No Shave November

So, there’s this thing called No-Shave November where people who can grow beards on their faces do that if they feel like it. I don’t know, it’s a thing. Whatever. I’ve heard that in recent years some ladies have hijacked it to grow big lady-bushes on their dainty lady parts, as part of some rebellion that shouldn’t even have to be a rebellion because other people policing hair on a lady’s lady parts is particular pet peeve of mine, so I won’t even go there at this moment.

Anyway, I have decided to also hijack this event for my own purposes, and have the intention of not shaving my legs for the entire month. Mostly I want to do this to see what it’s like. I began shaving my legs in sixth grade, before I even had any leg hair, because I wanted to be a grown up and leg-shaving seemed a great way to symbolize that. Since then I have never gone without shaving my legs longer than a day or two. I’ve tried waxing (WTF, ow.) and I’ve tried depilatory creams (my hair is sparse, but strong like an oak tree or something that stuff had no effect.) So I’ve shaved, every few days at least, for 28 years. I never really thought about it. It’s just what you do.

And then last year I was reading a blog by a lady who had stopped shaving her legs because fuck the patriarchy. And she said something that I found fascinating. She said that after her leg hair grew in, she was walking outside one day and suddenly realized that she could feel the breeze blowing her leg hair, and that this was like having an extra sense restored that she never knew she was missing. Suddenly her leg hair was this super-sensitive barometer of outside conditions. One that she’d been removing for years and years. And that kind of fascinated me. Like, what if I have been shaving off the equivalent of my legs’ twitchy cat whiskers all this time? What would it be like to feel the wind blow your leg hair? What if I never knew? And even worse, what if I never knew how such a basic body thing felt just because everyone said that I had to shave this hair off, forever and ever amen and I had never even argued?

And so, this month I am going to try my darnedest  to not shave. It’s cold enough now to be reliably tights/socks weather, and so no one has to know or give me some kind of cultural disapproval of my experiment unless I choose for them to see my legs. That said, I do not know if I will take to this very well. My leg hair is pretty sparse, but it really disturbs me to have it there. I already have a little bit of stubble, and I already really, really, really want it gone. But! I am going to hang in there as long as I can. Now, I will say that if this nascent foliage begins to get caught in my socks and ripped out in a painful manner, that’s a deal breaker. That’s not a curious sensation I long to feel. So we will see how it goes.

No, I will not be posting pictures, but I might let you know what it’s like. Also, you know, fuck the patriarchy.

Remember Your Priorities, Ladies!

I was just reading an article about a woman who has stomach paralysis – her stomach does not move food down to her intestines, it just sits there fermenting and eventually she vomits it back up. This means that she can’t get any nutrition and she’s slowly dying. Her hair is falling out and she is very weak, and has a hard time working. She’s also lost half her body weight, so she’s extremely thin, and keeps losing about 2lbs per week. They’re fitting her with a pacemaker in her abdomen that they hope will make her stomach contract and send food into her lower digestive tract. She is very ill and very desperate, and hoping that this surgery will let her return to a normal life.

Some guy in the comments: Well she looks amazing anyway!

Because we all know what’s really important.

Oh, and here’s the most recent cover of Vogue Italia, for your viewing pleasure. (and pro-Ana pinup needs)

In Which Popular Media is Bafflingly Popular

So I am totally unmoved by anything I’ve seen about Super 8 so far. It’s all blockbustery, effect, Speilberg, blah, and one expects that one ought to want to see it, or something. And I am sure it’s all thrilling and big budget and whoa. And yet, it makes me frown every time I see  the trailer. Then it suddenly occurred to me why I have no interest in it.

No girls.

Oh hey look, it’s another boys-coming-of-age-amidst-some-giant-catastrophe story. Yawn. Oh look. There’s a token chick to be the object of their adolescent interest. Yay. Some untouchable female ideal to get their chubby little adolescent cocks hard. Whee. Naturally the dudes have the action, and the girl is there to be inscrutable and fascinating, and naturally there are not TWO girls. That would be like, weird. One is plenty to get all our kiddie-cocks hard, dude, for real, we don’t mind sharing.

And thus the basis of my profound disinterest. (Also, go look at the trailer. Srs. It’s like, dude, dude, boy kid, dude, boy kid, dude, dude, dude, lady in the background, boy kid, girl they’re all in love with, dude.)

