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Inuit woman from Little Diomede Island with her child, 1928

Photo credit: Harold McCracken (source)

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Met another woman today she's 84 and actively discouraged me from getting married, as usual with old women, they should know right? She told me in all her years with her husband he never cleaned anything. So it's another case of men living their whole lives with a maid at their service for free. Can you imagine that? Someone cleaning after you your entire life? Men really live in another reality don't they? Anyway, she started saying "men! men! Are you married?" I said no and she replied "good for you! Wait, maybe you have a boyfriend then?" I said no again, she replied "good for you! Men only think about themselves!"

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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2015) dir. Ana Lily Amirpour

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Hot take: there is no punishment 'too harsh' for males who intimidate, violate, stalk, harass, or abuse women. "he's so young/ he doesn't know better/ you'll ruin his future, etc." i don't care. he made the choice to ruin it himself. any time the justice system shows leniency toward male perpetrators, it strips victims everywhere of their right to recourse and further entrenches the misogynistic idea that one man's reputation is more important (more worth protecting) than all women and girls

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Pilar Albarracín, “She-wolf” (2006): a vaguely shamanic-looking performance reminiscent of Joseph Beuy’s I Like America and America Likes Me, in which she shares picnic with a wolf in a gallery setting. The Spanish artist has explored various feminist themes that raise questions of domestication and the domestic codification of life. Her most recent works recreate portraits in the manner of Frida Kahlo. This exhibition at the Galería Filomena Soares was shown alongside her installations involving kitchenware. I’m reminded of the American artist Kiki Smith’s eccentric explorations of womanhood through folklore, and pagan witchcraft, especially her depictions of wolves, wolf/women hybrids and bestiality, archetypal associations of womankind with wild untamed nature. With mankind’s desire to dominate nature, woman’s confinement to the kitchen space appears analogous to the taming of a wild beast, only Albarracín translates the confinement of the kitchen space into the confinement of the gallery space.

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“There is no excuse for plain ignorance… Condemning all women in order to help some misguided men get over their foolish behavior is tantamount to denouncing fire, which is a vital and beneficial element, just because some people are burnt by it.”

— 14th century goddess of everything AKA Christine de Pizan , The Book of the City of Ladies

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Táhirih: Poet, Theologian, Women’s Rights Activist

(Pictured: A statue in Baku, Azerbaijan of a woman casting off her veil, believed to be influenced by the story of Tahirih from the Baha’i World News Service)

When I was first learning about the Baha’i Faith, one of the figures that immediately amazed me was Tahirih, so I wanted to make a post about her. 

Fatimah Baraghani’s birthdate is not certain, but it was sometime from 1814 to 1817. She was born into a prominent family in Qazvin, in modern day Iran. Both her father and her uncle were respected Ullamahs; her father was the head of a religious college in Qazvin. Her father ensured her education,  and even in her youth she was known to be quite intelligent and became known for her erudition. Though she was married to her cousin when she was fourteen, Fatimah continued her higher Islamic studies. Yet, her status as a woman prevented her from formally getting an ijazah, a license that allows one to teach important texts such as the Quran and Hadith. Her father called her Zarrin-Taj, meaning “Crown of Gold.”

After her marriage and subsequently having three children, Fatimah discovered the writings of Siyyid Kazim in the library of one of her other cousins. Kazim taught of a prophet that would come (the Mahdi), and the importance of women in the faith. She began to correspond with Kazim, who called her Qurratu'l-`Ayn , meaning “Solace of the Eyes.” She traveled to meet him, but before she was able to reach him he had passed away. She began to preach to his followers (from behind a curtain, due to her womanhood) and develop her own thoughts and beliefs on Kazim’s teachings. Her teachings seem to have been much more popular among the female followers rather than the male ones. It was here that she met the Bab, and came to believe he was the Mahdi. She was one of the Letters of the Living, one of the first eighteen of the Bab’s disciples. By becoming a Babi, she was branded as a heretic and her faith would lead to frequent clashes with her family.

In the summer of 1848, a group of prominent Babis met to discuss the future of the Babi Faith at the Conference at Badasht. The meeting was seeminglyl divided between more moderate Babis, and those who saw their religion as being its own faith. Fatimah lead the latter group. Representing this, she unveiled herself, a sight that was so shocking and disturbing to many of the men present that one man reportedly slit his own throat. This unveiling lead to accusations of immoral behavior lauded both at Fatimah and at the Babi faith as a whole, from both Muslim clerics and a Christian missionary in the area. Baha’u’llah was present at this meeting, and expressed his approval of Fatimah and her actions by bestowing the name Tahirih upon her- a name that means “The Pure One.” The Bab is known to have endorsed the names Baha’u’llah gave at the conference, including Tahirih. 

Due to her dedication to a highly marginalized faith that was labeled heresy, as well as her advocacy for women’s rights and her “unbecoming” behavior for a woman of her station, Tahirih faced imprisonment and eventually execution, strangled with her own scarf in 1852. Reportedly her final words were “You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.” She would have been in her mid-thirties. 

Tahirih was a brilliant scholar, poet, activist, and religious leader who remains an important figure not just in the Baha’i Faith, but in history. She looked to truth not only in books and learning, but also her personal mystical experiences.

Sources:

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Vassar College girls practicing Greek dance c. 1923

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Women dancing in the region of Oued Souf in Algeria. (Photo R. Richard, around 1950)

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Men who quit porn are like: 'dont watch it ever!! I constantly jerked it to scenes of violence against women for years and i had erectile dysfunction afterwards!!'

like omg is that more important than the rampant abuse of women in the pornography industry?? the fact your willy is floppy???

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I think fandom has rotted the brains of a lot of women on this site and has turned them into pseudo MRA’s like they’re so enamoured with fictional men that it’s blurred the lines into reality. “uwu men are soft smol good boys they’re harmless. Global violent crime stats are a psyop 🥺” type shit. Yeah Castiel and Bucky might not hurt you but the irl man that’s been memorizing your daily public transit route absolutely will. Get your head back in the game, ladies!

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guy friend I'm texting with says that he finished a bukowski book and that they think very similarly. i can never think of bukowski without thinking of this specific old tumblr post

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Julia Louis-Dreyfus — Settles Your Petty Disputes by Vanity Fair

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you’re not a real feminist if you don’t piss off both the left and the right

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ohh ladies… we’re really in it now

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