My Comments on this post
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2012/09/10/a-note-to-chill-girls-and-queen-bees/#comment-118136
- which brought out my annoyed feelings. But I think I kept my head well enough and I stand by it. The point isn’t that the phenomenon in the post aren’t real. The point is that throwing around cutesy, very gendered nicknames is not going to go anywhere good, and will probably end up being used in very nasty, petty, sexist ways against other women.
I really, REALLY think the important cause of wrestling with the phenomenon of women’s sexism and bargaining with patriarchy will never be served by cutesy high school nicknames.
It’s somewhat understandable to use these things in internal polemic, maybe, but treating terms like “chill girl” and “queen bee” as if it’s serious feminist theory is horrible. This is going to lead to nothing good. These are feel good buzzwords. And they’re designed to make “us” feel good.
Reminds me of the old “funfem,” only maybe worse in that it’s deliberately trivializing NON-feminist women we should be reaching out to and minds we should be changing. And even when it’s plain, frothing, pure sexist women, they deserve to be dealt with as adult, conscious sexists, not with diminutives and cute little gendered terms.
I’m starting to think feminism is being made for tumblr, anymore. Little buzzwords for the in crowd and young ones to throw around in their reblogs.
The underlying issues described are serious, and real, and when we mean that women need to look at how they see other women and how they’ve internalized sexism, we need to reach out to other women and discuss how they’ve internalized sexism. We need to deal with sexism in women with grown up terms, not cute little buzzphrases.
Full disclosure – I’m not “part” of the Atheism/Skeptic community, and thus am neutral on A+ and related issues, but I wish well to it, and to anybody fighting sexism and other oppressions within and without it.
But I really think this “chill girl” and “queen bee” thing is a step in the wrong direction for feminism of any stripe.
You understand that Queen Bee Syndrome has been in the scientific literature for 38 years, yes? And that I already mentioned this in a comment, yes? Thanks for deciding we’re working on the level of high school drama, though.
Queen Bee Syndrome?
Yes, I DO know. And if this had been a sober assessment of that sort of literature, or even a snarky post that dealt with it, that would be a very different thing. Reducing queen bee syndrome to “are you a queen bee” doesn’t do that justice.
I’m tempted to ask about the mountains of scientific chill girl literature, but this is the point – The issues here are REAL. They need to be dealt with. They probably won’t be served by giving people gendered snappy names that will end up being thrown around as insults.
I don’t think you are intending to make this high school drama, but I do think it’s going to end up there, particularly on tumblr.