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Funny how many dudes fail to get that.
““No” is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.
Declining to hear “no” is a signal that someone is either seeking control or refusing to relinquish it. With strangers, even those with the best intentions, never, ever relent on the issue of “no,” because it sets the stage for more efforts to control. If you let someone talk you out of the word “no,” you might as well wear a sign that reads, “You are in charge.”
Another common response that serves the criminal is to negotiate (“I really appreciate your offer, but let me try to do it on my own first”). Negotiations are about possibilities, and providing access to someone who makes you apprehensive is not a possibility you want to keep on the agenda. I encourage people to remember that “no” is a complete sentence.”
-Gavin De Becker: The Gift of Fear
Many thanks to Elizabeth Bear for today’s comment on our culture.
“My Least Favorite Trope (and this post will include spoilers for The Lego Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Matrix, Western Civilization, and—cod help me—Bulletproof Monk*.) is the thing where there’s an awesome, smart, wonderful, powerful female character who by all rights ought to be the Chosen One and the hero of the movie, who is tasked with taking care of some generally ineffectual male character who is, for reasons of wish fulfillment, actually the person the film focuses on. She mentors him, she teaches him, and she inevitably becomes his girlfriend… and he gets the job she wanted: he gets to be the Chosen One even though she’s obviously far more qualified. And all he has to do to get it and deserve it is Man Up and Take Responsibility.
And that’s it. Every god-damned time. The mere fact of naming the films above and naming the trope gives away the entire plot and character arc of every single movie.
I thought for a minute that Guardians of the Galaxy was going to pull off a subversion. They were so close. All they had to do was have somebody make the point that We Survived The Magic Radiation Because We All Worked Together, but no, it’s the pure fucking light of Chris Pratt’s Y chromosome that rescues the day again.”
From an article by Glosswitch published on the New Statesman.
“The underlying thought behind sex-positive feminism is conservative and unimaginative, fearing a sexless void should patriarchy ever vacate the space it currently fills. And yet the truth is, those who question objectification aren’t afraid of fucking. They are not the swooning, pearl-clutching prudes dreamed up by misogynists and sex positive feminists alike. They’re just taking sex positivity one step further, by recognising that no one’s choices are made in a vacuum but that everyone needs to be respected as an autonomous sexual being. That includes you, but it includes me too, and it also includes billions of others. This is where things get complicated. It’s not all about you. It’s not all about me, either. We need a world which accommodates our differences but to create this requires a fundamental change in the whole context of sexual choices.
Let us be clear: feminism is out to screw patriarchy. It’s not there to be wheedling and apologetic. It’s not there to teach women to cope with life as subordinates. It’s not there to promote a chirpy, can-do response to a cat-call, a hand on the arse, a tongue down the throat, an unwanted grope or a rape. And if you’re thinking “all this sounds a bit judgmental,” I do understand. I know words like “patriarchy” and “male dominance” make people feel uncomfortable (I’d call it “feminismphobia” if it wasn’t time we stopped pathologising dissent). I know some women have a deep-rooted fear of how feminism could change their sexual landscape. To support something which is ultimately for everyone – but not specifically for you – is difficult, but feminism is not about misusing words (empowerment, choice, freedom) to cover up the things we don’t want to see. We’re here to knock down the entire edifice, not repaint the walls.”
Boom! Boom! – Shots Fired.
“When we point out that there is a rape every three minutes, that a woman is beaten every eighteen seconds in this country, that’s very bad for women because it makes them feel victimized. And we’re not supposed to be bad and make women feel bad. This is the ultimate mind fuck. It takes away all the ground that we can stand on to say: “We have a political problem. We are going to find a political solution. And we are going to have to change the society that we live in to find it.” If you take a bunch of people and suddenly you find out that one is being beaten every eighteen seconds, that one is being raped every three minutes, that ten billion dollars a year now is being spent on watching them being raped for fun, watching them being exploited and objectified and violated for fun, and you don’t feel a little bit put upon, I mean a little bit frazzled around the edges by that, it seems to me that one would be not only a victim but half dead, totally numb, and a true fool.”
— Andrea Dworkin – Woman Hating, Right and Left
I see a lot of you getting really frantic and worrying that big bad meanies like me will “give feminism a bad name”. You need to wake up and realize a few things, really, really quick, or you are in for a lifetime of misery, hardship, and trouble:
1) Feminism will never get a “good name”, if by a “good name” you mean “willing cooperation from men who will eagerly treat you like human beings because you asked really, really nicely and were a good sweet girl who was polite and did things the nice way”. That is NOT going to happen. You can be the nicest, sweetest, most giving girl in the world and men will spit on you, beat you, rape you, jail you, call you a bitch, a whore, a slut, a hellbound sinning witch, AND a vicious man-hating radical feminist if you so much as ask for a few extra dollars with which to feed your starving child. This happens to thousands of women DAILY no matter how nice they are.
2) There are literally millions of people who call themselves feminist, and probably well over a million books written on the topic. If someone is going to pick my blog as a reason why they believe women should continue to be enslaved, beaten, starved, mutilated, and raped as they have been for thousands of years, they are just choosing to do that because they don’t really have any good argument. An ad hominem attack is a poor reason to dismiss an entire movement. Imagine in any other movement declining to stand for the side that is fighting for the liberation of billions of oppressed people because you personally don’t like one tumblog. “I’ve already made up my mind – don’t confuse me with the facts”. They seek confirmation bias – they’ve decided feminists are all mean, and they find a mean feminist to confirm their bias. (Note that I don’t deny being mean. Of course, I am mean because men taught me that I must be mean to survive, but they don’t ever want to admit that. I used to be the nicest, sweetest little girl you can imagine.)
