#femfics

Most people say "happy wife, happy life," but no one ever talks about the men who believe that their wife is their life.

He genuinely believes that you are his life purpose. That's it. That's all there is to life. Everything else is an accessory to you.

All he does is in reverence and worship to you. Working out, taking care of the house, cooking, cleaning, dealing with vendors, housekeepers, landscapers, handling business, making money, running shit.

It’s all in reference to you.

He knows who he is without you, and to him that isn’t anything. Sure he is successful, but for what? For the sake of it?

What’s the reason to be successful? The purpose.

Without you he would be solitary. He wouldn’t need friends or family or anything.

You are the driving force that makes him be apart of the world and build one around you that you never want to escape.

You let him be the gatekeeper to your reality.

He gets to worship at your altar every day and be whatever you want him to be.

Provided, puppy, man, subordinate, man, slave.

You allow him to live in a duality.

He gets to me every part of himself without shame or fear. He commits and surrenders completely to your will. His breath is filtered through you.

You are the air of life he breathes.

Prompt: Text scenario in which the reader and EXID members are talking about conspiracy theories? (The reader is dating Hani) Thanks! ^^

A/N: Okay so I’m dumb and I don’t know how to make a group chat without it looking weird so I’m making this more of a chatfic. I hope you all still enjoy though! - Admin Kiwi

♡ Tip Jar♡

Hi there everyone! Want to thank you all for our support over the last 24 hours.

This digital project was created for a university module New Narratives. Yesterday it was presented and finally submitted, but that doesn't mean the end!

- By Kit.

‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow though shalt bring forth children’ – Genesis.

   I remember the exact moment when I realized that the differences between boys and girls were so extreme that my friendships would never be the same again. There had been rumours all the way throughout primary seven of, ‘The Talk’ the one where they tell us what periods were all about and how not to have a baby. We sectioned off away from the boys, who teased us enormously, sneering over each and every one of our inevitably bloody futures. I had knots in my stomach as Mrs Deek rolled out T.V. and popped a video in the player.

‘WHAT IS A PERIOD? ‘, It bellowed.

 I felt more solidarity to my female classmates after that. That for better or worse,  today, tomorrow or in a few years, we were all (more or less) going to bleed. We knew it was going to happen.

  Some girls didn’t feel the same way. Although we didn’t really understand it, a period meant sexuality, and sexuality was bad. One girl tried on a pad when she didn’t need one yet at our youth club to see what it was like. Another girl in our class caught her buying it, and spread the rumour that she was a, ‘dirty slut’ because she’d started her period. After that, we whispered the word ‘period,’ and took pinkie swears not to tell anyone if we were discussing anything vaguely in the realm of gender anatomy.

 The boys that I was friends with told me they liked me better before I realized I was girl and slowly stopped inviting me to play video games and eat pizza with them after school.

In high school we learned all about how not to get pregnant, why condoms were important and how our lives would be over regardless if we had an abortion or kept these hypothetical children they were warning us about, until pregnancy became a fear.

   I remember the first time that I ever let a boy touch me. It was warm outside and my arms were freckling. I was wearing ripped up, baggy, denim trousers that I’d had since I was 13, slung low so the waist band of my girl boxers were showing. It read, ‘I love boys pants’ and had apples and cherries printed on it.

   I skipped school to sneak around the town with him, stealing kisses in corners of car parks, reading comics in the library, clicking together in the shadows.

  We were lying on the grass together in front of a petrified tree.  His hand walked across my stomach, and carefully disappeared beneath the fabric. We hadn’t been kissing, or talking and although I knew I should have felt some stirring in my bones or hear blood rushing to my head, I didn’t. I kept still and silent.

 He put my trembling palm on top of a hard lump under his trousers, I felt it swell and quiver like a snake. My eyes grew to the size of the moon and sweat immediately pooled below my nose. I shrugged away, saying that it all hurt too much. He smiled and hugged me tightly. We lay on our backs under the shade of the tree for a little while longer, and we didn’t talk about the incident again.

