When I was a freshman at UW-Madison, a women's studies professor I was interviewing for the school paper told me that a feminist is just someone who believes that women are equal to men.
Do I burn my bras? No, they're expensive. Do I walk around with unshaved legs and long locks of armpit hair? No, I want to be equal to men, not look like them. But yeah, I absolutely think women are equal to men, and therefore, I am a feminist.
But some people think this is not enough. They write books, they dissect the English language, they go on speaking tours and all of that is fine, until they "embrace" their periods as if Grey-Goose apple martinis were coming out of their vaginas.
British photographer Ingrid Berthon Moine photographs women wearing their own menstrual blood as lipstick.
New York artist Kate Goldwater uses sea sponges to collect her menstrual blood and use it as paint.
Activist Chella Quint has written a series of magazines about her period, and fun things you can do with tampons (besides sticking them in your poontang). She also travels around the country and photographs sanitary disposal units to document the travesty of women being told they are biohazards.
Here's some news for you: menstrual blood is a biohazard, you creeper. So are most male and female bodily secretions.
When men talk about their cum or their shit, women usually have one response: eeuw, how immature. And there's a good reason for that.
Women have come a long way in the last century, and we still have a long way to go. How is stopping to examine and salute our periods going to accomplish anything, except hold us back?
The most feminist-y thing, to me at least, to do is insert and move on, and when men shudder when we grab a tampon out of our bags on our way to the bathroom, we should be able to tell them to get over it, because we are.
No comments:
Post a Comment