But only in a manner of speaking. Nietzche was only right insofar as a certain concept of God can be compared to the quintessential abuser, certain religious tenets redacting to “I love you, don’t make me hurt you”.
Kind of like Ike Turner, who died December 12, still denying he had ever beaten Tina, and, according to his biographer, still womanizing at least into his late 60s [story at the bottom of this page].
Analogy credit: Da Spouse
Declaration: I am a feminist.
I. Am. A. Feminist.
I am a radical feminist. I believe with all my being that all women are human beings, inherently worthy of all the rights and dignities that other human beings (men) enjoy.
I have been hesitant to ‘out’ myself to certain people I know; mostly conservative men, all of whom have no actual authority over me, some of whom are relatives, all of whom I consider to be friends. I have been afraid of losing their friendships and love because of my beliefs.
No more.
If I can remain friends with them, despite having serious objections to some of their beliefs, then they can remain my friends, if they don’t agree with me. If they can’t they were never friends to begin with. If they can’t love me and know I believe these things, they cannot really love me.
We women are asked, every day, to be silent about disagreeing with others so that we don’t upset them, so we don’t ‘rock the boat’, so we ‘aren’t a bother’.
No more.
Listen up: I am a radical feminist.
I don’t believe in limiting a woman’s control over her own body; I don’t believe any man has any right to exercise any control over a woman’s body, mind, speech or actions; I don’t believe any woman has any right to control other women either, whether of her own choosing or in the name of a man.
I believe anyone who attempts to control women’s bodies, minds, speech or actions are misogynist: including rape apologists, rape celebrants, Men’s Rights Activists, promoters or supporters of pornography, promoters or supporters of prostitution, people who seek to limit or obstruct women’s access to health care, contraception, safe and legal abortion, STD prevention, higher education, a living wage, food for her children, her choice of partner(s), her choice of clothing, her choice of sexuality and sexual expression, her bodily autonomy.
If any of these terms or concepts are confusing to you, or if you aren’t sure what I mean by any of them, you may read for yourself at any of the sources listed below. I will be happy to have a civil conversation with any of you about any of these things, where ‘civil conversation’ means you listen to what I have to say, and I listen to what you have to say, and we respond to each others’ concerns. Basically, all the caveats of this blog apply.
If you cannot understand, that is fine. If you will not try to understand, or will not read those things which I suggest that might help you understand, I will have neither sympathy nor time for you. If you cannot treat me like a human being, I will not stay around for the abuse.
Yep, my feminist education is serving me well.
I recently read that Joe Bob and Michelle (http://www.duggarfamily.com/) have had their seventeenth child, and, although a painful thought, I’m not really surprised. I tried to find the blog entry I’d read again (was it on Feministing? Pandagon? Broadsheet?) so I could send it to Da Spouse: one of the guests at a cookout we held last weekend mentioned it, and I wanted to share.
So I searched “Vagina Clown Car” on Google.
Of course, the famous line gracing the photograph of this family (which is old, I think: I only counted fourteen children) became the title to several posts around teh internets. When investigated they yielded some seriously misogynistic lines, all in the name of criticizing Republicans, conservative Christians, or whatever.
This Arkansas couple has seventeen children and still wants more. They’re all home-schooled. All the kids’ names start with the letter J. Is it just me, or does someone need a swift kick to the ovaries?
How many minutes out of the past thirty years has she spent on her feet?
Sure. Blame her. Call her an idiot. No, better yet, call her a slut. Say not one damn word about him. Or the religious background telling her about her Rightful Place.
This is the main point to this feminist:
Among the “fun facts” listed on Discovery Health’s Web page devoted to the Duggars: A baby has been born in every month except June; the Duggars have gone through an estimated 90,000 diapers, and Michelle, 40, has been pregnant for 126 months — or 10.5 years — of her life.
That is. So. Fucking. Scary.
EDIT: Women are now being educated into their Rightful Place… at Seminary. Specifically Southwestern, a Southern Baptist seminary in Nashville.
I’ve been back to reading the occasional feminist blog, as well as Salon.com’s Broadsheet. Usually I just read the articles, without even realizing, I guess, that there was a comments section too.
Perhaps, though, my subconscious was protecting me from what I was certain would be there.
What is intriguing (well, discouraging, really) to me is that the first (or early) response to each post there is some sort of personal attack, or statement meant to belittle, demean, or trivialize the topic — and usually by an anonymous poster.
Read the rest of this entry »
Having read Thinking Girl’s first guest post on Slant Truth (which boils down to “if you have privilege where another person doesn’t, and they feel marginalized, demeaned, etc.: shut up, listen and believe them. It’s their experience, not yours”), this thought ran across my head while catching up on the Twisty archives:
I believe a rape allegation because I wasn’t there, and she/he was, and that was her experience. If a woman says she was raped, the case needs to be taken seriously. Let the courts/judge decide, based on actual evidence, presented fairly.
