women

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

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.

When we focus on feminism and women’s rights men are in many ways in important role in making change happen. They have to involve themselves in changing manhood, putting it under magnifying glass, manhood which is the very dictating part of creating rules of how we interact.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

We easily disregard men in talks about feminism and I have often come across the notion that men do not want to hear about feminism, because it is only about women and their problems. Well things aren’t that simple, isolated nor happen in vacuum, so I guess largely problems that are about the problematic relations between genders are not solved between women and by women only. Men have to participate, as men have to participate in raising their daughters and sons, which very often doesn’t happen just like that as we all are aware and many have experienced. Feminism is not only about grown up women and their rights, their difficulties, wrong-doings that happen to them. It is about children, young adults, all adults young and old, all people. It is about the never-ending discrimination that is justified by religions and traditions, power relations between genders and the basic need to solve the issue of discrimination, oppression, humiliation, neglect, gender-based violence and so forth. It is a very fundamental issue that happens to deal with all of us, all people once again. Feminism the swear word, silenced and loathed, the feared movement that has made already a giant difference. Certainly you have noticed.

We often do not acknowledge the factual violent nature of masculinity as bad. Nature of being a man that emphasizes natural urges, instincts, natural laws, naturalness of hunter-like masculinity that cannot be changed or argued, the natural hierarchies between genders therefore grounded and lawful, unchangeable. The bizarre nature of how men still view themselves through an ancient ideology of manhood that for many is undeniable but can be other than what reality shows masculinity to be, weak and scared. The image of manhood today is hopefully critically looking at himself by himself from down to earth not from space above. The strong, unquestionable, trustworthy authority figure, an action figure, conquering because that is what he does. It is his purpose to be a giant. And what it should be, manhood, all that and is not. Manly roles in society are often reasons to many problems all of the society faces and why is that..is that the power issue, credibility issue, authority and status issue? Who hold power dear and like to use it? Manly roles of what to me seem to be monsters in disguise, are a lie. The boxes of men become boxes for everyone to be in or out, live with not without. Those who do not like them are squashed and ridiculed, bullied to death.

As I see it, it is masculinity that we have to obey, like the beast, the threat of masculinity posing via cars, jobs, offices, achievements, possessions. What masculine men represent becomes a mantra for all of society, boys grow into this game too lightly. They believe it. It is the image of a true man what they need to become to be worthy. Self-love and sadism are the ruling features for a masculine ideal to happen over and over again. That is what masculinity does and wants, to rule, to have the last word and own as much as one can. It is a silencing and forcing kind of mode that many people who do not wish to be alpha males nor wish to be subjects of have to deal with. Violence is part of that strong manhood one way or another and it has one very straight forward approach to deal with all things. It is difficult to oppose for this reason as is the herd of bulls difficult to maintain. A strong man has his prejudices that he thinks are absolutely correct. Minds do not change that easily. Heroic macho ideals do not apologize, negotiate or believe in something that someone smaller says or thinks. Fragile can be beautiful and it is childlike. Masculinity is all about size, conquering with size and force, benefiting financially via that grandiose amount of stature. Such masculinity needs flattery, pals to feel connected and approved, trophies such as heroism, status symbols and women that somehow self-evidently are part of the cult of naturally divine masculinity to be adored. Masculinity that never does wrong and even if he does he has his good reasons and right to do as he pleases, because that is what men do. They please themselves.

Yes this is a caricature and stereotype, but it is masculinity I see and have been experiencing, more or less always. You wish to make a change please begin at once.

”The Man Box. 
American men face an oppressive set of sexual and cultural restrictions on how to perform masculinity. One collective set of these cultural expectations is often referred to as the Man Box. (Charlie Glickman defines the Man Box beautifully here. http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/megasahd-escape-the-act-like-a-man-box/ One of the primary reasons that boys and men gay bash and bully queers is that they need to perform masculinity in order to show the world that they’re in the Box.) The smallest social or sexual deviations from these rules can result in punitive private and public shaming, by other men, by our partners, by our families.” 

