Comments

  1. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    JC #3, why should I look at video, when you could explain yourself in a few sentences?

  2. says

    Nerd @4:
    I think it would have been helpful for you to word that differently. Personally, I’d have said something along the lines of
    Jeremy Claywell, what is the video about and how does it pertain to this thread?”

    Speaking of the video, the YouTube page describes it thusly:

    Published on Oct 8, 2012
    A BAFTA award-winning series with John Berger, which rapidly became regarded as one of the most influential art programmes ever made. This second programme deals with the portrayal of the female nude, an important part of the tradition of European art. Berger examines these paintings and asks whether they celebrate women as they really are or only as men would like them to be.

    Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger’s scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.

    ****

    Jeremy Claywell @2:
    I think it would have been helpful for you to include some sort of synopsis of what the video is about, or a statement on your part about why you appreciate this thread. I say this bc this blog and many of the FtB blogs have been attacked over the years by anti-feminists and MRA’s. Many of them have dropped into comments sections and left comments with links and no explanations similar to yours. I’ll admit I had the same knee-jerk reaction that Nerd did, but I thought it healthy to give you the benefit of the doubt and I’m glad I did. Thanks for that video.

  3. says

    Jeremy @ 3:

    I can’t view the video right now (wireless is sucking), but going by Tony’s description, I will watch when I am able, and I think this would be good in the Art thread, too, especially as I brought up the prevalence of works in which women are objectified and mutilated.

  4. says

    Thanks, Tony. The offer is most appreciated.

    @ All
    In case you missed my proto-proposal in the comments on the tyrant thread, here are some examples of what I’m expecting to be discussed here:

    * news about abortion rights and efforts to quash them
    * news concerning violence against women (e.g. cases of sexual assault or harassment; local stories of uxoricide, issues like the current call in Canada for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, terrorism against women)
    * news about feminist protests and activism
    * updates about online harassment of feminists and other prominent or not so prominent women and about misogynist groups online
    *sexism in popular culture and the arts, including advertising, news media, sports, books, television shows of today and yesteryear
    *discussion about sexism in the workplace (including fields traditionally dominated by men) and academic environments
    *rape culture in militaries and on campuses
    *sexism/misogyny faced by readers/commenters in their day to day lives

    That can all get pretty disheartening, so I’m also hoping that it will be a place to talk about successes and progress and examples of businesses/politicians/media and individuals doing things right.

    I come across stuff I want to talk about all the time but haven’t really had a place to do so (excepting the preaching I do to the choir of one who is my feminist 72 year old mum), so I’m really looking forward to this. I strongly encourage others to contribute so we end up with a very diverse and vibrant range of topics and viewpoints. I myself am Canadian so I’m sure you’ll see quite a number of the topics I bring up will reflect that.

    ——–
    I’m heading off for the night but I figure I should at least start out by dropping one or two stories here before I go.

    It’s been a couple of hot weeks here in Ontario and in BC too. Hot weather means some women will choose to go topless (officially legal in both provinces and unofficially in the rest of the country), and some cops and/or citizens will harass them for it. Today there was a well-attended topless rights rally, with well-behaved police who thanked the city of Kitchener-Waterloo for being respectful of demonstrators. Hopefully, it will eventually sink in. The Gwen Jacobs case was only 24 years ago.

    Police are investigating yet another incident of someone yelling FHRITP at a reporter (who happened to be talking about the great performance of women athletes at the Pan-Am Games at the time — double whammy). They don’t know if they can/will be charging the guy even if they find him.

    Only 9 people apparently showed up to watch the premiere of shameless cash grab er, anti-feminist flick The Sarkeesian Effect.

    I’ve been rewatching Star Trek, TOS. It’s fascinating to see how much of the sexism is actually under the surface in addition to the horrible blatant sexism. And yet, and yet once in a while a slightly progressive glimmer. Look forward to occasional comments from me about different episodes as I go through them.

