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POPSReactionary anti-women "men's rights" groups go mainstream
More: Toward the end of her piece, Joyce makes a particularly fascinating point about MRAs' domestic violence arguments: Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims. MRA groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false, as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the violence as mutual—part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse—as individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence was reciprocal. Additionally, MRA groups’ predictions of future violence by fed-up men wronged by the family-law system seem an obvious additional correlation, with the threat of violence seemingly intended to intimidate a community, like a fearful spouse, into compliance.
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POPSvideo: Jasiri X - "Beware Young Girl" More lyrics: And to the shock of her family and the witnesses she was charged with assaulting police and resiting them the difference when you black just the claim that ya yellin can turn a preacher's daughter to a dangerous felon so I tell em Verse 2 So much fun she had at the homecoming dance 930 she got to leave to get a ride from her dad saw a friend runnin past he asked her come and grab a little something that would last the party's jumpin in the back she laughed this was her chance to hang with the cool kids the older guys ones she didn't even go to school with but the rule is to never drink with strangers I wish that I was there so I could tell her she's in danger that those who she thought were good fellas would sedate her beat her and gang rape her and they would forever change her with hatred and anger for 2 and a half hours they brutalized her worse than pouring acid on a flower Continued below.
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POPSGore Vidal: latest candidate for Worst Person In The World I can't come up with anything to say without descending into epithets and ad hominem insults against Mr. Vidal, so I'll just repeat: candidate for Worst Person In The World. EDITED TO ADD: Let me make this clear . Comments alleging that the victim wanted it, deserved it, or was indeed a prostitute as Vidal alleges are out of line and (as of 2:20 pm Pacific time) will be deleted from here out. Comments alleging that "we don't know the full story" display the commenter's ignorance of the grand jury testimony and and (as of 2:20 pm Pacific time) will be deleted from here out. DO NOT EVEN TRY TO CLAIM THAT A 13-YEAR-OLD IS AT FAULT FOR HAVING BEEN RAPED, NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES.
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POPSOn becoming invisible More: I abandoned my cart, walked over to Customer Service, and asked if I could have a comment form to fill out. The Customer Service employee—who, bless his heart, could see me—said they didn’t have a comment form, but he listened to my complaint… He told me that if I wanted to talk to the Assistant Manager…I could deliver my complaint in person. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the Assistant Manager had been one of the guys who couldn’t see me. What the hell. It was worth a try. I walked over to the Assistant Manager. When I was just a few feet away from him, I stopped, planted my cane, and looked directly at him. Damned if I wasn’t still invisible. It was weird—he was a tall man, but when his eyes moved from one side to the other I could see them making an upward bump in their travel path when they were passing over me. He refused to look directly at me for even a second. I kept looking straight at him. There was no way he could have missed me.
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POPSWhat is "rape culture"? Click through for the whole thing. More: Rape culture is treating straight sexuality as the norm. Rape culture is lumping queer sexuality into nonconsensual sexual practices like pedophilia and bestiality… Rape culture is rape being used as a weapon, a tool of war and genocide and oppression. Rape culture is rape being used as a corrective to "cure" queer women. Rape culture is a militarized culture and "the natural product of all wars, everywhere, at all times, in all forms." Rape culture is 1 in 33 men being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is encouraging men to use the language of rape to establish dominance over one another ("I'll make you my bitch")… Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements.
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POPSJohn Scalzi on the latest "girls are ruining science fiction!" idiocy More: Well, actually , the thing to do is trap such creatures in a dork snare (cunningly baited with Cool Ranch Doritos, Diet Ultra Violet Mountain Dew and a dual monitor rig open to Drunken Stepfather on one screen and Duke Nukem 3D on the other), and then cart them to a special preserve somewhere in Idaho for such as their kind. We’ll tell them it’s a “freehold” — they’ll like that — and that they will be with others of a like mind, and there they will live as men , free from the horrible feminizing effects of women and their gonad shriveling girl rays . And then we’ll tag them with GPS and if they ever try to leave the freehold, we’ll have them hunted down by roller derby teams with spears . That’s really the optimal solution. But since we can’t do that , then pointing and laughing will suffice. So, yes: let’s all point and laugh at these funny little terrified stupid men, and then ignore them. Because that’s what they rate.
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POPSNew Oklahoma law will publicly post details of women's abortions online More: “They’re really just trying to frighten women out of having abortions ,” Keri Parks, director of external affairs at Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma, said. The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging the law, arguing that “it violates the Oklahoma Constitution because it ‘ covers more than one subject ’ — a challenge that previously worked to strike down an abortion ultrasound law.” Too bad "because it's a gross violation of privacy and nobody's business but the woman's and her doctor's" doesn't seem to be one of the factors. NOTE: Comments claiming that abortion is murder or insulting women who have abortions or the doctors who perform them will be deleted . Take it somewhere else if you want to have that discussion.
