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Hey, if it worked in 1955 why shouldn’t it apply now…?
*headdesk*
I write this post out of a shared personal experience with a religiously addled graduate from university. Let’s call him, to be charitable, douche-nozzle or DN for short. As with most of the risibly sanctimonious religious turds out there DN believes he has a relevant, informed opinion on a myriad of topics. It must be nice to be able to answer the hard questions of life with the unctuous “goddidit” and not be laughed out of the room by your peers. DN seems to think that he can bloviate on about Especially Easy to understand topics ones Feminism and Post Modernism. Now DN, with his above average score in verbal rectaltude decided to strike up a conversation with my partner based on the All-Star thesis that “feminists have “gone too far” and really need to take a hard look at the direction of their movement.
Feminism has gone too far… Oh ya right! Magically, since DN was warming up to mansplain exactly how frakking peachy the womenz have it now. DN, despite a few inconvenient facts such as that the patriarchy, rape culture, rape, the pro-kyriarchy biased social, economic and political systems, not to mention ingrained cultural misogyny and….et cetera are still all going on full stream, began to explain how right the world was and how feminism had gone wrong. It was as if all the institutions that enslave, depreciate and and destroy women somehow disappeared, seemingly overnight and more importantly, are inconsequential because he is white and male and he frakking says so.
DN, even jebus knows you fail.
DN carries his privilege well. He is middle class and literally has both sides of the family falling over him to ensure a soft landing in what we like to call reality. One of his more egregious assumptions is that Intransigentia is just a mere girl and therefore does not have much going on in the grey matter. Not many things can be further from the truth. She possesses a quick wit and near encyclopedic memory of facts and argumentation which she often calls upon to dissect and dismember fuckwittery of a much greater calibre than DN could ever hope to offer.
DN got lucky though, as my parter was bereft of sleep and had a magnitude 8 headache. Even with her size 8 brain packed into a size five skull she put an end DN’s douchery. Simply by asking which feminist authors he was referring to and to back up his claim with some sort of reasonable example. It was amazing to watch how fast the conversation shifted.
“Uh-oh this one uses her lady-brain for more than just house cleaning, praising jebus, and bearing children to brainwash in order to propagate the frakking bloody car-wreak that is christianity.” – I’m sure this didn’t cross DN’s mind, but I’d like to give his withered rationality at least the benefit of the doubt.
I look forward to the day when the Feminist movement is no longer necessary. I work toward furthering the rights of women and educating people about the assumptions they take for granted, that necessarily hurt women but remain unexamined. There is a long way to go, I just hope we can take another step by firmly slapping down the mealy mouthed privileged mendacity that regularly spews forth from mouths of people like DN.
I try and start my Saturdays on a positive note. I look at the CBC, a few Science Blogs usually something upbeat is going on. Not today though.
With a hat-tap to Shakesville, I excerpt from the linked article:
“Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: They are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.” Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association (www.pwaisbd.org) to help such women “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”
I post one of 12 pictures representative of thousands of women who have been permanently disfigured by acid attacks by men. When women are not people, when they cannot speak or be heard, when they have no rights…
Saira Liaqat, 26, poses for the camera as she holds a portrait of herself before being burned, at her home in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, July 9, 2008. When she was fifteen, Saira was married to a relative who would later attack her with acid after insistently demanding her to live with him, although the families had agreed she wouldn't join him until she finished school. Saira has undergone plastic surgery 9 times to try to recover from her scars.
They get male centric justice.
Michal Coren gets it wrong even at the best of times. I can always count on the Sun Newspaper to annoy me enough to blog about the inanity that fills its pages.
I really want to agree at least once with Coren before I die and with the opening sentence of his article I though today would be the day.
“These are sad days for the American right.” intones Coren.
My eyebrow twitched, would this be the day? Naa… It would be easier to smash an atom with my shoe then agree with Mr.Coren. Case in point – next sentence (italics mine):
“The Republicans have no credible leader, Rush Limbaugh has conquered the art of perennial outrage and the men in smart suits and women in shrinking skirts at Fox try to outdo each other in their use of hyperbole.”
Very nice ass-hat. ‘Smart’ men and sexualized women. Isn’t institutionalized misogyny great?
