thelesbianlifestyle.com

[a rant. yeah... still not on topic for the month... yet.]

I make art. Sometimes high, most times low, but art nonetheless.

Transcend or perish. Sometimes I don’t care which.

I sat in Women’s Studies today and realized that I despise Women’s Studies. I revoke the ability to call myself a feminist if this is what I have to succumb to. There are girls in that class who don’t know shit about feminism and are better feminists than I.

I have a great downfall: art.

And the professor stands up there placating us all in our responses like the nurturing “feminine” professors she loves to rant about. Do not tell me that there is no difference between art and objectification. Unless it is pornography, the art is not only on the paper but in the looking. Unless you look at the woman and the first thought is, “I want to fuck her,” it’s not objectification. Objectification is the perception that a person is only what they can do for us or how we can use them best. Basically, a person defined by relation to ourselves and that alone.

But what if the looking is in the beauty. The beauty of the body, of the feminine. The beauty as beauty FOR beauty because it exists as such, unto itself and for itself, we are just the observers and admirers. “All art is quite useless” unless it is admired intensely, quoting/paraphrasing Wilde. Frankly the high artists and their reclining nudes had a few things right. So don’t stand up there and tell me about Da Vinci’s divine proportion and tell me it was sexist. Don’t tell me to take offense to art, or to take offense to words. My life is art and words and the words of art and so I will not take offense to my life. I will fight. I am a fighter, I am full female, but I will not be this.

I am no feminist.

I BOYcott this.

Yes, boycott. Because “boycott” was the name of a person (man) and not some sexist phrase. No one said boycotting was just for men. I refuse to girlcott. I fucking refuse. And I refuse to sit here and deliberate why our society chooses not to use gender-neutral terms that don’t exist in English, or any Romance language. You don’t like actor because it proves man-as-norm, the male acceptable for female and not the reverse. You don’t like actress because it emphasizes the female-as-other and somehow less. Loaded terms, loaded guns.

Just fucking aim already.

Get the BALLS to pull the trigger.

I’m losing patience so put me out of my misery; I recognize and accept the failure I represent to Women. I don’t even feel like speaking anymore in that class at all. I will take on the “male” ideals with stoic face and imposing presence, making you wonder what I’m thinking because the power is not in the speech but the lack thereof. Speeches… I will leave those to the feminists.

by toni riot