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POPSA clarification of "The Terrible Bargain" More: Iain's taken a long look at the Terrible Bargain from its other side, and doesn't want the easy comfort of unexamined privilege at the cost of my trust. And so he does his best to quell that reflexive defensiveness and listen. And in those moments of listening, we forge a new bargain, lovingly struck: He looks inside himself for the hardened bits of internalized misogyny that yet linger, unexamined; I hand him in exchange the crumbling bricks of a protective wall built long before we met. The rubble collects at our feet, and we kick it away.
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POPSComplaining about sexism means you're a "ranty-pants"? More: You don't have to be anti-sex, or even anti-porn, to chafe at a dominant aesthetic that just happens to play right into the pocketbooks of the beauty and anti-aging industries. Our cultural preference for skinny, nubile women is at least as much about money as it is about male desire — and it's about the least taboo thing I can imagine. Rebelling against a system that actually tells men what to like — as well as, of course, telling women how to be — actually seems kind of sexy. And refusing to do what you're told — in this case, to quietly accept sexism so as not to seem "strident" — can be exciting. So rather than reading Turner's new column…as the blotter of the fun police, I'm going to think of it as a dispatch from the fun radicals, a textual Molotov tossed into the edifice of institutionalized misogyny. And I'm going to enjoy it.
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POPSInsurance companies: "Domestic violence is a pre-existing condition." Your partner hit you? No health insurance for you, ever! This is WRONG. More: “In 1995, the Boston Globe found that Nationwide, Allstate, State Farm, Aetna, Metropolitan Life, The Equitable Companies, First Colony Life, The Prudential and the Principal Financial Group had all either canceled or denied coverage to women who’d been beaten.” Source
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POPSOn skepticism and sexism More: Some people wrote in suggesting that the topic wasn’t worthy of discussion, and that Carrie and I exaggerated the problems. Many of the responses showed that on the contrary, we underestimated the problem and were downright wrong to say that the only sexism in the community is unintentional.… Why is it that feminists are so often misrepresented as being too sensitive, when cases like this clearly show the opposite? Neither Carrie nor I ever told anyone “fuck you.” We never called anyone a sexist. We never lost our temper and we gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, assuming or accepting clarifications that an insult wasn’t intended. If only the same could be said for those who took offense to our discussion.
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POPSJury convicts man of raping multiple prostitutes as his attorney says sluts and whores deserve rape The defense attorney continued with his attempts to slut-shame the women this man had raped: "They are not like your wife, your girlfriend or your daughter," he said. "They are street tramps. And what happened to them was, at least in part, their fault."… Giggenbach said the law protects them from violent crime just as it protects everyone else. "That's a wolf right there," Giggenbach said, standing before Gravely and pointing. "A wolf who attacks the weak, the uneducated and the socially crippled, because he knows they are not going to go to the hospital or the police. "He's a serial rapist, 15 or 20 times in our community," Giggenbach said. "Lurking, stalking, waiting for the weak to come out at night. "You find him not guilty and you tell this man, 'You go right ahead, anybody in this community can do that,' Giggenbach told jurors.
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POPSWhy rape is not "just rough sex" [CAUTION: likely triggery] More: Worse: imagine that you are so frightened that the person will kill you that you just lie there, unresisting, unmoving, trying hard not to really be there in your body because then the stick shoving dessert down your throat doesn’t hurt quite so badly…. Imagine that you survive the forced-feeding, and that as your attacker leaves you, either in the place of attack or having dropped you off somewhere to make your own way home, that they mock you by talking about how wonderful your favourite dessert tasted, and how lucky you were that they gave you more of it than you’d ever had before. And now for the kicker: * Imagine that when you tell people what happened, and how bad it was, and how scared you were and how hurt your body is, they look at you blankly, and say: “But what’s the problem? Everybody knows that you really, really like that dessert!”
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POPSThe terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: confronting casual misogyny More: There are men who will read this post and think, huffily, dismissively, that a person of color could write a post very much like this one about white people, about me. That's absolutely right. So could a lesbian, a gay man, a bisexual, an asexual. So could a trans or intersex person (which hardly makes a comprehensive list). I'm okay with that. I don't feel hated. I feel mistrusted—and I understand it; I respect it. It means, for me, I must be vigilant, must make myself trustworthy. Every day. I hope those men will hear me when I say, again, I do not hate you. I mistrust you. You can tell yourselves that's a problem with me, some inherent flaw, some evidence that I am fucked up and broken and weird; you can choose to believe that the women in your lives are nothing like me. Or you can be vigilant, can make yourselves trustworthy. Every day. Just in case they're more like me than you think.
