Reblogs Feminism Socialism Equality Sexual Racial & Religious Freedom
http://twitter.com/#!/Dansesouslalune
I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office.
—Jennifer duBois, Writing Across Gender (via florida-uterati)
Overfishing, global warming and pollution threaten to transform the ocean—and perhaps life as we know it
This is important.
[TW: rape, coercion, harassment, molestation]
Have I ever had “ANY unwanted/undesired physical or sexual contact”?
by Molly
Earlier in this pregnancy, I filled out my “Initial Health History” form for prenatal and birth care. You know: check the box if you’ve experienced severe headaches, diabetes, all sorts of things. After the usual “Emotional abuse,” “Physical abuse,” “Sexual abuse,” I got to this very interesting item: “ANY unwanted/undesired physical or sexual contact.”
And I almost went blithely on without checking the box that means I’ve experienced it. Because nothing has happened to me, really, right? I’m supposed to feel lucky, right, given that I’m a woman in a culture where horrible things very often happen to girls and women? But then I actually thought for a second, and reality hit me.
–
I have been grabbed and forcefully kissed, open-mouthed, by a stranger while walking through a crowded club behind friends.
I have been groped and rubbed on while dancing at parties in college, at bars, at clubs: a parade of hard penises I most certainly did not want to feel. For a while, I went dancing at a bar where women could dance on the bar, because it was the only place I could figure out to enjoy dancing without getting felt up: being ogled and treated like I was likely to strip at any moment felt safer and less disgusting than the alternative. And I like dancing.
I have felt my ass grabbed and pinched and stroked on crowded city streets and public transit, from early adolescence on.
When I was fourteen, I hemorrhaged while menstruating, leading to a very early first gynecological exam. After putting her fingers inside my body as I lay–abjectly terrified and deeply ashamed, feet in stirrups–on the table, the doctor asked whether I was sexually active. And when I said no, she assumed I was lying. That was my first experience of another person touching my genitals, and while technically she had my consent, let’s just say it didn’t go well. Many years of nightmares, body shame, and bouts of anxiety ensued.
Between the ages of twelve and nineteen, I attracted a great deal of ‘fatherly’ attention from middle-aged men who stood too close to me, touched my shoulders for no apparent reason, moved me physically where they wanted to go rather than using their words.
I’ve had boyfriends repeatedly touch me sexually in ways they knew I didn’t like. Because they wanted to.
There was a professor in grad school who would stand way too close to me (and lots of other young women) at department functions, doing odd things like stroking my arm, leaving me quite unsure how to respond without harming my future as a student and as an academic.
When I was twenty-one, a married acquaintance in his forties asked me to meet up with him and a group of friends for a drink one evening. He was drunk when I got there. He licked my neck. When I left for my car (to get the hell out of there and see my new boyfriend, who incidentally was Eric), the man followed me outside, scaring the shit out of me. He stood there towering over me in the dark parking lot, me backing away from his closeness, as he tried to convince me to go with him to his car.
Just for instance.
–
I’d never envisioned these little experiences as part of a larger pattern before filling out that form. They’re just so ordinary. My mother and stepmother and friends and, I’m sure, students have experienced all of this shit, and are continuing to experience it–and much scarier and more scarring shit, too. Many of you have, and do, and will. In many senses I am lucky. Yet despite my comparatively good fortune and my considerable privilege–which I totally acknowledge–the truth is that each of these ‘little’ moments in my life articulated what quickly became a powerful theme:
Your body is not for you. Your body is for men’s pleasure.
And you are at risk, all the time.
-
When I checked the box next to this item on the form, curious five-year-old Noah asked what it meant. I read it to him, and he asked what it meant again. I said something like “Well, Erin wants to know whether anyone’s ever touched me in a way I didn’t want, like kissing me when I didn’t want that, and unfortunately that has happened to me. A lot. But not recently.”
He looked at me very seriously.
