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

Tag: Misogyny

Rape Just Ain’t What It Used To Be

Apparently there’s a big problem with making a rape exception to anti-abortion laws: Rape today just isn’t what it was a few decades ago, when “unchaste” women could be forced into sex with impunity. Or at least that’s what pro-life Tennessee State Senator Doug Henry thinks:

“Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman, against her will, by some party not her spouse. Today it’s simply, ‘Let’s don’t go forward with this act.’ ”

You mean rape is forcing a woman into a sexual act against her will, after she explicitly tells you ‘no’? Well knock me over with a feather. Those feminists are just ruining everything. They’re taking away your right to force someone else into sex simply because she’s had sex before, and they’re even challenging your natural right to rape your wife (who, of course, you love dearly, almost as much as you love babies). Femi-nazis.

Here’s the video:

Support V-Day at St. Louis University

The international V-Day campaign has done amazing work for women world-wide — and women themselves have embraced V-Day in 120 countries. According to the campaign itself:

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexual slavery.

Sounds like something we could all agree on, right?

Sadly, no. Domestically, “pro-life” groups dislike the campaign because it involves the v-word: Vagina. And because, apparently, helping to end violence against women doesn’t exactly mesh with the pro-life message. I realize that sounds a bit hyperbolic, but V-Day is, at heart, about empowering women and girls to take charge of their lives. That’s exactly contrary to the “pro-life” view of women, family and society.

Students at St. Louis University are trying to do their part for international women’s rights by holding a V-Day event on their campus. Unfortunately, the administration is shutting them down, so they need a little help and I’m hoping that Feministe can come through for them. Below the fold is an email from one of their organizers, detailing the problems and what you can do to help. Please check it out:

Undoubtedly, you are familiar with Eve’s Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, and the world-wide V-Day campaign to end violence against women and girls. At our Catholic, Jesuit University, V-Day is a very special time for UNA as it gives us an opportunity to raise awareness about gender violence as well as much-needed money for local charities that serve women. Last year, in 2007 UNA was told by the SLU administration that we would no longer be allowed to perform The Vagina Monologues on campus–ever. On top of this, we are not allowed to advertise on campus at all, or even set up tables to sell tickets. Determined to still raise money for our charities, we found an off campus location last year and the protests and controversy surrounding the production helped us sell out all our performances.

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Sanesha Stewart is dead and I have only tears and frustration for her

A man named Steve McMillian apparently stabbed Sanesha Stewart to death on Saturday morning. Who was she? She lived in the Bronx. She was tall and femme and well-liked by her neighbors. She was a client at the law project where I volunteer, but I never met her myself. Some of my colleagues helped her get her name legally changed more than a year ago. None of the above mattered at all to the news media, which handled this tragedy with the appropriate combination of sensitivity, respect for the victim, and a very cold eye for the man who the police dragged from her apartment, covered in her blood.

Oh no… wait one second and back up. There was no respect and no cold eye, none at all. I must be imagining some completely different universe where young trans women of color aren’t automatically treated like human trash. Where we all live, business as usual is to make a lot of comments about what the murder victim dressed like and looked like, reveal what her name was before she changed it, automatically assume she’s getting paid for sex, and to make excuses for the alleged killer.

And please note: “Cops: Ex-con slays Bronx transsexual ‘hooker'” is not the original headline of this NY Daily News article. The original one was “Fooled john stabbed Bronx tranny,” until pressure from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation got them to change it. They are still suggesting that people take action by writing to the editors–follow that link for more details.

The Daily News also published a follow-up story in which Sanesha’s downstairs neighbor insists that she wasn’t getting paid for sex; the Daily News doesn’t offer any proof for their earlier assertion that Sanesha Stewart was a “hooker,” other than “police sources.” And as many trans people in New York City will tell you, the NYPD assumes that almost any young, Black or Latina trans woman walking around on the street, or going into an apartment building with a guy, is getting paid for sex work. Profiling is constant; women have been arrested around here simply for having a gathering in someone’s apartment, apparently it’s too suspicious. I mean why would any normal person want to hang out with one of THEM, right?

I don’t know if Sanesha Stewart was doing sex work or not, and I don’t think it really matters, other than the fact that the usual assumptions are being made. I don’t know what else to say. This kind of thing always leaves me at a loss for words, there’s not much to do but sit, and cry, and wonder how long it will be until the next murder. Until the next young, poor or working class, Black or Latina trans woman is murdered just for being trans, and then mocked by so-called journalists before her body cools.

Worst of all is the fact that even the newer article ends with a hint of what will undoubtedly be part of the next chapter of this story: the “tranny panic” defense.

Ramel C., 37, said McMillan had a girlfriend. He said his life-long friend must have been shocked to discover he was with a man.

“I’m not saying that’s a reason to kill anyone,” he said. “But I’m sure he was in some type of turmoil or shock.”

(Right, because no guy with a girlfriend has ever slept with or dated a trans woman.)

Read this, and then go look at some of the comments on those stories and the other news sources that megan_julca rounded up. The “trans panic” defense was used in the trials following the murder of Gwen Araujo, and those murderers got reduced sentences. We still live in a place and time where people think it’s “perfectly understandable” that someone would flip out and want to kill a trans woman just because they find out she’s trans. And those are the people who claim not to condone violent criminal reactions! Others are happy to step right up and say (at least on the anonymous Internet) that they’d react the same way and do the same thing. Trans people take the blame; trans people should be the ones walking around with prominent badges of shame, so all the “normal” people don’t make the wrong assumption. The question nobody ever seems to ask is, why would you automatically assume that the person you’re on a date with isn’t trans?

