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Here is a just a snapshot of what it’s like…
“What’s on my mind, Facebook? Glad you asked.
I am angry.
I’m angry because before I moved to the UK, I worked at a bar where the manager proposed a new uniform where the men wore waistcoats and button up shirts, while the women wore corsets. And no one saw the problem with that.
I’m angry because when I told him that if I wanted to wear that I’d be a stripper and earn ten times more, my coworkers were embarrassed and looked away.
I’m angry because even though he eventually admitted that my objections were valid, this incident (“Corsetgate,” I like to call it) is not remembered as the time I defended myself and my female coworkers from being objectified at work, but rather as the time that I “totally flipped out.”I’m angry because when I threw a customer out of the bar for grabbing me (twice, once after I explicitly told him it was unacceptable), I was asked repeatedly where exactly he grabbed me. As if there is some ranking system as to what must happen before I am allowed to feel violated by a stranger’s hands on me.
I am angry because the (female) bouncer told me afterward that his behavior was a compliment to me. I’m angry because she believes that. Because misogyny is so much a part of our society that women really believe that their bodies aren’t their own.
I’m angry because last night, out at some random club in London, a man walked up behind me and thrusted against me. And when I told him to get the hell away
from me, he moved on to another woman who was too drunk to say the same thing.
I’m angry because when I asked the bouncer to throw him out, he told me I was overreacting. I’m angry that when I decided to stand up for myself, my friends told me I was overreacting.I’m angry because my reaction, my refusal to allow myself to be treated as a subhuman slab of meat, is perceived as an overreaction.
I’m angry because men have a monopoly on anger. Because when I, a woman, am angry, it’s either “cute” or it’s “crazy.” It is never acknowledged that I could be a sensible, intelligent, educated person with a justifiable concern. Of course not. I’m a woman. (And a blonde at that. Strike two!)
If my boyfriend had punched Pelvic Thrust Guy out, he would have been applauded. Whereas my impulse to simply inform PTG that I was displeased with his behavior was met with a chorus of “Just let it go!” “We just don’t want to see you so upset!” “It’s not worth it!”
I’m angry because I was made to feel like I was being unreasonable for expecting to be treated with basic human decency. And PTG just strolled out of that bar without consequence. I cried all night, and he probably spent the rest of the night gleefully groping women who were too afraid or too brainwashed to speak up.
I’m angry because this (and much, MUCH worse) happens every day. And it happens everywhere, from small towns in West Virginia to great cities like London. To me, and to every other woman on the planet. And we’re still not allowed to be angry.
I am angry. And you should be too.”
I didn’t realize that I needed a new tag for posts, but indeed I do. Observe.
Yah. Wow. Hard to cram more wrong into a picture.
Taken from his essay on Counterpunch called Slouching Toward Global Disaster.
“Toxic Geopolitics
It is impossible to understand and explain such a disastrous failure of military interventionism without considering the effects of two toxic ‘special relationships’ formed by the United States, with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The basic feature of such special relationships is an unconditional partnership in which the Israelis and Saudis can do whatever they wish, including pursuing policies antagonistic to U.S. interests without encountering any meaningful opposition from either Washington or Europe.
This zone of discretion has allowed Israel to keep Palestinians from achieving self-determination while pursuing its own territorial ambitions via constantly expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, fueling grassroots anti-Western sentiment throughout the Arab world because of this persisting reliance on a cruel settler colonialist approach to block for seven decades the Palestinian struggle for fundamental and minimal national rights.
The special relationship with Saudi Arabia is even more astonishing until one considers the primacy of economic strategic priorities, especially the importance of oil supplied at affordable prices. Having by far the worst human rights record in the region, replete with judicially decreed beheadings and executions by stoning, the Riyadh leadership continues to be warmly courted in Western capitals as allies and friends. At the same time, equally theocratic Iran is hypocritically bashed and internationally punished in retaliation for its far less oppressive governing abuses.
Of course, looking the other way, is what is to be expected in the cynical conduct of opportunistic geopolitics, but to indulge the Saudi role in the worldwide promotion of jihadism while spending trillion on counter-terrorism is much more difficult to fathom until one shifts attention from the cover story of counter-terrorism to the more illuminating narrative of petropolitics. Despite fracking and natural gas discoveries lessening Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil, old capitalist habits persist long after their economic justifications have lapsed and this seems true even when such policies have become damaging in lives and financial burdens.”
-Richard Falk. Slouching Toward Global Disaster
Just a little peek into what fairness and equality means on the global scale. Take note of how the playing field is levelled instead of it being ‘level’ and one might start to see the patterns in our society and maybe start to question the conceptions of ‘equality’ when we are told things are ‘fine’.
Religion is a particularly nasty subset of the patriarchal fabric of our society. Most organized religions provide the justification for the continued male dominance in society. I mean, if the notion of a Grand Ooga-Booga isn’t preposterous enough on its own, the fact that most of His divine commands and intuitions are tethered to a male centric point of view should be the icing on the cold cake of realization that GOB (so close, I know) is a entirely a fictitious being made up by us.
So, GOB is really just scared dudes talking to themselves. This condition is not prone to produce much of anything useful (see the bible). The grim offerings that do rise from this murky swamp though, surprisingly, reinforce pretty much all that is shitty about humanity. Blind obedience, deference to authority, and of course the suspension of rationality when dealing with the world.
Bill Nye expounds on this notion in regards to Women and the deleterious bullshit they have to put up with when they are trying to make the right decision about their reproductive futures.
The take away from the video is this. Your magic book and your pious feelings are not substitutes for facts. Keep your magic in your head and stop fucking with women’s rights.
“Rape/revenge is replete in tension and bloody cathartic release; there is terrifying violation, and then there is revenge you can feel good about. The films use women’s trauma to justify stereotypically male pleasures of hyperbolic violence. So Thelma and Louise get to pick up guns and shoot people like they’re in a Western, while Furiosa drag races across the desert and then gets to murder and take the place of the evil patriarch. Rape/revenge fits feminism into male genre narratives that Hollywood can embrace.
…rape/revenge films are designed, often quite consciously, to let everyone in the audience experiment with, and experience, different gender roles, whether as trauma, empowerment, or both. That instability leads to a wide range of responses—and perhaps explains why rape/revenge is responsible for both some of the most critically lauded and most viscerally derided films of the last 40 years. For better and worse, the rape/revenge trope reveals how violence squats upon our understanding of gender—and how rarely, and timidly, that is confronted in popular culture.”
-Excerpts from the article by Noah Berlatsky found on The Establishment.
-Andrea Dworkin “The Lie” 1979. Letters from a War Zone 1993.
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