It’s just all “Stand by Me” and every other boys-grow-up kind of movie all over again, this time with a space alien or some shit.

Additionally, in thinking about other media in which a bunch of boys have an adventure with a token chick, I was thinking about “It.” And seriously it had never occurred to me to question or wonder why the only way that the kids could be saved at the end of it is their sole chick friend pulling a train with all of them down a sewer.

Really, Stephen King?

For a treat, go to Super 8′s photo gallery and try to find any females that aren’t Elle Fanning. I’ll wait here.

Oh, and here’s the movie’s official cast list from that site.

ID, Please

So I was watching a movie last night that was mildly interesting. Well, okay I was watching a movie documentary while I was also internetting and wandering around the house with some chores, so I can’t say I was like, raptly watching it or anything. But it was on, I guess is my point. So this documentary was playing, Nerdcore Rising, about nerdcore rappers on tour. I found it mildly entertaining mostly, at some points LOL funny and at some parts really dull as shit. But it did get me to thinking of a few things.

One of those is the way that geek guys bond with each other. I know a fair amount of really geeky guys, and they seem to share this vast repository of well-loved cultural artifacts that, although I grew up in the same time period, I do not have ready access to. You get these guys in a room together, and they’re speaking a secret in-joke language of games and toys and cartoons that I know about, but for which I have no real nostalgic feeling. And that got me thinking about the easier way in which guys seem to bond, at least superficially. I can sit down in a room with four other females my own age and we will not be throwing out references to movies we loved as kids, usually. We won’t be bringing up how much we loved our weirdo Barbie makeup heads and stuffed Smurfettes. We probably all share that same history, but it’s not a thing that we’re going to be like “Holy shit, Apricot was the dopest smelling of all the Strawberry Shortcake dolls! Lemon Meringue could not hold a candle to that sweet-smelling bitch. Dang!”

I wonder if in some ways that’s because of the types of toys that were/are marketed to girls. They all seemed to center on dressing up, being pretty, playing house, boring crap like that. They didn’t really encourage us to use our imaginations to have adventures and tell stories, they were centered on… looking cute and grooming. Boring. My brother had $6 Million Man toys that had exploding secret briefcases, and a Pele doll that would really kick a soccer ball. I had a giant disembodied head onto which I could apply makeup, and a lot of stuffed animals. Tell you the truth, I never liked toys that much. I liked books. At least sometimes in books something happened to a girl, or she actually started an adventure of her own. Continue reading »

…what you think it means…

I am happy that the Netflix site is working for me again, but I do not think that some of the terms their recommendation engine uses mean exactly what they think they mean.

To be fair, I haven’t seen the movie Brothers, so it might feature a “strong female lead.” But since it lists no women as stars, and makes little reference to women in its description and is called, you know, BROTHERS, I suspect not. Thanks for playing though, Netflix!

Where the Nonsense Ends

Does it not seem like everything ends in an argument, online? And I am not just talking about internet trolls and racist Post-Disgrace commenters, but about people who would seem to be on the same side of an issue, nitpicking that issue to death and arguing furiously among themselves over things that don’t matter all that much. Or, does everything matter all that much, maybe? Is everything worth arguing about? Like, OK you’re feminist, but not feminist enough, or in the right way. Or you’re feminist and support body-acceptance, and sex-positivity but you’re too hetero-normative and need to focus more on the queer/transgender experience. Or, you’re well-versed on transgender experience issues, but your language is non-inclusive of those who consider themselves asexual.

I mean really. These are all arguments I’ve watched happen online in the last week. The take-down of thoughtful, intelligent, well-intentioned people on nitpicky bullshit. Are you seriously serious? If I have to read about one more person screaming that their identity is being erased because they’re not specifically included in every sentence written about every topic discussed in the history of ever, I am going to turn off my computer in disgust.

And the sad thing is that they’re all right, in some way. It does suck to not feel represented, and not feel seen, and not feel as if people “get” your issue. But then again, that’s life. Ain’t never gonna be a time when everyone gets it. Does everyone have to be your super-sensitive ally, or can you give some people credit for good intenti0ns? And even if I am in need of education on your topic about which I should be more sensitive, dude, let’s just chill out on it. I am not actually attempting to destroy you in the process of expressing my own thoughts and experience.

