, a radical feminist and professor of American Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, author of of the best-selling media textbook, (2nd edition, Sage, 2002), used in over 200 colleges across the country, and co-author of (also reader of my blog, yay!), was recently invited to appear on the Paula Zahn Now show on CNN to discuss the Duke rape case. She agreed in part because the pre-show screening interviews and discussions went well and the questions she was asked were intelligent and thoughtful.
She was told the show would be done in two, possibly three segments, and that under discussion would be historical and contemporary issues of violence against black women in the U.S.
What happened to her, to another guest, journalist , who was a guest on the show, to the Duke stripper, to feminists and feminism, and to women in the United States and everywhere when Dines went on that show was yet another display of male terrorism, of the way men on the Right and men on the Left, men of color and white men, are more than willing to set aside any political differences they have when it affords them an opportunity to bond over the brutalized bodies and lives of women, women of color, white women, all women.
The first inkling that something wasn t going according to plan was on my ride from the airport to the makeshift outdoor studio at the Durham courthouse. A different producer called to tell me that although I study both race and gender, they don t want this show to be about gender. I answered that this woman was brought in as a stripper and is charging that the lacrosse team sexually abused her how could this not also be about gender?
Yes, yes, yes, she answered, but the show is focusing on race. I know enough by now not to argue with a senior producer an hour before taping, and so I simply agreed.
The second clue was one of the people on the panel with me the Rev.
Jesse Lee Peterson, an African American man who has made his name by slandering blacks for their racism against whites and their continuing unwillingness to climb out of poverty. For Peterson, black men have been emasculated by black women, and his project is about making black men real men again. The one saving grace was that the other guest on my panel was Kristal Brent Zook, an insightful journalist with Essence magazine.
As it turns out I was on camera for less than five minutes, and most of that time was taken up by Peterson railing against the alleged victim for setting these poor white guys up. Kristal got to make a few points but also was cut short. Zahn was clearly more intrigued by Peterson than either of us; her body language and eye contact focused on him.
As I tried to interrupt his tirade, she cut me off and returned to him. He got the last word of the segment, saying that the stripper has no humanity, no morality (she had children out of wedlock ) and should be jailed for what she has done to these athletes. As I got up to leave the studio I ask Zahn how she could do a show that once again leaves this woman stripped of her dignity and rendered invisible as a human being.
Zahn smiled and offered her hand as a way to tell me they are done with me.
When I got back to the hotel 30 minutes later, I already had a few emails from enraged men informing me that I am a bitch dyke, dumb feminist and nigger lover who is an embarrassment to the academic profession. By the next day at noon, it was a flood of emails, each one more hateful than the next.
After most television appearances I get some hate mail and some support, but never such a consistently negative barrage in such a short time. It is only when I sit down to watch a tape of the show that I understood why everyone was so upset.
Rather than being about racism and sexism in the media, the show had been billed as an examination of the rush to judgment on the part of the media and society.
The possibility that these men were guilty had been proved wrong, as the victim is clearly lying and motivated by money. The case is framed as a race issue, which for producers meant that blacks are out for revenge for past misdeeds by whites. Jumping on this bandwagon, so the story goes, was the District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was trying to curry favor with the black community in a re-election year.
The consensus on the show was that if anyone is guilty here, it is the lying, immoral black stripper and the amoral, politically motivated DA. The victims here are the upstanding white men who have now had their reputations tarnished first by a stripper and then by gullible fools who believed her. And of course, within the framing of the show, I appeared as not just a gullible fool, but even worse, a gullible fool with a feminist agenda.
My anger at the way the media humanized these men as victims and dehumanized the woman as the perpetrator of a lie clearly stood out from the rest of the show. And this was, I am now convinced, the producer s goal. I was set up in the show to be an example of the problem white liberal elites who have taken political correctness too far.
I was not brought on as a researcher or activist but as an example of how feminists rush to judgment in order to further their man-hating propaganda.
Virtually every email I have received blasts me as a conniving feminist who didn t even bother to know the facts of the case. These men yes, they all were from men explained to me that the facts show without question that nothing happened that night, which I would have known if I were not so busy trying to further my feminist agenda.
Read the entire (great) at Dissident Voice.
The , Healthcare by Women for Women Since 1972, closes its doors this month. It is one of only 13 feminist women s health centers remaining in the country.
It ran out of money. Aradia has always served poor women, with doctors and other health care professionals volunteering their time. Now, too many women are without health care insurance.
The past five years has seen 20 percent rise in low-income women seeking abortions at Aradia, probably because they do not have access to birth control.
This is such a loss for women! Aradia stood for women caring for women, for women s liberation and full humanity.
How many clinics do we have to lose, how many rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters will be co-opted or closed down or taken over by the Religious Right before we realize what we have lost as women, how successful men s resistance to and fight against feminism and women has been?
It’s a cramped space set below street level. Faded purple carpets and narrow hallways branch off into small examination rooms, office space and labs.
Classical music plays in the halls. For now.
But they’ll soon be empty.
Aradia Women’s Health Center, a First Hill nonprofit organization with a feminist point of view, has faced protesters, debt, several moves and a lot of change over the years. Recently it confronted an even more potent threat: a lack of funding coupled with rising costs. This financial crisis will soon take its toll.
In January, after 34 years of service, one of Seattle’s first abortion clinics and women’s health centers will close its doors permanently.
“We’re calling it the perfect storm,” says Karen Besserman, vice president of the board of directors. Over the last two years Aradia’s insurance provider tripled the cost of malpractice coverage.
Most of the clinic’s clients are low-income women -70 percent up from 50 percent five years ago - and Medicaid subsidies simply did not cover costs. Donations from local individuals have stayed consistent and account for 10 percent of the clinic’s funding. The rest comes directly from clinic services.
Aradia was created in 1972 by a group of women at the University of Washington’s YWCA. The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion a year later, and in 1977 Aradia incorporated the procedure into its general gynecological care program.
