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Reactionary commentators are famous for making up bullshit ideas designed to scare ignorant people. The American right has the trademark on this particular ploy as they fight to remain the last industrialized country without Universal Health care.
I bet they have contests to see how many poor people they can bamboozle to fight against their own best interests…
This snippet gleaned from the Raw Story comment section illustrates what happens when someone calls conservative/reactionary commentators on their babblative bullshit.
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: You want to see a death panel, Mr. Halperin?
I’ll show you a letter on Anthem Blue Cross stationery I got back when Bush was still president and Obamacare was still Newt Gingrich’s plan that never happened.
It says “denial of benefits” on it, but what it is, when the only thing keeping you alive is a very expensive feeding tube, is a letter from a private, employer-provided insurance company’s Death Panel.
My doctor had no input in the decision. The experts providing care had no input in the decision. Just the insurance company’s reviewer, who decided that the continuing care was “not medically necessary”. Which, in context, was a euphemism for “You are too expensive to keep alive. Please die.” And if I hadn’t had enough money in the bank to deal with it myself, I would not be typing this today.
There’s your death panel, you ignorant shill. They exist. Private insurance companies have had them for years. Get sick enough, and if you’re unlucky, you might just hear from one. It isn’t fun. Oh, and you want to know what’s really funny? If I hadn’t been able to afford care by bleeding away my life savings, my other alternative would have been to move to Japan—where they have universal, government-supplied health care.”
So, conseradrones explain to me why you’re not raising holy hell over how private death panels (the insurance companies) are killing Americans.
Ah, the familiar strains of the equalist argument blithly denying the power gradients and class structure present in society. It warms my heart when this old chestnut get brought out displaying the deep level of ignorance and self-importance of the dude that is usually mansplaining it to me.
But hey-hey, hyperskeptics lets look at some evidence…
Google Searches for Sexy Alcohol Ads
Sexy Alcohol
Google Search for Sexy Deodorant
Google Search for Sexy Clothes
Google Search for Sexy Car Ad
Google Search for Sexy Burger Ad
Well daaaaaaamn son, it looks like there might be a slight difference in the level of objectification between women and men.
Like most religious objections to Atheism, the idea that it takes faith, just like the believers own, not endorse magic and mythology.
Spoiler: It doesn’t.
Let the following video detail exactly why this religious claim fails.
It’s always good to keep an eye on what are fighting against and trying to dismantle. “Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence. When my older brother and I were born with a year separating us in age, patriarchy determined how we would each be regarded by our parents.…[I] was told by my brother that “girls did not play with marbles,” that it was a boy’s game. This made no sense to my four- or five-year-old mind, and I insisted on my right to play by picking up marbles and shooting them. Dad intervened to tell me to stop. I did not listen. His voice grew louder and louder. Then suddenly he snatched me up, broke a board from our screen door, and began to beat me with it, telling me, “You’re just a little girl. When I tell you to do something, I mean for you to do it.” He beat me and he beat me, wanting me to acknowledge that I understood what I had done. His rage, his violence captured everyone’s attention. Our family sat spellbound, rapt before the pornography of patriarchal violence. After this beating I was banished-forced to stay alone in the dark. Mama came into the bedroom to soothe the pain, telling me in her soft southern voice, “I tried to warn you. You need to accept that you are just a little girl and girls can’t do what boys do.” In service to patriarchy her task was to reinforce that Dad had done the right thing by, putting me in my place, by restoring the natural social order.
…[T]his traumatic event… was a story told again and again within our family… [T]he retelling was necessary to reinforce both the message and the remembered state of absolute powerlessness. The recollection of this brutal whipping of a little-girl daughter by a big strong man, served as more than just a reminder to me’ of my gendered place, it was a reminder to everyone watching/remembering, to all my siblings, male and female, and to our grown-woman mother that our patriarchal father was the ruler in our household… This is the way we were experientially schooled in the art of patriarchy.”
Bell Hooks in Understanding Patriarchy (2006).
Happy Birthday Arbourist! I’m looking forward to being with you for at least the next 40!
At my latest visit to Rescue 100, I was fast enough with my camera to catch Sophia going for a roll. The ground was much drier, so she didn’t get super-messy.
Yes, that is snow in the foreground. In May.
More horse pictures below the cut Read the rest of this entry »
The really bestest-awesomest part of discussing rape culture with dudes (and select handmaidens of the patriarchy) is their abject denial of rape culture. Yet, objectively, the culture we live in is a rape culture and this study adds even more support to what many feminists have been saying for so many years.
“(April 2014) – New evidence from the journal Gender & Society helps explain what women’s advocates have argued for years – that women report abuse at much lower rates than it actually occurs. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), 44% of victims are under the age of 18, and 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to police.
The study, “Normalizing Sexual Violence: Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse,” will appear in the June 2014 issue of Gender & Society, a top-ranked journal in Gender Studies and Sociology. The findings reveal that girls and young women rarely reported incidents of abuse because they regarded sexual violence against them as normal.
Sociologist Heather Hlavka at Marquette University analyzed forensic interviews conducted by Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) with 100 youths between the ages of three and 17 who may have been sexually assaulted. Hlavka found that the young women experienced forms of sexual violence in their everyday lives including: objectification, sexual harassment, and abuse. Often times they rationalized these incidents as normal.
During one interview, referring to boys at school, a 13 year-old girl states:
“They grab you, touch your butt and try to, like, touch you in the front, and run away, but it’s okay, I mean… I never think it’s a big thing because they do it to everyone.”
The researcher’s analysis led her to identify several reasons why young women do not report sexual violence.
- Girls believe the myth that men can’t help it. The girls interviewed described men as unable to control their sexual desires, often framing men as the sexual aggressors and women as the gatekeepers of sexual activity. They perceived everyday harassment and abuse as normal male behavior, and as something to endure, ignore, or maneuver around.
- Many of the girls said that they didn’t report the incident because they didn’t want to make a “big deal” of their experiences. They doubted if anything outside of forcible heterosexual intercourse counted as an offense or rape.
- Lack of reporting may be linked to trust in authority figures. According to Hlavka, the girls seem to have internalized their position in a male-dominated, sexual context and likely assumed authority figures would also view them as “bad girls” who prompted the assault.
- Hlavka found that girls don’t support other girls when they report sexual violence. The young women expressed fear that they would be labeled as a “whore” or “slut,” or accused of exaggeration or lying by both authority figures and their peers, decreasing their likelihood of reporting sexual abuse.
The young women in the study provided insight into how some youth perceived their experiences of sexual violence and harassment during sexual encounters with men. In particular, the study pointed to how the law and popular media may lead to girls’ interpreting their abuse as normal. According to the author, policymakers, educators, and lawmakers need to address how sexual violence is actually experienced by youth beginning at very young ages in order to increase reporting practices, and to protect children from the everyday violence and harassment all too common in their lives.”
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