  5. says

    Ibis3 @ 7:

    I’ve been rewatching Star Trek, TOS. It’s fascinating to see how much of the sexism is actually under the surface in addition to the horrible blatant sexism. And yet, and yet once in a while a slightly progressive glimmer. Look forward to occasional comments from me about different episodes as I go through them.

    I’ve recently re-watched the first and second seasons, while working. The sexism often made me cringe. One particular bit of sexism fairly screamed and grated my nerves – any time there’s a discussion, you hear “Gentlemen…”, even when there are women in the room, and involved in the discussion.

  6. woozy says

    I’ve been rewatching Star Trek, TOS. It’s fascinating to see how much of the sexism is actually under the surface in addition to the horrible blatant sexism. And yet, and yet once in a while a slightly progressive glimmer. Look forward to occasional comments from me about different episodes as I go through them.

    Slightly progressive glimmers? Can you give a few examples? I’m not aware of any.

  7. Tethys says

    I’ve been rewatching Star Trek, TOS.

    I’ve been watching the voyager series for the first time. Its refreshing to have Katherine Janeway as the captain, and B’Lanna Torres as the chief engineer. Seven of Nine is also a good female character, but I am bothered that she has a skintight catsuit for clothing instead of a starfleet uniform. I remember a particular episode of TOS that I found offensively sexist, but it also had some dialog from Eve and Kirk about only being valued for ones appearance. The episode is Mudd’s Women.

  8. mostlymarvelous says

    This isn’t exactly news, seeing as we’re already in August, but it’s a nice reminder that women do, from time to time, get the recognition they deserve. This year every single one of the recipients of the Australian of the Year awards was a woman. (I was reminded of this by a completely unrelated news item today.)

    Rosie Batty, AOTY, for advocating against family violence
    Jackie French, Senior AOTY, author of 140 children’s books and advocate for literacy teaching. (Apparently she’s so dyslexic herself she can’t read direction signs in car parks.)
    Drisana Levitzke-Gray, Young AOTY, advocating for deaf people, she’s completely deaf herself.
    Juliette Wright, Australia’s Local Hero. Wanted to donate needed items for babies, discovered that babies in poor families needed steel-toed boots for their fathers – to get a job – much more than clothes or blankets for themselves. Now runs a matching service for people offering goods and services and people needing them.
    http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/2015-award-recipients/ for more details about each individual.

    This is the first time ever that the winners of all categories were women. Nobody knew that this would happen before the award ceremony, so it was a real highlight when all four award winners eventually lined up. (The only sour note was that they also had to have a group photo with our Minister for Women’s Affairs, none other than dear ol’ Toxic Tony the Prime Minister.)

    Just a little warm thought to nurture in the background when the avalanche of horrible seems overwhelming.

  9. imback says

    The sponsored picture ads on this comment page at this moment include a Russian woman in a bikini, teenage girls in lingerie, a woman in a bikini on a stingray bike, women wearing practically naked dresses, and a woman’s butt implant exploding. I don’t mind ads but why do they have to be these?

  10. sindi says

    What are the arguments, from a feminist perspective, against genital mutilation? I ask because I’ve talked to multiple women who have a pro-mutilation stance, and despite my conversations with them about the long-term sexual and psychological harms of genital cutting, they decided to mutilate their children anyway. They see the issue as one of parental rights, and avoid thinking about the issue from the perspective of the victims.

    Unfortunately, forced child genital cutting is a common practice in my country. Ultimately, my goal is to pass legislation that would protect the right to bodily integrity for all children by requiring fully informed consent from patients before they may receive elective surgery. But for now I am focusing on reaching mothers, especially first-time or expectant mothers.

    I am hoping that employing feminist rhetoric will help people appreciate the intensity of the emotional pain that many victims feel. And also help them to recognize instances of emotional instability (anger, shame, guilt, fear, etc) as evidence of psychological harm rather than as irrationality, hysteria, or attention seeking behavior that should be dismissed or ignored. Thank you and have a blessed day.

