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The christian majority continues to whinge about being oppressed. Tough beans theocrats – the law, for once, has women’s back on this issue. So when you see the christian whinge starting as illustrated below, you also have the answer to their false claim of being persecuted.
Tariq Ali is one of the new left’s better thinkers. His writing is clear and often wittily incisive and thus has forced me to purchase several of his works. This is a interview snippet from Counterpunch on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.
Q: What is Mrs Thatcher’s legacy?
TA: Her legacy is clearly visible in the state of Britain today. It is essentially a story of decay and ruin: A small, post-imperial vassal state dependent on nostalgia and, more importantly, the United States to keep itself afloat. On the economy the Thatcherite model (astonishingly, still being praised by blind politicians in denial) was effectively the deindustrialization of the country, the purchase of working-class votes by squandering the monies that accrued from North sea oil and laying the foundations for a financialised economic model that exploded with the Wall Street crash of 2008. We live in a world where it is convenient to personalize politics. Thatcher obviously pushed through the measures required by capitalism with a raw and ruthless energy that was her very own. She was a great believer in appealing to the lowest common denominator, to the animal instincts that remain present in the psychological make-up of individuals regardless of their social origins. Another politician could have done exactly the same things as she did using a less charged rhetoric. A number of old Conservatives were not shy in stating that their party had been taken over by English ‘poujadistes.’ She almost came a cropper. Had the Falklands war gone differently which it might have done if Pinochet’s dictatorship (pushed by Washington) had not backed Britain.
She outmaneuvered the once powerful Mineworker’s Union, forcing it to call a strike on her terms and then destroyed the union and in the process broke the back of a once powerful British labor movement. She had referred to the striking miners as the ‘enemy within’. Even as she neutered the unions, she effectively destroyed the old Labour Party. Thatcher’s favorite Chancellor of the Exchequer and cabinet colleague, Nigel Lawson, while reviewing a book in the Financial Times noted admiringly that the tragedy for the Tories was that Thatcher’s real heir was Leader of the Opposition. Blair’s policies were little more than a continuation of her policies with better PR and an aggressive control of the media. Blair was less lucky with his wars. Iraq finished him off. He was exposed as a simple and straightforward liar. The Scottish writer, Tom Nairn, was accurate in his assessment: “Like other flotsam on the ‘no-alternative’ wave of the nineties, they think that the essence of ‘modernization’ is adjusting society to fit economic and technological advances. Which means serving such changes, via a machinery of collusion between government public relations, a compliant legal system and a servile press.
Her service to the power elites made her noteworthy, being on the cutting edge of the neo-liberal push back does have its advantages.
On the experience of women in society:
“Like most women, I currently live in a society where violence, harassment and scary shit can break out at any moment, just because I told some random asshole “no” without bothering to be nice about it. Doing that is so dangerous that most women don’t dare; after a few scary incidents, they learn to make up excuses, to smile, to be sweet and welcoming, to act as if every single random asshole on the street is a precious new friend that they would just LOVE to stand outside of the Chipotle and chat with FOR HOURS, if only cruel fate had not intervened. That’s what it’s actually like, being a woman: Playing nice with every random asshole, because this random asshole might be the one who hurts you. And then, if he hurts you anyway, they’ll tell you that you led him on.”
And of course, some basic facts about sexism and mansplaining from tigerbeatdown (and the above quote as well).
It’s a dude appropriating feminism in order to silence women who identify things as sexist. Here’s how it works:
- BASIC FACT #1: Sexism is, on its most basic level, the privileging of men over women. It’s more complex than this, of course, because gender is more complex than “men” and “women” in the first place, and we do live in kyriarchy, so not every man experiences male privilege in the exact same ways. But, basically, sexism goes, “man/manliness = good, woman/womanliness = not so good.”
- BASIC FACT #2: All women have a better chance of understanding sexism than cisgender men do. This is because women are targeted by sexism, in their day-to-day lives, whereas cis men have spent their entire lives being socialized not to see the ways in which they perpetrate or benefit from sexism. Again: It’s more complicated than this, because gender is more complicated than this. But all women have experienced sexism, whereas only some men have; women can learn about sexism from both lived experience and study, whereas cis men primarily have to study and work toward a level of self-awareness that the culture simply doesn’t support. Non-gender example: If I want to know more about the food at Momofuku, I can read the Momofuku cookbook, but that won’t make me David Chang. In fact, reading the cookbook won’t even really teach me what the food tastes like; to know that, I have to eat there. Lived experience is knowledge; if you can’t have the lived experience, you can’t have total knowledge of the subject. That is a very basic part of How Shit Works.
- THE COMPLICATION: Where man=good and woman=not so good, men are presumed to always be smarter than women, no matter what the subject at hand is. Hence the phenomenon of Mansplaining, in which a woman — no matter what her credentials, intelligence, or base of knowledge may be — can automatically be cast as ignorant and treated as such by a man, who assumes Real Expert status he does not actually possess. When it comes to Mansplaining sexism, the problems of the man’s credentials as compared to the woman’s are immediately apparent to anyone who gets How Shit Works.
