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Breaking news on the misogyny front…
“An Egyptian court has ordered a halt to forced virginity tests on female detainees in military prisons.
The case, which was decided on Tuesday, was filed by Samira Ibrahim, a woman who said the army forced her to undergo a virginity test in March after she was arrested during a protest in central Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Human rights organisations say that there have been many other such tests by the military.
“The court orders that the execution of the procedure of virginity tests on girls inside military prisons be stopped,”
Judge Aly Fekry, head of the Cairo Administrative court, said.
Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from Cairo, said the verdict was cheered by hundreds of who had gathered inside the courtroom to hear the ruling read out.
“Today’s verdict to ban any form of virginity test [in military prisons] will be seen by many as vindication for their criticism of the military over the past few months,” our correspondent said.
“This is something that will draw more criticism to the Supreme Council of Armed Forces – not so much the military itself, but its leadership.”
You would think that with a little research they could determine that these so called ‘tests’ are nothing but bullshite. Of course if the goal is to coerce and threaten women, then indeed this is a valuable test.
We should send them a periodic table as well so they can stop their alchemy experiments despite the intuition that the lead to gold secret is just around the corner…
I’ve had this post on the back burner for months, since a commenter at Shakesville (I think) said, you could never get away with restricting men’s access to Viagra the way state legislatures have restricted women’s access to abortion in America. And no, you couldn’t. But interestingly enough, it’s pretty easy to make a set of arguments for restricting access to Viagra, that are pretty similar to the arguments for restricting access to abortion. For the most part, all you have to do is search the text, and replace “woman” with “man”, “abortion” with “Viagra”, and “ends a human life” with “begins a human life”. (If pre-born human life is that important to you, you should take its creation as seriously as its destruction.) Then there are a few restrictions that claim they’re protecting women, and you just have to look at the flip-side: preventing men from hurting women. For some of the restrictions, I’ve invented an imaginary evil radical feminist anti-het-sex conspiracy to substitute for the Religious Right.
Every restriction on access to Viagra I propose below, is either a fact of life, or a legislated restriction, on abortion in at least one, and often many, American states. When the restrictions and their justifications are imposed on men, they look pretty radically man-hating (never mind that being unable to get a hardon is nowhere near as traumatic as going through childbirth against your will), but in their anti-abortion form, it’s not just fringe whackaloons making the arguments I’ll list, it’s people elected to public office. Read the rest of this entry »
When one searches for “Feminism Canada” it is surprising that the REAL Women of Canada website comes up so quickly. They indeed must have their google-fu locked and loaded because the shite they are peddling is quite amazing. On abortion, they have the anti-choice playbook covered and pretty much have the standard fetus-fetish boilerplate canardage in spades.
“REAL WOMEN OF CANADA reaffirms that the family is society’s most important unit:[Well, stating one fact is good, it quickly goes downhill from here] we value equally every family member, born or unborn [*sigh* So the stupid assumptions begin. The unborn are just that, unborn therefore not entitled to the rights we grant people]. Reproductive choice is exercised prior to conception, because conception and birth are consequences of choice; not choices in themselves [And condoms never break, nonconsensual sex never happens and frack, once your ladyparts are in incubator mode *your* autonomy is over]. Anyone who is not certain that there is a second human being[we have terms for this, blastocyst, embryo etc. Mislabelling a blastocyst, by calling it a human being is misleading – Most, “what about the baaaabeeee! nonsense origates from shite like this] growing within the pregnant woman[You don’t mean incubator with legs here do you?] should clearly give that human life the benefit of the doubt.[*facepalm* Oh you do..]“
The red pen of justice and commentary? Gentle readers, the amount of anti-woman sentiment going in this car-wreck of a “statement on Abortion” deserves nothing less. Appealing to emotion, ignoring reality and eliminating the bodily autonomy of women, all in one paragraph. Amazing.
It is said repeatedly by feminists that society over the years has oppressed women and that feminism is the answer to overturning this oppression. How, then, can the genuine feminist justify, in turn, aborting her unborn son or daughter[actually its quite easy, you forced-birth-douche-bags along with rest who would want to have their say over what goes in my body can go frack-yourselves, you see easy.], the most deadly kind of oppression[A more pernicious type of oppression is a group of people identifying themselves for women’s rights but instead promoting patriarchal values and the disenfranchisement of women; essentially subverting the very notion of women’s rights.]