It has served 54,000 clients and stayed true to its original mission of care for women by women, together with reproductive advocacy and education. The clinic has been at its current site, 1300 Spring St., for 10 years.
Here the organization’s eight health care advocates, a nurse, a physician’s assistant and nine doctors, provide abortions, birth control counseling, annual exams and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
At Aradia, health care advocates receive intensive training that takes three months. They screen and talk to clients, take their health care histories and also do some lab work.
“It’s quite intimate,” says Rose. They stay with clients during abortions and afterward take them to the recovery room with its recliners, heating pads and scent of peppermint. “We’re there so that they are not alone,” says Rose.
That kind of one-on-one care was one of the things no one at Aradia wanted to give up.
The board considered other options aside from closing, such as merging with a larger organization, becoming just an abortion clinic or purely an advocacy group. But, says Newman, none of the options would “retain the essence of Aradia.
” Roughly 20 employees are being laid off. Bloom feels certain they will go on to continue Aradia’s mission, “with the brand of feminist health care on their souls.”
“It’s a sign of the times,” says Bloom.
The federal government does not fund abortion. Washington state subsidizes it through Medicaid but those reimbursements are too low, says Aradia staff. As fewer Americans have insurance, independent non-profit clinics like Aradia are unable to cover the rising costs of service.
Abortion is on the decline nationwide, except among low-income women, something Bloom feels is due to their lack of insurance and access to birth control.
The pleasant, kind-looking man in the photo is Alex Coberly, 33, who has been employed by the Seattle School District since 1998 and who has been an elementary school principal for the past three years.
On November 22, he did something he later told police he s done a number of times in the past: he intentionally slowed his car (emblazoned with children s stickers of various kinds) alongside a car carrying two young women, smiled at them, then attracted the attention of the woman on the passenger side to his upraised, naked body and the movements he was making with it.
The women wrote down his license plate number, took note of what he looked like, called 911 and he was arrested.
What is interesting is, his attorney and some school district officials, parents of students, and former students have argued that Coberly should be able to keep his job, that his history of exposing himself to women doesn t have anything to do with his performance as a school principal. His attorney told the he feels there is no connection between this incident and [Coberly s] job [because] it doesn t involve children and doesn t involve his work.
Also interesting are the people who express sympathy for Coberly and talk about how sad this is for him, what a tragedy, what a nice man he is, and so on.
What about the women this man sexually assaulted? Not just the two who managed to get his license plate number, but all of the other women he says he s assaulted in the same way?
Having a man display his genitals in a menacing and intimidating way is sexual assault if you are a woman, girl, or boy. It is not flashing, which sounds funny and cute and harmless. It s not exposing himself, either.
I think, say, peeing on the side of the road would be more consistent with exposing oneself; exposing doesn t communicate the truth of what is done in instances like this. These assaults are never just about exposure. When men assault women in this way, they do it to intimidate, threaten, and shock women.
Their penises are usually erect and they are usually moving their pelvises menacingly. It is scary and traumatic to women who are victimized by it and would be destructive and frightening no matter what, but it is particularly harmful to women who have already been raped or sexually assaulted, meaning at least one out of three women (And I believe the number is closer to one of two or even more).
I will grant that he does look like a nice guy, in the same way the guys in the Craig s List experiment looked like nice guys.
He looks harmless, like the guy next door or your brother s friend. And yeah, these guys are nice all the way up until they feel like sexually assaulting, threatening, or menacing girls and women because it gets them off. Then they aren t nice at all.
I wonder whether those defending the principal would feel the same way if he d sexually assaulted them, their daughters, their mothers? If he d driven alongside them, this really nice-, normal-appearing guy with kids stickers on his car, and thrust his erect penis in their faces? What will it take, what level of sexual violation is required, for it to matter more that a woman has been sexually assaulted than it matters whether the man who violated her keeps his job or can move on as if nothing had happened?
Why is a sexual predator s reputation of more concern than the lives of the women he has harmed?
, , , a blog of a parent with kids at the school where Coberly was principal. There are comments from parents and others in the link.
A 30-year old man has been arrested in Florida for kidnapping his wife, raping her, hanging her from a tree, and torturing her in order to film a two-hour bondage porn video which appeared to be scripted, based on a computer printout found at the scene. She hung from the tree for several hours, her toes grazing the ground, according to news reports.
The man is not being identified to protect his wife s identity.
He has been charged with aggravated assault and battery, sexual battery, kidnapping and false imprisonment and is being held on $3 million bond.
Watch him say she agreed to it.
Heart
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I lust for it, I want so much this freedom,
this end to struggle and fear and lies we all exhale,
Oh mother, I am tired and sick
“How do you stop from going crazy?”
No way, sister, no way.
May we go mad together, my sisters.
May our labor agony in bringing forth this revolution be the death of all pain.
May we comprehend that we cannot be stopped.
May I learn how to survive until my part is finished.
May I realize that I am a monster.
I am a monster.
And I am proud.
from the poem, Monster, by Robin Morgan, 1971
The poem excerpted above, , written in response to something Robin Morgan s then small son said about her genitals, was, in the words of , iconic, virtually defin(ing) the scope of early feminism. Birthed in women s struggles for freedom and full humanity, the poem captured the imaginations of millions of feminist women, inspiring them to challenge and resist the many brutalities, small and large, which women suffer everyday because they are women.
If the , then and , it seems right to me that this classic of the women s liberation movement, be acknowledged and named, with full credit given, if not immediately by the the person using the imagery (because she or he wasn t aware of the poem, perhaps), then by those of us interested in honoring the great leaders and mothers of our own movement.
That s what you do you know?
[Edited to change the date of the writing of the poem to 1971, instead of 1961.]
Modern Mother Worldly was very, very lazy.
All her children drove her crazy.
The Bible told her to spank and train them.
But society said she must never constrain them.
The fruit of rebellion she did now see.
On the day of judgment she will have no plea.
Modern Mother Worldly cast in hell!
Now what becomes of the children of such a Jezebel !