  11. says

    imback@16
    The advertising images I’m seeing now are of products (car, loudspeakers, hotel room) and of a man hugging a boy (“Take time to be a dad today”, no idea what they’re selling) and a dog licking their chops (selling some kind of entertainment system). Time of day? Geography?
    Or are you talking about the click bait? I.e. the ads for other websites? Right now the pics aren’t so bad, only one image of a woman unaccountably lying on a floor, but fully dressed. But the titles, e.g. “10 African countries with the most beautiful women” manages to be racist and sexist at the same time (and yes, it’s the same one with the image).
    Seems to me, maybe advertisers have grasped that sex doesn’t necessarily sell products, but apparently it still makes people click, and thats all the click-bait sites want for their ad revenue.

  12. rq says

    Loving the picture. I may end up cross-posting stuff between here and the racism thread, as a lot of issues that affect black women would fit in this category. I hope that’s okay!

    [seeing examples]
    And I see Ibis3 has a great welcoming statement, and I think I’ll have to lay one out for the racism thread with Tony (later, Tony, see FB!). Just so things are clear.
    [/seeing examples]

  13. says

    * news about abortion rights and efforts to quash them

    On that note, I’ll just recommend the Reality Cast podcast, with Amanda Marcotte. It’s a weekly (more or less) podcast dealing with news in reproductive health. Usually features an interview with some relevant individual working in that field. It’s a really handy way to keep up to date with the shenanigans of the anti-choice brigade and get some sane commentary on these issues.

  14. Al Dente says

    sindi @17

    The point that genital mutilation is mutilation seems like a good place to start. It’s also irreversible, a violation of the victims’ human rights, has no health benefits for girls or women, and like any surgical procedure has risks of complications including hemorrhage, severe pain, sepsis and open sores. Long term effects can include urine retention, cysts and infertility. That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure google can lead you to other arguments against female genital mutilation.

  15. rq says

    … Though your points about irreversible, a violation of human rights, and with no health benefits still stand.

  16. opposablethumbs says

    sindi, I’m sure that plenty of people here can do a better job than I can of setting out how damaging FGM is – in many cases condemning girls and women to a lifetime of pain, incontinence, increased danger in any future childbirth and of course partly or wholly eliminating the ability to experience orgasm, the whole point being to control and confine women by way of controling and confining their experience of their own sexuality.

    But I would just like to point out that certainly most and very probably all of us are also opposed to circumcision. Just as we are opposed to any modification of a person’s body without their consent and without any medical need.

    However, if (and only if) your careful wording is intended to oh-so-cleverly hide the fact that you are actually talking about circumcision only and not FGM at all, please note that attempting to pull the wool is not appreciated.

  17. opposablethumbs says

    your points about irreversible, a violation of human rights, and with no health benefits still stand.

    Absolutely. 100% applicable to all babies/infants/children at risk of GM.

  18. Al Dente says

    rq @23 and opposablethumbs @25

    A more careful reading of @17 shows you may be right. sindi isn’t specific about which type of genital mutilation xe is referring to.

    opposablethumbs @25

    …the whole point being to control and confine women by way of controling and confining their experience of their own sexuality.

    I should have mentioned more of the social and psychological effects of FGM as well as listing some of the physical arguments against it. Thank you for bringing this up.

  19. says

    ***Curator Q&A***

    chigau #11: Does this story [about lifting of ban against women with naturally high levels of testosterone] belong here?

    Yes.

    AMM #19: Will trans and gender issues be considered on-topic?

    If someone wanted to curate a thread specifically about trans and gender issues (or Crip Dyke wants to branch out her Gender Workshop) or, say, one that encompassed gender identity, sexual orientation, and LGBT rights I wouldn’t want to stand in their way. Unless/until that happens, on the other hand, I’ll warmly welcome such comments & consider them to be on topic for this thread. Also, I imagine that many such topics would be appropriate for crossposting here even if a separate gender/trans/ or LGBT discussion thread were to happen.

    rq #20 Loving the picture.