“The tragedy is that all this comes at a time when we have one of the most worrying presidents in American history. Then, just as we think it can’t get any worse, comes the dream ticket of Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean, both former beauty queens and both proving that jokes about beauty queens are somewhat justified.”
Ah, yes. Beauty queens are always stupid. Check. Throwing a “somewhat justified” does not fix the message. Just like after punching someone in the face then saying ‘sorry’ does not mitigate the initial transgression.
“Actually she is an ordinary, nice woman blessed with beauty, a devoted husband and a good family. It really should end with that. But no.”
Bra-vo! She should be constantly pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen too. Sex class! Back to the galley with you and make me a sam’ich bitch.
“Palin wants power and is willing to close her eyes to the facts as she marches forward in glorious denial. Perhaps most chilling is how so many conservatives refuse to accept the obvious and twist into awful shapes trying to justify the woman’s failings.”
The ‘facts’: You are a woman and should never ever aspire to power. The public sphere is not your domain and how dare you even contemplate running for the highest office in the land. How could the Right even think of backing a female candidate? Patriarchally speaking, we have not gotten past the archetypal feminine “built in” flaws! The horror.
“Her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy,[…] Yet, where was your relationship with your daughter, one that would have indicated to you in numerous ways that the girl was hiding and doing something that was wrong?”
Because mother daughter relationships are always open and communicative, if only you’d just play your role and tend to the children. I guess Mr.Palin does not get the whole ‘girl’ thing and could not spend the extra time strengthening his role and bond with her daughter, his culpability is never questioned, while hers is immediately put front and center.
Awesome. Could this patriarchal values 101 lesson get any worse? Of course it does, the ass hattery kicks into overdrive as Coren trashes Carrie Prejean. What follows is his cogent response against her arguments(insipid as they my be). Hmmm…calculating the possibility my previous sentence being true…err… did I mention the smashing atom thing with my shoe… ?
“Carrie Prejean is an even more frightening example of right-wing hypocrisy. Her now famous defence of genuine marriage — only between a man and a woman [Wow, parroting the hetronormative standard. You go girl!]. […] she has posed almost-naked for photographs and that she made at least one graphic sex tape for a former boyfriend. We’re also supposed to believe that her recent relationships with young athletes have all been entirely celibate.”
What?! Pose nekkid for pictures? How dare you, whore! You are a public figure and you go off parading your sluty-slut-slut-lifestyle for all to see? No, no. You keep your sexuality ensconced in terms of patriarchal expectations or it will be a extra slut-shaming lightning round for the likes of you, after-all it isn’t your sex life for heavens sake.
“What she does on her own time is her business, but a moral position demands consistency and so should the response of social conservatives. This woman has even less right to speak for the American right than does Sarah Palin. And that, I’m afraid, is something I thought I’d never say.”
If only the italicized phrase applied to women…
So the calculus is in. If you have taken nekkid photos of yourself, and/or had sex with more than one partner (outside of marraige…ohhh the vapours take me now) as a woman that is an automatic disqualification from being in the ‘moral’ category.
The burning nuclear stupid burns! No Mr.Coren the morality of women is not intrinsically tied to their ranking in the Sex class. Women are autonomous beings capable of thinking outside of their imposed gender roles.
You should try it sometime.
I do not endorse what Mrs.Palin or Ms.Prejean represent, it is social conservatism of the most repugnant variety. Would it be too much to ask that we tackle their arguments as opposed to their gender?
Twisty, from the blog I Blame the Patriarchy opines on the recent passage of the healthcare bill in the US with the Stupack amendment:
“What I’m getting at is this: my lack of surprise at this Stupak shit proceeds from irrefutable evidence that state ownership of women is among the most beloved of our violent culture’s violent traditions. Social conservatives appear to believe that God made patriarchy in his own image, and that he will withdraw his complimentary concierge services and cancel Christmas, NASCAR, and life everlasting if the state stops oppressing women for even one second. So-called progressives just want uninterrupted access to pussy.”
I lack the the colourful verbiage that Twisty uses, but in this quote she deftly describes the atrocious nature of this particular amendment.
Abortion is not a crime in Canada. Abortion is under siege by anti-choice zealots, par for the course, but a good portion Canadian women have access to reproductive health services.
A woman’s right to make reproductive decisions is foundational in women being recognized as autonomous beings. It is paramount that we keep abortion, safe, legal, and accessible in Canada.