Then he gave me a serious smile and slowly, slowly, maintaining eye contact, gave me the gentlest kiss in the world, on my mouth.
I refuse to do the happy dance because I was fortunate enough not to be molested as a little girl and have not been violently raped. I refuse to be abjectly grateful for ‘getting off easy’ with the experiences I’ve mentioned here.
Because I deeply resent that they are normal.
Because I can hardly stand the thought of these constant erosions of personhood seeming normal to our daughters and sons.
But for this love and gentleness and compassion, I am infinitely grateful.
I offered several (unconvincing) reasons why it was reasonable to assume that the subject’s reports of change were credible and not self-deception or outright lying. But the simple fact is that there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid.
I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some “highly motivated” individuals.
—
Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Spitzer, apologizing for his 2001 study implying that “reparative therapy” could change gay people to straight.
He renounced the study’s findings last year. Here’s more from The American Prospect. Full text of the letter at Truthwinsout.org.
(via jtotheizzoe)
m-03:
How can someone stand behind abortion, when you have a life inside of you that God created for you? How can you say that this life isn’t worth it? If you can’t take care of the baby for whatever circumstances than there is always adoption available to couples who can’t conceive, but still want the joy of being parents. OPEN YOUR EYES! God has bigger plans for us all that we don’t even realize the picture.
Excuse me but it appears your baby is actually upside down
Did you take Sex Ed freshman year because babies come out headfirstHi, OP! As someone who was given up for adoption, allow me to call bullshit on your little post there! You see, when I was adopted, I was a white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical infant, which basically put me at the top of the list, right underneath white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical MALE infants! There’s only one kind of infant people wanted to adopt more than me! I was SOOO lucky! But if you actually bothered to look at the information readily available on the interwebs, you would be aware that the majority of people who are forced to rely on abortion for family planning are poor people and people of color. Of course, those two demographics intersect, thanks to the institutionalized racism of our society! Neat huh?!
Of course, even babies of color are not in high demand with couples looking to adopt. Many who do want to adopt outside their race choose to go outside the country, where laws are less strict and the process is often less expensive. Of course, most of the infants adopted this way are obtained in unscrupulous fashion, but who cares about that when you’re saving a little Korean or African baby from the horrible fate of growing up in Korea or Africa??? And all those children who have birth defects, are born with diseases or disabilities, or have other issues… WELL. Who wants to invest that kind of expense and time? Why would you adopt someone broken, LOLOL?!
Granted, there are some wonderful people who understand the system a little better, and make it a point to try and give POC and disabled children a good home. But they make up a very small fraction of potential adopters! This difference in supply and demand leaves a lot of children stuck in the foster system, where their chances of being adopted diminish with every passing year, and their chances of being physically or sexually abused INCREASE! Isn’t that wonderful?
And of course, we haven’t even talked about the person who is giving birth to the baby! I know you probably think pregnancy is a wonderful, happy time, and for some people it is, but it is also one of the greatest health risks a person can take. I love my son very much, and from the day I found out I was pregnant with him, I wanted him! But I also nearly died giving birth to him. You see, I had pre-eclampsia, the most commonly fatal birth complication in the world. My blood pressure was 180 over 130! At twenty-two years old, I was actually headed for a stroke, hah hah! How funny is that? And all it took was missing a single pre-natal appointment during which my blood pressure rose to dangerous levels and my body tried to kill both me and my son. Those seizures sure were fun, as was the emergency c-section performed without anesthetic! And being chained down while the operation was performed, because I was delirious and wouldn’t stop trying to fight off the doctors, that was a BLAST! It was great for my husband too, since he almost lost his wife and child in just forty-five minutes. You can imagine how thrilled he is at the prospect of me ever getting pregnant again. Babies are certainly cute, but pregnancy can have massive health complications, and I know it’s such a bummer, but they are PERMANENT. :( My abdominal muscles never recovered from being hacked through with a scalpel, and the flood of hormones caused by late pregnancy have changed things from heartburn (never used to have it, now, all the time!) to my emotional reactions (I cry when I see pictures of kittens now. I used to be tough). These are changes I did not ask for, cannot control, and cannot fix! And many people go through worse! I know, right? Unbelievable, but go look up the word ‘episiotomy’ and then look up ‘birth rape’ and I’m afraid you’ll find some stuff that just isn’t very shiny. Plus, the studies actually show that people who carry a baby to term, give birth, then give it up for adoption suffer HIGHER rates of post-pregnancy complications like post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis, general depression, and other mental health issues. Adoption actually isn’t good for the person giving birth at all!