    Me too.

    I may end up cross-posting stuff between here and the racism thread, as a lot of issues that affect black women would fit in this category. I hope that’s okay!

    Yes! I’m all for intersectionality. I’ll probably be crossposting some of my own links in the racism thread too. :)

  20. says

    Sindi:

    The reasons to be against FGM are myriad, so I’ll focus on what I think is the very rotten foundation of the practice – treating women as things. When you stop seeing people as human beings, any wrong is permissible. It’s also good to keep in mind just how much women internalize sexism. Happens to us all.

  21. says

    ***curator mode***
    @sindi #17

    Your comment reads to me like a passive-aggressive test to see if we’ll assume that only genital mutilation of girls is bad enough to warrant being actually called “mutilation”. If you actually want to have a discussion in good faith please straight up ask what arguments feminists would use to persuade parents or specifically mothers not to circumcise their infants assigned male at birth. Thanks.

    ***end curator***

  22. bayes says

    The discussions I’m seeing here betray themselves as being almost entirely Western, and particularly North American.
    It’s well to remember that most of the world doesn’t have our ferociously individualistic focus. When discussion dwells entirely on the individual’s rights, it ignores that much of the world reveres social conformity and ritual and dislikes as much individual decision-making as we exhibit. Until that huge gap is appreciated, we wind up simply berating other cultures rather than understanding them.

    Genital mutilation isn’t done for the girl, but for the family and society at large. Don’t mistake this for an apologia – I’m thoroughly Westernized and find the practice repugnant. However, there is no way that mutilating societies will ever give up the practice until the society itself thinks of it as wrong, and that will happen only when individual liberty becomes a stronger force than it currently is. Observe how long our Western society consigned women to being helpless incubators by banning both contraception and discussion about it, and how quickly we seem able to backslide into that status with abortion bans. Those laws changed only when the society around them changed, and we are still pushing forward to maintain them. I can still remember parental outrage over teenagers using the Pill back in the 60s. We still have many school systems that won’t discuss anything but abstinence. We have little cause to lecture those cultures that take the insistence on socially recognized purity to a gruesome extreme. When a girl’s marital prospects are slim to none without having had the mutilation, mutilation will never die.

  23. says

    I collect links to feminist resources and good reads that I come across for my blog’s library, and I would be happy to post them here too if others would find them of interest. By way of example, here are three I’ve come across recently:

    Dissenting Opinions May Occur: Some Thoughts on Yesterday’s Troubling “Writing Women Friendly Comics” Panel. By Carolyn Cox, The Mary Sue (July 31, 2015). [Sexist buffoon moderator Bill Willingham interrupts, disrespects and talks over women attendees while basically arguing cishet white men might be better suited to write the stories of other people, in a panel ostensibly about writing women friendly comics. Echoes of Ron Lindsay at WIS2.]

    A Reply to Lauren Southern’s “Why I’m Not a Feminist.” By Jenna Christian, Everyday Geopolitics Houston (April 10, 2015). [No one here will need to watch Southern’s video to appreciate this post: it stands on its own as a nice collection of debunking points rebutting typical anti-feminist claims and myths about feminism, with lots of references.]

    Ever Been Told to ‘Check Your Privilege?’ Here’s What That Really Means. By Sam Dylan Finch, Everyday Feminism (July 27, 2015). [A straightforward, well-written 101-level primer on privilege that speaks to intersectional issues and not strictly feminism—maybe a candidate for the racism thread as well?]

  24. says

    bayes 31:

    there is no way that mutilating societies will ever give up the practice until the society itself thinks of it as wrong, and that will happen only when individual liberty becomes a stronger force than it currently is.

    [emphasis added.]

