Aisha’s Comments (group member since Mar 22, 2016)

Aisha’s comments from the Feminists Starting XI group.

Nanania wrote: "I had a MINOR accident last week. I'm fine guys,calm down.
I have a chipped tooth(incisor),a bump on my head and a black eye.
I promise i'm fine.
However,I look and feel terrible, mostly feel.I fee..."

So sorry about your accident. Glad you're ok. Hugs

Here's something about make up that I found interesting from here: http://thenewinquiry.com/features/dea...

Dear Marooned Alien Princess,

I enjoy following you for your love of cosmetics as well as your love for talking about “serious” issues. My problem is I feel dependent on makeup and other enhancers, like I am not good enough to be “all natural.” I really do feel more confident when I have my makeup and hair extensions. Am I a disgrace of a self-hating woman?

You are no disgrace, love. You are merely human. We live in a petty, vain society that mistreats us based on how we look. The enhancements we wear often help us to better fit beauty ideals. Beauty is power. More perceived beauty for women leads to more perceived humanity, better treatment, and more access to resources. To feel better when you are being treated better is absolutely merited and normal.

While some of us wear makeup because it’s fun, some of us have skin conditions to cover up, or simply feel prettier with it on. All of those are OK reasons to wear makeup, because guess what: It’s your face and you get to do WTF you want with it.

The world is cruel. They will put you down for what they call defects, put you down for feeling bad about yourself, and then put you down for feeling confident too. The darker you are as a woman, the more shit you will get, whether you feel good or bad about yourself or in between.

They put us down for not fitting their ideals and then trash us for altering our appearance to be more what they deem acceptable. If you think you’re cute as you are, they will then remind you they don’t think you deserve to love yourself.

The “natural” look they worship only applies if you naturally look like a mannequin. That never goes for those of us with pores, pockmarks, acne, skin conditions, etc. They hate us for being all-natural in that case. We get no praise for not caking things on our face like their so-called vain hoes.

Self-love is also now seen as mandatory, a thing to be shamed for if you don’t have it, all while they pick us apart. Somehow, the point is always to dictate how we can and can’t feel, not to help us. Help would be to offer loving acceptance and support, to put in work to change society so we are not dehumanized for things as simple as appearance.

The darker and more marginalized we are, the more effort we have to put in to be considered acceptable, too. Rich white hipsters can be raggedy and dirty and it’s cool. Lower class black women in the same garb and conditions are considered sad ghetto trash. But we are also judged for dressing up when we are poor. Nothing we do is ever enough to be human.

I’d love to wake up in the morning and roll out of bed feeling I was cute enough like that, too. But society begs to differ, and abuses me more if I do. It’s gotten to the point where I see women who walk around in sweats without makeup and wish I could feel as comfortable as them. What that really means: I wish I could still be treated like a human being if I did. Cosmetics can be serious business.

We can be adversely affected by how the world ­mistreats us. But we get to cope however we can. We get to find comfort in whatever the fuck we can. And we get to do whatever makes us feel most beautiful.

Nikky wrote: TBH, I'm a bit wary about drawing parallels with inanimate objects and animals."

I understand but I'm thinking more in how we humans perceive beauty rather than what we think is beautiful. Why do we find some things beautiful and some not. Why do beautiful things give us pleasure?

What I'm trying to say is to me, the concept of beauty seems to be more an innate human thing. What we find beautiful however is what depends on our perceptions based on socialization.

I feel like there are beautiful men and beautiful women but it's only women who are expected to perform beauty for the male gaze to be considered valuable and I guess this is where the problem is. Also, is beauty only present when you're adorned? Can't a functional body with no adornments be beautiful? After all, it is perception not a real tangible thing.

Maybe it's the idea that to be beautiful you have to be adorned and made up and all that that is patriarchal but not beauty itself. I don't know.

Nikky wrote: "What function does beauty in women serve, period? Even within our own gaze, let's say women find and see beauty within ourselves, then what? So what?

Well, I'll follow this up with another question. What's the function of beauty anywhere? Why do we ooh aaah at sunsets, and animals and furniture and mountains and the beach etc? And is this separate in how what beauty is for women?

Ok, so I've read this and they're all super interesting and a thought occurred to me and I wanted to share with you guys so you let me know what your thoughts are on it. It's still an incomplete thought process for me, so it'd be interesting to have your input then will share my full thoughts on it once they're formed.

