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Ah, the forced birth lobby has finally pissed off enough women to start the inevitable slapdown of their deplorable, retrograde fundamentally anti-woman position. Let’s keep this video in the “abortion” feed for a long time, in light of that goal, I encourage everyone to share and repost this clip on their blog, so our anti-choice friends know exactly what they are up against.
And the nominee for Ministry of Truth goes to, you guessed it Fox News. The bullshite truly runs free on this fetid gem of an article featured on Faux News. (ed. sorry folks missed the link on first go around.)Yes, the War has come home. The War on MEN is ON!!!!11!1!!!
This article ranks highly on the coveted “Departure from Reality Scale”, but then again Faux News has never been a stickler for facts, or accuracy or unbiased reporting or…
“The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.”
As we all know, Pew Research speaks for all men and all women. Go read the report for yourself, drawing the conclusion that women want to marry and men don’t seems hasty and ill-advised as other factors contribute to this statistic and should also be taken into consideration.
“The so-called dearth of good men (read: marriageable men) has been a hot subject in the media as of late.”
The much over-hyped male hysteria needs a media cycle or two to shake out and then, along with Faux News, come plummeting back down to reality.
“Much of the coverage has been in response to the fact that for the first time in history, women have become the majority of the U.S. workforce. They’re also getting most of the college degrees. The problem? This new phenomenon has changed the dance between men and women. “
The dance being women now have to compromise less because they have the economic means to support themselves. What? You mean men will have act less like the entitled patriarchal douche-buckets that we all know and love. Say it ain’t so, Joe.
“During this time, I’ve spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.
Women aren’t women anymore.”
The author makes the whiny self-exclusion of fail from the gene pool sound like a bad thing.
” To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.”
Notice how the sexual revolution tended to be most rewarded when it was all about the free sex and consequence free slap n’tickle and less so for little things like women’s rights, anti-pornography initiatives and tougher rape laws. Sexual revolution indeed.
The dramatic change the author is attempting to misinterpret is the notion that women are full fledged, honest to goodness, people and not there just for their fucking and the birthing. Heady stuff, I know.
“In a nutshell, women are angry.”
Being on the short end of the stick since forever tends to do that to people.
“They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.”
Unknowingly defensive. Wow. Another checkmark in the strong supporter of female autonomy column please. This is the gleaming kernel of corn in this turd of piece. The notion that somehow Women have displaced Men from their lofty status as the rulers of western society. Strangely though, the standards in society are still based on white male preference and white male privilege still remains supreme, but for the first time it has been excised from the notion of “it’s just part of how society works”, thank you very much Feminism.
“Now the men have nowhere to go.”
Except to all the places of power and dominant roles in society. Oh Dear Lard, what about the menz!
“It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, men have been to blame since feminists first took to the streets in the 1970s.”
The dynamic of women being treated as people, is definitely at fault.
“But what if the dearth of good men, and ongoing battle of the sexes, is – hold on to your seats – women’s fault?”
Lolsob *forever*. Those damn women wanting to be treated like people… unbelievable what these women will do, is there no justice in the world?
“You’ll never hear that in the media. All the articles and books (and television programs, for that matter) put women front and center, while men and children sit in the back seat. But after decades of browbeating the American male, men are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.”
Riiiight. We definitely have a Gynocracy here now. Did you see all the media adds objectifying men as objects, or all the huge majority of leaders in our societies being women and thus promoting a pro-woman agenda. It is just amazing how anti-men our society has become. The strict rape laws, the violence against women act, the evidence is overwhelming.
“Men, say, the so-called rise of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family.”
Because whiny entitled men should be our concern. Those damn women now that we’ve taken the boot off their necks…they are starting to compete with us, and we have to treat them like they were people….*eek*.
“Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.”
Naturalistic fallacy combined with the notion that the 1950’s were just absolutely fucking amazing! You would think that men being the take charge and responsibility types that they “are” would not have to blame someone else for all their problems.
“It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.”
Feminism is a hydra with soooo many heads. It spends so much time castrating men and their desires, but yet, it is sexy-times for all. Alarmingly, it all happens at the same time. Feminism must involve some dark sorcery just you menz wait I just haven’t got my tome o’ spells in the mail yet.
“It’s the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life.”
WTF is “male nature” and why does it seem like a likely synonym is douche-canoe? Embracing the subordination of traditional marriage seems a long way from “seeking a balanced life”, but seeking a balanced life sounds a lot better than reaching for the stars as a premier object of the the sex class.
“So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.”
Lol, the role is “game on, dudes your free ride is almost over”. Rise to meet the new higher standard or join the whinging masses(?) of men going their own way and male rights activists. Makes differentiation *much* easier.
“Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.”
Yes you can win by losing!! Awesome. Marriage should be about equality not a dominate and subordinate role, please note that masculine and feminine stand in for said roles. There is no winning for either sex in heading back to traditional roles, not now, not ever.
Let’s all congratulate Fox News for hosting this amazingly progressive work that women everywhere will adore.
Ah yes, the perennially wrong anti-choice, forced birth lobby loses again, and again and again. You never get to ignore the bodily autonomy of women and this comment from Pharyngula details precisely why.
“I’ll tell you why I hate those hypothetical near-birth abortion scenarios. It’s not that they’re stupid, or that they never happen, or even that there’s a real world problem of them encouraging the antichoicers to think of this nonsense as a real thing. All of which are true, too, and seriously annoying. But [that’s] not why I get the white-hot HATE.
The hate is because the hypothesizer is just so damned keen to find some way, some very very special exceptional circumstance, in which it’s OK to remove my bodily autonomy. It’s very much like asking me when is rape OK.
Never? Really never? Ok, supposing she were the last fertile woman on earth… Or maybe there was a ticking time-bomb nuke and raping this woman would totally prevent it because a secret code has been tattooed on the inside of her vagina by some crazy mad supervillain in invisible ink and only your special semen can reveal the antinuke codes…
Awww c’mon, pretty please, surely there must be ONE situation in which a woman can be reduced to a piece of livestock?
NO. FUCK OFF. IT IS NEVER OK.
Why are you being so meeeeean to me for just asking?
Why are you so damned insistent on finding that one special circumstance when it’s morally OK for you to do something horrific to me? Why is it so unacceptable to you that I have bodily autonomy in all circumstances? NO, there isn’t a circumstance that makes you the rightful owner and master and torturer of me.
Just stop it right now.
Oh and another bit from the same thread.
“On the off-chance that there are any “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of”, I’d like to say the following:
Dear “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of”:
Fuck off.
Wait, I should probably make it a little more clear about what kinds of people I’m talking about, so that they know that this message is for them.
You might be a “I’m pro-choice, BUT I feel the need to qualify this position so that I can cast judgment on women who make choices I don’t approve of” person IF:
1. You think that, in some cases, women need to “take responsibility” for their actions. By this, you mean that women choose to have sex, and therefore they cannot choose NOT to be pregnant as a result of that sex. You think, or at least your attitude displays, that women who choose to have sex, women who choose to have a lot of sex, women who don’t always have safe sex, women who have sex in circumstances that you consider “iffy”, are “sluts”, and therefore need to be “taught” something so that they can mend their slutty, wicked ways.
2. You think that some women make the “right” choice for them, but that other women make the “selfish” choice. By this, you mean that you feel you are qualified to judge the appropriateness of someone else’s decision about a potentially life-changing situation, without actually being that person. A woman who chooses to have an abortion so that she can keep barely feeding her existing children – sad, but the “right” thing to do. A woman who is young, sexually promiscuous (for whatever “promiscuous” means to you), and seems more “care-free” than you think she should be – not sad, well-deserved, and the selfish bitch could use some “settling down”.
3. You think that some women might carry a pregnancy almost to term and then randomly decide to have an abortion. By this, you mean that a woman who has endured eight months, three weeks, six days and twenty-three hours of pregnancy has the potential to be flighty and impulsive enough to demand that someone kill her fetus.
Are we all clear on who I’m talking about now? Yes? Good.
I say again, fuck off.
My cousin nearly died last night. She went into eclampsia, in the last month of her pregnancy. She’s nineteen. She’s not married. She takes drugs. She’s unemployed. She’s had multiple sexual partners in her life.
In short, she is exactly the kind of person that people talk about (but never actually KNOW) when they say, “I’m pro-choice, BUT”.
You think she’s sexually promiscuous. Let me tell you that it’s hard to develop a healthy sexual attitude when your 20-year-old “boyfriend” coerced you into having sex when you were fourteen.
You think she’s irresponsible. Yeah, not having a firm support structure will do that to you. Not being allowed to grieve the death of your mother will do that to you. Being told of your mother’s sudden death due to side-effects of medication and then being told, “Okay, now go do your homework” will do that to you. Having your father emotionally abuse you and practically abandon you will do that to you. Being passed around from extended relative to extended relative, not having a stable home for more than a couple of years will do that to you. Being the youngest child in a family where all of your siblings are living far away, leaving you alone in a small, impossible-to-leave-town will do that to you. Living in a town that is mostly white, while you’re an adopted woman of color, will do that to you (along with all the judgments that go along with the “hypersexuality” of women of color). Having your own mother, before she passed, speak of adopting black children as if they were litters of puppies, will do that do you.