    Citation needed for the bolded claim. I apologize if I am reading you incorrectly, but this set off my l*bertarian dogma meter. Laws, economic sanctions at the level of the state and/or the individual, and exposure to different cultural norms (via media or direct social contact) can affect enormous cultural shifts in astonishingly short periods of time. See e.g. the same-sex marriage movement over the past two decades.

  25. komarov says

    This promises to be an interesting thread, I’ll certainly follow it. Quietly, for the most part.

    Just briefly regarding Star Trek:
    After (endlessly) rewatching the series (including TOS in pogress) I have become somewhat disillusioned myself. Star Trek may have tried to be progressive and inclusive and may, at the time,* been just that. But on the whole it still relied heavily on tokenism in all its installments. (Voyager, at a guess, was probably the most diverse and equally balanced, if that’s the word)

    The fact that Star Trek was, to my mind, trying to get away from all that makes the failure all the more grating. The main cast often consisted mainly of the token woman / person of colour / alien / …, sometimes rolled together. The rest, especially background characters still seem to consist mainly of (human) white males.

    If you really want to see this in action, consider the noble redshirt. Given the turnover you would have expected to see at least one non-human redshirt in three seasons of TOS. Likewise the one or two female redshirts were only there because a woman was needed for that particular role. So it’s just not feminism in Star Trek, it’s everything. That said, I still find it entertaining, I just cringe a lot more than I used to.

    *I’m a tad too young to have seen TOS way back when…

    And finally I’d like to nominate I, Mudd for the worst TOS episode for feminists.

    [spoiler] of a 50-year-old TV series. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

    ———————————————-

    Mudd, a scoundrel to boot, finds himself in charge of a planet populated by androids. They won’t let him leave but otherwise serve him unconditionally; he even gets to decide on their design. So naturally he ends up with a colony of young women (all white, naturally) in the usual TOS stylings (lightly dressed, Standard Issue Hair), repilcated endlessly.

    Far worse, Mudd is married and his wife is the most overblown stereotype of “Nagging Housewife” ever to grace the screen. He keeps a replica in a window box and perdiocally switches her on just to tell her to shut up when she starts her nagging – something he couldn’t do with the original.

    Even worse, after clashing with Kirk and being bested by him, the latter puts the androids in charge of themselves. He leaves Mudd behind on the planet and to punish him has literally a thousand wife replicas built to follow Mudd around and nag him wherever he may go. [/spoiler]

    I hope part of the blatant sexism was intended to underline how terrible a person Mudd is, but even if so, it all falls apart because of the ‘ironic punishment’. I’m sure at the time someone thought all that must have been hilarious. (Based on a story by Roddenberry himself, according to google) Nope, the joke certainly didn’t work for me. Parts of TOS have aged very poorly indeed.

  26. woozy says

    @32. There’s a cut and paste error: The comics panel anchor links the the Lauren Southern reply.

  27. Saad says

    bayes, #31

    When discussion dwells entirely on the individual’s rights, it ignores that much of the world reveres social conformity and ritual and dislikes as much individual decision-making as we exhibit.

    Well, this can only be decided by the victims of the conformity and ritual. How do they feel about it? Do they revere it?

    Of course societies with a dominant class exerting its control over marginalized individuals give off the vibe that all is a-okay. Ask the individuals who are getting the short end of the stick of this conformity.

    Morality is about well-being and suffering at the individual level. Societies, countries, communities are abstract and don’t have feelings. In fact going by how societies as a whole are doing is a horrible way to address social justice issues because the superficial happiness of oppressive societies mask the injustices being done to the marginalized groups under the surface. For example, look at how progressive societies appear to the outside world yet still have marginalized groups being bullied on a daily basis.

