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My former Boss at Linden Lifestyles, Salome strangelove has written a
very thoughtful post in regards to her feminism and her "Squee" over SL fashion.
I could tell epic stories about my angst in trying to reconcile my feminism, with my love of femme-y things, and my Transgenderedness. And I do mean epic. I have several threads, one of them 18 pages, on a message board I frequent that are basically all about that issue.
It wasn't till relatively recently, May of Last year, that I got over it...mostly. You see, for many years, I thought that because I was a nerd, I couldn't be a woman because I was nothing like a woman. Also for many years, I thought I couldn't be a woman because I was attracted women (I didn't know that lesbian MTF Transsexuals existed). And there were times that I believed that because I'd go squee over some RL pair of shoes like
these Christian Louboutin Anemone's (even if I couldn't actually walk or afford them) that I wasn't "really a TS".
Dear readers, did I ever tell you that I'm amazingly low self esteemy? Even in SL! Just last week I was thinking that perhaps my avatar wasn't pretty enough.
What helped me the most was my friends on the Internets, and the
Visible: A Femmethology Volumes.
Am I a feminist? Yes, yes I am. I've identified as such for years. Lets see, I think it was before Anita Hill, somewhere between 1988 and 1990. I began identifying more strongly with feminism with the rise of Third Wave feminism. In fact, it was a series of articles and interviews in Glamour magazine about and by Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi that did so.
I would describe myself as a pro-porn, pro-choice Third Wave feminist. I'm a practical feminist, I don't go for that deconstruction and theorizing, it hurts my head. I like to keep it simple.
I don't refer to myself as a "girl" or "woman" yet, I feel like I haven't "earned it" yet, but when I was young, I played with my sisters dolls, read her YM and Seventeen, played with her makeup. But that doesn't mean I didn't like Dungeons & Dragon's (got my first set in 81), playing with the Brix Blox Lego knockoffs, and playing video games.
I also sometimes sing the chorus of "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from the Musical "Flower Drum Song", sometimes ironically, but sometimes not, and I have done it while shopping in SL:
When I have a brand new hairdo
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do,
I enjoy being a girl!