As far as I am concerned the Stupak Amendment is one compromise too far.
A hat tip to Womanist Musings for the redirect to this article entitled The Growing Power of the Men’s Rights Movement.
The article itself was well written and brought attention to the radical agenda that certain MRA groups have going. They are becoming cohesive and organized enough to start making judicial and legal differences.
The MRA movement is an expected backlash to the idea that women can be people too. I know this is a radical idea, but it is vigorously opposed by these fundamentalist misogynists. But what is appalling are the comments left by the so called representatives of the MRA. Let’s take a small sample:
(trigger warning)
“ONCE AGAIN, feminist c*nts CONTINUE TO LIE to promote their man-hating campaign.”
“Oh, no kidding. You mean when you refuse to count anything a woman may do to a man as domestic violence, and when you include men who hold up their hands to prevent women from striking them in the head (again) as abusers, your data show that men are more violent than women? Wow.”
“But this faulty rationale fails to recognize the difference between unjust oppression and healthy restriction; limiting a gender’s job responsibilities based on natural capacity is not the same as limiting a racial group’s opportunities based on appearance.”
“delusional c*nts are so funny when they are trying to make sense. this is why women belong in the kitchen and not online. they are too f*cking DUMB to make a coherent, rational point without resorting to hysterics. LAWL :D men need to learn how to protect themselves from these violent, dangerous, man-hating c*nts”
“In the last two weeks, both sex trafficking AND unequal pay have been officially exposed as myths created by feminists and based upon deliberate lies spread by those feminists in order to further the selfish interests of women (and esp. feminists themselves)”
I am saddened by the sheer burning stupidity left on the comments section. The vitriol expressed not only toward women but the rights they are fighting for is shameful.
I thought debating religious people was frustrating. I would not want to even go there and attempt *any* sort of rational debate with this people. They really seem to be without redemption.
One finds a good fantastic post every so often. This one really helps for driving home the point of our patriarchal culture. The blog in question is called Kate Hardings’s Shapely Prose and the article is a primer directed toward men on the dynamics involved in approaching a woman. I intend this to be a reference post because I often come up against individuals who have no clue about how the constructs of the rape culture or the patriarchy or Feminism work.
Access the entire post here, with many thanks to the blog KHSP and Sweet Machine for her important words.
Sweet Machine says: […]
“To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance. When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some women, particularly women who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable. Those women do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to date them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. Women are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.
The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.
This means that some men should never approach strange women in public. Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a woman cold. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of solitude, but I suggest you start with internet dating, where you can put your unusual traits out there and find a woman who will appreciate them.
Are you wearing a tee-shirt making a rape joke? NOT A GOOD CHOICE—not in general, and definitely not when approaching a strange woman.
Pay attention to the environment. Look around. Are you in a dark alley? Then probably you ought not approach a woman and try to strike up a conversation. The same applies if you are alone with a woman in most public places. If the public place is a closed area (a subway car, an elevator, a bus), even a crowded one, you may not realize that the woman’s ability to flee in case of threat is limited. Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this woman be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach her.
On the other hand, if you are both at church accompanied by your mothers, who are lifelong best friends, the woman is as close as it comes to safe. That is to say, still not 100% safe. But the odds are pretty good.
This blog started off with Abortion. It certainly won’t end with the same topic, but I found a nice summary from ‘Screaming into the Void‘ a feminist blog. Read the whole post here, but here is the excerpt which nicely encapsulates the feelings around at DWR about Abortion.
Men and women are THE SAME SPECIES. Homo sapiens, otherwise known as HUMANS. This means that women are HUMAN. This means that if something is degrading, insulting or criminal to do to a man it is also degrading, insulting or criminal to do to a woman. The implications of this are staggering when you apply this principle correctly and realize how deeply woman-hate and denial of woman’s humanity is built into the culture.
I saw someone today say the whole debate on abortion was about whether or not the fetus is seen as human. This is incorrect. The whole debate on abortion is about whether or not the pregnant woman is a human being with a right to life, liberty, and happiness or an incubator who must be made to behave. If you don’t believe women are human, of course abortion is a travesty. It’s some subhuman interfering with the life of a potential new human. But if you realize that WOMEN ARE HUMAN, you cannot possibly place the interest of a fetal human over that of one already born and alive. It makes not the slightest amount of sense.
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