In a democracy, there is the acceptance and practice of the principle of equality of rights, opportunity and treatment for all[Nice statement, if it was actually true, you might be able to base your assertions on it.]. The unborn child must be included because we cannot arbitrarily take away the rights[Funny, it seems like you are making the rights of the female go *poof* without any compunction whatsoever.]of one group of human beings without giving assent to the withdrawal of rights from other categories of human beings. Since we are pro-family, we cannot discriminate by allowing an attack on one member of the human family such as the[don’t forget unborn sperm & eggs too, I’m guessing ‘REAL’ women are not much for masturbation or menses either.] unborn child. Doing so has opened the door to attacks on other vulnerable members of the family [citation needed, otherwise your rhetoric is just sympathetic tripe], such as the aged, and the mentally and physically disabled.
Sends shivers deep into the rectal area, doesn’t it? It is always appalling to see this sort of nonsense take root in one’s own country. I shudder to think of what being a woman in the US is like, with rights to one’s bodily autonomy and reproductive choice under constant attack. For instance, Mr.Rick Anal-Froth Sanatorum hates women, observe:
[transcript excerpt] Santorum: You know, the Supreme Court of the Unites States, on a recent case, said that a man who committed rape could not be killed, would not be subject to the death penalty—yet the child [sic] conceived as a result of that rape could be. That to me sounds like a country that doesn’t have its morals correct. That child [sic] did nothing wrong. That child [sic] is— [pauses for audience applause]. That child [sic] is an innocent victim. To be victimized twice would be a horrible thing.
“It is an innocent human life. It is genetically human from the moment of conception—it is a human life—and we in America should be big enough to try to surround ourselves and help women in those terrible situations—they’ve been traumatized already! To put them through another trauma of an abortion I think is, uh, is too much to ask, and I so I would, I would just absolutely stand and say that ONE violence in enough!
[Melissa McEwan from Shakesville commenting on said video]
“Yes, Rick Santorum, to be victimized twice would be a horrible thing—and many women who get pregnant via rape consider being forced to carry to term a pregnancy caused by rape and bear their rapist’s child a revictimization of their bodies. Which is why women have a choice. No pregnant rape survivor is required to get an abortion; and no pregnant rape survivor should be denied an abortion, either. And if you genuinely believed that to be victimized twice is a horrible thing, you would agree with me, you despicable, body-policing, misogynistic, hypocritical dipshit.”
“I have said before that I ardently believe, by virtue of what giving birth demands of the human body, the anti-choice position to be inherently violent. To take an anti-choice position in the case of a pregnancy resulting from rape is to turn the inherent violence up to 11.
“Let me be blunt: Rick Santorum is suggesting that after a man violates my body without my consent, sticks his penis in my vagina without my consent, ejaculates into my body without my consent, impregnates me without my consent, that he, Rick Santorum, should then have the right to force me to submit my body for nine months to a pregnancy I do not want, force me to submit my body to all that pregnancy can entail, from morning sickness to milk-engorged breasts to stretch marks to potentially life-threatening complications, and then force me to push out a baby I did not consent to conceive through the same vagina that was raped nine months earlier, and then decide whether to parent my rapist’s child or give up my child for adoption.”
Thanks but no thanks Mr.Anal-Froth. Time to take your misogyny marbles and head on home.
Around Fathers’ Day, the heteronormative masculinity enforcing messages involved in the associated marketing push absolutely drive me up a wall. According to the marketing that bombards us, “Father” seems to be some kind of monolithic hive-minded creature that only likes and does certain Very Manly things, and should only want certain kinds of gifts, and should only do certain kinds of Fathers’ Day activities. And I get angry on behalf of my dad, because I feel like it’s wrong to burden and confine him, and all men for that matter, with the expectation that fathers have to be a mix of Tim the Tool Man, Homer Simpson, and a randomly selected epic role acted by Mel Gibson, or else they don’t count.
