"I suspect it’s difficult for men to imagine a world in which their bodies have long been inextricably linked to their value as an individual, and that no matter how encouraging your parents were or how many positive female role models you had or how self-confident you feel, there is an ever-present pressure that creeps in from all sides, whispering in your ear that you are your body and your body defines you. A world where, from the time of pubescence on, you can feel the constant and palpable weight of the male gaze, and not just from your male peers but from teachers and sports coaches and the fathers of the children you baby-sit, people you’re supposed to respect and trust and look up to, and that first realization that you are being looked at in that way is the beginning of a self-consciousness that you will be unable to shake for the rest of your life.Even if they are never verbalized, the rules of bodily conduct for females become clear early on: when school administrators reprimand you for the inch of midriff that shows when you lift your hands straight in the air or youth group leaders tell you that the sight of your unintentional cleavage is what causes godly young men to fall, you learn that your body is dangerous and shameful and that it’s your responsibility to cloister it in a way that is acceptable to everyone else. You learn that your body is a topic of public debate that everyone is entitled to weigh in on, from a male classmate telling you that those jeans make your ass look huge to the male-dominated United States Congress dictating the parameters that rape must fall within to be considered legitimate. To be a woman, and to live life in a woman’s body, is to be held to a set of comically paradoxical standards that make you constantly second-guess yourself and jump through a million hoops in pursuit of an impossible perfection."
Stop Catcalling Me  (via albinwonderland)

(Source: lancyann)

— via geeknip

queenofadodi:

Men had no problem violating women’s bodies while they had on corsets, petticoats and farthingales, so what the fuck makes you think a short skirt has anything to do with it? 

(Source: morenamagia)

— via demonrevolutionary
"The nudity i think scares the nation as a whole because we are taught that nudity is a bad thing. But what i really learned was that when it was packaged the way i was, with no high heeled shoes or long hair or spinning around a pole or popping it, people have a hard time processing it when its not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. They don’t know what to do with it or how to place it or what to say because surely a woman cant be intelligent enough to be making a point. It has to be for publicity or for sale."

Erykah Badu (via queensi)

one of the wisest things ever said about women’s nudity.

(via sexxxisbeautiful)

(Source: wombmanifesto)

— via sexxxisbeautiful
thyrecks:

Zoe Smith, gold medalist at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games at the age of 16.
Zoe Smith was harassed via twitter recently because some female stated she looked o manly and no guy would go for that. Here is the article. Seriously, shes an 18 year old Olympian in lifting, and you have a problem because she’s too muscular for you? wow.
Part of the article:
“We don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that,” Smith wrote. “What makes them think that we even want them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place?
“Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favorably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?
“This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any woman with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble.”

thyrecks:

Zoe Smith, gold medalist at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games at the age of 16.

Zoe Smith was harassed via twitter recently because some female stated she looked o manly and no guy would go for that. Here is the article. Seriously, shes an 18 year old Olympian in lifting, and you have a problem because she’s too muscular for you? wow.

Part of the article:

“We don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that,” Smith wrote. “What makes them think that we even want them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place?

“Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favorably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?

“This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any woman with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble.”

(Source: budgiebazooka)

Tumblr source: thenarglesdontbelieveinyoueither
posted on July 16, 2012 with 4,995 notes and Comments
"It is none of my goddamned business if a random 400-pound (or 150-pound, or 90-pound) woman is healthy or not. Just as it’s none of my business how much money she makes or how her sex life is going. Health is private. Period.

What I do believe – and what I feel perfectly qualified to proclaim from the rooftops - is that every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to be treated with respect, deserves to feel loved, deserves to make her own decisions about her own body. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to have a fabulous time exploring her personal style and honing her unique look. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size can define health for herself. And, above all, every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to be happy. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size CAN be happy. And anyone who claims that happiness is contingent on weight is foolish and misguided, prejudiced and small-minded.

I’m not interested in quantifying the health of other women. I’m not qualified to make decrees about the health of other women. But I’m making it my life’s work to make sure that other women are happy. Happy with their lives, their bodies, their very existences.

Because happiness trumps everything, and we all deserve a piece of it. ALL of us. Including you.

"
— via queerandpresentdanger
posted on July 2, 2012 with 6 notes and Comments
Pelvic exams routinely performed on non-consenting anaesthetized patients »

“But then in my third year on my OB/GYN rotation I performed pelvic exams on unconscious patients. Women would come in for appendicitis or something. Then, once they’re asleep, the crowd gathers, line forms to the left.”

An article on how common this practice is in the medical community, and how there is basically zero honesty or accountability.



Just for shits and giggles, here’s a reminder on the federal definition of rape:

the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

Wow, total lack of respect for women’s bodies, dignity, and bodily autonomy in the medical community? Wide-scale institutionalized rape of unconscious female patients? Complete obliviousness to the staggering ethical ramifications of the practice?

I’M SHOCKED, JUST SHOCKED </sarcasm>

posted on June 12, 2012 with 5 notes and Comments
"The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted…

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

"

-Ashley Judd (The Daily Beast)

GOD BLESS YOU ASHLEY JUDD

posted on April 16, 2012 with 7 notes and Comments
"Do [people who advocate censorship of the naked body] feel that they have to take the world to task for urges they cannot reconcile within themselves? This impulse to censor all expressions of the naked female body speaks to an anxiety about the body, which extends to anxiety about (female) sexuality…To create a culture that thinks sanely about sex and the body, we still need to assert the idea that a woman’s body is not a source of shame and not in need of regulation by the government."
Saskia Vogel in Feministing (via ellielamothe)
— via ellielamothe