Nov 24

History, the News, Men, Women, Life, Death, Joy, Pain

History, many say, is nothing but violence, war, death …

Yes, because men write it.

If women wrote history, maybe we’d put something else center stage.  Maybe themselves.

And maybe if all that violence didn’t make the front page, there’d be less of it.

And if men became unimportant, then what they did would become unimportant.

But pain, death—it can’t help but be important.

Yes, but there’s been more birth than death.

More joy than pain?

Perhaps.  What I feel when I’m out paddling, the sparkles on the lake, the music in my headphones, it’ll never make the news.  For others, it’s the delight of a child’s giggle.  For others still, the swell of new knowledge gained or an antique restored.  These things do not make the news. 

(But how powerful a new car is?  That makes the news.  Every fucking day.)

Nov 16

When men are raped

When men are raped, as they often are in prison, does anyone ask them are they sure they didn’t want it?  Does anyone come even close to suggesting they asked for it, they are to be blamed for it?  Is anyone quick to add ‘alleged’ to the report?

Sep 29

Educating Women to Reduce Over-population. Right. They’re the problem.

So the other day I came across, yet again, mention of the idea that educating women would reduce over-population. (Right. They’re the problem.)  I find that questionable.

If education makes the difference, then why aren’t we educating the men as well?  And if the men are already educated, then clearly education isn’t the solution: they’re still impregnating/reproducing.  (Perhaps advocates of such a solution are imagining that an educated woman is going to tell her uneducated husband or other would-be-impregnator to not stick his penis in her vagina, and the man will say ‘Okay’ and go do something else.)

I suggest that if we want to reduce over-population, we need to get rid of sexism. In a sexist society, men are valued more than women, so people want to have at least one son, so they keep reproducing until their goal is met. No sexism, no pressure to produce male babies, less reproduction.

In a sexist society, women have little control over their bodies, so contraception and abortion are often not easily available. No sexism, no mandatory pregnancy, less reproduction.

In a sexist society, men feel entitled to use women sexually without their consent. No sexism, no rape, less reproduction.

Sep 06

from Jeffreys’ The Spinster and her Enemies

“As Dale Spender points out in Women of Ideas, women’s theory
has been routinely dismissed and written out of history whereas
men’s ideas have been called philosophy or politics.1 In no
instance is this clearer than in the case of the feminist philosophy
of sex that we will be looking at here. The contempt with which
these theories have been treated doubtless owes a great deal to
the significance of their challenge to the dominant male ideology
of sex. …”

from Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and her Enemies

Sep 02

“Girls shouldn’t read any books written by men” – check it out

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/feminist-author-girls-shouldnt-read-any-books-written-by-men/

May 23

Why Pornography Matters … Andrea Dworkin

My god, there’s something placard-worthy in every paragraph!!

“Why Pornography Matters to Feminists” from Letters from a War Zone, Andrea Dworkin:

Pornography is a n essential issue because pornography says that women want to be hurt, forced, and abused; pornography says women want to be raped, battered, kidnapped, maimed; pornography says women want to be humiliated, shamed, defamed; pornography says that women say No but mean Y e s— Yes to violence, Yes to pain.

Also: pornography says that women are things; pornography says that being used as things fulfills the erotic nature of women; pornography says that women are the things men use.

Also: in pornography women are used as things; in pornography force is used against women; in pornography women are used. Also: pornography says that women are sluts, cunts; pornography says that pornographers define women; pornography says that men
define women; pornography says that women are what men want women to be.

Also: pornography shows women as body parts, as genitals, as vaginal slits, as nipples, as buttocks, as lips, as open wounds, as pieces.

Also: pornography uses real women.

Also: pornography is an industry that buys and sells women.

Also: pornography sets the standard for female sexuality, for female sexual values, for girls growing up, for boys growing up, and increasingly for advertising, films, video, visual arts, fine art and literature, music with words.

Also: the acceptance of pornography means the decline of feminist ethics and an abandonment of feminist politics; the acceptance of pornography means feminists abandon women.

Also: pornography reinforces the Right’s hold on women by making the environment outside the home more dangerous, more threatening; pornography reinforces the husband’s hold on the wife by making the domestic environment more dangerous, more
threatening.

Also: pornography turns women into objects and commodities; pornography perpetuates the object status of women; pornography perpetuates the self-defeating divisions among women by perpetuating the object status of women; pornography perpetuates the
low self-esteem of women by perpetuating the object status of women; pornography perpetuates the distrust of women for women by perpetuating the object status of women; pornography perpetuates the demeaning and degrading of female intelligence and
creativity by perpetuating the object status of women.

