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Shameful
But What About The Gay Men?
Feminist Philosophers has a pdf linked on their site – it’s from a few months ago – and it’s full of women’s mug-shots and jesus.What the fuck is that shit about? It’s so blatant.
When are they going to start publishing photos of rape victims so they can let everyone know about the dangers women face ‘at the hands of men’, it in no way would be to shame them. Just like it’s totally not about shaming prostitutes, it’s just about letting the world know about the ‘dangers’. And shush, those dangers aren’t lack of mental health or other social services, there’s plenty of help available from God.
On page 11 of the .pdf there is a list of the charities ‘providing services’ to those “prostituted persons”. They are:
What Is Wrong With These People?
Seriously – Here’s a discussion from BBC radio I think (do they even have radios over there? : P ) and it says it’s only available online for a few more days, so listen while you can.
1) They have a panel discussion of 3 anti-prostitution moral crusader types – (who say things like it’s good to stigmatize prostitution, so good girls won’t stray) – and just one “former prostitute”/journalist/mother of 6 kids who also -kicker!: went to jail for making false rape allegations -which of COURSE bothers the hell out of me and that shit ought to bother the hell out of everyone but here’s the thing that all y’all haters better understand – really fucking understand – that’s why they chose her – to discredit the prostitute’s rights movement. If you think they did the right thing by trying to discredit the prostitution rights movement you’re an asshole. It’s fair and balanced don’t ya know, because they have the sacrificial lying dirty whore there to represent all the rest of us lying dirty whores. Wonderful.
- Someone at the forum I found this on, which I will endeavor to find the link to in a moment (ah-ha) observed something about one of the moral crusaders that was really key -
Women Can’t Be Heroes?
So, I’m over on Alternet earlier and I see this article: Media Fail: 2nd Cop, not Kimberly Munley, Brought Down Ft. Hood Shooter
On Friday, the New York Times ran an interview with Sgt. Mark Todd, the police officer who, contrary to previous reports, ended the Fort Hood rampage by shooting Nidal Hasan.
Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley has been applauded as a hero across the nation for shooting down Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan during the bloody rampage at Fort Hood last week. The account of heroism, given by the authorities, attracted the attention of newspapers, the networks and television talk shows.
But the initial story of how she and the accused gunman went down in an exchange of gunfire now appears to be inaccurate.
Another officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, said in an interview Thursday that he fired the shots that brought down the gunman after Sergeant Munley was seriously wounded. A witness confirmed Sergeant Todd’s account.
This Just In: Prudes Don’t Like Floozies
I saw this and this about this ”Sluts or New Feminists” article, and made this comment on feministe, but I think it was too long and it got caught in the moderation queue or something:
Quoting from the article:
They argue that women who invoke a new kind of feminism — the right to have sex whenever and with whomever they choose — is demeaning to women.
“A popular thing to say among this intellectual crowd, in the ivies and in feminism in general, is to say that sex is empowering and a real woman uses her sexuality in any way she pleases,” said Rachel Wagley, a 20-year-old sociology student who is TLR’s co-president. “It’s blatantly false and a lie that this culture tells to girls for their own benefit.”
Gee where have I heard that before? Oh that’s right I hear that from half the feminists I run across every day. Heck, you don’t even have to be hooking-up, just showing your flesh gets the “you’re not empowered, you’re stupid” shaming treatment.
As annoying as that is, that this person says ”A popular thing… in feminism… is to say that sex is empowering” – is even more annoying. It’s totally obvious she’s never been to IBTP or any other of the many sites out there that don’t believe in the “casual sex is empowering” stuff – so how can she even say she knows ANYTHING about feminism if she doesn’t realize that this is a HUGE debate within feminism? If she even googled “sex empowering” or anything, she’d have known that her theory that “feminism in general” has a hive-mind belief of any kind is simplistic bullshit. Oh but that’s right, she knows, and she meant to co-opt the whole thing – don’t credit radfems for the theory; while simultaneously pushing “feminism in general” into the role of the opponent who wants women to be big-ol-dirty-sluts.
Gah. that’s annoying. I don’t care what side of the empower-ful debate you’re on, it’s not cool to have non-feminists claiming feminist theory as their own.
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“England, who set out to explore the dating habits of college students, found they were kissing, having oral sex and sometimes intercourse with “no expectation that either party has an interest in moving toward a relationship.”
The horror. NO relationship?! AT ALL?! The absolute horror.
“There’s a lot of degrading treatment of some women and it is empoweringly free for other women,” she told ABCNews.com.”
I bet 10 bucks right now that next we’ll hear that women who do like to “hook-up” only do so because they have been abused or are victims of incest.