I don’t really know the answer, as I honestly think everyone has a point that other people aren’t sensitive enough/educated enough about things, and especially all these nuanced, multi-hued things about body and sexuality and gender. But I am sick to death of watching people who are smart and interesting sit and in-fight with each other and cause weirdo rifts in what should be supportive, connected communities.

But I think that’s just the way of it, really, our tendency as humans. We want to bond over common ground, but we also want to be Set Apart, and Other. We want to be the same, but different and special too. We want to belong to a group, and also be recognized as the most Uniquely, Authentically Groupish of the Whole Group.

Shit – maybe THAT’S it. Maybe if  we allow for others’ experiences within our group to be different-yet-valid, we threaten our own identity as a part of that group, most especially as the absolutely perfected distillation we want to be of all that group stands for. And then if they’re different-yet-valid and we’re not right in the MIDDLE, then we don’t BELONG and then our identity is threatened and so we fight that. So… we destroy our own affiliated peer group from a fear of being told that we don’t belong to the group that was originally large enough to encompass us all, until we started splintering it.

Huh. Now that’s a thing to ponder.

On the things that make me so tired

So, there’s been a lot going on in ladyworld in the last week or so! So everyone knows the deal with Julian Assange, how he does important work and yet might also be a bad guy? And from what I’ve heard, it’s not uncommon that people who have the drive and ambition and ego to do great work are also flaming narcissists with boundary issues, and sometimes they do bad things. Those personality types can go together (looking at you Bill Clinton, and… well, most politicians and well… most people in any position of power over anything at all, ever.)

So, Julian Assange is someone who is at the heart of a good, important thing (Wikileaks) and also is accused of doing some really bad things (non-consensual sex things, we call that rape.) The rape charges are allegations at this point, he has not been convicted. But there is no reason to automatically disbelieve his accusers, just because he’s a guy who does important things, or because the timing is suspicious.

I will admit that this is a hard concept to grasp, it’s kinda cog/diss unless you’ve given it some thought, I suppose.  Here, I will let FeministHulk explain it:

Tough concept number one: People can do good important things and very bad things all at the same time. People are that complicated.

Prosecution timing, suspicious – and yes, as Naomi Wolf said in her HuffPo article, these governments (US, Sweden, UK) are completely pimping out this fantasy world where they aggressively pursue those accused of rape. And that makes me sick. They’re certainly picking and choosing who’s the focus of an international Interpol-assisted manhunt and who’s not, aren’t they. Fuck you, you three governments. You suck. Most/many rape survivors can’t even get a hearing, and some are dissuaded from pressing charges, given the same sort of evidence that these women are able to provide. Conveniently, this case is the one you take seriously? Give me a fucking break, we see through that shit. That brings me to:

Tough concept number two: It’s not fair that all rape cases aren’t treated equally. That doesn’t mean that this one shouldn’t be taken seriously.

So, all this is going on, and people have complicated reactions to it, given all these tough concepts. And Michael Moore, who was seemingly having some difficulty with concept number one, wanted to get involved and help Julian Assange out. So he spoke out for him, and posted some of the money toward his bail. Now, it’s possible to speak out for and defend the good things that this man has done, without disallowing the possibility that he’s also done bad things. But Michael Moore was not yet on board with that concept, and felt that to support him, he must discredit the accusations.

Enter Keith Olbermann

Michael Moore went on Keith Olbermann’s show and said the following: That the charges against Assange were “lies and smears” and a “bunch of hooey” as far as he was concerned. He also asserted that it was a crime in Sweden for a condom to break during consensual sex. This is actually not true, but he was not challenged on that by Keith Olbermann. He was not challenged by Keith Olbermann on any of those statements. But Keith Olbermann is a journalist. And if he was having someone on his show to discuss rape allegations and rape law in Sweden, I think he should research the case, and the law, and be prepared to make factual statements about those things, or at least challenge untruths. Even if the untruths are committed by warm fuzzy making people like Michael Moore (who speaks for the little guy!)