”If you doubt this, see what happens to the average American man who wears bright pink socks for a day. See how many micro aggressions and shaming moments arise. This may be the land of the free, but most of us aren’t free to even pick our own socks”. – See more at: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/megasahd-culture-of-shame-men-love-and-emotional-self-amputation/#sthash.gHrEUzaw.dpuf

Thrills of being a woman

| Henna Timanttimetsä
I think that the fact I was born a girl was a provocation itself. I have felt my doings and all by being that is always first a female, not first a human or a person, but a woman and a body, is mere provocation and I have began to like it as that. That provocation is so easy and tormenting that it is joyous, because for me I am first a person, a human being. My gender I am not sure what it is for. That my body began to change into woman’s body was a shock also for me, because it meant I could not hide anymore and do boyish things and that I felt growing up was shameful because my body changed into woman’s body that is firstly sexual. To keep reminding me by staring and talking was like torture. I thought how bad am I if my sexuality is the only reason for my existing.

I provoke with my femininity for existing as I am, for looking the certain way, without me underlining my gender, without the need to seduce with my feminine qualities, possibilities of looking more feminine, assets to seduce are there, sure. Those parts of me are the thought of sex and means of sex. I am a sexual being as is a woman through and through. There comes a very puzzling and intriguing thing: desire and what do I want as that overly sexual being that I am. What does a woman want, what is she for, what is her purpose, what is her. There are disturbing stereotypes that repeat and cause alarm rightly so. Provocation starts there to have its effect. The one role for women that is to be for others is taken for granted and of course it is a good role. One can easily forget one’s own needs in being there for others.

Women who are vulnerable hold onto someone else, must seek refuge with someone and other women, because alone we are nothing. They forget themselves. That is the scare, to be nothing, to be left behind with nothing. We can be powerful with each other keeping womanhood as it is suffering, dirty, unholy, pleasing, not able to get away from being chained and under a looking eye that judges us, if that is what power is. There are punishments for those who do not fit roles of women and we need women to understand that to make democracy happen women need to stand out and speak up.

What women are about? Is it the same as what people are about?

| Henna Timanttimetsä
I probably should know myself what womanhood and being a woman is all about. I sometimes am a bit puzzled by what womanhood is in reality and what it is supposed to be. The dichotomy and contradictions are somewhat striking, not to mention traditions of being a woman. I have always been myself on battle field with the assumed view of what a woman is, can be, should be and is wanted to be, because I totally resent the idea of giving ready formulas of gender, identity and life. To me womanhood represents a cacophony and an unrealistic set of ideals that prevent women from becoming the best they could become as people. It is diminishing from the very beginning that there are things girls cannot do because they are girls, that girls have to be more careful than boys. Girls have to be protected from the world and from themselves. They have to learn  to act the roles of suitable women, suitable for someone not for themselves as women are still a possession, a package. Women have things they do and they do those things to please the opposite sex, but also themselves. To please the opposite sex pleases themselves as well.

To ask what women are about gives me an instant image of a magazine. An image where things are carefully planned, nothing is left at chance, mistakes and errors are for failures. Perfection is a perfect home and family life with satisfying work, a career even. What women are about I often feel I do not wish to explore. It is a repulsive task, because there is so little new there to find. To me it is panic over a stain, panic over not being enough, grouping and talk that sets boundaries between people. I do not want to have anything to do with it. Pain of womanhood is in difference, that they are afraid to be someone who sticks out, says against, breaks the given patterns of womanhood, making a difference is more difficult for them than they dare to admit. Why is making things different overwhelmingly difficult and a question of getting appalled over? What would that difference be that is needed? How do women get rid off fear of abandonment, fear of loneliness, fear of loss I do not know. As long as women are ruled with threat of violence we probably will be afraid, because we are the weaker sex and we believe it.

 

Shared sense making activity

| Henna Timanttimetsä

A new Tow Center report looks at how news outlets help spread (or debunk) false rumors online

“Once a certain critical mass is met, repetition has a powerful effect on belief. The rumor becomes true for readers simply by virtue of its ubiquity.”

By  @ylichterman‎ Feb. 11, 2015, 2:39 p.m.

Cherry Pom pomLittle fun never hurt anyone.