International Women's Day

ThatIndividual · 09-03-17 01:37:11

From the front page (excuse me for totally ripping the front page of IFM off, please!) :

Today, on International Women's Day, we ask you to reflect on the role of women in your life, in the world, and on this site. Each time you come here you take it for granted you'll be entertained by sexy, brave women, made possible by the labour and skills of the (mostly) women who produce the imagery behind the scenes. We know you appreciate us by buying a subscription and making the considered choice to support socially responsible erotica, so thank you, but today, we're giving you a small taste of what the world would be like if women didn't participate in it. We ask you to think about what you, what all of us can do better, to bring true equality to women, to respect and acknowledge their voices, and above all, to eliminate the threat of and the violence and harassment that is part of their lives. Thankyou, and we'll see you here tomorrow for a double dose of Ifeelmyself

I could talk about women both academically (bleh) and personally. Academically, I've read that societies with fewer women (meaning the ratio of men:women is weighted toward the men) tend to be more violent. Personally, I work in I.T. and went to an engineering college. I feel comfortable laying claim to knowing what life without women is like. Men tend to be more immature and brutal to one another when they're "left to themselves". For some reason men tend to be a little less cruel, on average, around women. I literally experienced having a mostly female department right door to my predominately male department for around a year and a half. I swear you could feel the estrogen 'waft' through the group of men when one of the women would walk through. Suddenly there were fewer 'dick jokes', for instance.

The concept of speaking of or "for" all women in the general is incorrect, of course. I refute the notion that any metric can refine human essence to a single measure or number meaningly. How then could I ever entertain speaking of half of humanity?

Hell, women are awesome Mixed bag as we all are.

Last edited by ThatIndividual (09-03-17 01:40:54)

Yadkin · 09-03-17 04:45:49

Thank you for participating in this today.

aven frey · 09-03-17 04:57:50

Thanks guys for being thoughtful good allies!

viva · 10-03-17 05:20:45

thank you guys!

viva · 20-03-17 22:23:23

I'm not sure that thinking of women as art to be looked at helps you realise us as complete human beings?

I think a more helpful approach would be more to consider women as people, not art. You can be attracted to people without objectifying them. Like, it's okay to find a woman beautiful! It's okay to be attracted to her. The problems arise when a woman cannot be anything but beautiful, or if she is not beautiful [to you] [in the ways you were trained to see beauty], she's less of a person - you might not even see her at all.

Unknotting all the complexities of objectification and attraction and societal oppression is really hard work. Wanting to change is like, %75 of the battle, so I commend you for that! But it's not a toggle - you don't switch your perspective, and suddenly you're no longer enacting patriarchal training - it's a process, and a long one, and involves a lot of self work too.

This may seem basic, but it's not only women who suffer under the weird seesaw of oppression we are born into. There's so much fucked up shit that happens to men too when they're thrust into a position of "power" and into the role of the active observer - without their own consent. No one ever asked you how you feel about this, either.

This system has taken some of the most beautiful aspects of all of our humanities - our sexuality, our attraction, our compassion, our empathy, our desires to please, to look, to be seen, to love, to be loved - and chopped it all up, assigned it to genders, and trained us mercilessly to fit within its confines from before we had even the barest comprehension of object permanence.

So when you start to consider feminism or "treating women with more respect", it seems like it's about women, but it's actually about all of us. you begin to unpack a whole lot for your emotional reality as well. I'm super excited about this journey - in myself and in others - so if you ever want to talk. I'm here and I encourage you to follow this interest as far as it goes.

It's amazing how much more free and safe we can be than we ever imagined or were told we could be. With just a little work laughcry emoji, sprout emoji, sparkle emoji.

Last edited by viva (20-03-17 22:25:51)

aven frey · 21-03-17 00:10:35

What Viva said!

I lament I'm currently too busy to contribute to this thread at the moment but I appreciate others making the effort!

xx

ThatIndividual · 21-03-17 02:10:16

viva wrote:

So when you start to consider feminism or "treating women with more respect", it seems like it's about women, but it's actually about all of us. you begin to unpack a whole lot for your emotional reality as well. I'm super excited about this journey - in myself and in others - so if you ever want to talk. I'm here and I encourage you to follow this interest as far as it goes.
It's amazing how much more free and safe we can be than we ever imagined or were told we could be. With just a little work

My understanding has been to be aware of how and why you're treating people the way you treat them. Treat people as people, essentially. If you tend toward critical statements and actions toward someone then ask yourself why you do so. Is it because they kicked you in the shins or because they're 'supposed' to be treated that way for some reason? What's the reason? (This also begs the point that Dostoevsky made: Even the most depraved of prisoners may become humane after being treated humanely.)

You can even treat someone too nicely - and that's in part what, I think, feminism is about. Being treated nicely purely because of your sex or skin color diminishes you and your abilities to shine. You could probably really ruin someone in an academic career with automatically giving them top marks on everything they did regardless of actual content. Imagine if, halfway through your favorite class in school your teacher told you that your grades from hereon in would be automatically perfect regardless of anything you actually did? Maybe you start turning in blank homework and tests - never learn or demonstrate any actual learning in that class again.