  28. says

    Thanks woozy 35—sorry about that. Try this one:

    Dissenting Opinions May Occur: Some Thoughts on Yesterday’s Troubling “Writing Women Friendly Comics” Panel. By Carolyn Cox, The Mary Sue (July 31, 2015). [Sexist buffoon moderator Bill Willingham interrupts, disrespects and talks over women attendees while basically arguing cishet white men might be better suited to write the stories of other people, in a panel ostensibly about writing women friendly comics. Echoes of Ron Lindsay at WIS2.]

  29. woozy says

    @34 I, Mudd. Was pretty bad but the introduction of the Mudd character was in Mudd’s Women was equally bad. Mudd’s delivering stunningly beautiful (distractingly so) mail order brides to a miner colony but he’s engaging in fraud because the women aren’t naturally beautiful. Their beauty is the effect of a narcotic that the naturally plain women are addicted to and … well, where can a premise such as that go but down.

    But I’m with chiagu. The worst episode is Turnabout Intruder.

  30. woozy says

    So, um, where are these supposed progressive glimmers in Star Trek: TOS? My feeling is when it came to women’s issues TOS simply dropped the ball and let it roll into the sewers.

    Actually one thing that always bugged me was a “comedic” scene in which Kirk was struggling with a computer’s AI. The feminine computer was flirty, purry, petulant, and pouty much to the irritation of masculine Kirk who wanted the computer to be straight-forward. Spock points out that the computer is from a planet with a female-centric hierarchy so most of the computer scientists were women and they gave their AIs personalities to match.

    Soooo… PROGRESS! It’s perfectly possible for women to become scientists, doctors, computer programmers, or any other traditionally male occupation. But if they do they will still always have flighty, irrational, irritating, petulant female personalities and ways of thinking because that’s fundamentally just the way women are.

    Oh… and remember the energy creature that imprisons/cares for Pike (it was Pike, wasn’t it?) and the big surprise that universal translater translated the voice as female, not as an arbitrary random choice, but because there are universally recognized characteristics and the entity was female because it thought like a female (if you can consider that sort of brain activity thinking)?
    Okay, I’m getting a bit disgusting and it’s still early in the day…

  31. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    komarov @ 34

    (Voyager, at a guess, was probably the most diverse and equally balanced, if that’s the word)

    I’d probably agree about that in general. They did fall off the wagon pretty spectacularly with the way they handled the 7 of 9 character though.

    TNG has it’s jaw-droppingly sexist moments too. There is an episode in (I think) the 2nd season where they encounter two very early earth colonies. One had reproduced via cloning and was reaching a point where they could no longer do so safely and there were so few discrete individuals that they couldn’t go back to reproducing normally either. The other had been founded by a group seeking to leave all technology behind. They were thriving but their planet was endangered in some fashion. The problem was solved by the male colony leaders getting together with Captain Picard and deciding that the 2nd colony would move to the 1st colony’s planet and that all the women from the 2nd colony would bear at least 3 children apiece with men from the 1st colony, preferably each with a different father. When the daughter of the 2nd colony’s leader turned out to not be very enthusiastic about this, she was informed that her other option would be abandonment at the nearest space station.

  32. says

    Men as the default “important people” in US society is so deeply ingrained that many people are unaware of our culture’s bias in favor of men. One black woman has had enough:
    My lived experience is not up for debate:

    Picture it! December 2014. Baton Rouge. I’m bumping the latest J. Cole album in the car whilst on my way to pick up some fresh produce or get gas or send a strongly worded letter to the patriarchy when track number three, “Wet Dreamz”, comes on.
    It was about a minute into the song when a strange thought crossed my mind. I thought ‘wow I sure wish I could hear a rap song by a female artist discussing the intricacies and emotions of her first time‘ and that’s when the bomb dropped. I legit shouted in my car something to the effect, “I’M SO INUDATED WITH THE BLACK MALE EXPERIENCE! OMG WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I HEARD/SAW MYSELF IN THE MEDIA I CONSUME” and proceeded to shut the song off. This epiphany came so suddenly, so out of left field since I had just hopped fresh off the Stan train for Big KRIT’s Cadillactica and more times than not I’m always here for dear Jermaine and his bag of stories and fables about his life.