- AND YET: The odds are high that, at some point in his life, a man will hear a woman identify something as sexist, and that he’s not going to like it. Perhaps it is something that makes him feel particularly defensive, such as his favorite book series, or his personal actions. What can he do? Well, he can Mansplain. He can use the powers of the man=smart, woman=less smart assumption to explain away her perceptions and thoughts, by casting himself as the One True Expert on this matter.
- COMPLICATION #2: But the matter at hand is sexism! And this gentleman fancies himself an enlightened sort! He’s not the sort of mansplainer who mansplains sexism away without caring whether or not he looks sexist in the process. He’s got to convince people that he just knows more about sexism than a woman does, in spite of all the evidence and basic logic pointing to the contrary, while still retaining his Liberal Dude Credits. “How can I achieve this impossible thing?” The man wonders, more or less unconsciously. “Perhaps if I… EXPLAINED MY SUPERIOR UNDERSTANDING OF FEMINISM????? Yes, that should do it!” And so the nightmare begins.
Evidence of the ugly side (is there a good side?) of the MRA movement. This is prima fucking facia proof of the ugly current of misogyny that runs deep in our society. Go to Manboobz and see the despicable MRA movement terrorize someone for expressing their views on their particular shit movement.
And so the MRAs have found yet another woman to hate.
Earlier this month, as many of you no doubt know, a Men’s Rights group sponsored a lecture at the University of Toronto. The event drew protesters, and the protesters drew MRAs with video cameras. One of the MRAs filmed a confrontation between a red-haired feminist activist and a number of MRAs who continually interrupted her as she tried to read a brief statement.
Her crime? She wasn’t exactly polite in responding to the interrupters. And so, after video of the confrontation was uploaded to YouTube, and linked to on the Men’s Rights subreddit and elsewhere, she became a virtual punching bag for the angry misogynists of the internet.
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The Feminist Current is a great site for understanding and staying up to date with feminism in Canada. This quote is from the conclusion of an article about the Vancouver Slutwalk, but addresses what many feminists find problematic about what Slutwalks are about. The italics are mine.
“Despite numerous criticisms, it appears as thought nothing changed for Slutwalk in Vancouver. Except for, according to Charlie Smith, the author of the Georgia Straight article, a more overt message advocating for the legalization of prostitution.
The fact that an event that could have addressed male violence against women is instead being co-opted in favour of promoting prostitution as a potentially empowering choice for women and working to normalize male power and privilege by decriminalizing pimps and johns is, well… it’s fucked. I simply fail to see how decriminalizing violent and abusive men will prevent sexual assault and promote equality. I fail to see how advocating to further entrench a deeply misogynist and sexist industry works towards equality or addresses sexual assault. Yes, we want to stop blaming victims for their own abuse, but do we want to do that while simultaneously normalizing an industry that hates women? It is even possible to stop victim blaming and sexual assault while simultaneously working to reinforce male power and privilege? Somehow I doubt it.”
It is important to celebrate the aspects of religion that bring a smile to your face. This clip has been exercising my smile muscles since I first saw it.
I’m such a fan of the yodel-rap.
So, we have the above and then we have stuff like this –
I would be much more likely to get all ‘religiousy’ if they were all about the Bach. :)
No objectification going on here Ms.Facetitsass. None at all.
Embedding in wordpress sucks.
Thus, I am only able to provide the link to the video I would like you to watch. Jimquisition, featured on the pop culture gaming site The Escapist, puts crass behaviour and bombast squarely in the centre ring. Jim’s style is crude, but in the case of female protagonists in the gaming industry, serves to succinctly make the point about the blatant sexism in the gaming industry (and yet another reflection on the inherent misogyny in the culture).
So go watch the video here. Then come back and talk to me about how right or wrong I am. :) Also, do check out Zero-punctuation while you are there as the author of the game reviews are an inspiration for creatively using the english language.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Whinge: How does forcing employers to give out abortifacients and not giving them a choice mean these people are being Pro-Choice and giving them a choice? Also these people claim to want to keep the government out of people’s bedrooms despite forcing businesses to give out items like birth control pills and IUDs that are used in the bedroom
The Answer: The First Amendment says my employer cannot force me to live according to my employer’s religion if it conflicts with my own. That means my employer cannot use a religious reason to deny me any part of health care under law. “Obamacare” closes the loophole that allowed a pro-life employer to deny me birth control, a privilege no other religious belief has ever been afforded anyway – a Jehovah’s Witness employer never could deny me a blood transfusion and a Christian Scientist employer could never deny me health insurance in the first place. You are claiming a special privilege that no other religious employer has ever had, the “right” to force your religion on another person, and whining that you’re being persecuted when you’re being stopped from violating other people’s First Amendment rights.