Now, the assertion that consensual sex with a broken condom is legal in Sweden was EVERYWHERE last week. It may have started with Assange’s lawyer saying it in court. But it was everywhere. You could not go anyplace and read or hear about this case without someone telling you that. And *I* repeated it, because I heard it from what I thought were trustworthy news sources. So I helped spread disinformation, unknowingly, and that’s embarrassing to me! I am really sorry I took part in that, and feel stupid. So, now here’s where we hold people like Keith Olbermann to what I am going to call… say… a higher journalistic standard. Keith Olbermann should have researched this, known the law, and refuted the statements that Michael Moore made. And if he could not do that at the time, he should have clarified after the fact, revisited the issue, made corrections. Because people listen to him and people trust him as a source for news. It sucks that I told my friends some of this stuff and it turned out not to be true, but it sucks way worse that Keith Olbermann facilitated Michael Moore telling it to hundreds of thousands of people.

The story now moves to Twitter, where Keith Olbermann retweets a link to an article alleging that at least one of the women who has accused Assange has CIA ties, and revealing the accusers names. The person writing the article, it turns out, is a Holocaust denier, and most reasonable people will then hold most other things that person says somewhat suspect. Okay, here’s an important thing: KO committed a major journalistic no-no (revealing the names of sexual assault victims, and promoting the idea that they were somehow colluding to spread lies about Assange, which placed them in very real danger) and later he issued an apology for the spreading of this information. Well, wait. What he actually apologized for was linking to an article that was written by a holocaust denier. I guess if the source had been on the up-and-up, it would have been okay for him to link to these women’s names, and broadcast them to all his followers, and accuse them of false rape allegations? No. That doesn’t make any sense. But keep in mind, it’s what he apologized for. And he deliberately stirred up his followers by repeating “I’ve already apologized!” When the apology was the equivalent of “Sorry I burned your house down using gas from the BP station, I don’t like to support BP because of that whole Gulf incident.” Dude  you BURNED THE HOUSE DOWN. That’s what you’re supposed to be sorry for!

Enter Sady Fucking Doyle

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown does not think any of this is remotely okay. She is, in fact, outraged. She wants Michael Moore to retract his false statements, and stop promoting the rape culture by shaming and smearing the victims who accuse men of rape, especially high-status men. Her very sensible argument is that this sucks, and makes women afraid to report rape because the backlash of it can be just as violating as the rape itself, and has little to no payoff in terms of the perpetrators ever being held accountable. That’s the rape culture. We live in it, we know it. But we don’t expect Michael Moore, of all people, to use it against us. Bill O’Reilly? Sure. That crying guy with the tennis shoes and the blackboard? Surely. But Michael Fucking Moore? And Keith Fucking Olbermann? These progressive liberal dudes are supposed to be ON OUR SIDE. They’re supposed to HAVE OUR BACKS. And then when this same old tired, played-out situation happens to someone they esteem/admire, suddenly no—these women are not to be trusted, their stories are suspect, perhaps they work for the CIA, and oh it was only “sex by surprise” and nevermind anyway.

No. Just no.

So Sady Doyle wants Michael Moore to say he’s sorry, and correct himself. She starts a twitter campaign, and you can read all about it in lots of places, so I won’t rehash it all here. But basically she wants MM to apologize, and it wouldn’t hurt if KO fessed up to shoddy journalism, either.

But they won’t. KO, in fact, throws kind of a fit, feels victimized, says he knows rape victims, so how dare anyone accuse him of not being sensitive! Darnit! And he uses a lot of pointed language to belittle some very legitimate greivances, and a simple request for an apology and clarification. He helps start a flame/troll war against Sady Doyle, riling his followers up so that they participate in some adventures with tough concept number one—which played out online as ”I like Keith Olbermann/Michael Moore, he says lots of things that I think are true and is generally a Swell Guy, so certainly anyone accusing him of anything is totally wrong. Fuck you, you cunt.” Which, that’s a lot of leaping around, but that’s pretty much how it happened.

Michael Moore, in the meantime, Mr. Champion of the Little Guy, would not deign to even address the issue. Just ignored it. Thousand of people calling for him to start a dialog, willing to hear his side, and he would not talk to them. Really startling and disappointing, to say the least. I am ashamed of him.