  When you’re a teenager, friends become your family. Parents never had much of an idea about anything, but your friends always know whether you’d want them to or not. That was the way it was. Sometimes my mum would comment if a name sprang up more than once,

‘What’s so and so like?’ and it would always be met with a quiet hum of consideration or a poorly executed lie.

    If I had lived with dad, he would have made me switch my phone off at night and ask meet anyone who sounded slightly masculine, but he moved out before Hurricane Hormone arrived. It was your friends you spoke you to, that was always the way it was.

    My best friend was first on the pill. Kate started menstruating two years before I met her, way before my body had even considered growing hair. She wore low cut shirts to school, and sometimes she rested her breasts on the table while she was talking. Her boyfriend had his hair cut in such a way that it looked like a mushroom was sprouting from his head.  I knew him from primary school; he’d pushed me off my roller blades when I was six.

   I had been kissing a beautiful boy on Friday nights in the underpass near my house. He was 16, with dark eyes and skin like rice paper.  When he kissed me he always put his hands in the indents of my hips and slowly fluttered his fingers like moth wings. The first time I ever saw him I flipped and never quite got back on my feet.

  One day before school Kate and I met at the tunnel where all the smoker kids hung out. The younger ones stood in little clouds together, hawking and spitting next to our shoes, while the older ones tried to sell off their half smoked ‘snout’.  We went to the other side of the tunnel and hid ourselves behind a shallow wall.  Under her rain coat she pulled out a white paper bag,

‘I got loads when I went to get the pill’ and she thrust it into my hand.

I opened it up to see a rainbow of condoms, different sizes, thickness, flavours, wrappers.

‘Do they come in different colours?’ I asked

‘What…’

‘Colours? They’re all in different wrappers, so do they come in different colours’

She looked at me with her mouth half open and her eyebrow cocked, ‘Jesus. Just put them in your bag, hurry up!’

 She lost her virginity that weekend. I quietly held on to mine for another month.

  She didn’t really talk about it much and said when I lost mine I’d understand why. It was just something that people did; like eating dinner, and now it was done she could get on with other things like apply for uni.

When I finally lost mine to the boy with dark eyes, nothing really happened. I hadn’t really known what to do. After being turned around, moved about, stood up and sat down to find a position that was good enough for him, I only felt aware how naked I was in front of another person.  Afterwards I curled up like a shrimp; feeling like a petal had been plucked from me. I lay, staring at the back of someone who felt like a complete stranger.

I met Kate the next day and told her I knew what she meant.

 I went on the pill a year later. It was the week before Christmas and we were both afraid we might be pregnant.  I asked Kate to come in the room with me; she held my hand and I rolled my thumb along the ridge of her finger.  Our faces burned red asking questions like,

‘Can you really get pregnant if they don’t do it in you’ and my big question mark:

 ‘Can you get pregnant if you start period the next day?’ – We weren’t pregnant, just terribly misinformed. The nurse was a stout woman, whose cheeks wobbled a little when irritated, which in this instance happened a lot. She answered our questions with a tone of disbelief and eventually asked where we’d gotten our sex education from.

                                                       *

 Geary happened because the boy with dark eyes broke my heart. Geary liked to tell girls they were beautiful, I know this because he had been whispering it in my friends’ ear all night before she eventually got fed up with him. She burst in on us and flew into a frenzy because she claimed him first. Her breath smelled of vodka and cigarettes.  He didn’t say anything at the time, but brought up when I’d bumped into him at a night club a few years later. He said he wondered how my body had changed since then. He never got to find out.

  James with the first person I’d known with a kid. He became a dad at 23 and watched his then girlfriend birth a little human that he helped create. He told me she was so badly torn that she had to stay in the hospital for a week. She didn’t like me much, but I thought she was a super hero. 