    I wonder if there are any female rap artists who ‘discuss the intracacies and emotions of their first time’. Surely there are (I don’t listen to rap, so I have no clue).

    Then it hit me, it wasn’t just about lack of female representation in hip hop or the specific artist’s feelings about black women—whether they view them as lovers, objects, sisters or friends—it was about the constant presence of the male experience in my life. I’m constantly hearing black men’s stories, black men’s feelings about women, things black men need black women to do for us as a people to rise blah blah blah stay black.

    Black men need to make room-equal room-for the ideas and experiences of black women in African-American culture. Again, male is not the default.

    As many of my black male counterparts lauded the praises of the new album and as they asked my opinion I got the lovely opportunity to awkwardly say “it was nice I just couldn’t really get into the stories he was telling cuz you know it wasn’t really made for me.” To which, they nod, awkwardly smile back and finish with something like ‘…but did you catch that verse in (insert random song I probably didn’t care about)?’ And then the moment is over.

    SMH. Women get ‘moments’. Men get their entire lives.

    When I speak to people about lack of black female representation and stories in many of the different types of media I consume there’s always tension present. It’s hard to express how I absolutely adore Kendrick and Jermaine and KRIT and so many other Black male artists but know I can never expect to hear much of anything I relate to as a black woman represented in their work. It’s generally met with “agh that sucks” or “I mean but like what exactly can be done to fix it. You got point by point instructions on exactly how to make it better? Nah? Oh well. can’t be that bad” Which is fine but I can’t help but feel that many times these points are made to problematize my complaint not the actual institution being critiqued. This dismissal occurs not just in hip hop but in most spheres of Blackness that I engage with that is not exclusively Black feminist.

    I agree with her. Her complaints are not the problem. The institutions that push men, men, men and ignore women are the problem. So too is the culture which does not push back against the pro-male bias to a sufficient degree.

    More times than not I generally feel regret when I have these interactions. Regret that I don’t have a quick and easy answer for how black males can better include black women into their vision for racial uplift outside of birthing the future kings and queens of our society and/or being there solely to support our male counterparts. Regret that I even brought it up in the first place and couldn’t just nod and agree that that one track was dope and his delivery in that one verse was great.

    Are there quick-n-easy answers/rebuttals? Should there be? Can a soundbite accurately convey all the basic, relevant information?

    Then I remember I spent the first 23 years of my life smiling and nodding and trying not to make too much noise when I felt silenced or excluded. The thing with doing that is that you’re still invisible whether you don’t make waves or you rock the boat till it tips over. When in discussion with a friend, for the sake of proving a greater point, I tried to think of how he must feel when listening to mainstream music from this genre he identified with so heavily and how he copes when his voice isn’t acknowledged and his presence isn’t considered important enough to address with care and complexity. Then I recall that as a cishet, black male it probably doesn’t happen too often and by probably I mean rarely to never. So no I don’t feel bad when I’m bumping Rihanna or Nicki or Rapsody and refuse to play male artists when I’m having a ‘get em girl’ jam session. Its not always about things being equal, one must always take into account power and privilege.

    I agree with her once again. Men won’t know what it’s like to have the concerns of their gender overlooked, diminished, or marginalized.

    There are several people who will dismiss your voice and your complaints because you haven’t provided enough proof that what you are saying is real. There are also plenty of people who believe they have to completely understand your struggle to empathize. If If they can’t see themselves in your shoes then the problem can’t truly be all that bad. They can’t see themselves in your shoes then the problem can’t truly be all that bad.

    Those people who claim to be unable to see themselves in the shoes of others often don’t try hard enough. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t have much of a problem attempting to view things through lens of people who I am not like (e.g. women, trans people, people with mental or physical disabilities). I won’t be able to fully understand their experiences, but I think on the whole, I am able to imagine (up to a point) what it might be like to experience life through the lens of other people. And so often, it becomes apparent that the experiences of others include suffering that is just vile and completely unjust.

