(replacing the Democrats' donkey)

Even though it's not supposed to be particularly cold in NYC tomorrow (50 degree). Also, mine is black (I AM a NYer).

WTF!!! i don't know what her problem is nor do I care. Get. Over. It. There were men wearing pink pussy hats. It has nothing to do with whether or not you have a vagina.

Me too...

pushed by Fox, Breitbart, etc.

For obvious reasons.

No, the pussy hats were NEVER meant to represent women's genitals (millions of women would have been turned off by that thought). This is just another effort to divide the left. Those pictures of all the bright pink hats were amazing -- and some people want to take that away.

whoever that is... They're now involved with our local activist group.

Fuck 'em. Wear the hat.

The pink ones remind me of "The Pink Panther" movie of my youth. They do not look like a vagina (or like a vulva, which is the accurate name for external female genitalia). If you think they do, then you have never looked at one. Use a mirror, if you have to. I like the idea of different colors, because cats come in different colors. Maybe somebody could have a sign that says, "What's up, Pussycat?" in homage to that song that was popular back in the day.

you call "back in the day."

And I agree, including about the confusion about vagina vs. vulva. It's amazing, isn't it?

like the one in this article.

https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/01/30/pussies-and-appropriation/

That's the picture of unity. And thanks for the article on appropriation as well -- some seem to have missed the meaning.

And will have a bag of them for sale with me at the NYC march.

Besides 50 shades of pink, I have the following colors available-- some with causes, some not
Rainbow (a few different yarns)--- LGBT rights
Green-- environmental
White
Navy
Black

I had purple and maroon but they sold through my Etsy store.

The visuals of the hats were so amazing.

Cats became pussy cats. Who decided to refer to a vagina a "pussy"? There are no pink cats in nature.

I love men, but let's face it... oh gawd. This thread will look as if it came from a male dominated website in no time.

It's sarcastic, it's to the point, and it is Anti-Trump for his misogyny, above all else.

The "pussy" reference to a vagina -- no clue. But Trump is the one quoted on that.

This reminds me of the "slutwalk" stuff.

Some women think it's alright. I cringe.

It's still a free country.

Nor, did I tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do.

Just expressing my opinion.

But the English Language was born a very, very earthy era 400-500 years before the straight laced Victorian Era.

But here goes...have you ever owned a kitten/young cat that goes into heat? Have you seen their natural behavior? If not, look it up. Like all life they have a strong urge to reproduce.

So is what I was taught. Would be happy to be proved wrong.

The person asked. I gave the answer I had read in the past. I admitted it may well be wrong and requested any different info.

So do you have info to add? Or does my answer just offend you...because?

So to answer your rhetorical question...yeah, really.

because you responded to me.

At the age of 52 years of age, I agree with you. I do understand basic anatomy, the desire of men and women to reproduce, etc.

The question asked was why the term for a cat and female genitalia are the same.

I am a science major and love history so I answered with the answer I have read and heard.

I agree that in any modern sense it is very insulting. But our language is full of terms based in the most base of human emotions.

I was really hoping to find a DU member who had better information about the term. That is one of the many reasons I love DU...so many people smarter than me.

Have a nice evening.

He made on tape. The pink because it's typically a girl color and represents breast cancer research and Planned Parenthood, two things that many were worried would be on the funding chopping block. The shape itself is because the pattern is easy enough for a beginner to make.

half of us have them. This is mine.

I'm just telling you what the creator of the hat pattern actually said each part represents.

The shape was never supposed to represent genitals, obviously.

It didn't take on the other meaning until much later. But that's beside the point; the hats aren't intended to look like genitalia but like cat ears. The double entendre is, of course, intended.

Pussy hat:



I don't think it's necessary to post a photo of the other thing.

...not necessary. Your restraint is appreciated -

That's my point.

