A feminist gang sign? Fuckin rite!

I am totally going to start a feminist gang. We'll cruise my hood seeking out the patriarchy and BLASTING it!! Take THAT!! Ahem.

You guys are so cool, Lovin' it.

cherylp - ;-)

When do we get to hear your theme song?

You've impaled Cyd Charisse?

OK great. Now I can't get that song outta my head... "G-G-G Gang signs..."

Samhita's is scary. And I think Vanessa is flipping me off.

I think Vanessa has the right idea using the middle finger instead of the index finger.

Actually I just saw that wrong, nm.

Did anyone notice the two girls doing the Vulcan greeting in there? Maybe it was just me...

HELL YEAH!!! Feminist gang sign! Loooove it!

g-g-g-gang signs . . . lmao

Now I need to take a picture making the feminist gang sing. Crap, where's my camera? One gangsta myspace pic coming right up . . .

You guys rock!!!

Ha. I went to high school with the guy who made that and I know quite a few of those women (or "white chicks).

Can I join? But only if I don't have to do any stupid initiation rites . . .

I'd be happy to practice the awesome gestures though :D.

Along the lines of feminist body language, I once spent a delightful evening with a woman who does anthropological research with Bedouin women in the Sinai peninsula. She showed us some of the hand-gestures the women use among each other, when they do their "vagina talk" (talk about men and sex and relationships). My fave was their sign for when a guy is flirting with/hitting on a woman: you raise your index finger and wiggle it like it's sniffing--it's the penis searching for a vagina.

Damn it, the Feminist Allies gang sign is going to be way harder to do. Won't someone think of the menz?

From Emily Post, The Etiquette of Gang Signs, p. 344:

For practical reasons, it is permitted for members of the Feminist Allies gang, most commonly referred to as the "F'in As" for short, to use the standard feminist gang signal. This is primarily because nobody wants to see the extra digit that would be required to make the second side stroke in the "A."

Cheers,

TH

My art teacher somehow found this video on YouTube. He is now convinced that every single hand gesture we do is a signal that all of us are in some kind of gang. (It's an all girls Catholic school.) Simply ridiculous.

That is friggin' cool. We should have a separate blog where women can all send in pixs with their FEMZGANG sign and make some kind of mosiac.

Seriously. I'd send mine in.

but for now how about an emoticon (like :) )

1

my favourite are the boobs behind Ann's head. Don't let Ann A*thouse know, or she'll be all over this- it is as she's long suspected about the feminist gang.

I love the feminist gang sign...but I'm wondering why no one is discussing why white women are using gang signs.

Finally a way for us to recognize each other! I'm going to add a scrunched up little finger as a tribute to Twisty.

And my 16 year old daughter has been doing this gang sign thing since middle school. I wouldn't read too much into it - girls just wanna have fun!

That was so awesome. I want to do it too!

Everyone should post their photos to flickr with the tags "feministing" and "gang sign".

Sorry anna, but if we want our gang to have any street cred, we're going to have to have initiation rites. Nothing too hardcore (i.e. you won't have to go out and kill a misogynist and bring us back his 'colours' or anything). Maybe just attend a few marches and yell at some catcallers or something.

Am I extremely dense? I don't get it. I have no knowledge of gang signs, so maybe that's why, but either way, I'm lost. What does this feminist gang sign mean?

I guess I will get to be the little wannabe on the corner who screams "5-0!" for the gang when the Pat Robertson comes wheeling around the corner.

. . . sigh . . .

cherylp, I give in. I want to be part of the "F'in As" soooo bad, I'll do whatever feminist act of protest you require ;).

I'm all for the mosaic. I'll even join flickr to be a part of it.

I love the feminist gang sign...but I'm wondering why no one is discussing why white women are using gang signs.

Point taken, SaritaS. I regret that my hipness quotient is not high enough to give me working knowledge in what, exactly, they're mocking in the video. White people? Women? Gangs? People who think acting like gang members is cool? People doing stupid things with their hands?

Am I extremely dense? I don't get it.

It's another piece of hip hop culture going mainstream. Gang signs were used for drug runners selling crack cocaine. Cops wouldn't know the signs.

I don't get it. To me, gangs = violence and young people dying.
I never see friends my age or older doing this because it's cool. Younger teenage friends and siblings do it all the freaking time. I guess it comes with the territory of having your head filled with really, really commercial hip hop (I dance/run to the stuff, but that's about it). I went to high school during the pop punk era and many people my age tried to pick up the cultural elements as well. Some people learned to play instruments or started bands, but most people looked like a walking Hot Topic advertisement. And yes, you/we looked like posers.
Embracing your DIY punk ethos by buying trendy crap from China at a strip mall. Posing with gang signs when you live on a farm. In retrospect, we always pick the worst shit to emulate.
P.S. The feminist gang signs are fab ... in a doing interpretive dances/odes to Ashlee Simpson kind of way.

You've also got to realize that the girls in the video aren't just "celebrating" or even "appropriating" gang culture, but taking an actively ironic stance towards it. ie Death, drugs, prostitution, violence, and general hard livin' for the urban poor = HILARITY! for college-aged white people with more booze than sense.

That said, I will say that the particular reason these sort of things seem cute is the complete reversal of it all: white, rich women tossing off a signifier of black masculinity.

A lot of that is just basic sign language, or mainstream stuff like "rock on".

Towards the end, one of the gang signs is the sign for blogging.

I have to agree with Jessica. However, I want to point out that if you use your middle finger, you're flipping off the patriarchy twice! (Backwards peace sign is equivalent to our middle finger in Britain.)

While I adore the seeing the Feministing crew, I have to agree with Jessica and blucas! that this leaves me feeling a little...yeah.

I think it hit home the most with the shot of the two girls standing in front of a fountain that looked sort of European, throwing up their gang signs. That just pinged me Why look Muffy, here we are on a class trip to Italy, isn't that just so quaint! You know what would be too, too hilarious to show to the other girls back at the old country club? A photo where we do what we saw the friendly servers doing the night before we boarded the jet!

It's reminds me of "hot" girls kissing in bars so that guys stare. All that "Oh, isn't your culture/identity too cute?!" It seems demeaning and condescending to me.

(And I don't want to make it seem like I think that African-Americans/Latinos/minorities have no other "culture" or "identity" than being in gangs, but THAT's what those girls are trying to "quaintly" mock here, so that's what I pointed out.)

I think I saw the Weezer wings maybe a "live long and prosper" and a couple shockers in there too.

In a similar trend to this gang-signs phenonmenon, girls all over my high school were--no, make that are--crazy about the the "eat-me-out" sign. We're talking every picture, every pose, every time a camera is within a fifty-foot radius, the eat-me-out signs commence, and this is in girls younger than high school as well. (In fact, I doubt that some even know that it's anything besides a 'peace' sign near their mouths.) These poses tick me off in the same way that the girls in this punchy little flick do. So you're trying to look really "hot-girl-on-hot-girl liplock"-y? Same thread as the gang signs and the "look how cool we are using gang symbols and rocking on with our violent ways wootpassthebeer!"

I do, however, adore the feminist sign.

This video is just goofy "g-g-g-gang signs!" :p
Aside from that, while I am in no way implying gangs are some sort of integral cultural element in communities of color, the whole running theme of cultural appropriation and entitlement in this "trend" is troubling/irritating...Although I'm sure none of these "white chicks" live anywhere near where they might throw up a sign in front of the wrong person...with that being said, I do love the feminist sign!