Ana’s Comments (group member since Jan 08, 2016)

Ana’s comments from the Our Shared Shelf group.

Ni hao everybody from Beijing!

It's lunchbreak over this part of the world and I thought this would be a nice moment to launch Round 4 of our giveaway! Last chance to snag a free copy of The Vagina Monologues! The rules are the same from the last three rounds and as my fellow mods said before, we will contact you winners during the coming days.

Congrats to the first 25 peeps who comment after this post! :)

Conversation will probably wind down over this thread after this last round, but I would still like to thank you all for the awesome reaction to this giveaway and also just for being here and taking part each day in this community. You really don't know how important it is for us all to have you gather here. Hugs! <3

This could actually be a nice idea with some great potential. I will make sure to share with the rest of the admin team. :)

I think I could not really choose any two particular people. Because feminism has to be intersectional, and often we lack first-hand knowledge of the struggles and life experiences that we have not gone through, I find that so many perspectives would risk not being fully represented if we only had two people to sit down and talk.

That being said, I would love if Pope Johanna could come back from the Middle Ages for a little while. :) Perhaps Anne Frank. And/or Simone de Beauvoir.

Labia surgery is just about the ultimate giant neon sign of control and unwelcomed intrusion of women's bodies. Would you give me a break? So not only you want me to fit in a size 0, have the perkiest, perfect boobs and the thigh gap, you also want me to have *the* loveliest sculpted labia out there.

You'd better be a fucking male model, then. Oh, wait. You're not.

As for shaving, I have sort of mixed thoughts. Mixed as in, I do shave my legs, armpits and inner part of my thighs, because I fully admit that I would be unable to go out wearing a dress otherwise. So yes, in that sense, the patriarchy got me. However...

1) Everybody should be free to sport hair all over their body if they so desire;
2) I actually dislike legs / chest / armpits hair in men just as much as I do in women.

As I mentioned upthread, anyway, I never got why and when shaving your whole lady bits became sort of an unspoken norm. I've done it once in a blue moon (the harmless way, though, ugh I cannot even imagine why would anyone submit themselves to such an excruciating pain). It itches like crazy. It looks very weird when you are not a sex industry star. I just do not get it.

¡Bienvenidas a todas las nuevas! Somos poquitos de España por aquí y algunos estamos muy lejos, pero siempre es una alegría recibir a gente nueva. :D

Recordad que el equipo de moderación está aquí para ayudaros en cualquier cosa que necesitéis. No os preocupéis si el inglés no lo tenéis perfecto; con poder medio seguir los hilos y las lecturas que (desgraciadamente) no tengan traducción basta. Además, podéis abrir hilos en español cuando lo veáis conveniente. :) Esta es una gran comunidad y esperamos que todos y todas estén a gusto en ella.

Good try, Wtfman, but we ask that group members refrain from self-promotion. Therefore, I will close this thread immediately. Thanks for your understanding!

Closed and archived

I think, the more you ponder about the world and mankind and things that are wrong and need to be repaired, the more you risk your happiness.

...However, for those of us with a certain personality, that's just the way it is. :) Feminism is just one of the things that are in my mind, which never seems to stay silent, for good and for bad as well. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I wish I could make my mind shut up, just for a little while.

Thank you so much, Indigo. Really. I was kinda worried that you would not be willing to open your own thread after the incidents these days, so to say. I know that it's very easy for us to say that this is overall a safe place, we do our best, blah, but the thing is, we're still cis. We still don't fully understand.

As for me, I am busy right now but I don't think I will contribute much to this thread for now anyway, other than just reading carefully. :)

Oh, and please do not hesitate to let us admins know if someone tried to spoil the fun. I am sure any of us would be happy to help. :)

Unfortunately women (not all, but many) have a tendency to play the victim

Redheads carry Satan inside.
Blondes are duuuuuuumb.
Boys can only think about one thing, I swear.
All girls like shopping.
All guys like football.

I mean, if we're going to start with that kind of blanket arguments, I'd like to join the fun, too.

I am starting to get a strong troll vibe here. Do not get me wrong - I think it would be terribly boring if OSS turned into this rainbow land of general agreement, all of us totally in tune with each other and traipsing down a Feminist Nirvana paved in pink and violet. I am more than fine with people disagreeing and posing all sorts of questions. However, I have been here long enough to detect certain ways, so to say. I am starting to get that feeling and I don't particularly enjoy it.

Sadly I am not very surprised that there isn't a march scheduled in China...but I was very pleased to see that one of the, so far, only three Spanish cities to host one is my beloved hometown. :D I will be happy to follow it from the distance.

Reading your entire post on my commute, Chelsea. Indeed, it's a point that no one had addressed. Hopefully it adds up to the obvious truth.

IIRC from previous posts, Indigo is a man!! :) (My apologies if I am the one who has the crappiest memory)

A suggestion that I wholeheartedly support. Indigo, I would love to read a thread that you started on this topic.

Indigo wrote: "The title of this group is rather transphobic I have to admit. Who created the title? I checked in to see what the heck was going on here and .... found a rather unfriendly atmosphere. For all that..."