KO, then, in an even more disappointing maneuver, starts claiming that he apologized a long time ago! All this brouhaha is over nothing, because he already addressed the issue! And he tells that to his followers, most of whom do not check that out themselves to see that all he apologized for was the belief system of the guy who wrote that article that he should have never linked to in the first place – not for linking it. Then he starts claiming to be Just Folks, and LOTS of people have linked to it, and why hasn’t everyone attacked EVERYONE ELSE WHO DID IT, HUH? And that’s where we get back to the higher standard thing. Since he clearly knows and benefits from the fact that his voice is much more widely heard than the average person’s, he must show more caution in what he says. Simple.

And Michael Moore? Still silent.

Enter Rachel Maddow

Last night, MMoore was appearing on Rachel Maddow’s show, and the internets threw all their hopes behind her. Surely SHE would not betray us. Surely SHE, so smart and thoughtful and witty and seeing of the big picture, and speaking of the bold words and actually BEING a lady-person and part of a class that is discriminated against every single day, and everything, surely she would not let us down? And I have to admit that it was only with trepidation that I watched the show – I feared so very much that Ms. Maddow would not live up to the standard my mind has set for her. But she did. Here’s what she (quite reasonably) said:

The timing could not be more suspicious. The man accused says he’s being pursued for political reasons. But even if you’re suspicious about the timing, there are two women who went to the police with what are essentially date-rape charges against this guy….Can your suspicion about the forces arrayed against Julian Assange and Wikileaks — your suspicion about the timing and pursuit of these charges — coexist with respect for the women making these accusations against him and with a commitment to take rape allegations seriously, even when the person accused is someone that for other reasons you like?

And then Michael Moore came out and he said a lot of the same things, somewhat less coherently. Which was good, good that he said them. I am disturbed by the fact that this makes him seem like a good guy here, some kind of feminist hero, for people who had not been following along the whole time. Maddow didn’t challenge him to apologize about what he’d said before, she just offered him a chance to say the right thing now – and he did, and that’s good, but it presented him in a rather different light than the actual daylight reality of the situation. But anyway, he STFU with the “hooey” talk, which is good.

And then Olbermann finally bowed to pressure and started tweeting somewhat more reasonable things too. And so… people were grateful. People who had been protesting and demanding answers all week were glad to get anything, anything at all from these two pompous jerkwads. And I don’t blame them. I’d have been glad too, had I been in their shoes. It doesn’t change the fact that these two guys are total fucksticks who only act marginally right when hectored mercilessly for a week, and who only say what needs saying when sarcasm, tantrums, blocking, ignoring and lying about their challengers have all failed them. They didn’t see the light, they capitulated to the pressure. And it’s better than nothing, but it’s not the same as them understanding what they did was wrong. At all. All they seem to understand is that the trouble was not going away until they acknowledged it. And for that I commend those who kept the battle raging for a week. (Since my twitter feed is private, I could not join in – no one would have seen my posts. I only got into it very late when it involved @maddow, because for some strange reason [I think because I was one of her first followers when she got on Twitter] she follows me, so she could see my tweets.) So, I did what little I could. Anyway. It’s somewhat over now, to the extent that any such thing can actually be over.

Exhausted yet? I am.

This whole episode has sucked a little more of the will to interact out of me, I have to admit. I exist in a state of almost constant disgust and disappointment with our media. With my fellow humans. With the culture I am subjected to. It’s really shitty, the things my friends say, the things popular media tells me, what I have to read and listen to and look at all day. The messages that I am not valuable, and my voice doesn’t count, and my experience doesn’t matter, and my opinion is not only unimportant but also not to be trusted. That I need to change everything about myself and even when and if I would do that, it’s still not going to be good enough, that then I am just an attention whore, desperate to please. Women exist in this curious state of can’t-fucking-win-for-losing, as my mom would say. (But she would leave out the word “fucking” probably.) You are trying too hard, or not trying hard enough. You’re not pleasing enough people, or you’re pleasing too many people, who do you think you are? And on top of that we’re never really safe, and then we’re blamed both for doing things that make us less safe AND for being “paranoid” about our own safety. It’s… beyond tiresome. It’s truly mind-numbingly exhausting. It’s hard to stand up straight and remember who you are in such a world, really. And when you have identified people who are supposed to be on your side, who purport to be on your side, and who hold a lot of influence over OTHER people who are usually on your side, and those people kick your legs out from under you—the betrayal of it is heartbreaking.

