Feminists, whores, and princesses

I know I need to be super-careful when I say things like this (especially when I don’t have the time to put enough thought into my own writing) but I seriously think that Bulgarian print media hate women. Their major goal at this point in time is to classify women into types. The most commonly mentioned of which are:

- the feminist: men-hating, self-hating, unattractive, delusional, arrogant
- the whore: fucks with no feelings attached, was probably abused by her parents, comes from a modest background, fucks for money
- the princess: comes from good family background, enjoys luxury, shallow and superficial

I don’t even know how to begin to explain what’s wrong with this picture, but two major things immediately come to mind:

1: Fucking grow up and find another go-to subject when you feel you’re starting to run out of ideas for articles. I swear, every time I see a vulgarity-ridden text about male-female relations I simply want to throw up. I obviously have no particular problems with obscenity nor do I have a mental list of things one should never talk about in public. I simply hate anything which reflects a choice of form over substance: the same way I hate flashed-out corporate websites, bad movies with awesome trailers, etc. etc. I understand how Bulgarian journalists would want to write about stuff like that back in the early 90s, when we first discovered the freedom to talk about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll without being censured. I also understand how that type of writing is a way of subverting the patriarchal norms of a traditional society like the one we live in here in Bulgaria. Yet, replacing one set of stereotypes (women are emotional, motherly, don’t care about sex as much as men) with another (women are whores, gold-digging, manipulating) is of no particular use to anyone.

2: Writing in terms of categories has already been done, many times over. By social scientists and psychoanalysts at the turn of the century. That’s the turn of the 20th century. Which was more than 100 years ago. Contemporary social scientists, psychoanalysts and people capable of independent brain-work, however, have long agreed that speaking in types is pointless to say the least.

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I had decided that I would no longer write about gender issues here, given the fact that my feminism has produced more personal drama than anything else that I care about. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that my own little battle against ridiculous stereotypes of being and behavior has not even begun. Please, give this text a generous read and do not think of it as militant. All I am trying to say is that it hurts my soul to see smart people say stupid things.