I’m afraid the picture you chose to use there is also pretty disingenuous. I know, I know, it seems like nitpicking. I’m not trying to be mean! :( But that picture shows a fully developed, viable infant, and most abortions are performed when the fetus isn’t even a fetus - it’s a blastocyst. That’s just a clump of cells. Seriously! You can totally find pictures on the interwebs and they’re not even gross, LOLOL! Later-term abortions are usually performed because of health complications, though some of our intrepid state legislators are trying to change all that! They care so much about people who are pregnant, you see, that they want to force them to carry dead or dying fetuses inside them until their body either becomes infected while it rots in their tummies (this is called sepsis, and it makes people very sick, and can even kill them!), or forces it out naturally in a gush of blood and fluids! Isn’t that so caring of them? I’m so glad they’re around to make those decisions for me! And if a pregnant person is not allowed to terminate an unviable fetus, in some states, they have to carry the child to term, give birth to it, and then watch it die in their arms because its lungs weren’t developed, or its brain formed outside its skull, or any of a million possible birth defects that will kill you just as quick as lickity-split! Isn’t that wild?! Of course, these people go through terrible grief, and as I mentioned, some of them may get sick and die from not being able to abort dead or dying fetuses. But I guess that’s just A-okay with you, huh?
Basically, I think before you suggest adoption as a universal alternative, you should actually go do some research on adoption. And before you condemn abortion, you should do some research on abortions - not the stuff your church is giving you, the stuff the real doctors are saying. Go to Planned Parenthood (if they haven’t all been closed down, ROFLMAO!) and request whatever information they have on the process, the statistics of who has abortions and why… and actually, all of that is on the interwebs! Isn’t technology AMAZING?
And in closing, since I’ve been asked this question many times and I know it’s coming? Yes, I realize I am here talking to you because I was not aborted. But the thing is, if my mother had chosen abortion, I wouldn’t know the difference, so it wouldn’t matter to me. And if she decided that choice was best for her, then that choice would have been best for her, and I would never want to take that choice away from her. As it is, since I was given up for adoption, and since I have seen the statistics on how badly people who give their children up for adoption suffer, I have spent much of my adult life worrying about her, whether she’s healthy, whether she’s okay, and feeling that if she did suffer from any of the common post-birth symptoms, it is at least partially my fault, even though she made that decision on her own. Which is silly, I know, but at some point, all children have to stare down the consequences of their parents’ having them. For some, that’s poverty. For others, a life-time of their parents struggling to treat and care for a severe illness or disability. For others, it’s wondering if their mother ever got over giving them away, and wishing you could reach out and assure her that it’s okay, she doesn’t have to be haunted.
May your birth control never fail!
Pro.
Sonneillonv deserves a mother fucking standing ovation here.
Reblogging because of Sonneillonv. Your google-fu is formidable!
bam.
^ All the commentary, and also: why are pro-life graphics always SO GODDAMN CREEPY???
-Jess
This is absolutely disgusting.
Front page of Yahoo news, ladies and gents.
You need to read this and watch the video that accompanies it from ABC news.
I don’t care if you ride Tennessee Walkers or not, any horse man or woman needs to be aware of what’s happening in the walking world.
This is fucking revolting.