And so I watched all this unfold over the past week, and I watched the fabulous Sady Fucking Doyle come basically unglued over it, with a broken heart, and lots of admiration. I watched people I esteem, like Kate Fucking Harding, get her back and support her, and that made me glad it was happening and sorry it had to, all at the same time. I watched media figures that I wanted to respect behave in really disappointing ways. I watched their rabid fan bases turn on each other and bring more ugly into the world. I became even more ashamed of all of us, as a society.

There is no moral to this story. It’s only another ugly tale of people versus people, where no one wins and we lose collectively. Anyone have a solution, aside from living in a cave?

Yeah, this!

So a user named “random-mash” posted this on reddit today – I don’t know if s/he made it or not, but I ganked it to post here because… true it is. And naturally half the comments on it were from guys who were either like – “Really? Why do you ladies let yourselves feel that way?” And then the other half of the guys were like “Stuff marketed to girls is stupid, are girls also stupid?” and the other half (I know the math is perhaps questionable at this point) were like “Why don’t you just pretend you’re a guy, and stop being a girl so people don’t have to call you out on your tits and whatnot? Being a girl is a cry for attention!” And kind of proved the cartoon’s point. So…everyone should read “Female Chauvinist Pigs” so I don’t have to keep explaining all this to everyone, because it wears me out.

Privilege Denying Dude

Ah, my sweet, sweet sons of white male privilege. (And to all the women you’ve conned into supporting you against their own interests, because they feel more powerful when they associate with men against other women.)

Now there is a meme ridiculing all the dumbass stuff you say and do! Feel free to get all butthurt, because, you know,  how dare someone make fun of a group you belong to! Why are people being so mean and not understanding YOU as an individual, and all the lovely, logical POINTS you are trying to make? Don’t they know you’re to be listened to for your wisdom, and not mocked? And also, you have feelings?! And just because lots of people in your group act that way and sometimes YOU act that way, it’s still not OK to make fun!? These jerks.

Anti-Propaganda Propaganda

Rape Apologists Mash-Up

So the other day I shared this post on Google reader, from The Pervocracy, because I have seen evidence of these behaviors SO MUCH online, and I liked the way she wrote about it.

And today there is a post on Gawker about a woman who works in tech who blogged that she was sexually assaulted by a dude who works in tech. Here’s her post. And imagine my lack of surprise when pretty much every rape-apologist troll in the world came out of the woodwork to fit these stereotypes!

So first you have to go read The Pervocracy post because it’s brilliantly written (if maddenning/saddening) and then you can come back for this delightful mashup where I found evidence of almost every single one of the douchey victim-blaming behaviors.

Hint: when we say we live in a rape culture, and that women are considered the sex class – THIS IS WHAT WE MEAN.

(comments taken from Gawker, the victim’s blog, and reddit – in most cases a paragraph break means a different commenter with the same message. Bolding mine because seriously WTF.)

Mr. What About The Men
I have to say I would be VERY leery of working or socializing with her in any fashion. The fact that she would broadcast her allegations to the world without presenting any proof, I find more than a little disturbing.

There are some things that youjust don’t do to someone, and one of those is making baseless accusations of a horrible crime that will destroy their reputation, regardless of how firmly you may believe the event happened.

Mr. Model Victims Only Please
This woman was drunk and probably ‘assaulted’ a bunch of guys at the bar in a similar fashion. Are they making a big ruckus out of it? No. Are they trying to publicly humiliate her for it? No. They are respectful of the fact that she misinterpreted their intentions and failed to avoid assaulting them. The double-standards in our society are absolutely ridiculous. Women can get away with any crap these days. It’s disgusting.

Ms. Fashion Police
What the fuck do you think is going to happen when you get tipsy in a short little skirt and bounce onto the person nearest you? Are you really so surprised that this happened?

Mr. I’m Not Blaming Her But It’s Her Fault
She may be a “victim” but she’s not innocent.

..also I think you might look/act like a slut.

Play beer pong
Lay across bed
Sit on laps
Find hands in underwear. Sounds pretty logical to me

Ms. Couples Therapy
you know this as well as i, that we can project our sexuality and power over men when we want to, but not all men can read the signals the same. the guy who assaulted you is dead wrong, no question. but i ask you to look inside yourself and ask that if you did not create a climate in which the wrong signals were being sent. no means no, and that is the end of the story. but you must consider whether changes in your own behavior could have avoided this situation in the first place

Mr. Offensive And/Or Baffling Metaphor
…there is something to be said for making yourself less of a target. Of course you have a right to wear whatever you want. You also have the right to hang out in dark alleys with bags full of cash. Doesn’t mean either makes a whole lot of sense in terms of making yourself less of a target.

