feminism

Bodies online

Kuva | | Henna Timanttimetsä

bodies online

Kuva | | Henna Timanttimetsä

How is a woman a threat? Woman who is a play thing, a childlike object? A quest for not growing up is a funny thing. Fun is just beginning?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
It is a series of absurdities without any factual base. Absurd in the world of statistics and results, absurd in the world of multiple paths and complexity. The need in simple power oriented world is not to solve the feminine brain, but to keep the world in a state of believing change is not possible for some, because it just isn’t. The thought of threatening womanhood, threatening feminine humanity, femininity as part of all people, which is over and over again put to disgrace and denied, threat of the evolving womanhood that can evolve so much it is too much to take. What is manhood in this picture when men don’t want to admit female strength, equality nor superiority? It is difficult to admit a woman might be better at something. What does a manly man do other than attack. A capable woman is the threat, an offence.
Good question is what do we threaten as women who make and speak up and when does the threat begin? Strong opposition to feminism is clear indicator of fear men feel and many women conform, fear of change and difference, fear of losing balance, losing power, a grip over, tradition which we hang on to as our lives depend on centuries long oppression and belief that women are inferior. Amount of violence against women is very telling. It is appalling and common, almost, dare I say, an accepted way of keeping discipline. We must live in fear, because we want  to survive. By being submissive we can do that, survive. All we do is survive in our routine-like identity looking after other’s survival. Women can survive terrible circumstances. Amount of violence speak of men feeling the need to state their position as leaders, solving complexity with simple solutions and in need of old solid unchangeable ideas. Where does violence lead is to more violence, fear, anxiety and despair. Violence seems to be the desired route and way of leading all around the globe. Strange leadership. Could women as leaders change that or do women imitate men? There is plenty of evidence that women’s intellectual capabilities are something else than inferior, it is surely one reason to feel weak and unmanly. It is also reason not  to fall for imitating. Idea of female brain being less is rather strong without it being the fact. When women want to change their lives different men have to change their standing point. It can be a question of becoming humble listener instead of the one who gives advise and orders. That is where the difficulty lies. Who has a say over, who to believe.
Since woman is known to be physically weaker threat is somewhere else than what women can physically do as harm. We like to think physicality is the primary tool for threatening and shadowing anyone, a tool of violence, work, force and making evidence of grand size. Idea of threat and fear is bound to biology and physicality, fear of losing life dictates much, fear of abuse, oppression and hurt. What do women threat as themselves, as a gender and different, if they are allowed to be themselves, is the strictness of patriarchal way of living which is favored by many women and men as the way things should be. Feminism is a threat to a way of living and male dominance which is obviously extremely difficult to change and grow out from, because it alters everything we ground ourselves on. Male dominance sounds as it is violent. The reason there needs to be dominance of any kind can be unclear, but is taken for granted. Women are to dominate anything else but those areas seen as male dominated areas (there are quite a few), things women are suppose to dominate naturally. So women are naturally caring is a saying, parroting, not necessarily a fact. Anything else occurring, women doing or thinking is always seen as something extraordinary and a wonder in everyday order of things.
What is under threat is always question of pride, honor, deserving, power structure and dignity, and to whom these items belong. What is there to own and have. Very easily those things belong for men and men either grant them forward or choose not to which is seen also as natural order of things.

What is revolution?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
Is joining a group in Facebook a sign of something happening in reality? Does joining a group in virtual reality mean something other than a push of a button, labeling one’s identity in public and among a group? What kind of reality is in social media other than minds and senses put together and how do things done in social media reflect what is going on socially in the concrete world? Should we even not make a difference between virtual and bodily concretion? Between people happen things we call social interaction, communication, conversation, deeds, makings and social activity, a mixture of events and thoughts. Social media and making revolutions with help of internet provided platforms can give a strange feeling of accomplishment and progress. How many people, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands who like, who comment, who pass and share messages, who inform and make. This information space and how it functions clearly affects our reality and lives in the world in a massive way. What is revolution in this and importantly when people desire to accomplish revolution using social media what happens other than togetherness and same-mindedness in virtual reality?
Social media is much about liking and feeling good, sharing the fun one is having. Activism can cleverly join in the fun and make way for social media to be part of change. It is of course possible to ignore socially important issues and pay attention to oneself only, be as blind in social media as in everyday normalcy. As someone asked me at the university when I talked about being an activist in social media like Facebook: How is it possible? What is activism in Facebook? For many it is still a new thing and I feel I am talking to a wall.
My question what is revolution is demanding. Revolution is and must be aggressive. To point out my aggression and rage are not to harm or kill in the traditional way, but to make a turnover of minds, of how things are done. Revolution means in my world a complete change. It is not marketable, nice, flattering nor pretty. Those who think you can get the shells of revolution but not the contents are wrong. That is not how it goes.

Honor and dignity are serious matters, part of humanity, which dictate much in this world of people who seek to be respected and honored, but those two are also matters of opinion and choice, important what comes to women’s rights who often do not have freedom of choice.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

The Status of Women in Islam vs Status of Women in other Civilizations and Religions

In this light people who still argue that feminism is not important or say it plays no role whatsoever to make lives better amaze me. Rights of women are vital to all of society. If women do not have a say over their lives and they are possessions who can be treated as objects civilizations do not evolve, we do not find equality, peace nor are able to let all people be the best possible persons they can. By violating women’s and girls’ rights continuously we waste human resources, we do not reduce suffering, poverty, ignorance nor oppression.