From the tract entitled, Perilous Times, sent to Quiverfull mother Andrea Yates shortly before she killed her five children
I’ve been getting a lot of hits from , probably partially in response to a on the movement which was shown January 3. I think the Wikipedia article is pretty good.
One thing I like about it is that it includes as a “notable Quiverfull Family,” Rusty and Andrea Yates. Quiverfull movement people usually distance themselves from Andrea Yates, who killed her five children after attempting to stone them, dismissing her as a disobedient and ungodly mother, as not a “true Christian,” as mentally ill or otherwise just not a bona fide Quiverfull mom. But my experience is there are more than a few women in the movement who are like Andrea Yates.
Unlike her, they haven’t been pushed to their breaking point yet.
Last July Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the murder of her five children. She was then sent to a mental hospital.
After the trial, trial exhibits were uploaded to the internet, and so at last I was able to take a look at the actual teachings of the Yateses long-time spiritual leaders, Michael Woroniecki and his wife, Rachel. I knew Woroniecki was an “itinerant” preacher who traveled the world with his family, “preaching the gospel,” but I hadn’t been able to learn much about his actual teachings.
Woroniecki proudly describes himself as a “fire and brimstone” preacher.
He believes his family is all that remains of “true Christianity,” comparing himself with Noah, whose family was spared the flood described in the Bible s book of Genesis. He shares the distinctives of the Quiverfull movement: the reverence for the “fruit of the womb,” i.e.
, children, for voluntary poverty or simple living , homeschooling and Bible literalism. He believes, though, that it is evil and sinful for men to hold regular jobs and for women to be at home with the children while fathers work. He teaches that families are to “trust the Lord” and that fathers should with their wives and children all of the time.
He pastors via letters and other written materials, and this is how he “pastored” the Yates family. The Yates were intimately associated with the Woronieckis. They had given up most of their material possessions and had purchased a bus from the Woronieckis in order to live in it with their three children, as the Wornieckis had previously lived in the bus with their six children.
The Yateses didn’t go to any sort of church meeting, believing with Woroniecki that the modern day church has the “Jezebel” spirit and is apostate. Most of the teaching was man to man, Worniecki to Rusty Yates, although once in a while both Michael and Rachel Worniecki sent materials to Andrea Yates, all of it condemning.
Graphic from tract entitled Witch and the Whimp published by Michael Woroniecki.
The word of God is very sobering when it warns “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is iniquity and adultery. Although rebellion is common to all, the word of God continually emphasizes the particularly destructive power latent in “the contentious woman.” Witchcraft, as seen in the nature of Eve, is the underlying ATTITUDE of contention or insistence to HAVE YOUR WAY.
Witchcraft is cooperating with Satanic motivation to manipulate, control and rule…This is the way of the adulterous woman. She eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong.” (Pr.
30:20). God says, “I find more bitter than death the woman WHOSE HEART IS SNARES AND NETS AND HER HANDS ARE CHAINS. Whoever is pleasing to God shall escape from her… You may be married or single, brazen or reserved, striking or simple, a pagan or a Christian but as a daughter of Eve you are born with the nature of a witch.
No matter how blatant or subtle, “God is not mocked.”
This tract is primarily written to expose this “spirit of Jezebel” that Jesus says will rule His people in the last days… The woman Jezebel is the paradigm of the ultimate witchcraft which has a religious or “Christian” pretense. .
. She is a woman who could even intimidate a mighty man of God… Today the false church is ruled by the “spirit of Jezebel.” Whether it rules through an entire maternal organization… or ndividuals… the goal of seering a conscience is the same.
… It can rule through women who have positions of leadership or are simple and ordinary. It rules because of the terrible bankruptcy for courageous men of decisive faith. It rules because the so called pastors and preachers of today are passive whimps (sic) ruled by the underlying domination of their contentious wives.
A passive man may entertain a “macho” or charismatic image but his whimpish spirit is clearly seen by his refusal to rebuke the spirit of Jezebel, whether it be trying to rule as a “preacher,” “teacher,” or housewife. (Emphases Worniecki’s, most scripture references removed.)
In the years before Andrea Yates killed her children, she had also been charged with caring for her elderly and ailing father who died in the year before the killings.
In this context, then, of back- and spirit-breaking daily caregiving while homeschooling her five young children, with virtually no community of women to support her, she had repeatedly received letters from the Woronieckis, her spiritual leaders, berating her for her spiritual disobedience and failings. She had twice attempted to kill herself.
Shortly before she killed her children, she had received a tract entitled “ It included the graphic at the top of this post with the associated poem beneath it, “Modern Mother Worldly.
” The tract reads in part:
A woman is created to be a helper . This does not mean a wife. It means a servant, single or married.
if a girl does not know how to be a servant then she is learning how to be a ruler. It s called witchcraft. My daughters share and teach the gospel.
They do not preach. They are completely content to be servants. NO witchy contention to compete with their brothers… The eternity of my children is my accountability while they are children and I would be sending them to hell if I raised them to think according to the standards of this world.
…If you REALLY want the best for your children then first YOU must get right with God. …Yes it is far easier to just let the systems of the world do your job - EVERYBODY DOES IT - but you are the one who will reap the consequences. …I can not stress how serious this whole thing is.
By the time a child is fourteen or fifteen, it s too late. By this time, the thinking of the world that YOU have taught them, takes over. You feed them with the world s ways and you reap exactly what you sowed.
…God is going to hold you accountable. …The most severe statement Jesus makes in the whole Bible is in regards to how a child is treated (Read Matt. 18:6)!
If Jesus makes such an extreme issue out of this how weighty it will surely be on the Day of Judgement! (Emphases the author’s.)
Shortly after receiving this tract, Andrea Yates killed her children.
She told a jail psychiatrist, “It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren’t righteous. They stumbled because I was evil.
The way I was raising them they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell.” One of her requests was that her head be shaved because she believed that on the flesh of her scalp, she must have born the “mark of the beast,” condemning her to eternity in hell for her failures as a wife, a mother, and a person.
