You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2014.
Today’s Red Pen of Justice edition is brought to you by the clueless parvanimity of Neil Macdonald. Mr. Macdonald has many important opinions on Rape Culture and, shockingly enough, they are completely out-to-fucking-lunch-brain-gone-fishing, wrong.
“For people my age, the freedom to get drunk or high and then have sex with someone was a right guaranteed by the sexual revolution of the Sixties.”
Oh!! So you valued have available female fuck-toilets to bang when you were getting crunked in name of peace, luv and rock and roll. Wow, funny how the ‘sexual revolution’ that gave dudes more peentacular access to women is lauded while the current battle for female bodily autonomy and consensual relations is slandered.
One paragraph in and you need a machete to cut through the misogyny. Awesome!
“Heaven knows that much of the world, beginning with Islamic societies, still discourages or forbids such behaviour. Oh, and also Yale University.”
Ah yes, because Islamic religion and Yale are completely the same.
Idiot.
Islam is all about protecting women’s modesty from the phaser-like dick beams that emanate from Islamic men. Women’s bodies drive Islamic men around the jizz-tastic bend (tru-fax!!) therefore its into the gunny sack for Islamic women and most of their rights. No misogyny here, move along, move along please.
Yale is attempting to ensure that people are not unwilling participants in sexual and social encounters within their institution. Here is what the Yale Policy says:
“Sexual activity requires consent, which is defined as positive, unambiguous, and voluntary agreement to engage in specific sexual activity throughout a sexual encounter. Consent cannot be inferred from the absence of a “no”; a clear “yes,” verbal or otherwise, is necessary. Consent to some sexual acts does not imply consent to others, nor does past consent to a given act imply present or future consent. Consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual encounter and can be revoked at any time.
Consent cannot be obtained by threat, coercion, or force. Agreement under such circumstances does not constitute consent.
Consent cannot be obtained from someone who is asleep or otherwise mentally or physically incapacitated, whether due to alcohol, drugs, or some other condition. A person is mentally or physically incapacitated when that person lacks the ability to make or act on considered decisions to engage in sexual activity. Engaging in sexual activity with a person whom you know — or reasonably should know — to be incapacitated constitutes sexual misconduct.”
Whoa. You go Yale! Treating people with bodily autonomy and safeguarding their rights. Let us see what McShitstain, err… Mcdonald thinks about a treating people with dignity and respect…
“A person who is incapacitated by alcohol or drugs cannot by definition consent to sex, and is therefore a rape victim if sex occurs. If both parties are drunk, presumably, it would be up to Yale administrators to decide who was the rapist and who was the victim. This may all sound beyond the realm of common sense, but it is real.”
Do take note and sample the fine airs of special pleading that is happening here. The only case mentioned were both parties are drunk. McShitstain, you and other entitled man-children like you can fuck right off forever. If both parties are drunk then no action between either is predicated by the rules set out. This isn’t rocket science – the default action when consent is in question is to back off and not do anything.
Did you feel that that? As a matter of fact, I felt it – a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of man-bonerz suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
TL;DR – Your entitled man-attitude and fucking stiffy does not trump women’s right to be treated as a human beings. I feel like I’m giving shit-stains a bad name by associating them with you… Onward turd-lord!
“American universities are under serious pressure by federal authorities to do something about the “campus rape culture,” as some call it – 55 U.S. colleges and universities are currently under investigation for failing to protect students from sexual harassment or assault.”
Protecting your students from rape? GTFO! The nerve of some schools trying to provide a safe environment for their students. It must be a communist plot or even worse – a socialist one. And why is protecting students a bad thing? How is a raging sac of bollocks like yourself even allowed near a keyboard when it comes to this issue is completely beyond me.
“Alarmed at the growing perception that they’re becoming havens for rapists, the schools are coming out with codes of sexual behaviour that go far beyond criminal law.”
Good. Good, good, goodly-good. Because the law isn’t doing enough to combat the sexual abuse and harassment in our culture. This is what setting the bar higher looks and feels like – sorry about the bruise on your forehead, asshat.
“Therefore, if a college administrator thinks that you more likely than not violated a lengthy, highly detailed set of sexual rules, you’re not just expelled, you may also be shamed in the media as a sexual predator and stained for life.”
But, but, but, the ‘peen was meant to run FREE! Oh woe! The onerous burden of consent you must really know how Atlas feels eh? The president of Shitistan just called, he wants you to stop ruining his country’s good name…
We are not done with you yet, douche-nozzle in training. How dare you compare the shaming of sexual predators with victims of rape. How the ever loving frack do you do this? Have you discovered some sort of dark energy that requires you to have your head firmly embedded in your ass?