Andrea Dworkin on BookTV – from 2002
The video isn’t embeddable you can watch it here (update: maybe you can watch it, the page is giving me trouble now, says it has errors) It’s 51:24 in duration, including introduction and question and answer portion. I’ve transcribed only Ms. Dworkin’s prepared speech, beginning at 3:30, below, and my thoughts on what she said follow:
Apparently I Lied
When I started this blog and said “it won’t have a constant stream of sex worker’s rights stuff”, apparently I lied. Sorry ’bout that.
To tell you the truth, I don’t even really think of it as sex-worker’s rights stuff, I think of it as general human rights stuff. It’s similar to when I would rail against the drug war; that wasn’t because I wanted to do drugs, it was because I’d seen so many people’s lives ruined by the attempted legislation of morality and I wanted it to stop. It wasn’t about the dope smokers and line snorters who got thrown in jail either, it was mostly about mandatory minimums being applied to drug offenses, which resulted in violent criminals being released, and the forfieture laws that violate the right to presumption of innocence and cost truly innocent people their homes, land and savings. I had been sentenced under mandatory minimum guidelines, and not too long after I’d been released a cop was shot and killed by a violent repeat offender named Robert “Mudman” Simon who’d been granted early parole:
In May 1995, Robert “Mudman” Simon, a motorcycle gang member, shot and killed a New Jersey police officer during a routine traffic stop. 4 Mudman had been paroled from a Pennsylvania prison only months before the attack. (source)
between 1970 and 1982, “Mudman” Simon was convicted nine times for crimes that included things such as murder; robbery, rape, weapons charges, receiving stolen property, larceny, issuing worthless checks, forgery, and many other things. [...]Even though he was at one time charged with murdering an inmate, on February 18, 1995, he was released from the State Correctional Institute at Graterford, and on May 6, 1995, just several months later, he shot a policeofficer on a routine traffic stop. (source p264)
When the Mudman story broke I felt compelled to write my first-ever letter to the editor of my local paper. I ranted about the mandadory minimums on drug offenses that had sent prison population skyrocketing up to 130%~ capacity and resulted in violent offenders - who were not covered under mandatory minimum laws – being released far, far too soon and with horrific results. They printed it, I was happy, and I still have a copy of it stashed away somewhere on a shelf in a box of memories.
Tom Ridge was the Governor of Pennsylvania at the time: ”He was elected in 1993 on a campaign stressing fighting crime. He sought and won new anti-crime laws early on, though some were ruled unconstitutional. During his two terms, Ridge pursued a get-tough agenda using all the police-related branches of state government. He’s had little patience for critics, from death penalty opponents to civil libertarians.” Of course, mandatory minimums are a federal sentencing guideline, so the governor had no power to override them, Ridge served as Pa.’s tough on crime governor right up until Bush appointed him director of Homeland Security - and we all know how well that worked out.
Now, when I read about the anti-trafficking organizations targeting the commercial sex industry I have the same worries; that a lot of truly innocent people are being put in far worse situations than they need to be. It seems so simple that decriminalization, or legalization and regulation of sex work is the only way to truly help the people who have been trafficked against their will. It’s the illicite nature of the sex industry as it is now that makes autonomous sex-workers as well as those who have been forced into servitude extremely vulnerable.
Hypatia: Last Light of the Library
I don’t know when this movie is supposed to be released in the US. I heard December 18th, but then I read this article from October 14th detailing the trouble finding a US distributor because of belief that it will have “limited appeal”. Apparently the patriarchy has a problem with it.
It’s the cinematic story of the last days of Hypatia, a mathematician and astronomer, and a pagan woman; a scholar in the ancient city of Alexandria. Some modern scholars consider her death to be the first “witch burning” of the long and brutal transition from pagan culture to christian rule. Socrates of Constantinople, an early church historian (c.380~) wrote of her death:
Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING
Before there were social contracts or sexual contracts there were biological contracts. Biological contracts have always been and always will be, unless we as a species learn to asexually reproduce, and even then there will be a contract between parent and offspring.
8=5+5=10 and I Love Your Boobs!
I love your boobs.
The boobs in this sentence have been objectified.
This is not feminism. This is language. It’s about people, and parts of people, being used as the object in a sentence. It can be done correctly or incorrectly. Correct usage gives us understandable results. Incorrect usage gives us a recipe for disaster. How many times have you had something similiar to this conversation:
What Comes Next Is Up To You
Malevolence arrived
to brutalize.
It took us over
it told us lies.
It burned our words
as it burned our flesh
To silence, to stop, to oppress