3. On that last note, what do you think that you are getting out of trying to convince men who are hostile to feminism to convert to the cause? I can assure you, they aren’t going to listen. These men are your enemy. I don’t care if they are your fathers, your brothers, your best friend since high school. If they are saying crap like that to you, there is a message in it, and the message is, “If you are too strident and vociferous in standing up for yourself, I will do everything in my power to stomp you down. I will call you names, I will make you feel like dirt, I will gaslight you until you are certain you are the abuser and the bad guy here. You better cater to my feelings. You better not devote any more time and attention to feminist causes than *I* think is appropriate, and they better be feminist causes that *I* approve of, or I will withdraw my attention, affection, and love from you.” This is emotional blackmail. These are toxic men to whom you should limit contact to the bare minimum necessary.
Never apologize for seeming too angry.
Never apologize for your feminism.
Never apologize for standing up for yourself.
That’s just a long, spiralling road down to hell.
The word whore is incomprehensible unless one is immersed in the lexicon of male domination. Men have created the group, the type, the concept, the epithet, the insult, the industry, the trade, the commodity, the reality of woman as whore.
Another quote of the day? You betcha. Our culture is toxically pornsick and Andrea Dworkin realized that in 1979. 1979!! So talk about prescience –
Contemporary pornography strictly and literally conforms to the word’s root meaning: the graphic depiction of vile whores, or, in other language, sluts, cows (as in sexual cattle, sexual chattel), cunts.
The word has not changed its meaning and the genre is not misnamed. The only change in the meaning of the word is with respect to its second part, graphos: now there are cameras – there is still photography, film and video. The method of graphic depiction have increased in number and in kind: the content is the same; the meaning is the same; the purpose is the same; the status of the women depicted is the same; the sexuality of the women depicted is the same; the value of the women is the same.
[…]
The word pornography does not have any other meaning that the one cited here, the graphic depiction of the lowest whores. Whores exist to serve men sexually. Whores only exist within a framework of male sexual domination. Indeed, outside that framework, the notion of whores would be absurd and the usage of women as whores would be impossible.
Woman as whore exists within the objective and real system of male sexual domination. The pornography itself is objective and real and central to the male sexual system. The valuation of women’s sexuality in pornography is objective and real because women are so regarded and valued. The force depicted in pornography is objective and real because force is so used against women. The debasing of women depicted in pornography and intrinsic to it is objective and real in that women are also debased. The uses of women depicted in pornography are objective and real because women are so used.[…]
The definition of women articulated systematically and consistently in pornography is objective and real in that real women exist within and must live with constant reference to the boundaries of this definition. The fact that pornography is widely believed to be “sexual representations” or “depictions of sex” emphasizes only that the valuation of women as low whores is widespread and that the sexuality of women is perceived as low and whorish in and of itself. The fact that pornography is widely believed to be “depictions of the erotic” means only that debasing of women is held to be the real pleasure of sex. As Kate Millett wrote, women’s sexuality is reduced to the one essential: “cunt… our essence, our offense”.
The idea that pornography is “dirty” originates in the conviction that the sexuality of women is dirty and is actually portrayed in pornography; that women’s bodies (especially women’s genitals) are dirty and lewd in themselves. Pornography does not, as some claim, refute the idea that female sexuality is dirty: instead, pornography embodies and exploits this idea; pornography sells and promotes it.
-Andrea Dworkin:Pornography – Men Possessing Women. pp. 200-201
“Here’s the thing. Men in our culture have been socialized to believe that their opinions on women’s appearance matter a lot. Not all men buy into this, of course, but many do. Some seem incapable of entertaining the notion that not everything women do with their appearance is for men to look at. This is why men’s response to women discussing stifling beauty norms is so often something like “But I actually like small boobs!” and “But I actually like my women on the heavier side, if you know what I mean!” They don’t realize that their individual opinion on women’s appearance doesn’t matter in this context, and that while it might be reassuring for some women to know that there are indeed men who find them fuckable, that’s not the point of the discussion. Women, too, have been socialized to believe that the ultimate arbiters of their appearance are men, that anything they do with their appearance is or should be “for men.” That’s why women’s magazines trip over themselves to offer up advice on “what he wants to see you wearing” and “what men think of these current fashion trends” and “wow him with these new hairstyles.” While women can and do judge each other’s appearance harshly, many of us grew up being told by mothers, sisters, and female strangers that we’ll never “get a man” or “keep a man” unless we do X or lose some fat from Y, unless we moisturize//trim/shave/push up/hide/show/”flatter”/paint/dye/exfoliate/pierce/surgically alter this or that.
That’s also why when a woman wears revealing clothes, it’s okay, in our society, to assume that she’s “looking for attention” or that she’s a slut and wants to sleep with a bunch of guys. Because why else would a woman wear revealing clothes if not for the benefit of men and to communicate her sexual availability to them, right? It can’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s hot out or it’s more comfortable or she likes how she looks in it or everything else is in the laundry or she wants to get a tan or maybe she likes women and wants attention from them, not from men?
The result of all this is that many men, even kind and well-meaning men, believe, however subconsciously, that women’s bodies are for them. They are for them to look at, for them to pass judgment on, for them to bless with a compliment if they deign to do so. They are not for women to enjoy, take pride in, love, accept, explore, show off, or hide as they please. They are for men and their pleasure.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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