Yes, that is the same Dominic Monaghan who admitted he tried to taunt Fox into getting violent with him during the filming of this video! Why? He wanted a more realistic response! He wanted rage! This guy is method. He is the Stanislavski of douchebags.) Fox finds a phone number on his hand, and they start arguing. She punches him, he punches the wall, and then they kiss.

She leaves, he tracks her down and beats the guy she’s with. And she goes back to him. And she’s got beer! And then we go back to Rihanna, who of course knows a thing or two about dating violent assholes. So some of this video is about Rihanna commenting on her own personal experience with intimate partner violence. And part of it is Megan Fox donating her fee for the video to Sojourn House, a Los Angeles Women’s Shelter. Which is yet another reason to just absolutely love her. But it’s also about a music video shoot for a song about intimate partner violence where a male actor was allowed to abuse his female costar in the name of authenticity.

As the video progresses, the violence escalates. Eminem’s last line is “if she ever tries to fucking leave again, I’mma tie her to the bed and set the house on fire.” As he sings, Monaghan hits Fox, they are both consumed in the fire, and then they’re kissing again. I can’t even believe I have to say this, but a music video about Intimate Partner Violence shouldn’t be sexy. Which this video is, in places. This video is so very close to PROMOTING the thing it is supposed to be preventing. We have Eminem, who is singing about his relationship with his ex-wife. And we have Rihanna, whose only lines seem to be about STAYING in an abusive relationship, not getting the fuck out.

We have to include her thoughts on the song, because no matter how severely wrong this video is, she chose it to comment on her own abuse: “The way [Eminem] did it was so clever. He basically just broke down the cycle of domestic violence, and it’s something that a lot of people don’t have a lot of insight on. So this song is really a powerful song and touches a lot of people.”

I understand that it is possible to depict violent behavior and allow the audience to draw their own conclusions and that some people will watch this video and understand that at least from a marketing standpoint, it is supposed to be about how toxic abusive relationships are for those in them. But it also has lines like “maybe that’s what happens when a tornado meets a volcano,” and scenes of Fox and Monaghan sucking face, which teaches the same bullshit lessons about destructive, abusive relationships being “passionate.”

I knew people who listened to Eminem when I was younger, people who were survivors of domestic violence. Some of them could see their relationships or their parents’ relationships in his music. They would take their experiences and filter them through his albums, contextualizing the realities of their lives with his. But his music also normalized the experience, making it harder for them to imagine being with people who didn’t abuse them. This is the most mature and honest that Eminem has ever been about his own behavior, but he has still never acknowledged that his music might incite others to violence. He’s always stood behind the “for entertainment purposes only” disclaimer, cowardly hiding from his own culpability in creating a culture that accepts violence against women.

Should people be making music videos about intimate partner violence? Absolutely. Twenty years ago another music video about intimate partner violence came out, Garth Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls.” CMT and TNN both refused to play it. We need media outlets to change the way they report abusive relationships, to stop using sensational and insensitive language in their reporting. We need videos that are more than simplistic revenge fantasies, like the Dixie Chick’s “Goodbye, Earl” or Martina Mcbride’s “Independence Day,” which ignore the fact that women who kill their abusers are almost always made an example of by the justice system, and place the onus on women to respond to violence with violence, and not onto a system which forces the abused to chose between jail and death. But what we don’t need is Eminem trying to convince us he has anything we need to hear about abusive relationships. He’s said enough.

I got married about three weeks ago. I didn’t know that getting married was going to cause me body anxiety. Body anxiety so intense I’m not even really sure that I’ve fully processed it. As a fat chick, I am well aware of the MUSTLOSEWEIGHTBEFOREWEDDING cultural imperative. I was aware of this before I ever knew what Fat Acceptance was. And I knew before I ever got engaged that I would be doing no such thing. Frankly, I wasn’t even tempted. I know people who have gone on serious diets in the year or so before they get married, women who have attended “boot camp,” and companies who have made a lot of money off of fueling those anxieties. I wanted no part of it. When the woman who helped me try on a dress asked me if I was planning on losing weight before the wedding, I said no. In fact, I started weighing myself to make sure I wasn’t losing (or gaining) weight because I wanted the dress to fit, I did not want to have to get alterations (due to laziness).