I don’t understand why anyone would ever choose to get involved with horses if they didn’t love or respect the animal enough to treat it humanely. Only humans could be this gratuitously cruel and greedy. Shit like this is what makes me hate people.
That man and his employees deserve pain of a level incomparable to what they put those poor creatures through. And then some.
This is beyond sickening.
This is really fucking sick.
A top official at an anti-domestic violence advocacy group that has been encouraging the House GOP to roll back protections for immigrant victims in the Violence Against Women Act (or VAWA) is the founder of a controversial international matchmaking company, domestic violence workers warned lawmakers on Monday night.
The advocacy group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, or SAVE, has been lobbying the House of Representatives to include a “reform to curb VAWA immigration fraud” in its version of the bill. The GOP version of the bill does that by removing confidentiality protections for immigrant victims of abuse and forcing them to tell their alleged abusive husbands that they’re applying for protected immigrant status. It also removes an avenue through whih immigrant victims can achieve permanent citizenship.
An official of SAVE has a major financial interest in reducing immigrant protections: Its treasurer, Natasha Spivack, started international “marriage service” Encounters International in 1993 with the aim of arranging marriages between U.S. men and Russian women. “The Woman Of Your Dreams Just May Have A Russian Accent,” states the company’s website.
One of the Russian brides matched by Encounters International sued the firm, claiming that she was beaten by her American husband, that the company failed to properly screen candidates and neglected to tell her about a law allowing immigrants to escape abusive marriages without fear of automatic deportation. A jury decided in favor of the Russian bride and awarded her $434,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. The case was affirmed upon appeal.
Trans* rights in the United States. See a problem here?
& This is why I wont move off the west coast!
Nor I out of Minnesota!!!
just in case you folks don’t quite understand the implications of “employment discrimination” and “housing discrimination” i will break it down for you:
it means you can be FIRED from your job, no matter HOW long you’ve been working there or how great an employee you are, for NO other reason, and it means you can be KICKED OUT OF YOUR HOUSE AND/OR EVICTED for NO OTHER REASON. it means you can be DENIED a job SOLELY because you are trans* and it means you can be denied a home SOLELY because you are trans*. and it is COMPLETELY LEGAL.
mass only recently ended this with the trans* rights bill we passed just a few months ago.
i hope you understand that the legal sanctioning of stripping BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS from trans* people is DIRECTLY CORRELATED with the outrageously high homelessness and SUICIDE rates of trans* people. THIS is part of why over 50% of trans* people UNDER 20 have attempted suicide, many successfully. 50 FUCKING PERCENT.
this is not just discrimination. this is STRIPPING people of their HUMANITY and ENDORSING their deaths. this is borderline LEGAL GENOCIDE.
why i’m not at all impressed w/ Obama’s “groundbreaking” stance on gay marriage.
A list of PoC Sci-Fi/Fantasy authors.