You might even try to seek comfort in bad places. You might accept the friendship of bad people, just so you won’t be alone. You might try to make some of your pain go away by taking drugs.
You might do that.
But you know what? “Sluts” die from pregnancy, too. Drug addicts die from pregnancy, too. Pregnancy is a medical condition. It doesn’t care what your circumstances are. It sure as hell doesn’t mete out “justice” or “punishment” for your actions and decisions. It kills “good” women as well as “bad” women.
But my cousin never had a choice. Not a real choice. She had no money for an abortion. She had no family that would help her if she did. It was all arranged – they would find an adoptive couple, and she would give the baby up. There was no discussion. My cousin didn’t have a say – after all, she brought this on herself, didn’t she? She can’t make choices about what happens to her own body when she depends on other people, can she?
No real choice for her, and she very nearly paid with her life. She started having seizures. The doctors did an emergency C-section (the baby is small, but should be fine) and continued surgery to try to save my cousin’s life. We don’t know yet if she will have brain damage as a result of those seizures.
So, to all of you “I’m pro-choice, BUT”:
Fuck off.
Who’s the one placing a value judgment on human life, here? Is it me (unequivocally pro-choice, abortion on demand)? Or is it you (I’m pro-choice, BUT)?”
And of course, the arguments that forced birth advocates refuse to answer and repeat what about the baaaaabY! Again.
Read the rest of this entry »
Thank goodness those of us with fluffy pink ladybrainz have access to the cogent Manly-Man opinions of men. Go to the tumblr: Laugh, grimace, get angry, and repeat.
Shall we wake up to some historical notions? Has history ever been kind to women? The short answer is no. Why?
Because, Patriarchy.
Today is not for learning about 101 level feminism. Today is calling down from pulpit the rage and the anger against the systematic oppression of women in our society. If you’re not “down” with Patriarchy and what it entails, I’m not here to explain it to your special snowflakyness (at least not today).
Today, friends, we address a structural question that I rarely see mentioned in the abortion debate. It is a relationship between the amount of freedom women possess in a society and said women’s access to reproductive health services – covering contraception, abortion and all shades of family planning. The correlation being that as women become full fledged members of society they gain the right to decide what is best for themselves and their families contrary to established patriarchal norms.
Women when not chained to strict reproductive roles gain freedom in society. When women can control their fertility they can choose to join the public sphere (or not) and contribute in more ways than just propagating the species. How bad was it, let’s look at what women were fighting for in 1922.
“WHEREAS, Women today, although enfranchised, are still in every way subordinate to men before the law, in government, in educational opportunities, in professions, in the church, in industry, and in the home:
“BE IT RESOLVED, That as a part of our campaign to remove all form of the subjection of women, we shall work for the following immediate objects:
“That women shall no longer be regarded and shall no longer regard themselves as inferior to men, but the equality of the sexes shall be recognized.
“That women shall no longer be the governed half of society, but shall participate equally with men in the direction of life.
“That women shall no longer be denied equal educational opportunities with men, but the same opportunities shall be given to both sexes in all schools, colleges, and universities which are supported in any way by public funds.
“That women shall no longer be barred from any occupation, but every occupation to men shall be open to women and restrictions upon the hours, conditions and remuneration of labor shall apply alike to both sexes.
“That women shall no longer be discriminated against in the legal, the medical, the teaching, or any other profession, but the same opportunities shall be given to women as to men in training for professions and in the practice of these professions.
[…]
“That women shall no longer receive less pay than men for the same work, but shall receive equal compensation for equal work in public and private employment.
“That women shall no longer be barred from the priesthood or ministry, or any position of authority in the church, but equally with men shall participate in ecclesiastical offices and dignites.
“That a double moral standard shall no longer exist, but one code shall obtain for both men and women.
“That exploitation of the sex of women shall no longer exist, but women shall have the same right to control of their persons as have men.
“That women shall no longer be discriminated against in treatment of sex diseases and in punishment of sex offenses, but men and women shall be treated in the same was for sex diseases and sex offenses.
“That women shall no longer be deprived of the right of trial by a jury of their peers, but jury service shall be open to women as to men.
“That women shall no longer be discriminated against in inheritance laws, but men and women shall have the same right to inherit property.
[…]
“In short – That women shall no longer be in any form of subjection to man in law to custom, but shall in every way be on an equal plane in rights, as she has always been and will continue to be, in responsibilities and obligations.
They understood back then what was required to be free, to be treated equally and fairly in society because women at the time (1922) they were NOT. Not legal persons under the law, but rather owned property of men, slavery all but in name, so to speak.. Look at our rape laws to see how women are viewed as property rather than as a person. Its chilling.