Is Beauty solely a function of patriarchy? Can beauty in women exist separate of patriarchy? Can we have our own gazes or are they all tainted by patriarchy?

Nikky wrote: "My currently employer is very keen on affirmative action so the number of women is basically equal. Now, I have this male colleague at work who is convinced that women (not most, all) get ahead at ..."

If all women needed to get ahead is use sex, then why aren't there more women at the top? Why are there on;y 16% women CEOs in the entire Africa? Like, if this is a working method, women would be in charge of everything by now, right?

Brian wrote: "I am not sure how we will take out the economic gain.ness from society - how does society then incentivise and reward hard work?"

Brian, maybe a start is to rethink what we consider hard work and the purpose of it. Work is right now seen as a means to amass wealth rather than sustenance than building communities, especially the most vulnerable in the community. That's why in one city we can have multi million houses and also slums and we consider this one community. If you consider work a means to gain wealth then yeah, it's gonna be hard to rethink capitalism. But if you see work as a tool to enable you and your community sustenance and comfort, then amassing wealth for the sake of just amassing it becomes gross. I won't say I have the answer of what next after capitalism, but I just know capitalism isn't it.

As we agitate for the downfall of patriarchy, as Naomi Wolf brilliantly articulates, it is abundantly clear that this is an economic system we are fighting.

This book has, so far, served to #woke upon me the fact that systemic disenfanchisement of the woman is, probably most supremely, for economic gain; that's fucked up. "

This right here is why I (Me, myself and I :-D) believe firmly that feminism has to be anti-capitalist. Because really, the root cause of most isms, is economic gain.

This is super interesting. There's something someone tweeted a while back that I've not really had a chance to think about and maybe we can all unpack it here. The tweet basically was calling out the woke men who have financial means who rarely pull up women in substantial ways, but instead mostly just see them as casual partners. I wish I could find the exact tweet cos the wording was more articulate. Also, it was more directed to black South African men in regards to South African women, but I think it can apply to feminism as well. Men have more power than, women, men generally make more money than women. So, have you guys ever thought of tangible financial ways you can help women and the cause? I don't think I've heard of any organization that's run by men or funded by men that gives money to feminist movement. Have you?

Something i came across https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v...

Also, this piece is what explained to me for the first time what me being angry meant and why there's so much resistance towards the legitimate anger of the oppressed.

Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)
Sara Ahmed

http://sfonline.barnard.edu/polyphoni...

The Combahee River Collective. Reading this was when my feminism was transformed into feminist activism. I dream of creating something similar for Kenyan Feminists.

http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee...

To start off, here's a link to the magazine: Pan-Africanism and Feminism. It's a great resource on African Feminism. There's 20 issues so far so you can read up on the old ones. I think it's a great way to map out how African Feminism has been doing. Enjoy :-)

http://agi.ac.za/journal/feminist-afr...

Hi guys,

Thought I'd start a thread where we can share books and other resources that we come across even if they're not on the reading list. Put up links or PDFs or whatever.

Aisha

Hey Samira,

I agree so much with this. Like, women being allowed to express their anger is one thing I'm very passionate about. I even ranted about it on Twitter sometime back.

https://twitter.com/bintiM/status/633...

Ok, so I haven't finished reading these chapters, (I'm so sorry, I have been swamped, but will finish tonight for a more detailed convo) but I find the discussion about theory vs action interesting. Because for me, I am of the opinion that most of the times, the actions come before the theory. In my personal feminist journey, I was a feminist long before I knew what feminism was or could even define what patriarchy is. And I believe this is so with a lot of women. We live the life, we see there's something wrong and then we seek to understand better and hence get into the theory. I feel this is an important distinction especially when it comes to African feminism which has been in existence for a long time without being defined as feminism. African women have been navigating patriarchy for a long time which basically is feminism in action. So the practicals I feel is innate, and a lot of time it's not the big things. It's in the small ways we navigate in the world daily, the ways in which we find to rebel against the system. So feminism can manifest itself in so many different ways for different women, not all of it guided by the theory of it.

This is why I like making a distinction between Feminism and Feminist Activism. I guess this is what Naomi is talking about. (Although, activism in itself can also be defined as anything you do that rejects an oppressive system, big or small) Feminist Activism I guess then is the active work done to dismantle the system, which can be guided by the theory.