 He would hold me like he would his daughter, tucked into his arms with my legs dangling like a rag doll. Whenever I tried to say something about it he would run a finger lightly across my eyelids and whisper, ‘shh’ until he thought I was subdued enough.

 We were walking together after having a fight. It was the first time I had ever tried to blunt my sharp tongue, to be a little quieter, to take up less space in the hope of being desired just that little bit more. He took my hand and said, with a detectable hint of surprise in his voice,

 ‘I actually had a really nice day.’ I carefully stretched my lips at him into an ersatz smile. He patted me on the head and said, ‘Good girl,’

I looked at him incredulously and replied, ‘Aye, alright dad’

He made an arch of disgust with his mouth and his eyebrows flew up almost into his hairline. He said I had issues.

   Dave was all long hair and rock and roll. He would appear every now and then in my twenties, always in the cross road at the end of a relationship where, completely depleted of energy and any stitch of my own identity, he would find me inevitably wailing into my pillow, ‘who am I?’

 He was always on something. Life plus, I would call it. Life plus drugs. Life plus alcohol. Life plus obsession with new records/clothes/women. He took that one foot I’d have left on the ground and swept it away from me in haze of his vices, which I’d willingly adopt for a night.  He was fast. I’d already have tasted his tongue in the first minute of the record playing. He held a little paper bomb in front of me and asked, ‘wanna go on a trip?’ I was never that into drugs when I was teenager, but his eyes were like honey and his lips were peach pink.

  When I was 25 I was mad about Tate. I loved his body. You’re never really sure what to expect. It’s a game of chance when the lights go off. I trickled my fingers across his stomach and came across a familiar, softness indented on his right hand side, a small scar. I slid down his body and kissed him on his silver slither.He didn’t as much as flutter but his eyes were strangely bright in the dark.

  They always thought you owed them something, and you’re never quite equipped with the tools to chisel away at their persuasions. As a teenager you don’t feel  strong enough in your conviction when you say no. Maybe’s leave a gap, something they can wriggle into, wriggle next to you, try to wriggle right up inside of you. They all want to know you now, because you’ve got boobs under that top, because you wanted to wear a skirt, because you fancied a chat.

  I always kept my eyes closed at their half open mouths. Their thick saliva flowing into my mouth, and their hot breath in my ear. They all had things in common. Eventually the moan of one would lead into the whimper of another, and you couldn’t remember who's freckle you liked so much on that earlobe.

You don’t try to explain it, not in hushed voices at sleepovers or drinking wine with the girls; after they’ve nuzzled you, bit you and lapped up every inch of you, you start to feel adrift in something unknown.

They all had that in common – when they were finished between your legs they would look at you as if they were surprised that you’re still there. You’re different now, the potential is gone, and they fucked that away.

Image

Image: WeHeartIt.

“But doesn’t that mean you hate men? But doesn’t that mean you never shave? But what about egalitarianism? Or equalism?! EQUALISM!!!”

The word ‘feminism’ is heavy with connotations. By association, so is identifying as a feminist. Anybody who has identified as a feminist for any period of time can tell you this. Despite the weight of the connotations, I unhesitatingly and unapologetically call myself a feminist. Interestingly, I have found that identifying as a feminist is generally way more palatable to people than identifying as an anarchist… But that’s a different days’ work right there. Back to the feminism.

Throughout the years, mainstream media has done a very good job at painting feminism in a bad light. The Man dislikes anything that is a threat to him, and by golly gosh, you can bet a movement that wants to challenge and tear apart gender roles, liberate women and smash patriarchy (among other things) is not gonna be well-received by Mr Man. It’s reasonably well-known that The Suffragists who fought so hard were often called The Sufragettes, in an effort to belittle their struggles (generally a suffix of ‘–ette’ is added to a word to denote a noun which is smaller than its original form. Language is fucking powerful, man).  The feminists of the second wave were very often painted as hairy, smelly, bra-burners. The feminists of the third wave have been painted as seething misandrists, foaming rabidly at the mouth at the very thoughts of occupying the same space as a man. So yeah, it’s not surprising that to many, feminism has become this scary, all-but-impenetrable fortress.