And anyone who knows classic fairy tales (or the Shrek movies) is familiar with "Puss in Boots"

the use of 'pussy' to refer to female genitals is first documented (i.e. shows up in print) in 1879. Why the usage happened is unclear. The word was first in use as a term of endearment for women/girls as far back as the late 16th Century. It didn't appear as slang for 'cat' until the early 19th Century.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/pussy

http://www.word-detective.com/2014/07/puss/

and beaver.

The nicknames suggested softness and hair -- not a vagina (which is the internal part.)

When did a nickname for Richard become male genitalia?

Let's be nice to each other! We need each other!

And, yes, the pink looks great on a sea of heads, of any gender. But if your pussy hat isn't pink, go for it anyway. I didn't read the link, but it sounds like opposition trolling to me.

Liberals, progressives, and Dems need to learn to ignore the bullshit from the right and stay together. We constantly let them define shit that belongs to us. If it pisses somebody off, then they weren't really with us to begin with and were probably looking for a reason to stomp off in a huff. Let 'em.

It would be wonderful if we could repeat what happened last year, to let them know we are not losing our nerve or dedication.

..I had ever witnessed, and that is saying something. Honest to Gods, I felt the entire thing had been made up out of whole cloth by dedicated trolls and dragged along until it attracted the terminally naive and easily offended.

The hats are not vaginas, and they are not pink because white women have pink hoo-has. Pink is a "girl color." The name Pussy Hat harks back to the original meaning, an alternative for Kitty Cat. (I even included two Mother Goose nursery rhymes featuring the term "pussy cat." ) No woman of color is being excluded by snotty white women. We are supposed to engender a sense of unity and defiance.

One of my broad brimmed sun hats is shocking pink, and that's the one that now goes on my head at women's marches.

I am Woman, hear me roar -- and by the way I am pointing at Trump's teeny-peeny and laughing my ass off.

Nobody remembers the term "pussy cat" anymore?!?!? Now THAT is weird.

("Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? I've been to London to visit the Queen.&quot

Is "Together We Will" the source of this opposition? Where's it coming from? It is agitprop from right-wingers?

I forgot we were being mean to transwomen, too. So much fake division, so little time to sow it.

(Emoji of me pulling my hair out in frustration, having to wear my hat to cover the bald patches, then being accused of insensitivity to women with alopecia)

Last edited Fri Jan 19, 2018, 02:25 PM - Edit history (1)

That is the color of the membrane that lines in internal organ that is the vagina. The skin of the vulva/perineum will be the same as the skin color of the owner of the vagina.

Let us not get diverted by this nonsense.

...who had picked it up someplace and brought it here.

but last year saw a lot of outrage from others who thought they were vagina hats. I have seen memes with women wearing vagina costumes compared with women wearing the hats. I always thought the hats were in response to trump's grab-em-by-the-pussy comment, so I think that's where the confusion comes in. Maybe I'll add a couple of eyes and some whiskers to my hat if they really are meant to be cats.

It is a rewriting of history to make people who want to keep a popular symbol feel comfortable ignoring the voices of transwomen who feel excluded by the symbol.

They expressly connect the had to Trump's statement and acknowledge that yes, specifically to the body part referred to by Trump as a "pussy.".

And, while you're at it, spend some time listening to transwomen who feel excluded by the symbolism.

This is not the first time symbols that are popular, that well-intentioned people want to hang on to, have felt exclusive or even racist/sexist/etc. to minority populations. Groups advocating for women, a historically oppressed group, ought to be better at listening and adapting to be inclusive.

no one originally meant the pussy hats to exclude anyone. I saw men wearing those hats. Can't it be a symbol of how disgusting the treatment of women has been rather than pointing to one's own body parts? No one should feel excluded in this movement.

No one is claiming that transwomen were intentionally excluded.

Crayola didn't intend the crayon labeled "flesh" to exclude anyone. But it did because it it said to African Americans that the color of their skin was not really flesh colored. In the same way equating pussy with woman tells women who don't have one that they are not real women.