The language of these materials which the Yateses believed were scriptural were more than just words, they were and are powerfully destructive and, I believe, they rise to the level of hate speech which ought to be legally prohibited, as other kinds of hate speech are legally prohibited. To declare, as Woronieki does, that women are born with the nature of a witch, witches being understood to be evil and wicked in all the ways he describes, is hate speech, just as other kinds of hate speech are hate speech and ought to be treated as hate speech under the law, as discriminatory and sexist in the same way slurs against other marginalized groups, ethnicities and religious communities are treated. For the purposes of this post, these words must be understood to have had the power to drive Andrea Yates over the edge, particularly given her isolation, the burdens of her life, and her struggles with mental illness.
How is it that men like Michael Woroniecki simply walk away from the devastation they have wrought in the lives of women and children? This is a man who at one point in his “ministry” was arrested after he followed a woman, a stranger, for two blocks, berating her to tears; his actions were not restricted to hate speech in tracts and pamphlets and letters. Who knows how many women have suffered at his hands in similar fashion?
How is it that Rusty Yates walks away from the devastation he wrought in the lives of his wife and his children? He divorced Andrea, remarried a few days before Andrea’s trial last July, then sped off with his new wife in a red Corvette. Rusty Yates was the one person who knew what Andrea was reading, what she was thinking and hearing about God, women, about herself, as woman doomed to hell.
He was the one person who knew the burdens under which she was laboring day after back-breaking day, who knew what she was going through. He knew exactly what was in the materials being sent to his family, and yet he did nothing as he watched Andrea descend into what must have been unbearable torment, believing that not only was she doomed to hell, she was dooming her children to hell as well, yet she was bound, as a woman, by the religious beliefs imposed on her, to continue to bear children, whom she believed she would continue to doom to hell.
How is it that any of the patriarchs simply walk away from the grave and deadly damage that they have caused and continue to cause in the lives of women they call Jezebel, , women like , women like Andrea Yates, and our children?
How many more Andrea Yateses will we have, how many more children will be harmed, before we begin to hold men like these accountable, at a bare minimum, for discriminating against women because they are women, for terrorizing women because they are women? Take a look at those tracts, those words written about women; why are they not legally prohibited as hateful and discriminatory, in the same way similar materials about any other group would be prohibited if they were widely and publicly circulated, and in particular, if they were causing real harm in the lives of real women and children?
Huh.
All right, all you radfems and radfem wanna bes and radfem allies and radfem supporters and people-who-like-radfems-in-spite-of-yourselves :D, go and nominate our blogs and various individual posts and series for Koufax Awards! Hurry up! I went over there in Internet Explorer (don t do that, use Firefox), so I couldn t read all that much, but GEEZ, it s all the same old people, lots of men, liberals, liberal feminists, and all the regular mutual admiration societies and good ol bloggers.
We know our writings are the best. :P Maybe we need to start our own awards, for woman-centered blogs, woman-centered blogging, something like that.
Then I started to think, But wait.
We don t really even believe in competitions like this, we re all about mutuality, cooperation, consensus, win/win, power with, we re against hierarchies, and so on.
Then I thought, Well, but it s all in good fun, and competition isn t always bad, we re not in the post-revolution yet, maybe it keeps us motivated when we might not otherwise be. And besides, Heart, you have no sense of humor.
Then I thought, But wait. This is totally, totally political. How could it not be?
And in political events of this kind, radfems will always get the short end of the stick, the left foot of fellow -ship. (But I sort of covered that in my first paragraph by saying maybe we need our own contest. )
So I m pasting trackbacks and thinking as I go through and paste each one of all of the amazing posts I ve read on each one which should be nominated, although probably very few people have ever even read these amazing blogs, so they probably won t get nominated.
By the time I m done, I m thinking, now I don t know about Koufax awards. Maybe we need something woman-centered instead, which honors the best post from every radfem s (or pro-radfem man s) blog, or the best series, from each person s blog, or the best woman-centered posts from all sorts of blogs, radfem or no. And then maybe categories like, best analysis, best new theory, most consistently woman-centered, funniest from a woman-centered perspective, most controversial, most over-the-top, and so on.
Since moderation issues are on my mind, I decided to lighten things up a bit and present the Best of the Peanut Gallery, comprised of excerpts from some of the comments men have attempted to post to Women s Space over the last 30 days or so. It is an interesting mix; I hope you laugh as hard over some of the comedic attempts at commentary as I did! That way, the disturbing commentary might not be quite so burdensome.
Im a man. I searched for Brit’s crotch and I found this site. I love the site and the discussion.
It’s haunted me and Ive since had discussions about it with my feminist wife who has majored in women’s studies and I guess has tolerated my point of view all this time. I always thought of myself as a feminist, but maybe Im not. My wife is angry with me because of my counter arguments.
This missive isnt about Brit’s crotch but maybe it is. Because I found this site due to my curiosity…
To the women of this site, I ask: What is the definition of feminine minus the polution of the male point of view? When I say “feminine”, Im talking about sexuality and the projection of such.
Im not talking about equality across the board, which I believe wholeheartedly in.
What do the women who contribute to this blog find acceptable when it comes to sexuality, the appearance of sexuality and the response to said sexuality?
Please, Im not trolling here…
Maybe if he knocks it off with the aggravating anti-feminist counter arguments he is evidently making when his feminist wife takes him to task over his internet searches for Britney Spears crotch shots, they can really delve into the definition of feminine minus the polution of the male point of view.
This poster knows how to make the world safe..
Why these people get irritated when someone talk about morality.
You people exposing morethan allowed any religion. Is it freedom. I call it utterly careless attitude of a community whom goes for freedom which destroy our social life by rape, adultry, drunks, abortion and all of form of sins which is prohibited by god through his teachings.
Go to Bibile. Quran or any other little moral writings. then we all will be in safe
This would be, I believe, the first time I ve heard the term non-dick :
What a bunch of lying dicks and non-dicks, you came to this site to see pussy!
so where is it???