I, for one, did learn a lot, particularly regarding the DSM label. Thank you so much for all your insight, Indigo. Also, irregardless of whether the posts / words / thoughts that rightfully made you feel unwelcomed and unsafe were mine or not, I would like to equally apologise for that. We do encourage lively debate here, but not at the cost of a single one of our members reasonably feeling like this space isnt welcoming for them. I am on my phone right now, but I would support any of my fellow admins rephrasing the title of this thread, at least, if they agree with us. Otherwise, I would just like to stress the very firm intention of the entire admin team in keeping this a welcoming, safe space for everybody.

Tristan, no. I am sorry, but transsexuality is not a mental disorder. It's just not. Where is your evidence to support such an argument? Oh, right, nowhere to be seen. And I could care less about the ICD being transphobic, even more so when you think that up until not so long ago, homosexuality was also regarded as a mental disease.

Jule wrote: "Meagan wrote: "I must be the only one here who so far has to push myself through the Vagina Monologues. It's not because I'm uncomfortable with the word Vagina or the content of the book but it's p..."

Both Kaitlynne and you had a huge great point re: the book being limited to the empowerment of cis women. I will readily admit that I had not thought of that. One could indeed say that, after all, this book was written in 1996, so well before the point at which transsexuality is being discussed now (haha, yeah I know, as if we could be much much prouder in 2017, but you get what I say, right?)...but it is still a very legitimate criticism.

I guess it could be similar to when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. She was far from getting the whole notion of feminism...but that doesn't mean that her work was any less needed or important, and it paved the road for others who would further advance the fight for equality, as we still are today.

Tristan wrote: "I hope this doesn't seem insensitive (though it probably will) but to the original poster, it is a mental illness, and because it is a mental illness, regardless of what evidence you give - they wi..."

Tristan, your post is actually offensive. Not because you hold an entirely wrong argument (that transsexuality is a mental illness. It's not.), but because of your wording.

Most people learn to be quiet about it, because we know what it is... Like when someone is suffering from schizophrenia or another mental disorder, and they're going off about something, and you can tell that the person is suffering from it - you don't walk up to them and say "what you're saying doesn't make sense, you have a mental illness".

Well, first of all, schizophrenia is an actual mental disorder, caused by one or a mix of the following factors - genes, environmental factors, and brain changes. It is not cured and/or treated by awareness, love and understanding, although those are of course of invaluable help for sufferers, caregivers and for society as a whole to stop stigmatising mental illness. When left untreated, schizophrenia poses an actual risk to the patient and to those around him/her/they.
Transsexuality? It is not an illness. Transsexuality refers to those who strongly feel that their gender identity is not consistent and/or culturally associated with their birth assigned sex. The treatments linked to transsexuality are not, or they should not, be directed at, forcing this experience out, but quite on the opposite, they're aimed towards helping that individual align their sex with their gender if they so desire.
Does transsexuality come with pain, fear, etc.? Oh, it very much does. However, most of those side effects are not caused by any sort of brain imbalance or anomaly. They're inflicted by society. By each and one of us who disdain their experience, negate it or make fun of it. Also by those of us who 'learn to be quiet about it', thinking that we are being very kind to those 'poor' transsexuals when, in fact, wounds caused by silence often take even longer to heal.

They'll never be treated like the gender they wish to be treated as, not because of their physical bodies but because of their demeanor which is dictated by the brain.

Well, then it's a pity that we insist on failing our fellow humans, because they should. Also, which demeanor? If we start to believe again in that kind of 'undeniable' truths, then many of us are going to have a hard time with our very (un)lady-like behaviour.

Human experience is a giant spectrum. Walk from one end to the other with an open mind, with as much honesty and curiosity as humanly possible, and you will find that it's easier not only to accept others, but to accept yourself.

Laure wrote: "And thanks all for the great input. Ana, I loved reading your views, and your last post taught me a lot. I actually use many of these arguments - ex., "trapped in the wrong body" - to simplify the ..."

Oh, you're more than welcome. Also, I totally used to use (and to be honest, it's not entirely fair to use the past tense) those very same sentences myself. Which is already a great first step, the fact that we acknowledge that trans peeps exist and are legitimate, it's just that we need more education on the subject. I will never grow tired of recommending Sophie Labelle's Assigned Male comic strips. You can follow her in Facebook. Mind you, she has stated plenty of times that her purpose is not to educate people, but for some of us it does end up serving as an excellent resource. Sometimes, as a cisgender woman, it's not easy to...uh, how would I put it? Um, sometimes I will read her comics and think to myself, 'Ohhh but...see, it's not that we all...it's not like that entirely...' But ultimately, I have to remind myself that I've never been in her shoes and keep my mind open to learning and, yeah, self-criticism. Really suggest you go follow her!!

To be perfectly honest, it bothers me when people talk, as in setting expectations, about shaving their (or their partners') vulvas, period. I swear it's become sort of an unspoken norm to have a vulva be back to its childhood state of affairs. Otherwise, it is not good hygiene / not sexy / insert negative wording of your choice. I would like to freely decide the degree to which I shave my private parts without any additional pressure, thank you very much.