I tend to treat people as worlds unto themselves. Everyone has a story - literally, a view of the entire universe unique to themselves, their past, and desires.

My problem is when a woman looks me square in the eye and my mind goes blank I want to talk, but my mind's gone! I'm totally blaming the gross men I work with on this one. Swimming in farts and f-bombs all day makes it hard to stay responsive.

Last edited by ThatIndividual (21-03-17 02:36:24)

viva · 21-03-17 20:38:05

phy00ma - thanks for clarifying, I appreciate it! Yeah I think your approach has its own beauty, much like ThatIndivid below - treating people as worlds unto themselves, aesthetic universes with infinities to divulge - I really get that. It just feels a little idealised, like maybe not totally possible to actually do without gender bias considering how we've been socialised.

Even and especially joking language reveals windows into the depths of it - like joking about "gross men"

I love when a man looks at me deeply and I cant speak. I think emotional surrender is part of pure basic glorious humanity. thinking you have to be able to speak confidently when your heart is melting - thats all the other stuff.

SELVOREAN · 07-03-22 17:46:47

Hello everyone
Tomorrow here will be March 8, International Women's Day.
I dare to resurrect this thread to convey my best wishes to all of you, whether you are collaborators, forum participants, IFM staff or its other pages.
Congratulations to all, the road is being long, it is being hard, in some cases bitter, and in others something sweeter, however as a poet from my country wrote: "walker, there is no path, the path is made by walking" (Antonio Machado).
We have to walk that path together, hand in hand, with all our daily determination and without letting ourselves be intimidated by nineteenth-century ideas and concepts.
A big hug from old Europe and, long live the women!!!

PS: sorry if the translation is not the most correct, I do not master the language of Shakespeare either (blushed smile).

Hangdog90 · 08-03-22 04:13:07

SELVOREAN wrote:

Hello everyone
Tomorrow here will be March 8, International Women's Day.
I dare to resurrect this thread to convey my best wishes to all of you, whether you are collaborators, forum participants, IFM staff or its other pages.
Congratulations to all, the road is being long, it is being hard, in some cases bitter, and in others something sweeter, however as a poet from my country wrote: "walker, there is no path, the path is made by walking" (Antonio Machado).
We have to walk that path together, hand in hand, with all our daily determination and without letting ourselves be intimidated by nineteenth-century ideas and concepts.
A big hug from old Europe and, long live the women!!!
PS: sorry if the translation is not the most correct, I do not master the language of Shakespeare either (blushed smile).

On International Women's Day this year, those of us in Europe are especially aware that we are seeing the largest exodus of women an children refugees across the borders of Ukraine, into Poland, Romania and Moldova, and onwards to the rest of Europe and beyond.

Thinking of those women, and how they must feel as they cope with the severing of the lives they knew, here is an English translation of one of Antonio Machado's poems (translated to English by Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney)

[Traveler, your footprints]

By Antonio Machado

Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveller, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea.

Hangdog90 · 08-03-22 19:00:38

Today at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a group of feminist protesters stood topless in formation, chanting against the war, with the Ukrainian flag painted onto their breasts and messages to Putin to stop the war painted on their arms and torsos.

I wish I could share a video.

Last edited by Hangdog90 (08-03-22 19:01:25)

_redbird_ · 09-03-22 05:04:11

SELVOREAN wrote:

Hello everyone
Tomorrow here will be March 8, International Women's Day.
I dare to resurrect this thread to convey my best wishes to all of you, whether you are collaborators, forum participants, IFM staff or its other pages.
Congratulations to all, the road is being long, it is being hard, in some cases bitter, and in others something sweeter, however as a poet from my country wrote: "walker, there is no path, the path is made by walking" (Antonio Machado).
We have to walk that path together, hand in hand, with all our daily determination and without letting ourselves be intimidated by nineteenth-century ideas and concepts.
A big hug from old Europe and, long live the women!!!
PS: sorry if the translation is not the most correct, I do not master the language of Shakespeare either (blushed smile).

Thank you for the well wishes!! That's extremely lovely of you. A big hug back to you from Australia. It has indeed been a difficult couple of years (especially in lockdown record holding Melbourne, hehe) but IWD was quite lovely. It was so nice seeing all the lovely posts celebrating the wondrous marvel that is women .

#1 09-03-17 01:37:11

International Women's Day

#2 09-03-17 04:45:49

Re: International Women's Day

#3 09-03-17 04:57:50

Re: International Women's Day

#4 10-03-17 05:20:45

Re: International Women's Day

#5 20-03-17 22:23:23

Re: International Women's Day

#6 21-03-17 00:10:35

Re: International Women's Day

#7 21-03-17 02:10:16

Re: International Women's Day

#8 21-03-17 20:38:05

Re: International Women's Day

#9 07-03-22 17:46:47

Re: International Women's Day

#10 08-03-22 04:13:07

Re: International Women's Day

#11 08-03-22 19:00:38

Re: International Women's Day

#12 09-03-22 05:04:11

Re: International Women's Day

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