OMFG

It is So. Wrong.

[via j.d.]

The World According to Abstinence-Only Education.

If I ever have a child, and they come home with an Abstinence-Only textbook, I’m taking them out of school. Period. No questions asked.

Of course, since I don’t have a child, I can still laugh at this garbage:

Originally posted here. Be sure to look at the rest of Anna’s art too — she’s brilliant, and brilliantly funny!

Holy NC-17, Batman!

If my life were a movie, I have the sinking sensation it would be PG-13, at best.

Ah, Empowerfulment.

On my way into class this morning, I was greeted a sight in the ubiquitous medium of sidewalk chalk, so prevalent on college campuses.

It read (or so I thought):

Tired of Women Being Objectified?
WOMEN OF KU
Calendar Tryouts
womenofku.com

So before I went of onto a rant about using feminism to lure women into a sense of empowerfulment, I went to check the chalk ad for accuracy.

Turns out, the “Women of KU” ad consisted of just the last three lines.

There was a little arrow directing readers of “Tired of Women Being Objectified? to another ad, one advertising this (which appeared in my email box not long after):

—–Original Message—–
From: owner-orgs-l@listproc.cc.ku.edu on behalf of [real person]
Sent: Mon 4/30/2007 10:40 PM
To: orgs-l
Subject: Join CSW this Tuesday night for fun, food and music!

Join the Commission on the Status of Women TODAY for:

Salon Nouveau: Promiscuous Girls and Other Topics in Modern Music

Come discuss women and modern music!

We will have.

Music videos
Food
Prizes
Coffee
And more!

Tuesday, May 1 from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Hawk’s Nest: 1st floor KS Union

And I was going to have SO much FUN ripping the Empowerfulment Movement a new one.

I am glad that the advertisers for that abomination of a calendar that pitiful excuse for empowerfulment Women of KU were NOT, in fact, using feminist idea(l)s to further corrupt women into thinking that Empowerfulness == Feminism.

The research Google search I did isn’t going to go to waste, however.

In searching for WoKU, I found the photographer who takes the pictures in the first place, who works at the local paper. Apparently he does this to “make people happy”:

“There are people out there who know I’ve been around the block [as a professional photographer/journalist] a couple of times, and the first question they still ask is, ‘What’s it like to photograph the “Women of K.U.?”‘” he said, laughing. “So I make sure they get a copy for them just to see them smile.

“It’s fun.”

Yep, people smile when they see women objectified. Oh, um, I meant heterosexual sexist men do. And maybe women and men who buy into the Empowerful business. I can tell you that I don’t smile at the thought of pictures of scantily clad young female college students sold $10 for a 12-pack.

Right now, I’m too mad to give this last bit a good analysis, although I know it’s there. Feel free to leave your opinions on this matter (as always, taking into account teh rulez).

hot teen action

So, is getting a bunch of spam advertising porn a sign I’m doing things right or what?

Seriously, this blog must have graduated or something. I only just to get ads for male sexual enhancement.

---

UPDATE (2007-04-25 08:24):

On a related note, Twisty takes note of the responsibility of porn has in maintaining rape culture.

As Vera Venom comments:

Simply put - people saw the *men* tortured at Aru Gharib and they were horrified!! Horrified!!

They see women tortured in brutal porn and it’s sexysexy!

I <3 her, muchly.

Feminism Friday, belated.

There’s been much on-bandwagon-jumping lately by the name of Feminism Friday (which I discovered via Thinking Girl), and I, on a Monday, have decided to start out with this. I’ve seen many ways to do this, and since I’m not in a place where I can do analysis of feminist issues with a (to me) clear voice, I am going to simply share where I’ve been, and maybe what thoughts they’ve provoked. We’ll see where all this goes, and how long I can keep it up.

Lessons this week(end) have been in discovering misogyny and the exercise of privilege in the durndest places.

God’s a bad, bad…

Holy. Crap.

I get this in my inbox, from my dearest one:

Play Track 5, “hand of the almighty,” and stick with it past your initial revulsion…
>> http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnrbutler

I suggest you do it too. Abso-friggin-WRONG. I haven’t laughed this hard in weeks (no exaggeration)!

Oh, and as a P.S.: I got official approval to add a couple more letters after my name today — I passed the M.A. oral exams. Woot!

File this under ‘X’ for “Covers I never thought I’d hear”.

Joel has posted something that I can’t quite believe — Alanis Morissette parodys (?) a really vile song. From the B’eyed Peas. You know the one?

I really can’t quite fathom it. Enjoy, anyway. It’s completely and utterly wrong (and yet so right).

File this under ‘H’ for “Not necessarily”

Charlotte Allen over at IWF defended her use of “crying rape” in a headline as having a neutral connotation, thus:

Just to clarify: The expression “crying rape” (like “crying murder” or “crying theft”) doesn’t mean the accuser is necessarily a liar. It just means she’s an accuser.

“Crying rape” does not bring the phrases “crying murder” or “crying theft” immediately to my mind (in fact, I’d never heard them used before Ms. Allen did so) but instead, evokes the phrase “crying wolf” from Aesop’s fable, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf“.

This most definitely does not have a neutral connotation, but a negative one: that of a false claim.

To be completely anal about it, I will do the most heinous of acts and consult a dictionary of the English language:

The Idioms section of The Free Dictionary:

• cry wolf:
  to ask for help when you do not need it, with the result that no one believes you when help is necessary.
  She had repeatedly rung the police for trivial reasons and perhaps she had cried wolf too often.
  [search link]

Not satisfied? How about these:

• [dictionary.com], under ‘wolf’: (11) cry wolf, to give a false alarm: Is she really sick or is she just crying wolf?
• [Merriam Webster], under ‘cry’: cry wolf : to give alarm unnecessarily
• [Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable], under ‘wolf’: To cry “Wolf!” To give a false alarm. The allusion is to the well-known fable of the shepherd lad who used to cry “Wolf!” merely to make fun of the neighbours, but when at last the wolf came no one would believe him.

Incidentally, I did Google both “crying murder” and “crying theft“, and the connotations were generally negative.

Compare this with some of the phrases captured when googling “crying rape“:

• Wife jailed for crying rape to hide infidelity.
• Poor desinger gets caught in USA, 3 ladies crying rape, when it was with mutual consent.
• A woman was jailed today for making false rape allegations against her ex-husband.

And those are just three of the top ten hits. Imagine if I went through all 130,000 of them.

I’d say there is substantial evidence that the phrase “crying rape” is not as neutral as you make out, Ms. Allen. That may be your intention, but I don’t think that’s how many people interpret it.

You would be correct if you insisted that “the lion’s share” does mean all of it, but if you insist on that meaning, who will now understand you? … Do not be so right that you will be misunderstood. Language is what we make of it by a language convention. — John Ciardi

and to think, I could have gone to MIT

Nothing personal, Dory.

… this story, via Tim Shea:

Time Travel Convention Planned for Saturday, May 7

I guess it doesn’t matter if I miss it or not, since I can always go later. The sad thing here is, that these folks actually had to come up with a reason for a party… isn’t that sort of thing just self-justified?