?? And then there are all of you pretending to have “intellectual thoughts” on this search for a pussy view.
Actually, in my search for a pussy shot, I’ve had a lot of fun at your expense……thanks.
This poster is concerned about Britney Spears self esstem. Reminds me of the guy who, when one of my daughters reamed him a new one for being a misogynist jerk, said, You re ruining my SELF of STEAM.
You have to either have, self esstem issues or would have been pretty damn pissed to go out to a night club and show your privates especially with no knickers on.
Come on celebrity or not your a women respect yourself. i watched a documentary on tv in the United States about young girls going out binge drinking and doing stupid things in public that they later regretted doing this was a classic example.
I say if your out drinking look after yourself.
I actually like Brittany Spears and i think shes beautiful and no matter what the media says about i bet shes an awesome mother……….im glad she got rid of that no good loser KFed.
I might give him a few points for the last paragraph, if he d made some comment about the photographers taking up-skirt photos and why that was wrong. Oh well.
hi, heart.
It’s that guy defending the sadists again. I don’t know if you actually read these things or what. Anyways, I found another post by you on the same subject while I was surfing.
(I swear to God I’m not stalking you.) Anyway, it was on the same subject, and in it you mentioned that some people might think sadism and misogyny don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but that’s what you think and you won’t hear arguments to the contrary.
That’s repugnant.
I’m not offended by your views on the subject, I think they’re naive; but your refusal to let your beliefs be challenged disgusts me. If you don’t think you can defend your beliefs, well, god, you’re surrounded by people who can. If you’re not emotionally able to accept my views, well then you shouldn’t have started the conversation.
It’s this ability to surround oneself with nothing but like-minded people that I really hate about the Internet.
Like I haven t had 4,678,902 debates about this on the internet. The guy can evidently find me with no problem, so I figure he should go find some of those old debates.
It s so funny create one venue, just ONE, on the internet, which isn t going to tolerate endless wranglings over what might be wrong with sadomasochism and people are infuriated. They can create 15 blogs a piece, you know, and write of the joys of beating someone, being beaten by someone, the thrills of risky sex practices like fluid bonding, if they want to. But create one venue where it isn t going to fly and they are disgusted and it s what they hate about the internet that radical feminist women have, at last, an opportunity to discuss what we want to discuss unhindered, undiverted, unattacked, without having to waste energy dealing with this kind of thing.
I mean, if we want to talk to them, we can find them anywhere and talk to them, no? Do they ever think about that.
Is it that hard to believe that some men might have misogynist bedroom fantasies, while not being misogynists in real life?
Yes? Misogynist in the bedroom equals misogynist everywhere else. This is the kind of man, and logic, I find alarming and dangerous.
You also mentioned something (maybe on this board, maybe on that other board) that if you thought these guys had shown any respect for women, you might believe that they might be decent guys, but clearly they didn’t, and so on. Now, I don’t know much about online sex personals etiquette, but somehow I can’t imagine that if a woman went looking for some BDSM, she’d be all that interested in responses like, “Let’s respectfully discuss your proposal over coffee.”
Here is a guy who has just asked me whether I think it s possible for a guy to be misogynist in the bedroom and not misogynist elsewhere.
Here he demonstrates why he doesn t even believe that himself. From his perspective, if a woman is looking for an sm encounter, she must want to hear what all those guys in the Craig s List experiment had to say, no coffee and respectful discussion for her.
This philosophical dude feels we really need something more substantial than stories of women being dragged a mile behind a car, having their bodies chopped up and stewed on the stove, being raped and burned to death, being lined up in schoolrooms and shot, being basically unrepresented as heads of Fortune 500 corporations, to convince anyone that men terrorize women:
Generic man-hating isn’t going to gain momentum.
Yes, men can be dogs but you have to give the public something to work with here.
Yes, the whole human experience and history is strongly influenced by and dominated by males. Religion, law, government, as well as social and economic dissonance has developed.
Some barriers have been overcome, and most of your first world countries have decreased that dissonance. Less developed countries, generally speaking, seem to be more likely to have cultures that support females as being chattel. I think that the targeting that women get in first world countries has sublimated into forms that even they may not recognize as happening.
Personally, I think most undergarments women wear are designed exclusively by men for me. Pantyhose, bras, girdles, garters, et al all seem to fly under the radar of awareness, but in my mind are just short of something that could have been used in their own version of the Spanish Inquisition. Even womens shoes are designed to force them to strut provacatively, meanwhile their feet are being crushed and bent in painful directions.
Meanwhile, mens shoes and underwear are comfortable and functional. I have no idea why women put up with that stuff. Make-up, to me, is all part of that nonsense too.
If women want to be taken seriously, they need to take themselves seriously. Confidence, Intelligence, Independence, Assertiveness, and the ability to make decisions under pressure will get you farther than a tight sweater and boatloads of make-up. To be honest, it is more appealing too.
At last, the stunning conclusion:
Finally, I don’t think every pocket of the world is saturated with male dominance….if there are issues to be addressed in your corner of the world, the focus should be finding balance among elements to achieve equality. Vilifying all that is masculine may erode power of male dominated societal view, but the view will only last as the dominance the other way is held.
Education is key to a longer lasting balance.
Education is key to a longer lasting balance.
Heavy.
Glad you squared that away for us.
Sometimes women offer interesting commentary, per yay:
This site is retarded. Heart you are annoying.
Aside from the fact that I could care less about Britney’s crotch you seem to care too much what everyone’s opinion is on the subject. Like a little too much, I might add. Shut up already moron!
Here is my opinion on the matter. Britney should know better than to not wear panties and bend over in front of paparrazi or spread her legs with a short skirt on without panties knowing she is a huge star and will most definately be showing the world. She is skanky as in no class just like Janet Jackson who likes to show her boob to children at a football game then act all innocent.
Britney knew what she was doing and if she is that stupid to do everything I just mentioned without any inkling of the ramifications then maybe she will learn from her mistakes and embarrassment if she even feels any. Obviously, it was a publicity stunt and she enjoys that kind of attention and will do anything to get it. Just so you know, i wore a really short skirt on my birthday with no panties but I was with my bf and I am not super famous so no gives a rats ass.