Also: pornography is violence against the women used in pornography and pornography encourages and promotes violence against women as a class; pornography dehumanizes the women used in pornography and pornography contributes to and promotes the dehumanization of all women; pornography exploits the women used in pornography and accelerates and promotes the sexual and economic exploitation of women as a class.

Also: pornography is made by men who sanction, use, celebrate, and promote violence against women.

Also: pornography exploits children of both sexes, especially girls, and encourages violence against children, and does violence to children.

Also: pornography uses racism and anti-Semitism to promote sexual arousal; pornography promotes racial hatred by promoting racial degradation as “sexy”; pornography romanticizes the concentration camp and the plantation, the Nazi and the slaveholder;
pornography exploits demeaning racial stereotypes to promote sexual arousal; pornography celebrates racist sexual obsessions.

Also: pornography numbs the conscience, makes one increasingly callous to cruelty, to the infliction of pain, to violence against persons, to the humiliation or degradation of persons, to the abuse of women and children.

Also: pornography gives us no future; pornography robs us of hope as well as dignity; pornography further lessens our human value in the society at large and our human potential in fact; pornography forbids sexual self-determination to women and to children; pornography uses us up and throws us away; pornography annihilates our chance for freedom.

May 20

Men are allowed to …

“Men are allowed to set and have boundaries, they are allowed to say no. Women are not: we must be open-minded and inclusive to the point where we must say yes to everything. Yes to porn, yes to abuse, yes to prostitution, yes to lower pay, yes to dating men when we don’t want to.” from a post by lk at FeministCurrent

(Especially apt regarding the whole TERF thing…)

May 20

Andrea Dworkin addressing an audience of about 500 men …

“…why are you so slow? Why are you so slow to understand the simplest things; not the complicated ideological things. You understand those. The simple things. The
cliches. Simply that women are human to precisely the degree and quality that you are.

“It is an extraordinary thing to try to understand and confront why it is that men believe— and men do believe— that they have the right to rape. Men may not believe it when asked. Everybody raise your hand who believes you have the right to rape. Not too many hands will go up. It’s in life that men believe they have the right to force sex, which they don’t call rape. And it is an extraordinary thing to try to understand that men really believe that they have the right to hit and to hurt. And it is an equally extraordinary thing to try to understand that men really believe that they have the right to buy a woman’s body for the purpose of having sex: that that is a right. And it is very amazing to try to understand that men believe that the seven-billion- dollar-a-year industry that provides men with cunts is something that men have a right to.

“… men come to me or to other feminists and say: “What you’re saying about men isn’t true. It isn’t true of me. I don’t feel that way. I’m opposed to all of this. ”
And I say: don’t tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There’s no point in telling me. I’m only a woman. There’s nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying
that they represent you. If they don’t, then you had better let them know.

excerpts from “I Want A Twenty-four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape”

May 10

Crying Rape for Regret

Regarding the view that women ‘cry rape’ when they regret having had sex, let’s concede for a moment that that’s true. The concession begs the question: why do so many women regret having sex?

Even if it turned out to be a mediocre experience—if the man wasn’t very good at it, due to lack of skill or lack of maturity (in terms of wanting the woman to have an orgasm too)—one would hardly cry rape.

Perhaps the woman got pregnant. If she didn’t want to get pregnant, one would think she’d either be using contraception or she’d trust the man to wear a condom. So either the contraception didn’t work or the man didn’t wear a condom (or took it off part way through) or he promised to ‘pull out’ before ejaculation (not knowing that semen can get into a woman’s vagina even before ejaculation).

However, my guess is that the woman thought they were going to make love, and it turned out he was just fucking her. Worse, she realized (once she realized it was just a fuck) that she’d get a bad rep, to put it mildly: her name would circulated, the guy would post humiliating comments, maybe even images, on social media, etc., etc., etc. It makes perfect sense: as long as women who consent to sex are considered sluts, they’ll be tempted to cry rape—non-consent.

So men, you don’t want to be charged with rape? Don’t have sex the woman will regret: make it great sex; use a condom; and don’t consider the woman a slut because she wanted it.

May 01

excerpt from Pornography and Civil Rights, MacKinnon/Dworkin

Pornography [also] engenders sex discrimination. By making a public spectacle and a public celebration of the worthlessness of women, by valuing women as sluts, by defining women according to our availability for sexual use, pornography makes all women’s social worthlessness into a public standard. Do you think such a being is likely to become Chairman of the Board? Vice President of the United States? Would you hire a “cunt” to represent you? Perform surgery on you? Run your university? Edit your broadcast? (p.48, emphasis mine)

Worth repeating.

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