Ms. CSI
So, she was standing there, waiting to go to the bathroom and this guy came over, grabbed her, and shoved his hands down her pants? Did I get this right? I mean, how baggy were her pants for this to happen? Did he unzip them first?? I’m trying to visualize the incident in my head, and it’s not really making sense.

Quite frankly [going to the authorities] should have been your first step, not going back to your room and sleeping.

Mr. Troll
Its a man’s world, always has been and always will be, and you can never change that, so get used to it and drop your panties already ya silly biotch!

Ms. You Don’t Just Get To Decide Whether You Consent
Were you asking for it? NO. Were you encouraging it? Yup. Men are dick-bags. Sounds like, from the comments, that you’ve been through this before. If so, you are not a victim, you are a participant.

Mr. How Do I Not Rape Someone It Is So Difficult
Sexual liberation: women give it away for free, and their judgment is so bad that often no one can tell the difference between consent and assault. Even further, men are now both sexually frustrated and rightfully scorn most women as self-involved sluts, so treat them even worse. What a good idea sexual liberation was.

As a guy it can be very confusing when doing the flirtation dance.

Part of the problem is that the signals women send are confusing. Men frequently are reduced to guessing.

Ms. Traditional Values
Sorry you had a bad evening but hell, who do you think hangs out late at night in bars – church goers? Grow up and learn from this and apparently your other experiences.

Mr. This Wouldn’t Happen If Women Would Just Fuck Me Already
“I’m so tired of men being interested in me sexually and trying to get in my pants after I’ve been teasing them all night” *sigh* I know your type… You love to flirt with guys and get attention (sitting in laps) and then act offended when someone guesses that you might be up for a roll in the hay. YOU are the problem, trust me.

I have no sympathy for you. You dress provocatively and expect men to leave you alone. When a woman does that, it’s exactly analogous to a man using his physical strength to overpower a woman. This is because just as women usually have no defense against a stronger male, men have no or little defense against their hormones when they see certain parts of the female body exposed in front of them. Dressing as you did is unfair; it puts undue burden on the men around you by taking advantage of their weak point. You’re foolish and naive for expecting to escape the evening without incident.

Ms. Avoid The R-Word
If the gentleman in question, is, in fact a gentleman. He should be mortified and extremely apologetic that he “misunderstood” your own intentions (or lack thereof) and physically exceeded the Boundaries of polite, gentlemanly behavior.

The only one I couldn’t find was this one:

Ms. Tough Girl

And frankly I stopped looking, as I need to go take a shower after reading those comments for an hour.

So many people, sucking in so many ways. Thanks to those of you who don’t.

Sloppy Fucking Journalism, Round 6,092

So there’s this AP article that ran in the local PD and it’s talking about birth control (many forms, not just the pill) possibly being free under the new health care regulations. It quite properly cites a medical authority on whether or not birth control should be covered as preventive care:

“There is clear and incontrovertible evidence that family planning saves lives and improves health,” said obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. David Grimes, an international family planning expert who teaches medicine at the University of North Carolina. “Contraception rivals immunization in dollars saved for every dollar invested. Spacing out children allows for optimal pregnancies and optimal child rearing. Contraception is a prototype of preventive medicine.”

OK, cool, nice to have a medical opinion that is in support of the issue at hand. Now naturally, they want a counter-opinion, in the interest of “fairness.” So what medical authority do they turn to for the counterpoint?

But U.S. Catholic bishops say pregnancy is a healthy condition, not an illness. In comments filed with the Department of Health and Human Services, the bishops say they oppose any requirement to cover contraceptives or sterilization as preventive care.

WTF? The US Catholic BISHOPS? Wait, why should anybody take medical advice from those guys? Is this at least like, the US Catholic Bishops with Medical Degrees or something? Huh, nope, just regular old bishops. I see. So a group with no medical chops to boast of has banded together to force church teachings into government policy and now they’re being cited as the counterpoint to a valid medical opinion? I mean, not only are these guys who have no medical degrees or medical authority at all, and who will also never be pregnant—they’re guys who (if all is working according to plan) will never even be in any way associated with a pregnancy. Not even from the standpoint of involved partner. They are so far outside the spectrum of “people who should be allowed to have a voice in this shit” that I cannot even SEE them from here.