Whether you (presumably not a transwoman) believe that no one should feel excluded is not the issue. Transwomen are saying they do feel excluded - and we, as progressives who care about inclusion and equality, should be listening.

think, the hats were never meant to be replicas of women's genitals, and don't represent women's genitals.

Suppose a person who had had her gallbladder out had said, "I feel excluded by those hats because I don't have a gallbladder." Would that have been a reason for everyone to stop wearing them? No, because the hats don't represent gallbladders. Just because someone has a "feeling" doesn't mean everyone has to act on it, no matter how silly.

Transgender women have decades of experience of deliberate exclusion by many feminists. This article references 1976 - so that's 4 decades without even a serious search.

https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/the-long-history-of-transgender-exclusion-from-feminism

(I attended Festival for several years starting in 1981, so I have direct experience with this exclusion, the women who perpetrated the exclusion, and the women hurt by it. It is NOT a right wing meme created recently to sow dissent. It is real women who are hurting - and you are saying they are silly, and that equating gender with genitals - as the pussy hat does - should feel no more hurtful or exclusionary than some fantasy that connects hats with gall bladders (that doesn't even make sense, except as a strawman invented to slam trans women and their silly vapors or unicorns).)

As a cisgender woman, who has not had the door slammed in your face for 4 decades by feminists, you don't have any basis in reality to understand what actions by feminists feel exclusionary to transwomen - let alone to judge whether her feelings are "reality based" or "silly." (Any more than I would have the basis to judge whether a race-tinged meme, or comment - that I viewed as innocuous - carried baggage that was hurtful or exclusionary to people of color.)

To suggest that a transwoman who feels excluded by equating gender with genitals, albeit less blatantly than Lisa Vogel, is being silly, or that her feelings are not reality based, is beyond the pale.

The pussy hats have nothing to do with genitals.

They are pussycat hats, complete with ears. They are a JOKE against Trump, a way of laughing at and appropriating his attempted slur. And that is all they are.

They have cat ears because they are a visual PUN on the word "pussy."

If men don't feel excluded by the hats, why should any women?

who acknowledge the connection to the "pussy" Trump admitted grabbing. That connection was intentional by the creators. Yes, it is a visual pun - but insisting it has nothing to do with genitals IS rewriting history.

As for "should" feel excluded, that isn't the point. When someone in an historically (and presently) hated and excluded group, tells you that they feel excluded by a symbol, it doesn't matter one iota whether you think they shouldn't feel excluded. They do, and to silence or dismiss their voices is offensive.

As to men not feeling excluded - no one suggested equating "pussy" with being male.

share that characteristic unless they shave it off. The fact that it is something people call women's hairy pubic region doesn't exclude trans women. They have hair, too. And teeth. And nails.

Did you know that "pussy" originated not even as a term specifically related to the pubic region, but to girlishness itself?

https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/01/30/pussies-and-appropriation/

The Pussy Hat Project is a classic example of appropriation, taking a term that has been used as a slur and turning it into a badge of group identity and cohesion. Queer, for instance, was a derogatory epithet, reclaimed by the LGBTQ community to mean not only homosexual but emphatically different in one’s very approach to sexuality. Of course, that word, like the word pussy, did not always or in all circumstances carry a pejorative meaning. I grew up with an Edwardian book, Queer Stories for Boys and Girls, on the bookshelf, and what we expected of those stories was a strange plot twist, perhaps some magic. Other epithets, like what we call the n-word today, however casually used, bore insulting overtones from an early moment — and not surprisingly, have been more problematic to appropriate.

Each example of appropriation, one might say, has its own story. Some, like feminists’ appropriation of nasty woman, are true examples of semantic inversion. Others retain several original meanings, including the pejorative one, even while being reclaimed. The pussy of pussy hat begins with a sound used to call a cat, or perhaps a rabbit. (I have owned both cats and rabbits and have never known either to respond to a call, but that’s another matter.) Slowly, at least in English, it comes to refer to the animal itself, and from there, to those who behave in ways associated with pussycats.