- Kōbō Abe
- Maria Acosta
- Linda D. Addison
- Saladin Ahmed
- Sherman Alexie
- K. S. Augustin
- Malcolm Azania
- L.A. Banks
- Steven Barnes
- Derrick Bell
- Aliette De Bodard
- Tempest K. Bradford
- Maurice Broaddus
- Joseph Bruchac
- Octavia E. Butler
- Raphael Carter
- Ted Chiang
- Joyce Chng
- Zen Cho
- J. Damask
- Milton J. Davis
- S. J Day
- Samuel R. Delany
- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Moondancer Drake
- Tananarive Due
- David Anthony Durham
- Malon Edwards
- Greg Van Eekhout
- Amal El-Mohtar
- Zetta Elliot
- John M. Faucette
- Ono Fuyumi
- Amitav Ghosh
- Craig Laurence Gidney
- Jaymee Goh
- Jewelle Gomez
- Hiromi Goto
- Andrea Hairston
- Nalo Hopkinson
- Kazuo Ishiguro
- Valjeanne Jeffers
- N.K. Jemisin
- Alaya Dawn Johnson
- Stephanie Lai
- Yoon Ha Lee
- Ken Liu
- Marjorie M. Liu
- Malinda Lo
- Karen Lord
- Karin Lowachee
- Marie Lu
- Brandon Massey
- Alicia McCalla
- Neesha Meminger
- Anil Menon
- Maryanne Mohanraj
- Haruki Murakami
- E. C. Myers
- Uehashi Nahoko
- Shweta Narayan
- Mahtab Narsimhan
- Nnedi Okorafor
- Daniel Jose Older
- Marge Piercy
- Cindy Pon
- Dia Reeves
- Salman Rushdie
- Michelle Sagara/West
- Nisi Shawl
- Vandana Singh
- Shaun Tan
- Shveta Thakrar
- Sheree R. Thomas
- Colson Whitehead
- Ytasha Womack
- Xakara
- Laurence Yep
- Ibi Zoboi
- Dark Matter (compilation series)
- The Carl Brandon Society (organization)
I went through the notes on this post and compiled as many of the suggestions as I could find, so here it is again. Thanks to everybody who contributed!
Feel free to reblog & add more.
(Source: reallyreallyokthen)
Think this shit’s funny?
Keep making rape jokes then.
It really gets me when people say things like “why didn’t you report them!?” or “it’s your fault, you let them walk free”. Statistically speaking, rapists will not be convicted, or tried or even brought in for questioning. The victim is lucky if their charges even get a second glance. Plus, the horrific things victims have to go through to prove that they’ve actually been victimized further damages their psyche and healing process, which should be their first priority above anything. It’s the sad reality we live in and rapists know this and it’s why they continue to be so prevalent. In addition, we live in a victim-blaming society where rape is considered a preventable situation in which a person can’t suppress their innate sexual urges instead of a violent, horrific crime. By saying things like “she was asking for it” or “they shouldn’t have been so drunk” suggests rape is something everyone is capable of if they’re tempted enough, which it most certainly is not.
These numbers need to change. This is embarrassing and disgusting, but we as a society, need to start rethinking how we even perceive rape before that can happen.
We’ll probably never know how many women inventors there were. That’s because in the early years of the United States, a woman could not get a patent in her own name. A patent is considered a kind of property, and until the late 1800s laws forbade women in most states from owning property or entering into legal agreements in their own names. Instead, a woman’s property would be in the name of her father or husband.
For example, many people believe that Sybilla Masters was the first American woman inventor. In 1712 she developed a new corn mill, but was denied a patent because she was a woman. Three years later the patent was filed successfully in her husband’s name.
—FactMonster.com (via stfuconservatives)
(Source: factmonster.com)
There’s already a Change.org petition against the passing of Amendment One, which banned same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships in North Carolina. These things actually tend to be pretty damn effective.
Let’s see what the power of Tumblr can do! I know there’s at least a million Tumblr users who are against this sort of harmful discrimination and bigotry.
Sign the petition and reblog to spread the word, please!
You know what to do. Please raise your voice in ANY WAY POSSIBLE.
Please sign the petition and help us North Carolinaians get our rights back for all marriages!
The UK agreed to give India £166m to fund the programme, despite allegations that the money would be used to sterilise the poor in an attempt to curb the country’s burgeoning population of 1.2 billion people.
Sterilisation has been mired in controversy for years. With officials and doctors paid a bonus for every operation, poor and little-educated men and women in rural areas are routinely rounded up and sterilised without having a chance to object. Activists say some are told they are going to health camps for operations that will improve their general wellbeing and only discover the truth after going under the knife.
This is stuff that’s happening within your lifetime. This is not something from the past, something that happened a while ago. Population control is something that still exists.
And if you ever try saying that we need to save women in foreign countries, well maybe you should step back and consider how Western countries are aiding in (and have encouraged) creating these issues.