If you’re a newcomer, it’s difficult to know where to begin. Though if you’ve managed to shake off the garbage that you’ve learned directly and indirectly about feminism to get a proper look, you’re on the right track. A quick Google search for ‘feminism’ will yield heaps of interesting things – scour the related images and one of the first things you will notice is there are lots of cute comic strips and cartoons, many of which are eager to illustrate the fact that you can be a feminist and NOT hate men.

I don’t think starting your feminist journey around basically pandering to the naysayers is a fabulous place to begin. Call me lazy or whatever, but I couldn’t be arsed convincing people how much I don’t hate men. To me there’s something extremely un-radical and un-revolutionary about opening a conversation regarding feminism with “yip, I’m a feminist… but I don’t hate men, honest, honest!!” Why should any feminist, whether they’ve been in the game 20 years or 20 minutes have to expend energy on affirming others of their male inclusivity? Why has the eagerness to convince people that you’re not a raging misandrist become such a large tenet of third wave feminism? There’s something so apologetic and whiny about it. It really and truly makes my skin crawl.

Model: Paris Dunlop.

Clothing and make up provided: Paris Dunlop

Kristy Allan:

'This is how I'd go out if it wasn't for society!' wearing her D.I.Y studded plaid shirt, crop top and ripped tights she reminded me of Kurt Cobain in his perfectly unkempt grunge attire of the 90's. While we both scoffed at her statement, I've muttered, cried and internally clung to that same statement; beginning when my body decided to jump start into puberty

 The truth is, when it comes to the realms of fashion, no matter how cultivated one is in style, there is a lot of forfeit and even more compromise in our choices lest we’re criticised for inviting sexism in the form of cat calling into our lives. In a liberal world of underwear as outwear, a post punk and fourth wave feminist era, surely there aren’t cultural restrictions in clothing? – The short answer is of course there is.

 The meaning of clothing has shifted over time but the line between wearing too much or too little still exists as a neo Victorian Madonna and the whore complex. What flesh is acceptable to bear and hide is based upon largely what the fashion industry finds aesthetically pleasing that season and will eventually filter into the mainstream high street consciousness. Many people buy into this, and many don’t. What is important is to recognise that the fashion industry capitalises on the insecurity that it creates, by generating unattainable beauty as a process of exploitation and marginalization of women of colour, queer and trans* individuals. The fashion industry as a whole often erases these identities in favour of the idealised white western woman, and wrongly so. It is through this particular capitalisation that the industry is able to control what fashion means to women. After all, the leading designers are mostly men; Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren to name but a few.  With these factors, it would not be unjustifiable to conclude that the fashion industry as a whole is inherently misogynistic.

  However, as the tributary trickles down to the individual’s wearing the clothes it is impossible to ignore that fashion holds a cultural impact: The D.I.Y riot grrl movement of the 90’s has made a resurgence amongst the alternative subculture, where the concept of femininity that is normally determined by outside influence can be adjusted and tailored to the wearer – this echoes throughout spaces designed for marginalized groups, cultivating an identity does not begin and end in clothing, but it certainly helps.  It almost appears that no matter how one chooses to represent themselves through their clothing, sexism is always going to be invited but this reason isn’t solely down to the fashion industry itself, it stems to a larger cultural ignorance and outdated attitudes that consider clothing as an appeal to the male gaze and not a concept of individual expression, separate from the hyper sexualisation of female anatomy.

 Could manipulating, customising and making ones on clothes count as a feminist act? The customisations used in this shoot were not a political statement but instead were an expression of aesthetics. However, these touches have power. Fashion has the potential to reach a wider, more inclusive audience that doesn’t focus solely on white western women. 

By Emma Bulloch. 