And hey, you know what? Knock yourself out if you want to form some group to pressure government to do your bidding. That’s fine. Nuts can be expected to be nutty. But what gripes my ass is that this reporter puts this shit forth as a contrasting medical opinion, which it IN NO WAY IS. I am sure you can find some actual back alley, grime-smeared doctor someplace to say that having a trillion babies makes for a happy happy uterus, or other such nutbaggery—so get off your duff and find one. I probably wouldn’t give that person’s opinion much credence, but I give even less of two shits what a bunch of religious dudes with no medical degrees think about women’s healthcare needs.

Here, I have Venn’d it for you, all helpfully:

Today I am offended by:

What the fuck do you know?

I find this entire project so damn offensive and tiresome. As if I am supposed to feel better that someone I don’t know hypothetically finds me beautiful? That should make my day? Conversely, should it ruin my day if someone I don’t know finds me hideous? Of course not. If someone left me a note calling me a hideous hose-beast, then everyone would say “Oh what the fuck do they know!? Don’t listen to them!”

This is the same thing.

The opinions of strangers, people who do not know you (and many times, those of the people who DO know you) are not a thing upon which one should base one’s mood. Positive or negative, I don’t give a flying fuck what you think of how I look. This whole thing just perpetuates the stupid notion that people should always be happy that other people find them “attractive.” Oh the random compliment that made my life worth living! Oh joy! Gosh bless the fragile egos that this project caters to, those people are going to have a difficult way in the world.

And even if one bought into beautiful=important so being thought beautiful=happiness, this also smacks of “everyone gets a trophy, so everyone’s trophy is meaningless.” If some random stranger leaves me a note that says I am beautiful, in a random place, without ever having interacted with me, then they must think everyone is beautiful – and that makes their opinion on the topic meaningless.

I think that people should find themselves adequate to the task of living whatever kind of life they want to live, no matter what their appearance. I also know that’s insanely hard. But further externalizing the way we perceive ourselves based on random anonymous compliments is not actually helping.

You know what the internet needs more of?

Naked, skinny white chicks. Really, I would like access to more images of naked, skinny white chicks looking as if they really want you to fuck them, or looking dead, or looking vacant-eyed, or looking underage, or looking like they’re gonna do something sexy with another naked skinny white chick, or looking frightened or threatened or in pain. Or just plain old skinny naked white chicks with random sexyface. There is just not really enough of that shit. Naked skinny white chicks as art. Naked skinny white chicks as fashion. Naked skinny white chicks as accessories. Naked skinny white chicks as social commentary. Sometimes I think that when we went off the gold standard, our national currency secretly became based on naked skinny white chicks. (Images NSFW)

Casual Sexism in Action

Saw this in my Facebook feed this morning.

After I saw it, I had to go look Cat Cora up, as I had no idea who she was. Some kind of beauty queen/fashion model/sex worker, I presumed? Someone whose living was made by being “hot?” Someone whose “hotness” was in some way germane to the discussion of their attendance at an event?

But no. She’s a chef. A female chef. This means that instead of talking in any sensible way about her actual accomplishments and the purpose of her appearing at this venue, we get a personal opinion on her “hotness.” Presumably, no one is coming to listen to her talk about food, there will just be a bunch of guys beating off in the audience?

This very casual assumption that it’s OK to talk about the perceived attractiveness of women in every circumstance is blatantly sexist. Women are (in actual fact!) about more than their physical appearance. They have talents and skills and brainz, and all kinds of stuff! Not just Teh Tits!

I would assume that most people would not give a status update like this a passing thought. It’s completely natural in our society to remark upon a woman’s perceived “hotness” as if it is her duty to be hot, and our right to judge that hotness and remark upon it freely. There is no mention here of her actual purpose in showing up, what she will be talking about, her title of “chef”or any link to websites where one can get more information or even frame who this person is. We get only the information that’s most important. This female will give you a boner!

How interesting it would be if women were instead judged on the merits of the tasks they’re actually performing, and this kind of casual, blatant sexist crap set off everyone’s bullshit meter.