Enter the “pro-life” movement, more accurately, the forced-birth, anti-choice, anti-woman legion that is blithely serving the patriarchy attempting to remove women’s hard won bodily autonomy. Denuding women of their rights serves only to force them back down the ladder of equality where once again they can be solely defined by their biological fecundity. Our forced-birther friends know only one date from history, January 21st, 1973 Roe Vs. Wade. They fail, consistently, to see that women’s control of their bodies is the cornerstone of women’s rights as a whole. Chipping away at female personhoood is what these misguided fetus-worshipping individuals excel at. They pine for the days when women were at the mercy of their reproductive systems and enslaved by the patriarchal system surrounding them.
There is no “Golden Age” to aspire to when it comes to women and their rights, the time for action and activism is now, because the counter-revolution is pushing back with unparalleled ferocity. Fuelled by ignorance and religion (redundant I know.) the anti-choice contingent screams for justice for the unborn, ignoring the real living breathing women who do not want any more constraints on their autonomy. Ignoring women is a specialty of the patriarchy, make sure you are smiling while we remove your rights.
The pro-life platform is nothing more than a set of patriarchal shackles for women; why so many women want to get them fitted and locked on again is entirely beyond me.
The struggle for women’s rights is never over. Let us commemorate those who fought for our freedom and that are still fighting to preserve it.
Oh hey there. Nothing like rape statistics to darken your day. However if you don’t know, you can’t fix it. So read up and get cracking to make your little part of the world safer for everyone.
Women
1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted rape).1
17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.1
9 of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003.2
Lifetime rate of rape /attempted rape for women by race:1
- All women: 17.6%
- White women: 17.7%
- Black women: 18.8%
- Asian Pacific Islander women: 6.8%
- American Indian/Alaskan women: 34.1%
- Mixed race women: 24.4%
Men
About 3% of American men — or 1 in 33 — have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.1
- In 2003, 1 in every ten rape victims were male.2
- 2.78 million men in the U.S. have been victims of sexual assault or rape.1
Children
15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12.3
- 29% are age 12-17.
- 44% are under age 18.3
- 80% are under age 30.3
- 12-34 are the highest risk years.
- Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.
7% of girls in grades 5-8 and 12% of girls in grades 9-12 said they had been sexually abused.4
- 3% of boys grades 5-8 and 5% of boys in grades 9-12 said they had been sexually abused.
In 1995, local child protection service agencies identified 126,000 children who were victims of either substantiated or indicated sexual abuse.5
- Of these, 75% were girls.
- Nearly 30% of child victims were between the age of 4 and 7.
93% of juvenile sexual assault victims know their attacker.6
- 34.2% of attackers were family members.
- 58.7% were acquaintances.
- Only 7% of the perpetrators were strangers to the victim.
Effects of Rape
Victims of sexual assault are:7
3 times more likely to suffer from depression.
6 times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
13 times more likely to abuse alcohol.
26 times more likely to abuse drugs.
4 times more likely to contemplate suicide.
Pregnancies Resulting from Rape
In 2004-2005, 64,080 women were raped.8 According to medical reports, the incidence of pregnancy for one-time unprotected sexual intercourse is 5%. By applying the pregnancy rate to 64,080 women, RAINN estimates that there were 3,204 pregnancies as a result of rape during that period.
This calculation does not account for the following factors which could lower the actual number of pregnancies:
- Rape, as defined by the NCVS, is forced sexual intercourse. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, oral, or anal penetration by offender(s). This category includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object such as a bottle. Certain types of rape under this definition cannot cause pregnancy.
- Some victims of rape may be utilizing birth control methods, such as the pill, which will prevent pregnancy.
- Some rapists may wear condoms in an effort to avoid DNA detection.
- Vicims of rape may not be able to become pregnant for medical or age-related reasons.
This calculation does not account for the following factors which could raise the actual number of pregnancies:
- Medical estimates of a 5% pregnancy rate are for one-time, unprotected sexual intercourse. Some victimizations may include multiple incidents of intercourse.
- Because of methodology, NCVS does not measure the victimization of Americans age 12 or younger. Rapes of these young people could results in pregnancies not accounted for in RAINN’s estimates.
References
- National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey. 1998.
- U.S. Department of Justice. 2003 National Crime Victimization Survey. 2003.
- U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sex Offenses and Offenders. 1997.
- 1998 Commonwealth Fund Survey of the Health of Adolescent Girls. 1998.
- U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. 1995 Child Maltreatment Survey. 1995.
- U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2000 Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement. 2000.
- World Health Organization. 2002.
- U.S. Department of Justice. 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey. 2005.
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