So, I was pretty fine with my body. Fine with being a fat bride. Fine with the fact that I was wearing a strapless dress which showed off my, yes, arms — which are considered unacceptably fat by many people. Until it actually happened.

Suddenly, my appearance was way more important than it had ever been. I’m certain that I couldn’t count how many people complimented me on my appearance. On my dress, my shoes, my hair, my makeup, my jewelry. I did not get any criticism, thank God. I only got tons and tons of compliments from everyone there. And the compliments keep rolling in on the photos I posted on Facebook. I was about to say “not that I mind them,” but the fact is, I do mind them. Not because I think people are ill-intentioned or because I find compliments embarrassing. But because it was so apparent to me that my looking beautiful, or sexy, or whatever, was an important component of the event. It was a feature. My appearance was part of the entertainment, and so matter what I did, if I went along with the cultural prescription by getting dolled up, I was going to be rewarded with oohs and ahhs.

My partner? I didn’t hear anyone say anything about his appearance. Even though he looked terribly handsome. I didn’t see any comments on Facebook. And I asked him just now if anyone complimented his appearance and he said “I don’t recall.” The truth is that it didn’t matter what he looked like. That stark difference, between my appearance mattering a lot and his mattering almost not at all, kind of made me want to be invisible. Because weddings are a pageant and, little did I realize until I got there, I was on display. And I was not doing anything. I was not singing, or acting, or giving a persuasive speech, or trying a case, or teaching a class, or any of the other things I usually do when I am standing in front of a group of people and everyone is looking at me.

And I admit, I wanted to look beautiful. I wanted to look sexy. What surprised me was how important it was to everyone else that I looked beautiful and sexy. That mattered to them. That made them happy. That made them feel good. Not only was it hard to take the compliments because I was surprised by the volume of them, but because I had trouble believing them. Am I insecure? Sure. But I’m also realistic. And I know that I live in a fat-hating culture where being fat is not okay and being unabashedly fat is worse.

So, I will admit, as embarrassing as this is, that when people tell me they like they way I look, I secretly want to just not be noticed. Because the more people notice my appearance, the more I worry that they are thinking something like, “she is really pretty. It’s too bad she’s fat.” Which is, in fact, something that multiple people have said about me before. Like I was a disappointment to the human race by not living up to my god-given potential to be fuckable.

So there’s that. Then there’s my recently-revived exercise program, fueled on by an online group of runners who are tracking their miles and keeping each other motivated. I don’t believe in weight loss, but I do believe in fitness, and I am the most out of shape that I’ve been maybe ever. I am trying to get fit, and feel good, and oh my God exercising until you are sweaty and panting and red in the face feels so good. But then I get harassed, and I feel like crap. Like when I’m running in my neighborhood and men are making kissy noises at me and calling me sexy, and then when I confront them and tell them that’s not acceptable they shout at me and laugh maniacally and call me a “fat fucking pig,” over and over.

It’s days like that that make it hard to believe people when they compliment my appearance. Behind the very fact that my appearance is important is a cultural hostility toward women’s bodily autonomy that I can’t shake, no matter how nice it seems.

You should read it, still. Because you’re not going to find a more brutal, honest, and passionate attack on the ways feminism has failed a lot of people. Most of whom are women.

Let me explicate a bit. I’m not saying feminism has failed all women, which is silly. I’m certainly not saying that feminism hasn’t been a remarkable force for the transformation of society and benefited a great many women all around the world; to say otherwise would be absurd. But let me tell you, there have been a lot of times that feminism has let people down, mostly women. Women like, for example, me.