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Anti-Choicers Defeat Birth Control Bill in South Dakota

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A South Dakota bill that would have given women easier access to contraception and taken substantial steps to decrease the unintended pregnancy and abortion rate was defeated in the state senate — by “pro-life” legislators.

The Birth Control Protection Act said South Dakotans have the freedom to obtain and use safe and effective methods of contraception without government interference.

“It is the public policy of this state that the interest in freedom from unreasonable government intrusions into the private lives of citizens, and specifically the right of consenting individuals to obtain and use safe and effective methods of contraception without interference by governmental entities … ” the bill stated.

Birth control is not abortion. It does not cause or promote abortion. Birth control is the most effective way to decrease the abortion rate. And yet those who claim to oppose abortion the most are the same people who are taking the strongest steps to increase the abortion rate.

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From the special moderation queue

From someone calling himself* “Fuck all you fat crazy feminists”:

All you crazy cunts need to get a clue. Women are not mentally capable of ruling. Hell you can barely think straight enough to drive cars. The rest of the time you spend running from mice. Just so you know – you will never be equal. It’s like this – just because the rabbit desires to be the equal of the wolf doesn’t mean that she won’t get her ass eaten. Stop dreaming of “being equal” and start ironing shirts!!! You dumb fat bitches. 🙂

Because adding a smiley at the end means you didn’t really mean it!

___________
* I suppose it could have been a woman, but when one’s email address brags about the size of one’s banana, it’s a good guess one is a man.

Oh noes! Not pink underwear!

I’m a puffed-up misogynist twit!
He likes to call himself “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” but he might as well be called “America’s Most Opportunistic Publicity Hound And Misogynist.” Yep, Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, has crawled out from under his rock to bask in the television lights because the Superbowl’s comin’ to town, and he wants to be sure to get some free publicity:

GLENDALE, Ariz. – If it comes to it, the oft-proclaimed “America’s Toughest Sheriff” says he has a pair of pink underwear, a bologna sandwich and a spot in a dirty old prison tent for Tom Brady, Eli Manning or, most certainly, Paris Hilton.

Maricopa County – which includes much of metropolitan Phoenix – is host to the Super Bowl, one of the nation’s most decadent party weekends where, sometimes, celebrities and even athletes find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Around here the law means Joe Arpaio, the tough talking, tougher-ruling sheriff who would like nothing better than to make an example out of a high-profile criminal and give them the kind of treatment you might expect in what used to be the wild, wild West.

So for the football player who might get into a bar fight or the starlet who might drive drunk, consider yourself warned.

While it’s nice to see that any celebrity or athlete will be treated the same as anyone else, it’s useful to keep in mind what it’s like to be treated the same as anyone else in one of Joe Arpaio’s jails. The cornerstone of his strategy? Pink underwear.

Pink underwear: When he noticed that inmates kept stealing jail-issued underwear, he dyed them all pink in an effort to humiliate male prisoners and cut down on thefts. It worked and he even sells a line of pink underwear to raise money for the sheriff’s office.

That’s right: Arpaio’s strategy is to feminize the male prisoners, thereby humiliating them. Because there’s nothing worse than being a girl. But I loved the unquestioned assumption that the tactics work because feminization is so bad, and not, say, because it’s a lot harder to pass off pink underwear as your own rather than as the jail-issued stuff.

Other tactics include feeding his prisoners only bologna sandwiches, housing them in tent cities out in the Arizona desert, and making them work on chain gangs. I’m really surprised that nobody’s managed to file a successful civil rights claim challenging these practices, which seem to be put in place not for the benefit of public safety, but for the benefit of Joe Arpaio’s reputation.

Obsession

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Chris Matthews claims that he isn’t obsessed with Hillary Clinton and other female politicians — but for someone who could care less, he sure does talk about them a lot. Head over there and read the very damning evidence. My personal favorite Matthews comment:

“[S]he’s clapping, like she’s Chinese. I know the Chinese clap at each other, but what is she clapping at? I mean, it’s like one of these wind-up things.”

I wasn’t even aware of the stereotype that Chinese people go around clapping at each other. Thanks, Chris Matthews, for simultaneously spewing misogyny and expanding my racist worldview!

Why I Love Bob Herbert, part 8472

This.

With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s win in New Hampshire, gender issues are suddenly in the news. Where has everybody been?

If there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America. Sexism in its myriad destructive forms permeates nearly every aspect of American life. For many men, it’s the true national pastime, much bigger than baseball or football.

Little attention is being paid to the toll that misogyny takes on society in general, and women and girls in particular.

[…]

To what extent are the candidates of either party concerned about these matters? Do they have any sense of how extensive and debilitating the mistreatment of women and girls really is?

We’ve become so used to the disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous and even violent treatment of women that we hardly notice it. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed against women and girls every day. Fashionable ads in mainstream publications play off of that violence, exploiting themes of death and dismemberment, female submissiveness and child pornography.

If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service.

Just read it all.

Pat Oliphant’s gender anxiety and Hillary-hating run deep

That cartoon I posted about below isn’t the first, or even the worst, of the overtly misogynistic cartoons Oliphant has turned out this year.

I’m with Scott — I need a shower after looking at the collection that Mithras has put together.

You know, sometimes I wonder if we overuse the “Assholes” tag here, but then I see stuff like this and I realize that yes, there are just that many assholes in the world.

UPDATE: Good gravy, I had forgotten he was responsible for this one, too.