About a week ago, I got into sort of an on-line argument with a blogger who said that, as a feminist, she hated the 'Fearless Girl' statue down near the NY Stock Exchange.  Her view was that it trivialized women's strength and opposition to forces (such as what the bull represents) that seek to trample women and other marginalized groups.

My view is that I identify with the girl.  I don't feel like a Joan of Arc or even a Rosie the Riveter.  I've never been a fighter; my motto is "she who runs away / lives to run another day."  My life has been about surviving.  And being, well, femme.  So I appreciate that downtown, where the bulls trample everyone smaller than them, there's a statue of someone small and weak like me.  Who is still standing.  For all the rather Trump-like bluster that the bull's sculptor has dumped on her for "mocking" his artistic masterpiece, she's still there and she's still standing.

I identify with her because I think I'm really femme -- in my own way.  Not the 6-inch-heels and lipstick and fishnet stockings femme, more little-girl femme.  I'm into soft and pretty, into nurturing and cuddling babies and keeping an eye out for lost sheep.  I wish I were small and could rock a girl's dress like 'Fearless Girl' does, even if I don't have her courage.

But even though I've been feminist all my life, I don't feel like most of feminism has a place for women like me.  Women are supposed to be strong and tough and leading Teh Resistance (and kind of butch, too.)  And that is so not me.  The blogger's dislike of 'Fearless Girl' felt like the dislike of women like me, whom she dismisses as "little girls."

My "Resistance," such as it is, lies in endurance.  When I was young, everything about me was bad, bad, bad.  I didn't fight (or else learned at a very early age that I could never win), so I hid.  Years later, when it became clear that I could get away with being myself, I started to show little bits of myself to see how I'd be received, and as it became clear that it was safe to come out, I did.  The bullies may have thought they triumphed, but I'm still here and I'm most of the way back to being me.  What's more, in a world increasingly controlled by people who hate people who (like me) Don't Fit(tm), I continue to be me.  I transitioned and I'm still here.  I go around showing my face, even though it's pretty obvious just to look at me that I'm trans, and I'm still here.  They may come back and kill me, but you know?  In 20-30 years I'll be dead anyway, so what's the difference?  At the moment, I'm me and I'm still here.

Just like 'Fearless Girl.'

Someone came along and stuck the girl in front of his statue changing the intended meaning completely, without even asking him if he was ok with the idea. As an artist myself, I'd not exactly be pleased someone came and randomly turned my artpiece into something else, or twisted/changed its message with theirs.

But the thrust of your post is that feminists are tripping over each other now as to what constitutes female strength and femininity, and not necessarily winning friends in the process? Yes, I'd agree. They are. I wonder what sort of female the blogger would have liked? One with a superhero build? I see them arguing incessantly online over exactly what a strong woman "should be", as if they never get tired of telling other people how to think. Just be yourself. 

Quote from: Kylo on May 05, 2017, 11:24:13 AM
Someone came along and stuck the girl in front of his statue changing the intended meaning completely, without even asking him if he was ok with the idea. As an artist myself, I'd not exactly be pleased someone came and randomly turned my artpiece into something else, or twisted/changed its message with theirs.

And nobody asked him to put his bull there, either.

As for its meaning -- raging bull, right in front of the NY Stock Exchange, the epitome of Wall Street and capitalism -- there's really only one half-way credible interpretation: runaway capitalism, trampling and goring everything and everyone who happens to be in his way.  The sort of thing that is glorified by the Wall Street Journal types.  It was a piece of public, political art, and it's no surprise that someone responded to it with an equally public, political piece of art.

Quote from: Kylo on May 05, 2017, 11:24:13 AM
But the thrust of your post is that feminists are tripping over each other now as to what constitutes female strength and femininity, and not necessarily winning friends in the process?

Nope.  That's your lens.

The background of my post was that pretty much our whole society has always devalued "femininity" and feminine things, and that this attitude has affected feminism, too.  Much the way someone who was abused throughout childhood and blamed for being too weak to fight off their abusers will have contempt for anyone who is weak, so feminists frequently try to argue against the Patriarchy using the Patriarchy's values.

The thrust of my post was that, much as I respect women who Resist Teh Power in what are generally considered "masculine" ways, I am not that kind of woman, and what I love about the statue is that it shows someone who is "only a weak girl" and not a Joan of Arc, i.e., someone more like me, yet still #Resisting.  I would like to see more diversity in the women who are annointed as heros.

BTW, this is an ongoing discussion within feminist circles, with a lot of feminists, especially the younger ones, pushing back against the blanket devaluation of feminine stuff.  Much the way they are pushing back against transmisogyny in feminist circles.

Society in general devalues weak men in the way you say, not weak women.

The only people I've seen doggedly ragging on women for being "weak" are feminists themselves, some of whom have an idea in their minds about women being all things to all people... and anyone who disagrees with them being gender 'traitors'.   

I have to disagree that society devalues women, too. A thing of little or no value is disposable. And we know who are really the disposable sex, don't we.

I'm on board with the idea there is more than one kind of strength. What concerns me is that some feminists have got to a point where the things they say and their ideological agenda actually hurts or confuses women, or has people thinking they're inadequate or doing wrong when they're not.

These boards and others have a lot of people coming in wondering if they've committed some sort of thought crime toward these attitudes these days and post about the anxiety that results from it. It's quite concerning.