Here’s a stupid example of why: Let’s say I go and embark in a self-taught intensive reading of feminist history via the works of great feminists (as indeed I am doing). Around the 1960s and 70s I’m going to find a great many books written by strong, intelligent, argumentative women, women who literally changed the world. A source of pride for any woman, right?

Well, not any woman. Not this woman, for example, because everywhere I look I am going to find plenty examples of people arguing that this woman isn’t even a woman.

That’s the stupid example why. A smarter example was Lu’s Pharmacy, where feminism was used to defend not giving prescriptions — any prescriptions, not just the obvious stuff like hormones — to trans women, because, areyoureadyforthis, we don’t bleed.

And I wish I could say that these were isolated things, but take a look at this comment from an interview I did with Amanda Hess a while back:

I have always been a feminist, despite growing up in a fundamentalist religious home. However, as you also call yourself a feminist, I will refer to myself herein as an XXist. Just to avoid any of the connotations you, as a non-XX, may have given the word.

Perhaps as a feminist you speak for women’s rights. I do not. I speak for XX rights. Whether they be man or woman, both or neither.

I absolutely uphold the rights of XXs to run businesses, charities or social groups solely for other XXs. I am not sexist. I am an XXist. It is my chromosomes.

(As a side note, I enjoy knowing that I! Ruined! Feminism!, and as always it’s great fun watching people make theory almost literally off my back.)

I could go on, but I won’t, mostly because Sady has already done it so well (and more than once.) My point is that if I, a person who suffers from both misogyny and transphobia, someone who writes and works towards feminist goals, feels left behind by feminism… well then, what the fuck?

Or to get brutal, how much easier is it for folks to consider Sarah Palin a feminist than to consider me one?

The problem is, I think, that there is a long-standing confusion as to what feminism is: should it be, as bell hooks insisted, a radical movement to change the patterns of domination, violence, and subordination that have characterized human society, or is it an advocacy movement for a special interest?

I believe it is, or should be the former; that anyone who truly is struggling to end oppression in all its forms must be a feminist, and that a feminist must be someone who struggles against all forms of oppression. I think that most feminists would say something along those lines, and certainly Third Wave feminism has done a lot to try and rectify the failings of previous waves (pick your favorites from: Racism, classism, nationalism, homophobia, transphobia, academic impenetrability).

But I can hardly be heartened when a entire series on Feministe about sexual abuse gets fewer comments than a post about whether it’s sexist to have special classes to teach female lawyers what is “appropriate” clothing (hint: yes), or the recent thousand-plus comments on a couple of  Feministe threads about, essentially, whether it’s okay to be cross with people who bring children to nice restaurants, and wherein it was seriously posited that the only way to be a real feminist (or woman, or human…I’m still not sure) was to be a mother. Leaving me SOL, I guess.

Which brings me back to Kinsey’s post. Because whether you like it or not, you have to deal with what she raised: That you can’t have it both ways, to say that claiming a feminist identity allows you to disown the nasty parts of the movement’s history and its present. She demolishes the logical fallacies people use all the time to do just that: The It’s Not Me whine, the That’s Not What I Believe dodge, and the No True Feminist evasion. Because, well, bullshit. Because if we can say Sarah Palin isn’t a feminist — and she isn’t — because she opposes just about every core element of feminist movement, we don’t get to say that Mary Daly or (spit) Janice Raymond aren’t feminists. They do support most of the core ideas of the movement; they just also include a lot of ugly bigotry. (Just like Betty Friedan hasn’t been disowned for her own classism and nasty homophobia, but celebrated despite it.)

I still call myself a feminist. I call myself one because I believe in it as a movement to end all human oppressions. I call myself one despite the fact that so many other feminists would disown me, despite the fact that working for feminist issues has very rarely ever resulted in my particular issues being even considered feminist issues. I believe, because I know that the movement I believe in ultimately won’t leave anyone behind.
But I may have to wait alone for a long time.