Raiding Sociological Images is a pastime of mine as SI manages to succinctly highlight important issues in our society. One issue is gender inequality and how prevalent it remains in our society. The neat graph, along with some of their interpretation:
“First, notice that women with more education (the lighter bars in each age bracket) do worse compared to men than women with less education. That is, the gender inequity is worse in the upper classes than it is in the lower classes. Why? Well, people tend to marry other with similar class and education backgrounds. Accordingly, women with more education may be married to men with higher earning potential than women with less education. Those women are more able to make work-related choices that don’t foreground economics, since their income is less central to the financial health of the couple. They are also more likely to take substantial amounts of time out of the workforce when they have kids (working class women can’t afford to do so as easily), and we know that doing so makes a real dent in career advancement. So, perhaps ironically, women who are “richer” educationally may marry economically richer men who then allow them to deprioritize their careers.”
I’ve researched a little into the topic of Heteronormativity in our culture. It is a big word, but really it just means the structural framework of how we view women and men in our culture and the roles and expectations we define as normal and how these roles should be performed. All fine and dandy right? In reality, not so much. It does not take much to transform gender roles into gender stereotypes and beginning the process of ordering people into their “proper” gender identities based on their actions and appearance.
Being an outlier on the hetronormative scale invites a variety of negative responses ranging from quizzical looks and questions all the way to profane gendered slurs. Concepts like heteronormativity and Patriarchy, if you are part of the dominant majority, are sometimes very hard to see or even conceptualize. It is only until you breach a perceived norm (as a member of the privileged class, if you’re in the underclass you get oppressed by default 24/7) do things start to go sideways. I came to this little discovery point about twenty some years ago for something as basic as choice of adornment.
The cause of some controversy? :>
Having worn a gold rings on my index toes for some twenty years now let me assure you that I have received compliments all the way to outright hostility for a simple choice of jewelry. One of the most common responses I get is “Hey, aren’t toe rings for girls?” to which I usually reply to my (almost always) male questioner, “Hey aren’t earrings for girls?”. Which usually makes them stop and think for a bit as the realization that the cultural validity of gendered practices is not static, but rather quite fluid in nature. Okay, well I hope they realize this, but most of the time they, just repeat their first comment again (they having just passed a heteronormative judgment), to which I reply, “I think they look cool, and thanks for asking,” and politely steer the conversation elsewhere.
Less judicious or enlightened individuals have often questioned my sexuality dropping the familiar hetro-bomb, “Are you gay?” with the word gay dripping with scorn and derision. Does wearing toe rings make you gay? It has not worked yet, and I would not be particularly worried if it did because like most decisions of this nature, first and foremost it is my choice. And I choose the gendered slurs and disapprobation from various sources because when it comes down to it, it is their problem, not mine. I can come to this conclusion precisely because I am a member of the dominant class and still retain enough of my privilege so that my outlier choices do not negatively effect my social status much over all.
Still think that patriarchy and privilege are not integral parts of our society? Push your “normal” gender role a bit just to see, as an experiment, how closely heteronormative norms are enforced, I dare ya. :)
Men are not supposed to do nail polish either. I say bollocks to heternomativity. :)
Gender is a feature of society that is becoming the focus of more and more research and experimentation. One idea that fascinates me is the idea of psychological priming for gender and gender related activities and careers. I’m working my way through Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, but this article caught my eye from Jonah Lehrer and dovetails nicely with what I am currently reading.
“One last point: I think the power of seeing a female calculus professor is magnified by the absence of similar figures in mass culture. In a 2002 study led by the psychologist Paul Davies, two groups of male and female undergrads were shown three minutes of television commercials. Students in the first group were shown a variety of “gender stereotyping” ads, such as a woman gleefully touting the benefits of a skin product, or a “slender female” talking about the deliciousness of diet soda. (All of the ads were real.) Students in the second group, in contrast, were shown a mix of gender-neutral ads, such as a pitch for an insurance company and a commercial about cell-phones. Then, the women were quizzed about their interest in pursuing a career in math or science.
Once again, the results were depressingly clear: Women exposed to the gender stereotyping ads were far less interested in anything quantitative. Instead, they were more than twice as likely to choose careers in the verbal and service industry, such as retail, sales and communication.
The pattern was reversed, however, in the women who saw neutral ads. They were actually more interested in pursuing quantitative careers. All it took was the absence of a blatant stereotype to increase their interest in math. While I don’t expect television commercials to get better anytime soon – pop culture is full of persistent tropes – it turns out that we’ve got a fix for the negative effects of these stereotypes. The cure is female math teachers.”
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