If I were, I would be seeking attention by showing my crotch on purpose to the media. BTW, Britney you need to get some rash medication. Good going.
Lastly, everyone should just move on now because no one really cares about what Britney does as they really shouldn’t. Worry about your own crotches, fire crotches and what not. Hell if i was papparazi and i saw that I would be clicking away with the camera as well so….
yeah. Get real! No one got hurt in the making of this retarded publicity stunt.
Way to go Britney and rock on with your bad self. Everyone has an opinion and it really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks- not even Heart or me. So move on with your life Heart.
We get it already.
Even though that commentary is Exhibit A of internalized misogyny, I can t help but laugh every time I read it. Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.
Sorry if I was rude in my last post but I just get a little upset when people obsess over justifying other people’s mistakes (if you want to call it that)as if it really matters. What she did was her own doing and every single person has a different opinion on the matter and yet it still doesn’t matter what any of us think. We don’t know Britney or what she thinks on a daily basis.
The only support she needs is her real life friend’s and family. You all go on and on as if you are making a difference when all you are really doing is wasting your time and energy about annoying papparazi that are like roaches and will never go away. I am sure she has adjusted to the lifestyle she chose as most people do.
And i really didn’t see any rash in the pictures. I was just being sarcastic. I wish Britney well and don’t care about her crotch and I hope she isn’t affected by this too much.
Who knows? Maybe she was drunk.
And even finishes with season s greetings!
There are much better things to worry about and discuss and think about like Christmas in a few days and being with loved ones. Take care and be well. Merry Christmas all
Tei Tetua, who if I m not mistaken is a men s rights guy who posts at Alas sometimes, wrote the following in response to .
In a bedazzling example of precisely that phenomenon, Tei Tetua thinks it s important to focus in on which Boston paper published the article (I named the wrong paper) and the bad company feminists are keeping publishing the article there. Forget about atrocities against women, whatever, atrocities against women happen. Get used to it.
Also, forget about the fact that mainstream newspapers don t publish articles about atrocities against women as atrocities, which was the whole point of the article I linked to.
That article was from the Boston Phoenix, not the Globe. The Phoenix is a weekly paper that used to be “underground” or “alternative” or whatever you want to call it.
It’s the kind of paper where each issue includes a sex section with all the ads from “escorts”, and every time, that section has an appropriately enticing picture on the cover. The same issue of the Phoenix also had an editorial slamming Jimmy Carter for his recent book comparing Israel today with South Africa in its bad old days, which I think is a topic that needs to be talked about much more (and there’s a link with “Orthodox Jewish woman beaten by men”). In other words, some people might say that feminism isn’t in the best company in that paper.
Then this guy crawls out from under his rock to remind us all that we are, truly, surrounded by pedophiles, misogynists, dangerous men. Men who say what this man says below are dangerous men.
When men expose themselves in public they are considered as flashers and could face charges of indecency, but when Brittany Spears does it to save her dying career she’s the poor victim of men’s peversity.
She has become a public figure ever since she wore her enticing and provacative school girl uniform. She put herself in the sexual market place, music videos. It was Brittany’s choice to tie her shirt up to expose her belly,not the audience.
It was Brittany that decided to put a new twist to the old school girl fantasy that has been around for as long as there has been school girls. Her twist was to put an actual girl who was still in school in a music video. Where as in the past this school girl fantasy was usually filled by someone older posing as a school girl.
Most men who buy into this fanasy usually have to pay someone to do this, Brittany just made it more acceptable. Brittany is desperate for adulation. She using something other than her voice to attract an audience.
Why would any women put themselves in that situation. Obviously she isn’t modest because she really plays up her sexuality on stage. Take for instance when Brittany and Madonna kissed on national television.
Two music celebrities selling a form of sexuality on public television. But it’s perverse for men to watch it or want to see more. It’s perverse that men want to see her crotch now, get real.
Brittany is the only one selling crotch shots. Why should men be persecuted for buying something a grown women wants to sell. For Brittany she has decided to sell her voice and image and it seem she has developed a market for herself.
Now the general public wants what she is selling. And I bet there are many lesbians out there you aren’t hating because they want to see Brittany’s crotch. Society has come a long way accepting gays and lesbians for who they are, why can’t you get off your high horses and let men and women do what they have always done.
Men have to do all the chasing after the women they love or lust after and it is the women who does all the rejecting. History isn’t written about women pursuing their mate it has always been the man.Traditionally it has been the man who asks for the first date.
I know alot of women,but I don’t know very many women who ask men out on dates. And I don’t know many women who go around in little black miniskirts witout panties. Especially if they are going to a public function where they’ll be the centre of attention.
what Brittany does with her crotch is her business and everyone is buying it. I think she would do better just doing a sex video like her moral compass, Paris Hilton. Women’s groups aren’t exactly lining up around the blockto protest the expoitation of poor Paris Hilton.
No women’s group has picked up the cause for poor Pamela Anderson or Janet Jackson. And what can we do for the exploitation of Madonna.Face it sex sells and it is usually done by a man and a woman.
Now days it done by evryone to anyone. Who knows now days. Stay tuned for the next big production of chasing beaver, apparently it’s a bisexual thing.
With so many problems in the world why do we need to spend time on this. She is just wanting publicity.
Yeah, man.
Let the poor dudes get their crotch shots, would you?
“I can’t believe there are still women who don’t get it: ALL men. ALL men.
All. It’s concealed to get laid. It’s revealed when they lose it.
Take a look at the nice men in the Craig’s List post: see the lefty cool guy with the bandana, the guys out there in ‘nature’, the grandfatherly looking guy? There will be women who they have helped across the street, stood up for in a harassing situation, loaned money to so they could buy school books for their children, spoken for when she didn’t get a promotion, agreed that women should be able to walk here and there safely. Get real.