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POPSCodeStink and pals promote AHAVA, lol is this really at the top of their "to do" list? Methinks I shall purchase some AHAVA products today in fact: http://www.deadsea-cosmetics.com/ (free shipping worldwide! )
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POPSWhy I don't watch horror movies From a discussion of the movie Deadgirl . More: Nope, that’s all entirely coincidental… I think we should be more mindful of what we allow into our minds; whatever we put in stays there, and the sum-total of our thoughts and memories is who we are. There are many, many other things we can choose to absorb into ourselves instead that foster a brighter outlook on life or convey useful information (even if it’s in a disturbing way). In my opinion the problem isn’t disturbing or violent imagery per se, it’s subjecting ourselves to enormous amounts of it that lacks any constructive context.
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POPSIranians Rape Virgin Girls Before Executing Them
And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. "I remember hearing them cry and scream after was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her." Apparently, this was known. From a book review in 2002: It remains to be said that the fate of women in the prisons of the Iranian Islamic Revolution is worse than the fate of men. It is not necessarily because women are less resistant and less tolerant to torture, but because women are considered from the theological perspective of the Iranian regime to be an element of seduction, and their bodies a place of evil and impurity. The torture of a woman's body may take the form of rape. Despite the necessity of secrecy that imposes itself in these cases . . .
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POPSI was raped, and I am standing up...because the worst thing you can do is pretend it doesn't happen More: What could my friends have done differently? It doesn't matter. Rape doesn't single out the drunk nympho from the poor side of town. Any number of my friends could have been assaulted, and 1 in 3 of them will be by the time they leave college. Most won't report it, because reporting a rape or assault is humiliating. I would know. So stand up. Stand up for your sisters and mothers and brothers and sons. Stand up until our world changes the way it looks at assault survivors. We're not outcasts, suffering from some horrible disease that if you get too close, you'll catch it. We're your neighbors, your friends, your family members. Stand up for us, because the worst thing you can do is pretend it doesn't happen. US Department of Justice statistics say that 71% of rapes are committed by rapists who are known to their victims. 71% . It's not the guy in the dark alley you really need to worry about… it's the ones you don't think you need to worry about.
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POPSResearcher: article is "a flat, unambiguous, factually incorrect misrepresentation" of my findings More: “When I saw the article my heart completely sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they’d got this study.” Since I started sniffing around, and Sophia complained, the Telegraph have quietly changed the online copy of the article, although there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate. But there is a second, less obvious problem. Repeatedly, unpublished work – often of a highly speculative and eye-catching nature – is shepherded into newspapers by the press officers of the British Psychological Society, and other organisations. A rash of news coverage and popular speculation ensues, in a situation where nobody can read the academic work.
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POPSSome answers to "But why didn't she fight back?" More: If women are raised being told…that: -it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (”mean bitch”) -it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (”crazy bitch”) -it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (”stuck-up bitch”) -it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (”angry bitch”)… -it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (”dyke bitch”) -it is not okay to raise your voice (”shrill bitch”)… If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways. And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.
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POPS"The central tenets of 'natural childbirth' are racist, sexist lies" More: Pain in childbirth served a very important function…it was the punishment that befell women who became too educated, too independent…The idea that "primitive" women had painless childbirth was fabricated to contrast with the painful childbirth of "overcivilized" women. Grantly Dick-Read was issuing a warning to women of a certain social class: if you step beyond the roles prescribed for women, you will be punished with painful labor… In light of this, the contemporary popularity of natural childbirth is more than a bit ironic. The central claims of natural childbirth, that childbirth is not inherently painful, and that if you "prepare" properly, your birth will be painless, too, were utter fabrications. Read would be delighted that these fabrications have been embraced by many women and that his philosophy has been propagated so successfully that most women don't even realize that the central tenets of natural childbirth are racist and sexist lies.
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POPSMisogynistic Mad Libs More: In which woman (bonus if not remotely a feminist) can independent act , yet Ronald Reagan is allowed to die! As the Bible says, verse (bonus points if it mentions submission, Eve, or the Virgin Mary; minus points for Mary Magdalene) . And as ill-defined group such as "some people" have warned, vague alarmist statement . What will happen to the men of the world if these weird, outdated term for "women" are allowed to take control? What will happen to our values? The only solution is for women like female public figure who is not Ann Coulter to get back in the small, restrictive space so that they can return to euphemism for breastfeeding and men can return to euphemism for bludgeoning . :lol:
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POPSThe compassion of Dr. Tiller More: As everyone who knew Tiller points out, Tiller's motto was "trust women." He had the phrase printed up on buttons. Rest in peace, Dr. Tiller.
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