 

Where is honor?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
Is woman’s honor more fragile than man’s honor? How honored are we and where does our honor begin? Who gives us our honor? It can be taken away like an object due to something we have done or we can lack honor because of gender or sexual orientation. We can be threatened to lose honor and end up not having much or any left. Some of us care about it some don’t. It is a culturally made construction that holds us and can make us do things to each other, things that are less honorable, but are justified if honor is publicly disrespected. Honor is a complex idea of civilized humanity, behavior and status system, that is connected to god via society. Honor and its graveness is depended on what kind of life is valued, what gives value to gender, age, occupation, status, group approval, opinion. It is cohesion that is needed to keep an order dictated by someone for various reasons which don’t have to be sensible, dictated by those who know honor, have honor, do honorary deeds and have authority to say who does not have honor, who can be respected. People need their groups to keep on living. Are there groups for those without honor, groups for those who think they have honor but do not, for those who live a lie? I haven’t seen much honor lately even though people like to think they have honor, which is probably the same as dignity, people are all more or less honorable to themselves. I like to think people who violently defend their honor do not have any or who place honor of their’s in front of honor of someone else are without honor. Violence, death, shame and threat connect with having honor, something to die for, defending it as one’s face and possession where one stands. We are so easily fooled. There is no honor in killing. That there is honor in visiting someone’s grave but not getting to know a living person.
I have began to think what is it, because what I see as honorable truly is not visualizing itself in the world today. To me it seems like honor is a lookalike, an act that needs to be tended and kept up, so it is a face that can be lost, a mask. I also think it is more important for men than for women, more important for a family as a whole, because it still happens that people who do not meet the standards of family honor and proper are abandoned and shut out. This happens too often for LGBTQ-people, disabled, to anyone who is seen as a freak and shameful. Traditional sense of honor and respectability, way of life that needs to be maintained as it is, without it changing or being challenged is very much alive. Conventional views stick hard and are difficult to change for some reason. Even though conventions do not make any sense especially if they strangle people to death. Conventional is boring, outdated and doing more harm than good because most people probably are not that normal as they like to make other to believe. Conventional perceptions on what is shameful, what is right, how to live, what is good are tightly woven into concept of honor. It is honorable to make a living, support one’s family and oneself, live in a way that does not break the moral code and is not bizarre.
What kind of honor is in making gossip, abandoning one’s child, making war or killing one’s daughter for falling in love with a wrong boy or a girl, which is obviously more terrible option. Ill talk is interesting in this context because many who gossip and wonder other people’s choices in life condemn morale of those whom they speak of. Irony is strangely enough often not visible to those who lightly thrash those others, judging those others and their flaws.
Where is honor? Is honor with those who ban pornography or with those who turn their backs to people who are not liked? What is there to like? What is an honorary thing to do? I think many are not doing the honorary thing. Moral is lacking there where the moral code is strict. Where there are things to lose, where losing honor over braking conventions is horrible abomination, what there is to lose that we haven’t lost already?

porn drawings

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Confessions of an Erratic Marxist – Berfrois, video of a lecture.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Confessions of an Erratic Marxist – Berfrois

The excellent Yanis Varoufakis, but pay attention, no women take stand to ask a question. It is important for women to have a voice and reclaim power by standing up and speaking up. Forget your fear, forget the idea of the fragile sex that does not have a voice and has to rely on men who speak and take the stand, who openly use their heads to solve problems and make conversation. Standing position when performing your cause may be important for some in many ways. It is not insignificant how one operates and makes oneself heard. Often when men who have power are portrait they stand in front of an enthusiast crowd or alone as masters of their field, as bigger owning the space and the situation, owning their cause and the future they make. It is not probably very female to speak forcefully to agitate. If women throughout the history have done so, agitated loudly, showing publicly that they are capable of complex thinking, they have been thought to be too manly, rude interrupters of public status quo who must be silenced. How much this is true today is to be guessed, but reasons to be afraid are there, mostly it is shame that women bear for being the weaker sex. It has not been proper for women to speak as men do. It has been a great loss. Women should perform as people as anybody and as women. That is not less to speak as a woman, it is different.

Interested in our need for conventions and safety of conventional. What keeps stereotypes and conventions alive?

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Mostly, which is quite often, I face those demands and rules that are meant to bind us together to live in happy agreeing community without conflict as always in community that does not like change, that has a demand for outside and inside. I have wondered why there is and has been such a strong need to categorize and label and in my case and in women’s lives particular a violent need to define and know what is the absolutely correct thing to do, say, live, dress and so forth. I notice this because I unknowingly and knowingly break all the conventions there ever has been. It has been a puzzle in which I simply do not fit, so why force it. No reason whatsoever. Make life more easy maybe? Yes opinions on how I live my life, feel free to contribute..

Is it our need to keep up with something solid, safe and belong to a group of people who value conventional way of living? Why do we have to succeed as good obedient citizens and follow conventions which make us possibly something we do not want to be, to agree with conservative way of thinking that holds traditions dear? We all have an idea of what conventional means to some extent, but to force creativity and making new things into that mold is censoring, something made under regulations that make conventional aesthetics, not to change but prevail and stay in power.