In the 1960s the Women's Liberation Movement broke down the role of the 1950s housewife and gave women the choice to work and have a family.  Now, 50 years later, is the choice to be a stay at home mum due to Feminism advocating choice for the individual or is it one made solely from a financial perspective? 

  Choosing to be a stay at home parent means a lot of things.  It enables you to take a leading role in nurturing your child's development and catch a lot of those moments you might otherwise miss.  However it can also mean giving up your career and a loss of family income.  Taking into account expenditure such as mortgages and the rising cost of private childcare, the decision of whether or not a parent will stay at home can be a fine balance between financial restrictions and the well-being of the child.  Mhairi, a stay at home mum from Ayrshire, is one such example.  “It would cost more for me to work as well as my husband. We would probably get help with child care but not enough to make it worthwhile. I also wanted to enjoy the first years of my daughters' lives and to be there for them.”

  Some families may, however, be unable to have one parent out of work.  Kirsten, Aberdeen, felt that financial pressure forced her to continue working.  “I was working when I became pregnant and if I'd left of my own accord to become a stay at home mum I wouldn't have received any financial help (benefits etc.) apart from tax credits... bills and the mortgage ate up most money and if I wasn't working we'd have no money for treats like holidays or days out or just to give the boys a good life. I would dearly have loved to be a stay at home mum... but it was made so difficult to do that I just couldn't do it.”  Having both parents working can become a viscious cycle when the cost of childcare means that parents then have to work more to cover the rising cost.  Again, Kirsten felt this was something she had to do after their second child.  “I then needed to work to pay for childcare to work because again there was so much financial pressure on me.”  While the cost of private childcare can be claimed on top of the basic rate of Child Tax Credits, available for those who work more than 16 hours a week, this is calculated on a sliding scale and not all of the costs may be covered.  Child Benefit, £20.55 a week for the first child and £18.55 for each subsequent child, is available to all families however those with incomes over £50,000 may have to pay a tax charge.  At such low rates it can hardly be seen as adequate cover to allow a family to freely choose to have a stay at home parent. 

  For those on higher incomes the choice may be more easily made based on lifestyle and parenting choices.  Sandra, Leeds, had quit university when she found out she was pregnant.  “Because I'd not had a job previously, and my partner Phill was in a fairly well paying and steady job, we decided that I'd look for casual work until [our daughter] was born (I never got a job at this point). When she arrived things just felt comfortable and our style of parenting -what you'd probably call attachment parenting - is focused on one of us being there 24/7.  [Our daughter] breast fed until she was three so it was the most practical option for me to stay at home with her.”  A change in circumstance meant that their roles are now reversed but having a parent at home has been the right choice for their family.  “I love the closeness that staying at home has brought to our family, and it seems to benefit [our daughter] hugely - not to say that there are no other ways that work, only that this works best for us.”

  While income is obviously a deciding factor a family must also look at childcare options if both parents are to be able to work.  In England all children over the age of 3 are eligible for 15 hours free pre-school care each week, in Wales this is a minimum of 10 hours and in Scotland every 3 or 4 year old who's parents require it must be provided with part-time pre-school education, however a 2013 survey carried out by Family and Childcare Trust  http://www.daycaretrust.org.uk/pages/childcare-costs-surveys.html found that only 30% of English local authorities and 16% of Welsh local authorities are able to provide sufficient childcare for working families during school holidays while almost half of the surveyed Scottish local authorities were unable to confirm figures for demand and provision in their area.  In Scotland there is no legal obligation for local authorities to assess the level of demand versus their provision of childcare which leads to situations, such as that in North Lanarkshire http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8587834.stm, where council-run nurseries are being closed whilst new housing developments are approved in the same area.  With insufficient nursery places and the rising cost of private childcare (the same survey found that the average cost of private childcare in Britain for one week during school holiday time is now over £100) it could suggest that families have to have one parent stay at home because there simply isn't childcare available.