“Presumably, the government has decided that the need to avoid further traumatizing victims trumps an accused’s right to question the accuser. The intent behind all this is laudable. I say that as the father of a daughter who just graduated from university. But what the universities are doing is also frightening, and I say that as the father of a son who is going into his senior year.”
Shorter Douche McAsshat: My male right to a woman’s body is being violated, changing behaviour to make people aware of boundaries and personhood infringes on my right to be a dude.
“Not only are universities all over America substituting their administrators for police and courts, they are attempting, with the best of intentions, to parse and regulate human behaviour down to the least gesture and syllable.”
Overcoming patriarchal constructs is HARD, dipshit. If it was a walk in the park, unlike now because of your whinge-baby-mantrums dressed up as a noble defence of the status-quo keep getting in the way of progress, we’d be over the idea that consent is some sort of weird idea requiring two Rosetta stones and the wisdom of the ancients to decipher.
“[…]”
“Alas, this is not a public debate that encourages critical writing.”
You don’t say.
“After a White House task force declared in April that one in five women on campus has been sexually assaulted, and that only 12 per cent of sexual assaults on campus are reported, Dr. Mark Perry, an economics prof at the University of Michigan, ridiculed Washington’s math by using actual sexual assault figures from three schools.”
Too bad Dr. Mark Perry screwed up the analysis.
“Another key fact Perry’s analysis misses is that colleges only track certain types of sexual assault in their numbers. Typically colleges only report assaults that occurred on campus and/or assaults in which the accused perpetrator was also a student at that university. So, again, we expect the numbers tracked by a university to be smaller than the number of assaults their students actually experience and report to local police.
The take home point is that the number tracked by the college would only be a fraction of the assaults that George and Mark are using as a comparison. The mismatch doesn’t mean the prevalence figures are wrong — it’s that they have compared a select group of cases that are tracked by a university to a wider group of assaults that their students experience and report to local police.”
Whoops – hate to deflate your confirmation bias Neil.
“Conservative commentator George Will, a sober analyst if there ever was one,[…]”
As long as you’re into mostly irrelevant arch-conservative altiloquent drivel. His level of poisonous bullshit is an post unto itself. See the Michigan Chronicle for rebut of his asinine diatribe.
“[…] then cited Perry’s critique in a column, suggesting that colleges, with their extra-legal sexual conduct rules, and their “trigger warnings” about offensive languages in textbooks, and their campus speech codes, are treating students like fragile hothouse flowers, rather than preparing them for the world.”
Ah yes, the real world where, you know, patriarchy and misogyny are the gold standards and you just need to abide by them. Treating Patriarchy as some sort of inevitable force of nature is bullshit Neil, stop it.
“Four U.S. senators promptly blasted Will as an antique who trivializes and legitimizes sexual assault, perpetuating myths created by victimizers.”
See, we do have progress in society.
“There was similar blowback last year, when journalist Emily Yoffe had the temerity to suggest that while sexual assault must be punished young women might also want to avoid getting blind drunk Yoffe quoted Anne Coughlin, a professor at the University of Virginia and an expert on feminist jurisprudence, as saying more or less the same thing. Those who believe there is a rape culture on American campuses have called that “blaming the victim.”
Because blaming the victim totally doesn’t happen… Neil saying shit like this that puts you into multiple facepalm territory, your ignorance is dangerous and you should stop spreading it around.
“But every parent should certainly consider this: If the complications of human sexuality and its often ambiguous mating dance defy consistent definition by the intellectual candlepower of entire university faculties, what advice should you give children who might still be in their teens as they head off to college?”
What, exactly, is ambigious about consent? If you have it great, if you don’t, stop proceedings immediately. If you’re not sure, stop proceedings immediately. My God, the epic complexity of this notion – we need more SCIENCE on this one dudes…
“his would be mine if my son or daughter were ever to ask: If you feel the need for a sexual adventure, seek it off campus, where police have expert investigators and courts guarantee your rights. Due process, in other words.”
Because expert investigators and the courts are always so darn sympathetic to the victims of rape. I have no words for the sheer amount of stupid you’re doling out in your ‘advice’.
“And avoid sex with fellow students, period. It’s just too risky nowadays.”
Because changing the misogynistic ground rules of society is much much much MUCH too hard, so take your balls on go your own way. If this perchance helps exclude your type of thinking from the next generations gene pool, I think we can call your strategy a win for everyone.
RPOJ out.
Pretty much all the evidence you need to verify that christianity is bullshit.
Never a happy ending (for the religious) when you examine and compare religious claims to reality. Not much more to say here, have a great Sunday everyone.
Nice of Deep Green Resistance to illustrate what Patriarchy is for women.