Virtually everyone calls the reliability of a rape victim into question. The general consensus by the ugly side of the media machine (FOX News, I’m talking about YOU), once the declaration of insufficient evidence has been made, suddenly nothing has happened and ‘the girl’
made it all up.
Just because the prosecution couldn’t get up enough witnesses / the witnesses were not treated as credible doesn’t mean nothing happened.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Defense rests.
An acquaintance from way-back posted this li’l “funny” to her LJ a few days ago, and I posted an evaluative response in the comments [no direct url, sorry, but it's the first one].
I was curious, especially since I’d just put my big-ol-burgeoning-feminist opinion on her LJ*, exactly why she had posted that, and considering she listed her mood as aggravated, I thought of two possibilities:
1) Either she was aggravated at the thing she posted
or
2) She was aggravated at something else, and therefore posted it.
Possibly the two were unrelated, but I asked. She replied:
At this time in my life, i think i posted it because it was funny and because I’m sick of men who only want sex. Ya know what I mean?
My first response was:
Yup. That’s a frustration I know about.*** I’m sorry to hear you’re being pestered. My (angry, frustrated) response to that sort of thing was always “fine, see if you get ANY.” The “I’ll have sex when I want to, and you can’t make me, so nyah” response. Not my favorite, but sometimes the only thing that gets (got) listened to. Or not listened to.
So, yeah. I get ya. *HUGS*
What I thought about posting after, but didn’t, ran something like this: “Yeah, and then when I want(ed) to have teh sex, I felt I couldn’t because I’d be giving in again” + “Even if you do say that, it’s not always listened to” + something else I’ve forgotten just now.
I wasn’t done yet. I couldn’t just let all that go.
Then I had a Second thought: The list isn’t fair to women. The long list o’ requirements that women supposedly expect from men, some of which are not necessarily important… I mean, “love shopping”?, and the combination of which is clearly impossible, is used to characterize women as impossible to please.
Follow this with the short, lust-based men’s list, which, while treating men as animals who are subject only and always to their basest selves, use the concept of men having ’simple’ desires to shame women into submission: men’s desires, unlike women’s, would be so easy to fulfill, i.e., women ought to fulfill them, and be grateful men aren’t as ‘demanding’ as women are.
Part of me still wishes I could see this as funny. Right now, though, it just looks like an example of what men pushing for sex would say (have said) in order to get their way: “You women are so hard to please… why won’t you do the one thing to make me happy?”, or “Look at all the stuff you expect me to do; and you can’t/won’t do this One Simple Thing for me? You obviously don’t love me.”
Guilt trips = emotional manipulation. Full stop.
Something else interrupted the Second thought: Yeah, the list is funny, if you look at the first list as what would be appreciated If only that were something women could sanely do. But from where I’m sitting, I can’t, and won’t buy into that sort of stuff anymore. To me, the entire purpose of “funnies” like this, subconscious though it may be, is to shame women back into “their place” (see also, “The Husband Shop” in this post).
So no, dear, I don’t think it’s funny. I can appreciate that you might, and that at one time I would have too. Then, though, I was playing into the ’shaming women into sex’ game, and suffering from it as a result.
*and yes, I felt like I was forcing it on her**. Not really sure why; looking at that.
**this might have something to with the fact that the topic relates directly to pushing something unwanted on women, and I don’t want to be even remotely associated with rapist-like characteristics, even though this is 1) just my thoughts on a topic and 2) I dont’ hold a position of power/privilege over her and 3) she is free to delete/edit comments on her own site. Talk about being overly cautious.
***In previous relationships. My husband, my dearest one, is a partner in the truest sense of the word, and is by no means implicated in this. Anyone who implies otherwise will have me to deal with.
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.
On a related note, Twisty takes note of the responsibility of porn has in maintaining rape culture.
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.
The first full sentence to hit my ears this morning was from an NPR report that the Supreme Court has voted to hold up partial birth abortion legislation. What I first heard, however, was this:
The decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, stated the right to legislate on moral grounds … and that there would have to be proof that a significant number of women would be harmed by the legislation for it to be struck down.*
This question came to my mind today, in light of many, many things: the dismissal of rape charges against the Duke lacrosse team and a friend’s reaction to that, as well as Dora’s third post on Women and Violence at Shrub dot com.
It is, indeed, an insidious process that leads to victim-blaming and excusing the accused, regardless of what the evidence may say. As much as we’d like to think we have a fair justice system, the fact of the matter is that someone who makes an accusation of rape is disbelieved, belittled, and is regarded as being of questionable character, while someone who is accused of rape is rigorously defended, and the media is said to be unfair to the accused, and not the accuser.
I knew it came from somewhere.
1 August 2007 — nightgigjoIn relation to my next-to-most-recent post that happened to mention the madonna-whore dichotomy, a poster, puckrockhockeymom, made mention of it while she waxed eloquent on a Feministe post that was itself inspired by a PostSecret postcard which read “My greatest fear is that I’m good enough to f*ck but not good enough to love”. Read the rest of this entry »