Rolling our way to freedom...

[The F-Files]

Meet Girlistic's "Feminist of the Month!" ...for some reason, I don't think that wearing sexy uniforms and fighting with women on rollerskates was what the second wavers had in mind when they were fighting for women's liberation...

Melissa "Melicious" Joulwan, 39, of Austin, Texas I'm a member of Texas Rollergirls. Being a Rollergirl and a feminist gives me confidence to chase my dreams. I wrote a book (Rollergirl: Totally True Tales From the Track) and am part of a community of women who know who they are, what they want and how to have fun. More than ever, being a chick rocks. We wear sexy uniforms, train as athletes and are proud of our toughness. We admire the Second Wave who fought for Title IX so girls know they can run track or start a Roller Derby revolution.

[RGM]

Yipes. Is this what we're being told Title IX was for now? Roller derby? Who says something like that? And again, why does empowerful feeling have to be cited in a sense where common sense suggests that there's really not a whole lot of empowerment going on?

[The F-Files]

and why has empowerment turned into catering to men's fantasies (i.e. rolling around in sexy costumes and bashing into eachother-a great combination of dehumanization and de-sistering). Such individualism will get us nowhere. I love Catharine MacKinnon's article "Liberalism and the Death of Feminism." It really says it all.

[misfitgirl22]

I do not see how being in a barely there outfit skating around is empowering?? I mean if you like to skate and be on a roller derby team thats cool, more power too you. But i have seen documentries on these roller derby teams and what i see is a bunch of women looking like a pack of hookers on skates and men watching it. I see it as yet another way to brain wash a women into thinking its empowerment. When really its just another way for men too get there jollies off!!!
Women keep fooling themselves. I guess it makes them feel better. I am so tired of women saying they want to be strippers or porn stars and they really have no education on what these professions are really like. They think its so glamorous. I really think alot of women know they dont really wnat to be a stripper but they somehow make themselves believe it would be fun.

[RGM]

It's almost become like a class thing. Middle class white girls who have just a little bit of privilege want to "be" like the strippers but without any of the inconveniences, like poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, rape, etc. They've got this warped idea that it's a glamorous profession (wonder where they get that from?), and have absolutely no concept of the much darker, deadly reality.

It's like rich white males forming "gangs" to go rob convenience stories so that they can be more "normal" and live like the lower classes. Only this is hurting real people, and not just businesses.

[Lost Clown]

Empowering today is so misused. They might as well be saying that driving is 'empowering' or that scanning ones own groceries is 'empowering'.

Excuse me, I need to go 'empower' myself by ordering pizza.

[misfitgirl22]

Too true Lost clown!

[The F-Files]

I think it was Jill from oneangrygirl who said that ..Gail and Bob use it now all the time, which is cool because it's a great quote but I'm pretty sure it was Jill who is the genious behind it!

Empowering today is so misused. They might as well be saying that driving is 'empowering' or that scanning ones own groceries is 'empowering'.

Excuse me, I need to go 'empower' myself by ordering pizza.

[The F-Files]

It's almost become like a class thing. Middle class white girls who have just a little bit of privilege want to "be" like the strippers but without any of the inconveniences, like poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, rape, etc. They've got this warped idea that it's a glamorous profession (wonder where they get that from?), and have absolutely no concept of the much darker, deadly reality.

It's like rich white males forming "gangs" to go rob convenience stories so that they can be more "normal" and live like the lower classes. Only this is hurting real people, and not just businesses.

I think it all boils down to the difference between an individualistic/liberal view of feminism and a radical/collective view. CMack sums it up pretty well in many different pieces she wrote. Liberalism and the Death of Feminism was a good one but here's two other quotes that explain what I'm getting at:

"The Feminist question is not whether you, as an individual woman, can escape women's place, but whether it is socially necesary that there will always be somebody in the position you, however temporarily, escaped from AND THAT SOMEONE WILL BE A WOMAN." Not by Law Alone in Feminism Unmodified:

Also: "And anyone with an ounce of political analysis should know that freedom before equality, freedom before justice, will only further liberate the power of the powerful and will never free what is most in need of expression. If what turns you on is not your bottom line, and if you understand that pornography literally means what it says, you might conclude that sexuality has become the fascism of contemporary America and we are moving into the last days of Weimar." Not by Law Alone: Feminism Unmodified.

[oneangrygirl]

i'd like to claim the mcdonald's analogy as my own, but i have no proof.

[Andrew]

"The Feminist question is not whether you, as an individual woman, can escape women's place, but whether it is socially necesary that there will always be somebody in the position you, however temporarily, escaped from AND THAT SOMEONE WILL BE A WOMAN." Not by Law Alone in Feminism Unmodified:

What a great quote! Yes, that's it!