“Female socialization in patriarchy is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as “grooming”—to create a class of compliant victims. Femininity is a set of behaviors that are, in essence, ritualized submission.
We see nothing in the creation of gender to celebrate or embrace. Patriarchy is a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power, and we want to see it dismantled so that the category of gender no longer exists.
… Patriarchy facilitates the mining of female bodies for the benefit of men – for male sexual gratification, for cheap labor, and for reproduction. To take but one example, there are entire villages in India where all the women only have one kidney. Why? Because their husbands have sold the other one. Gender is not a feeling—it’s a human rights abuse against an entire class of people, “people called women.”
Oh radio 2, how I wish you’d reformat again with more classical music. A huge hattip to the CBC for producing this wonderful journey through song.
Also, who knew Tom Allen was a purveyor the dark art of lower brass musicianship? :)
Oh hey our conservative government is trying to squash the CBC and ventures like this, go here and tell them in no uncertain terms where they can go. (also, support the CBC):)
The rights we enjoy today in Canada as workers and professionals were not given to us. It was through determined, bloody at times, never-say-die, collective struggle that our rights as workers were imposed on the capitalist class. Power never makes concessions – struggles for basic working benefits must be fought for and taken. The price for humane working conditions can be as high as death or as in the case of Cleaning Workers Union in Greece, permanent disfigurement.
“Vassilis Kikilias, didn’t lose time. Less than an hour after he took office, riot police cracked down on a protest of the cleaning staff of the ministry of finance.
The protesters are more than 500 women of all ages and national backgrounds who were cleaning tax offices, the ministry of finance and customs services until a ministerial decree, fired them all indiscriminately and permanently.
The austerity rationale behind the decision was spurious because these women were not a fiscal burden – quite the contrary. The privatisation of cleaning services has increased the amount spent in order to keep public working spaces decently clean.”
Ah, there we go, the popular myth that privatization is solution to all problems in the public sector. It usually isn’t when it comes to saving money as privatized services cost more and treat their employees badly; less pay, less benefits, less job security. Embrace job insecurity! It is but one of the lovely intrinsic features of privatization of society and a necessary feature of the capitalist paradigm.
“The fate of these 500 women is nothing new in Greece; for years now, and especially since the financial crisis, workers have had to take to the streets to reclaim their rights.”
“Overall, privatising services and reverting to temporary contracts for workers has been associated with slavery-like conditions of labour exploitation.”
We must never forget the blood price paid by earlier generations to erect the bulwarks of labour protections against the capitalist tide. People fought and died for what we consider “normal” working conditions.
“Kouneva, a trained historian, emigrated to Greece from Bulgaria in 2001, because of the financial troubles many countries in Eastern Europe were going through at the time.
In 2003 she was hired as a janitor by private company OIKOMET, which had a contract with the Athenian railway service. Seeing the conditions in which her colleagues were working (low and infrequent pay, lack of insurance, mistreatment), Kouneva entered the janitors union of Athens and soon became one of its leading figures.
From that moment on, she didn’t stop protesting working conditions, struggling for the rights of cleaning staff, who were often ignored by the main trade unions.
She ignored threats against her life and never regretted her decision to continue the fight for labour rights.
One night in December 2008, Konstantina Kouneva was attacked by two men while walking back home in downtown Athens. They threw sulfuric acid on her face and forced her to drink the rest in what could have been a fatal attack.”
What was her crime? Protesting for decent working conditions. People need to realize the coercive power capital holds and guard against it regaining the sort of destructive influence observed in Greece.
“This doesn’t change the significance of the cleaners’ story: Fired from governmental institutions some of these women will be hired back at half of their original salaries, no insurance in some cases, and incapable to fight employer blackmail as employees.
This is what the austerity programme is all about.
A lot has been written about the high unemployment figures in Greece due to the crisis but there’s another aspect that affects the working population. Salaries drop, conditions worsen and the negotiating power of workers is annihilated.
500 women are continuing the struggle Konstantina Kouneva paid for with her health, fighting hard to keep the gates that lead to the precarious underclass, closed .
Despite the fact that they have already won their litigation against the Greek state, they are being constantly attacked by conservative politicians, the mainstream media, and riot police. Just recently they were brutally beaten again while trying to reach the finance ministry and demonstrate for, yet another day.”
People fighting for their lives while conservatives, the media and of course the police try to crush them. This was commonplace here in North America not long ago and the conservative capitalist forces of today are doing their very best to erase the memory of workers popular struggle so they can continue to chip away at the hard fought rights and benefits we enjoy today.
[Source]
The deconversion process does some pretty wacky things to people. We join Evidence and his tale of his journey away from the theism that held him prisoner for so long.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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