Welcome to the Planet! "Feminist Supervixens", both female and male, are invited to come and participate in this discussion of feminism, women's issues, and anything even tangentially related.
This is a regularly-occurring "Feminists' Circle" for Daily Kos, where all the supercool feminist Supervixens can pull up a chair and chat, get things off their chests, and get to know each other.
Everyone is free to bitch (yes, BITCH!) and moan - this forum can be "What's Your Fucking Feminist Problem?!" if you're in that frame of mind - but humor, fun, happy stories and congeniality are encouraged.
Notice to anyone who is NOT a feminist and wants to come here and complain about how bad feminism is, the problems inherent in feminism, etc.: fuck off and write your own diary on the topic. That's not what this one is for.
Here's a personal memory that I've kept hidden away. After the last Supervixens diary, it kept nudging its way back up into my consciousness. So perhaps there's a reason to tell it to you tonight.
In the late '80s, when I was working for a Swiss bank in the World Trade Center, I commuted from the WTC out to the farthest reaches of Brooklyn. It was a long ride on the subway.
One evening at rush hour, I got onto a very crowded train and squeezed in among all the commuters. We used to call them straphangers. But there were no straps anymore, just steel pipes as you see today. I was hanging on to one of the poles in the middle of the car.
We were going through the tunnel when, about six feet from me, a young guy slapped a girl across the face. They were also standing, "straphanging", next to each other.
There had been no argument, not even a discussion between the two of them, that I had seen.
She didn't react except to look down at the floor of the car.
About five minutes later, he slapped her again. She recoiled, but didn't say anything or do anything except look down.
When this happened for the third time, I began to get annoyed. I looked around and saw an entire subway car crammed to the ceiling with people who were studiously - and I mean STUDIOUSLY - ignoring this scene. Even the people who were jammed in right next to the couple, elbow to elbow, butt to butt, were pretending that nothing was happening. They were looking off into the distance, staring into their books or newspapers, doing anything but acknowledging what was happening.
Now, in some ways, this is typical New York behavior - you tune out stuff because there's just too much, you get overloaded, and "personal space" is at a premium.
But while growing up in Manhattan, I've seen several purse- and chain-snatchers pursued by bystanders and soundly beaten up before being turned over to police.
And there I was in this subway car full of people who were consciously ignoring what was happening.
Every few minutes he would slap her again, and nobody would react. It seemed that I was the only one who even noticed. It was like a kind of street theater - an "apache dance" in the NY subway, but the audience was expected to look away.
This felt very strange.
I caught the guy's eye and he started staring at me. Out of the whole subway car full of people, I was the only one who was even looking at him.
I stared him down for a few minutes while I tried to figure out what to do. Obviously this was a bad thing, a guy slapping around his girlfriend in public, but what could I do about it? What SHOULD I do about it?
He slapped her again, and then sneered at me. When the girl saw him do that, she looked up, and sneered at me too.
Cops I've talked to have said that they hate domestic-dispute calls because they always end up being the "bad guys", and often THEY get attacked - shot, stabbed, etc.
For the next couple of stops before I got off to change trains, the two of them spent a lot of energy trying to drill holes into me with their eyes.
When I left, I gave them a long last glare. But I knew I should have said something, done something more.
But why was no one else looking at what was happening? Why did they block it out?
That scene lives with me still.
I should have done more.