Twisty deconstructs that Are You A Feminist? Quiz making the rounds in two parts:
Are You A Fake Feminist? and “My PMS Disaster Level”: High
I particularly liked this excerpt from the post at the first link:
… Where did I go wrong? Well, I’ll tell you. I flunked because I’m a feminist. See, the quiz is predicated on cultural constructs that are antithetical to the Twistolution, so the questions are framed so that the quizee has to accept certain patriarchal precepts in order to give the proper ‘feminist’ response. For instance, I had no choice but to check ‘strongly disagree’ on this one:
Men and women should be held to the same sexual standards. If men can sleep around without judgment, women should be able to as well.
To the eyes of the novice blamer, this fun-feminist declaration of empowerfulness might fly under the radar, but to the watery red eyes of the spinster aunt, the antifeminist subtext is clear: the statement presupposes that ‘sexual standards’ is a kind of cosmic constant, and that at least some people should be held to them. But of course the default ‘sexual standard’ to which the statement alludes is the male fuck-anything-that-moves model; the underlying theme is that ‘feminists’ should fight for their right to awesome X-treme boinking. The quizling is not allowed to express, for example,”women’s sexuality should cease to be defined in terms of male sexuality, you fucking knobs.”
–Ann Bartow
I am so going to use “empowerfulness” at the next even semi-appropriate opportunity.
You should read Twisty more often. She is quite the creative writer. Her photos are usually pretty good too!