In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: October 2011

The Only Girl In The Group

This is a guest post by Meghan O’Neill.
Hi. It’s Meghan. I’m a comedian. I mostly work in sketch comedy and I once belonged to a sketch group where I was…get ready for it…THE ONLY GIRL IN THE GROUP! […] a lot of the time, I was the author of those sketches. I was writing myself as the part of the patient wife or the bitchy girlfriend or the silent, sexy old lady and giving the spotlight to some other male person. On a good day, you’d call that generous. On a really good day, you’d call that stupid! Why would any writer/actor give up their best parts?!

Tech interlude: quote and reply bug

A few people are finding that when they use the Quote and Reply link in comments the quoted text ends up stripped of spaces so that it all runs on and on and on and on.

I’m going through and editing these as I find them, but if it’s happened to you could you briefly at least let me know your OS and browser so I can look for the cause?

In Norway, Gender Equality Does Not Extend to the Bedroom

A must-read piece about intimate partner violence and rape.

Sexual violence against women in Scandinavia shares characteristics seen in more unequal societies: It is all too common and rarely reported, and those who commit it are even more rarely convicted. Ancient prejudices about male prerogative and modern assumptions about female emancipation conspire to create a thick wall of silence, shame and legal ambiguity.

One in 10 Norwegian women over the age of 15 has been raped, according to the country’s largest shelter organization, the Secretariat of the Shelter Movement. But at least 80 percent of these cases are never brought to official attention and only 10 percent of those that are end in a conviction, the Justice Ministry says.

Nowhere is this taboo more stubborn than in the family home, long considered off-limits for law enforcement and the state.

“The statistics tell us that the safest place for women is outside, on the street — most rapes happen at home,” said Tove Smaadahl, general manager of the Shelter Movement. In a 2005 survey by the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 9 percent of female respondents in a relationship reported experiencing sexual assault.

“No, we don’t have equality between men and women,” Ms. Smaadahl said, “not until we have addressed the issue of relationship rape.”

Heroes

Zurana Horton.

New York’s Daily News is reporting the gut-wrenchingly sad story of a pregnant Brooklyn mother who died amid a hail of bullets on Friday afternoon as she tried to protect schoolchildren at Public School 298 in the borough’s Brownsville section from a gunman perched atop a nearby roof.

Zurana Horton, the 33-year-old pregnant woman, was hit in the head in front of the Lucky Supermarket at Pitkin Ave. and Watkins St. after she threw herself over a group of children, cops and witnesses said.

“Moments before, she was seen hovering over several children to protect them,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

The second woman was shot in the arm and chest. The 31-year-old was listed in stable condition at Brookdale University Hospital. The 11-year-old girl, identified as Cheanne McKnight, a 6th-grader at P.S. 298, was being treated at Brookdale for a graze wound to the cheek.

A source said Horton, a mother of 13, had just picked up one of her kids from nearby P.S. 298. A teacher ran to her side and whisked at least one of her children into a nearby firehouse for safety.

FBI redefines rape to mean, like, rape

The FBI’s official definition of rape, via its Uniform Crime Report, has remained unchanged since 1927: “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” Obviously, this is problematic on a number of levels–basically, every word except for “the” and “of.”

1. the carnal knowledge – excluding any assault with fingers or foreign objects, on any orifice but the vagina
2. of a female – excluding anyone not a cis female (the definition actually explicitly classifies male rape victims as victims of sexual assault)
3. forcibly – excluding any assault involving drugs or coercion
4. and against her will – excluding statutory rape

Correction–the words “a” and “and” also seem pretty square.

We can’t know exactly how many rapes have gone uncounted to date, because the government doesn’t track figures on we-don’t-consider-it-rapes. And so we can’t know how much funding has been withheld based on the not-real-number of rapes counted. But in the interest of clearer accounting, the FBI’s UCR subcommittee has voted unanimously to put forward a new definition for vote by the advisory board:

Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration of a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.

Now, this change doesn’t directly affect rape arrests, charges, or convictions–this is about records and reporting. But this can help keep the number of reported rates more closely in line with the number of actual rapes, meaning that federal resources can be directed to prosecution of actual rapes. So it’s progress, 84 years in the making.

In the end, I suspect the broom is a pretty good equalizer.

Women aren’t involved because they don’t want to be involved. Do you know how hard it is to recruit a woman who isn’t interested? It’s not fair to recruit based on sex over ability. Sometimes women choosethe less prestigious positions because they’re easier. And we have to accept the fact that there are things that men are just naturally better suited to do–that’s just biology.

Science? Tech? Business? Quidditch.

Muggle Quidditch leagues are, apparently, dealing with a new ruling that states that every team must have a 4:3 ratio of male players to female and vice versa, and some are not dealing with it well. This is a bit surprising for two reasons: 1. Quidditch was always co-ed in the Harry Potter books and movies, placing absolutely no preference on males over females and regularly featuring female team captains and players in all the same positions, making a very clear statement that boys and girls are equally skilled and respected in Quidditch. 2. This game came from a book about a boy wizard.

The current IQA (International Quidditch Association, of course) standard dictates a ratio of 5:2, so a team with five players of one sex would be required to have two players of the opposite sex. The IQA found that in many cases, teams would bring in those minimum two women and then relegate them to less prominent roles–because let’s face it, being a beater isn’t quite as exciting when you aren’t fighting off actual, enchanted medicine balls out for blood–and changed that ratio to 4:3. Thus the aforementioned complaints about women and recruiting and physical limitations and blah blah you’re playing a full-contact co-ed sport on brooms. There aren’t a lot of similar athletic programs out there to base your rule structure on.

The rule will go into effect for the fall 2012 season, delayed because of the impending Quidditch World Cup. This leaves teams plenty of time to start recruiting new players as necessary to meet the required ratio, cross-train their players to be stronger at multiple positions, and get all their whingeing out of the way so they can settle down and play some Quidditch.

Masturbation is totally gay

I’m sure some of you will be happy to hear the news: I’m apparently a big ol’ homo.

Haha oh wait, women don’t masturbate, really — I mean, I’ve heard they do? But let’s be real here. We’re talking about sex and desire, so obviously let’s focus the attention where it really matters, on the people whose sexual desires are real and important: Men. Women can masturbate men, and that’s ok as long as those men are their husbands. A man can masturbate if he’s got one hand on his wife’s boob. But men masturbating alone: That’s a big no-no, because it makes you gay. Since you’re touching a cock.

First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.

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