I say “ways associated,” because cats, of course, are predators, armed with sharp claws and teeth and apt to pounce when the prey is most vulnerable. But those aren’t the qualities evoked by the Oxford English Dictionary’s first definition, “A girl or woman exhibiting characteristics associated with a cat, esp[ecially] sweetness or amiability. Freq[uently] used as a pet name or as a term of endearment.” Indeed, young girls in the 19th century often acquired the nickname Puss or Pussy, much as they might be called Kitty.

Just as the call for the cat evolves into a term for the cat itself, so the “amiable” quality of a girl called pussy becomes the term both for the most “amiable” part of that female’s anatomy and for the supposedly “girlish” quality of cowardice, e.g. “Don’t be a pussy.” At this point—which, again according to the OED, began sometime around 1699 — the term, like many sexually charged terms, owes its pejorative quality mostly to the context in which it is used.

These hats have NOTHING to do with the history of the term, and everything to do with Trump's statement about the genitals he grabbed. The people who created the meme acknowledge it.

Anything else is rewriting history so we can smile, pat ourselves on the back for a pervasive meme, while plugging our fingers in our ears saying, "Nyaaa...Nyaaa....I can't hear you...ratehr than listening requests by transwomen, historically intentionally excluded by many feminists, to please take our feet off of their necks.

That's why I said what I did.

I think that some people have forgotten that the word "pussy" is also just a derogatory word for "female" in general. "Don't be a pussy" doesn't have anything to do with genitals. It means "don't be a sissy." Or "don't be chicken."

Yes, I think you're right. Many don't know that.

I sincerely hope that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women show up wearing their pussy hats.

Because I posted a picture of a gray hat a friend lovingly made for my father to wear.

I want to be inclusive. I also want pictures of crowds that cannot be easily doctored. No one can claim those crowds were from the inaugural ceremony.

Just bought the fleece tonight to make them. I didn't do them for DC last march, but we'll have them for our local march on Saturday.

I’ve been on DU a long time but rarely post because I’m thin skinned, but here goes. I don’t like the hats. They were in response to Trump’s use of that word in an offensive manner as a way to reclaim that word, similar to black musicians reclaiming the n word and taking the power of it away from the offenders. But in my opinion it doesn’t work and the connotations of the word feel like they’re in my face. I grew up being offended by the word and I feel like the hats kind of make light of it and make it OK. I wouldn’t say to someone don’t wear it - it’s their right to choose - but I didn’t/ don’t like them and just wanted to weigh in. Thanks to all the DUers who keep interesting dialogue going and offer perspective and analysis in these rough times.

It's protest. It's a show of strength and unity, and it's replete with meaning. (Yes indeed, it's "in your face." Progress doesn't happen by sitting down and staying quiet.)

Sorry you "grew up offended," too. I hope someday you'll join us and wear a flaming pink pussy hat with pride.

Consider all the 'nasty woman' and 'bad hombre' (derogatory terms used by candidate Trump to describe Hillary Clinton and Latino men) merchandise that is available (search Etsy if you are in doubt). My mom was upset that I used the keyword 'nasty woman' in my Etsy description for pussyhats. She is marching with me tomorrow, but is still in lala land about how playing nice isn't always the best strategy. She was raised to be very passive and take things as they are instead of fighting.

One sign that is always prevalent at feminist protests is "Well behaved women rarely make history."

On the other side, there are shirts that are embracing the term 'deplorable." (Again search Etsy if you want proof). I went to one protest where both sides were there, I showed up in my pussyhat and the other side had women wearing 'adorable deplorable' shirts.

2016 on with campaigns-- if your opponent makes a gaffe, make a t-shirt of it.

