-
–My mistrust is not, as one might expect, primarily a result of the violent acts done on my body, nor the vicious humiliations done to my dignity. It is, instead, born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark my every relationship with a man—the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the careless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreaction, the eyerolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language (“humankind”).
There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. They tell them and I can laugh, and they can thus feel superior, or I can not laugh, and they can thus feel superior. Heads they win, tails I lose. I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, “I love you.” I love you, my daughter. I love you, my niece. I love you, my friend. I am meant to trust these words.
There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil’s advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women’s Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that’s so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.
-Shakesville - The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck (via misandry-mermaid)
Feeling this pretty heavily right now.
-
WHAT I CANNOT CHOOSE
Blue or red pill toss up.
Was a toss up between green and blue, but I think I’ll go with blue cause damn it would be nice to teleport to my folk’s house for a weekend or inside a wall street bank vault or to disneyworld or whatever.
-
Yes, false rape accusations happen. Run the protocol anyway. I’ve heard that perhaps the military has the highest number of ‘em. True or not, RUN THE PROTOCOL ANYWAY. Because in 15 years of investigating rape accusations, I can count those that panned out as false on one hand. Meanwhile, the one time I almost skipped the protocol, the one time I almost didn’t believe a petty officer, because I was naive as an investigator and a young woman, because her commanding officer described her as “a party girl, always late, always out drinking, don’t bother with this one”, she turned out to be the victim of one of the most brutal assaults I’ve ever investigated. She shouldn’t have still been -alive-, let alone up and making the accusation. So let me repeat: five false accounts in fifteen years. And one time I almost failed a woman ‘cause of the bullshit way it’s normal to talk about us. Take your shipmates’ word, and then run the protocol. Every. Single. Time.
– - JAG lawyer, speaking to my husband’s plant during Sexual Assault Prevention Month. (via circusbones)This hits home for me.
(via heirofmedusa)(via heirofmedusa)
-
Anon submitted:
I stumbled upon this site and I think it’s a great movement! I did a drawing/illustration a while back and I think it might fit in here.
Oh man, your art is GREAT! And this picture is really funny, made me smile big time.
Guys, check this artist out. He’s really great!
-
6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism →
These six scientists were snubbed for awards or robbed of credit for discoveries … because they were women.(via sciencechicks)
-
You know I can’t even really be mad that this scene doesn’t manage to pass the Bechdel Test because of how beautifully it highlights everything that Elementary has done in granting women agency within narrative space to significantly impact the course of the plot and drive things forward. This scene has several big duties to pull and it does them all quite beautifully.
First, it helps to highlight what I’ve seen other people mention before, that Elementary does a very good job of balancing danger to Joan without dismissing her responses. In this scene the peril to Joan is evident. She is plucked off the streets and brought to a restaurant to converse with someone she knows to be a ruthless murderer and yet there is no hysterics to tug at the audiences fear responses by placing Joan in a “torture porn” setting where she is restrained or the light is dim and she ultimately fulfills the narrative role of damsel in distress. The danger is real and the audience feels that, but we don’t have the pandering payoff of seeing Joan tied to a chair and at someone’s mercy. Joan may be in peril, but she is not forced to play into the expectations of what that should look like.
Second, it highlights Joan’s extreme courage. This is the first time she has been face to face with the woman that she had known as Irene knowing that she is in fact speaking to someone who had orchestrated probably hundreds of deaths. The very first line of this scene is Moriarty’s observation is that Joan is not afraid of her. Joan’s rebuttal, that she is to angry to be scared, is both a testament to her control and her protectiveness of Sherlock. Joan is beautifully unwavering in this scene.
Third, it sets up Moriarty’s downfall by highlighting the advantage that Joan has in this pas de trois, her interpersonal intelligence. Both Moriarty and Sherlock have a certain degree of external emotional intelligence, they can see reactions in others that they can consciously interpret, but they have a poor grasp of their own emotions and expressions because neither are very used to deducing inwardly. (Though one can argue that Sherlock, through Joan’s interventions, is making progress.) To Joan it must have been almost painfully obvious, maybe even too obvious causing her to second guess, that Moriarty is in love with Sherlock and that is her weakness. To the audience, it seems pretty clear as well. Joan is pulled off the street and threatened in a crowded restaurant with assassination and one of the few real questions (a question that is quite obviously dodged) is if Joan wants to have sex with Sherlock. If that doesn’t smack of insecure jealousy, I don’t know what does. But Moriarty has completely failed to see that she’s tipped her hand because the recognition of her own responses is clouded by how distant she is from her own emotions. She doesn’t see her jealousy because she doesn’t feel her own emotions, merely observes them. Joan can recognize this situation for what it is because she is in touch with her emotions and those of others, including those around her who are least in touch with theirs. In a very beautiful way, the very thing for which Sherlock and Moriarty might dismiss Joan, sentimentality, is what very much saves the day.
(via fandomsandfeminism)
-
-
The Problem with 'Boys Will Be Boys' →
For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!”
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.
It was so tempting.
He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
She had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement.
(via fandomsandfeminism)
-
(via fuckyeahfeminists)
-
– Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (via queeringmisogyny)The abusive man’s problem with anger is almost the opposite of what is commonly believed. The reality is:
Your abusive partner doesn’t have a problem with HIS anger; he has a problem with YOUR anger.
One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you —as will happen to any abused woman from time to time —he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straightjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.
(via beebebruiser)