They’re all rapists. It’s not this guy is good, that guy is bad. Men.
They are all men, and they all have the privilege. The man you are sleeping with/working with/sitting next to in your gender studies class/being a blood donor/working for community issues/saving your babies life in the pediatric ward~~~~~~~~ALL.”
is this any different from saying all blacks steal?
all blondes are stupid? all feminists hate men?
This kind of question is, again, why I moderate.
To respond to this level of cluelessness would require energy, time, and bandwidth none of us has to spare, and all of us prefer to devote to women s issues. Besides that, anybody who finishes that kind of question with, just curious is asking to be spammed.
Way to go with lumping all men together in one awful sea of women hating testosterone.
Can’t you see that these are just sad wankers trying to get laid? I guarantee you that 99% of them have never taken part in any BDSM activity before and simply saw the ad as an opportunity to get laid. The ad was specific in saying the submissive wanted cruelty and violence so that’s what they offered.
The ad was graphic, so they were graphic in their replies. It’s not about hating women; it’s about meeting a biological imperative to have sex with as many women as possible. These guys are not angry they’ve been ‘outed’ as women haters; they’re angry because they’ve been outed as sad little men who can only succeed with women who put up no resistance.
This guy is creative and original!
You all need to get laid.
fuckin’ nice.
where can i get the video???
??love to have it.
oh by the way fuck you broads!
if heterosexual sex was a male dominated thing: wed have a hell of alot more people on earth. Men think of sex every 58 seconds, women do maybe twice a day.
Here the facts-and-figures guy evidences he doesn t know the difference between rape and sex, has no clue that in fact, most rapists walk and none, in the U.S., is killed for rape, and doesn t get it that women bear no responsibility for their own rapes:
Concieving a child is a two-way thing, if a woman is raped than she goes to the authorities and-while they kill the man who did it- she gets counseling.
I ll include his final line because of its unique and interesting spelling of chauvinistic, kind of along the line of Jovan for Men :
P.s.s.
The Media only has “concoted” a shovanistic view of women because there are women out there that will submit themselves to being photographed, exploited, ectectect as a career opportunity.
Not to be dissuaded by the radical feminist nature of this blog, the politics of this blog, or the posts in this blog, ardent life offers us biblical counsel:
People are imperfect. In fact, this is the very foundation of Christianity; people fail, ad God stepped in to save the day.
People screw up every-single-day. When a person is hi-lited as a good and godly person, one that you aught to respect, it somehow amplifies there Sin as somesort of huge imposing hurricane that wipes out the importance of what that person taught. People screw-up, get over it already.
Let
God be named True, and every man a liar.
I like the part I bolded. Yay, verily and amen to that.
I ve been brewing a post for a while about the comments I get here which never see the light of day, but this particular one struck me as particularly representative, and it is also a good illustration of why I, and other radical feminists, must carefully moderate our blogs. It s also a very good example of the thought life of a large number of American men, given the number of commments like this which I spam.
This is one of thousands of men who ended up here on his quest to see up-skirt shots of Britney Spears.
It s interesting the opportunity we have, as radical feminist bloggers, to gather information and evidence as to the kind of things men want to see based on the search terms that result in their visiting our blogs. The commenter, of course, posted in full the words I have x d out.
laguna loire: well i just hope that both of u`r parents get leuchimia and your wife (cause you are a lesbian right?
) get hit by a truck full of dildos and if ever you get kids i’ll hope they get kindnaped and then savagly raped by a gang off n****** with huge cocks
H.A. Chew sent this along, published on the , written by our friend and ally, .
Rock on, Stan what a GREAT article!
Here is a thought exercise. Think of all the euphemisms used to describe the distinctly male external appendage, or eroticized acts from the male point of view, that call to mind conquest, war, or violence.
Examples: I d like to hit that ( hit as act of aggression, that as objectification). He shot his load (gun metaphor).
I knocked the bottom out of that pussy (penis as an instrument to wreck a thing, woman reduced to an instrumental body part).
Bob added her to his list of conquests (self-explanatory). He made her ( he is the subject, she is the object to be taken).
Porn advertising uses very warlike metaphors, if anyone is interested in what the market says about what men find popular in the arena of sex-commodified.
Now flip the exercise. Think of all the euphemisms to describe war and aggression that are sexualized.
Examples: We re going to pop it to the enemy.
Our forces will penetrate here. He made that guy his bitch. Abu Ghraib.
Anyone who thinks for a moment can come up with her own list. Or just listen to other people, television, the radio
These figures of speech are so common that we have the tendency to overlook, and even repeat them, never stopping to think how these figures of speech devalue women, or how they construct male sexuality as conquest and violence.
Anyone who has not seen the Media Education Foundation film Wrestling with Manhood is hereby strongly encouraged to see it, and to use it as a collective teaching tool about how masculinity is constructed as violence, and how immensely popular is its misogynistic core.
It shows the frothing audiences as theatrical wrestling events cheer at macho posturing, which included the feminization of enemies, at the brutality of the fights, but with the most disturbingly enthusiasm, at the staged and real abuse of women during these intensely popular public entertainment events.
Here is the problem I am having with the weaponized phallus, a problem of a more limited scale than men s deeply enculturated hatred of all things female, especially the female body (which they see as a thing to be conquered, defiled, humiliated taken). It s that fact that so-called progressive men (people really should look up the sordid history of that modifier), those who claim to stand for justice and against domination and exploitation, engage in the self-same, woman-hating, weaponized-phallus trash-talk as right-wing men.
And here is a small step I am proposing to left-wing men. Stop that. Stop it right now, and never do it again.
Here is a short list, with explanation, that I d like you to stop:
(1) Stop using gendered language thoughtlessly. There is a politics to language, and it is not just being PC. That term was invented by right-wingers to fight back against things like women s studies, African American studies, and other non-white, non-male, non-imperial challenges to a racist, Eurocentric, and patriarchal canon.