Don’t wear it if it offends you. And let it alone. I’ll ignore any crap I get about it.
Just be there and be counted.

If I could go to a March (travel challenged right now) I would wear one (if I had one).

I'm an older white male.

If the good people in BLM wouldn't feel insulted, I would carry a BLM sign.

I don't HAVE to be a member of one group or another in order to show solidarity with them and carry their message.

Pink cat ears to make a statement by mostly women but many men to protest the piece of shit who now squats in our WH after stealing it from probably the most qualified person to ever run for office in modern history. Not a soul who sees the pictures from last year questions what that was about.

I believe we want to do that again. Yes?

If that's a problem, then you don't have real problems.

Not talking about DU here, but the culture of taking offense at every little thing has got to go. It makes it easier to divide us and, if nurtured, creates weaker human beings. We need strong human beings fighting right now, because the stakes are just too big to give things like this any foothold.

Work on your shit people: if something like this causes a reaction, get some help with neutralizing it. If you find yourself easily triggered by everyday occurrences, there are things you can do to strengthen yourself.

Talk therapy works for some people. Meditation helps neutralize others. I never really got results from either, but have made great strides using energetic strengthening techniques. Feel free to contact me if you need assistance figuring out an answer but either way, I hope you can find your way to feeling strong and non-reactive for good!

I am a member of a state offshoot of Pantsuit Nation and this issue has become very divisive. Unfortunately it's run by admins who use fancy jargon to more or less shame people into not wearing the hats. It's disgusting, to be honest.

share that characteristic unless they shave it off. The fact that it is something people call women's hairy pubic region doesn't exclude trans women. They have hair, too. And teeth. And nails.

Did you know that "pussy" originated not even as a term specifically related to the pubic region, but to girlishness itself?

https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2017/01/30/pussies-and-appropriation/

The Pussy Hat Project is a classic example of appropriation, taking a term that has been used as a slur and turning it into a badge of group identity and cohesion. Queer, for instance, was a derogatory epithet, reclaimed by the LGBTQ community to mean not only homosexual but emphatically different in one’s very approach to sexuality. Of course, that word, like the word pussy, did not always or in all circumstances carry a pejorative meaning. I grew up with an Edwardian book, Queer Stories for Boys and Girls, on the bookshelf, and what we expected of those stories was a strange plot twist, perhaps some magic. Other epithets, like what we call the n-word today, however casually used, bore insulting overtones from an early moment — and not surprisingly, have been more problematic to appropriate.

Each example of appropriation, one might say, has its own story. Some, like feminists’ appropriation of nasty woman, are true examples of semantic inversion. Others retain several original meanings, including the pejorative one, even while being reclaimed. The pussy of pussy hat begins with a sound used to call a cat, or perhaps a rabbit. (I have owned both cats and rabbits and have never known either to respond to a call, but that’s another matter.) Slowly, at least in English, it comes to refer to the animal itself, and from there, to those who behave in ways associated with pussycats.

I say “ways associated,” because cats, of course, are predators, armed with sharp claws and teeth and apt to pounce when the prey is most vulnerable. But those aren’t the qualities evoked by the Oxford English Dictionary’s first definition, “A girl or woman exhibiting characteristics associated with a cat, esp[ecially] sweetness or amiability. Freq[uently] used as a pet name or as a term of endearment.” Indeed, young girls in the 19th century often acquired the nickname Puss or Pussy, much as they might be called Kitty.

Just as the call for the cat evolves into a term for the cat itself, so the “amiable” quality of a girl called pussy becomes the term both for the most “amiable” part of that female’s anatomy and for the supposedly “girlish” quality of cowardice, e.g. “Don’t be a pussy.” At this point—which, again according to the OED, began sometime around 1699 — the term, like many sexually charged terms, owes its pejorative quality mostly to the context in which it is used.

If we wanted to walk in lockstep, we'd be Republicans.

just before she passed away. I think we should wear them for that reason alone.