When you use male nouns and pronouns to describe human, you are reinforcing the idea and practice that makes male the norm. Calling the species homo sapien Man is a problem. Calling land and ships and other things she and her, that men are seen to control, is a problem because it assigns the controlling role to males.
Saying that it is colder than a witch s tit is a sexist turn of phrase. Using the term balls to describe courage, and making courage a male characteristic, is a problem. Calling people who lack courage or strength pussies is a devaluation, as well as objectification, of women.
(2) Stop saying things that are homophobic, and stop tolerating homophobia. Homophobia, as Suzanne Pharr once pointed out, is a weapon of patriarchy. When you make jokes about prison rape, that is homophobic, as well as buying into a notion of rape as legitimate tool for social control, and masculinity constructed as sexual revenge.
The ideological basis for men s control over women is what Adrienne Rich called compulsory heterosexuality. Policing people based on the masculine-feminine binary is policing a binary of domination and subjugation.
(3) Stop saying clueless shit about sex that makes sex an unmitigated good (in reaction to the theocratic right s squeamishness about sex).
It might sound liberated if you are still trying to shock you aging parents, but it erases women s experience of sex as often obligatory, manipulative, humiliating, and even frightening one of the practices in a system where they are on the wrong end of social power. A recent article by Joe Garifoli in the San Francisco Chronicle, called Anti-war couple conceive new way to generate peace, is a perfect example.
Living on their houseboat off the Marin County coast, anti-war activists Donna Sheehan and her partner, Paul Reffel, concocted a way for the world to communally create a lot of peaceful vibes.
They want everyone to have an orgasm on the same day.
They go on to say, If you re experiencing pleasure, you re not engaging in aggressive, destructive behavior.
Really?
Does that mean, asks my friend De, that the rape of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim, in which three men apparently had their peacemaking orgasms, contributed to world peace?
Don t say dumb shit like this. It betrays your own cocooned privilege, and not just become some Haitian peasant woman might be more worried about the food that s not in her belly than her daily orgasm, but because sex has been experienced as violence by millions of women imposed by men who took physical pleasure from their violence.
(4) Stop reinforcing the devaluation of women by measuring them by some media-concocted version of what they are supposed to look like. This is a tough one, because we het-men (and even gay men) have been trained very early and very thoroughly to cast the pornographic gaze on women first judging her fuckability (think about that term before we inquire about anything else). This is a form of oppression, and until we make an intentional effort to stop that, everything we say about relieving oppression is hypocrisy.
If we say we are for justice, and we say we are against oppression, and we judge women this way, we are frauds and we deserve to have no one listen to us, ever.
(5) Stop thinking it is okay to attack the enemy s women based on their gender. When you make a sexual remark to put down Anne Coulter or Condi Rice, or crack on them about their appearance, you are attacking them based on their status as women which implicitly attacks all women.
That shit is not cool. It doesn t make you a more effective progressive (or whatever). It makes you an oh-too-typical male misogynist.
You are still engaging in sexualized revenge.
This just scratches the surface, but I don t want to overwhelm anyone. If you want to add one more step, start calling others out when they do this stuff, too.
Time to de-weaponize the phallus; let it revert to the humble pollination device it was designed to be. You d be surprised at the implications.
There was an article in the Seattle P-I last night about a young girl named Ashley who is undergoing a treatment dubbed the Ashley Treatment.
According to her family s , she has a condition called static encephalopathy of unknown etiology , which means an insult to the brain of unknown origin or cause, and one that will not improve. She is now nine years old, and would have been expected to attain adult height and size. She cannot keep her head up, roll or change her sleeping position, hold a toy, or sit up by herself, let alone walk or talk.
She is tube fed and depends on her caregivers in every way. She will never develop mentally or cognitively beyond three months of age, but is expected to have a normal life span.
The “Ashley Treatment” includes growth attenuation through high-dose estrogen therapy, hysterectomy to eliminate the menstrual cycle and associated discomfort to Ashley, and breast bud removal to avoid the development of large breasts and the associated discomfort to Ashley.
A fundamental and universal misconception about the treatment is that it is intended to convenience the caregiver; rather, the central purpose is to improve Ashley’s quality of life. Ashley’s biggest challenges are discomfort and boredom; all other considerations in this discussion take a back seat to these central challenges. The “Ashley Treatment” goes right to the heart of these challenges and we strongly believe that it will mitigate them in a significant way and provide Ashley with lifelong benefits.
The family goes on to say that these treatments will allow Ashley to remain a size which enables them to hold her, take her with them many places, carry her, and bathe her easily (4 5 , 75 pounds). They believe it will reduce the chance that she will be sexually assaulted by caregivers and will eliminate the pain and difficulties of menstruation. She began to develop signs of puberty at six years of age, which is when the family worked with doctors to begin the treatment.
The family intends to care for her at home always, and says she would have been cared for at home always regardless her size, but that being small will give her options she wouldn t have had had she grown to full adult size. It sounds to me as though this is a Christian family; if I were a betting woman, based on the way they say what they say about God, and based on their reliance on doctors and traditional medicine, I d say they were Roman Catholic. They seem to be devout Christians.
For my part, I think this is horrifying. It is particularly odious to me that the parents felt the need to remove Ashley s breasts (because she didn t need them) and her uterus (ditto), and that fear of their daughter being molested by caregivers figured heavily into their decision.
What have we come to that we will remove a young woman s breasts and reproductive organs to increase the likelihood she will not be abused by caregivers ?
What have we come to that we think removing breasts and reproductive organs will keep any child or any woman safer from sexual assault? How is it that the belief is, it s the breasts and the body which invite the abuse, as opposed to the misogyny and depravity of anyone who would sexually abuse anyone, but particularly a vulnerable, disabled girl or woman? How is it forgotten that babies are sexually abused, toddlers are, small children are, little boys, little girls, all the way through old women, all the way through animals, all the way through corpses, are sexually abused, and in these assaults, the presence of breasts, or not, or uteruses, or not, or human bodies or not, or living bodies, or not, matters not one whit.
Why aren t we insisting that caregivers not be sexually predatory?
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