    That’s the thing, sometimes no matter how much emotional and mental energy you put into putting your issue in perspective for them they’ll still never be fully convinced your qualms aren’t just you “trying to make a fuss.” Those are not your allies, they are not your friends in this area, and they aren’t looking to console you. They’re looking for ways to dismantle your argument so they can remain chilling and cooling on the comfy couch of their privilege. You have to remember when encountering these people, no matter how long you decide to engage them for, that the issue is them and their failure to empathize not you.

    Yes. ^^This.

    You were not put on this earth to spend most of your time teaching/proving to other people that your experience is valid or real or worth being heard. In these times where Black women are still fighting simply to be remembered and advocated for with the same fierceness that is extended to many other marginalized persons’ struggles, its important to remember your voice matters. Your experience is enough and your feelings are real and if anyone tells you different take a cue from Queen Monae herself and tell them to:

    (followed by a clip of her saying “So get off my areola!”)

    QFT.

  33. imback says

    @Delft #18,
    Yes I meant the click-bait off-site ads. They cycle every time I refresh, and now there are no bikinis, mostly dubious miracle cures in fact. I don’t at this time pay to get FTB ad-free, so in reading free content I have little right to complain. But many of these ads do seem pretty ill suited for a skeptical feminist site.

  34. woozy says

    @40..

    I always got the impression that episode was written as kind of a “meta” episode. There seem to be two contradictory prevailing themes in science fiction: one, that we shouldn’t impose or judgement upon other cultures and two, Human (aka American) Yankee individualism with it’s cowboy diplomacy and emotional affinity to nuance is always a better option then cold oppressive logic that aliens must have, is always a philosophically better and solution. This episode turns the idea that if we really shouldn’t judge we should recognize that our values might be the wrong ones for a situation. The result is lose-lose mess where no-body can possible like the outcome yet by the rules of science-fiction writing it should seem valid even though it’s revolting on all levels.

    Or, I’m overthinking it. But it did almost seem a mock-up parody of a typial TOS episode complete with Ryker playing a passively womanizing Kirk. The daughter you mention comes on to Ryker complete with “don’t you like girls” line but she’s ultimately, despite her rebelious passion for social justice, is ultimately a spoiled brat who gets dumped uncerimoniously in utter defeat at the end as was typical of TOS.

    It *was* an unpleasant episode.

  35. says

    imback @42:
    One thing you may be unaware is that FtB does not control the ads. They pay a third-party site to regulate the ads. It is completely out of the control of anyone at FtB.

  36. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    woozy @ 43

    Even if you’re right that the point was that it’s just a lose-lose situation where nobody can possibly be happy with the outcome, the women were still completely excluded from the decision.

  37. sindi says

    Yes, I avoid mention of gender on purpose. I guess I will elaborate on why I have done this. I am not interested in trans-exclusive, male-exclusive, or intersex-exclusive arguments. I want to protect all children from involuntary genital cutting including any form of male, female, or intersex circumcision, infibulation, or sex-reassignment.

    Earlier this week I read the perspective of a transman who considers his “clitoris” to be his penis, and his prepuce aka clitoral hood to be his foreskin. After all, he says, it all develop from the same tissue before hormones kick in and cause sexual differentiation, so it is largely arbitrary to use different words for essentially the same parts. As a matter of fact, the most common form of genital cutting, for children designated either male and female, is the removal of the the prepuce alone. (Yes, the term FGM is an category of multiple kinds of mutilation some of which are much more extreme.) From an ethical standpoint, there is no reason to create distinctions between different kinds of genital cutting unless one is interested is justifying some forms as being morally permissible. My focus of ending unnecessary forced genital cutting for all children (of all genders and all sexes) using strong, universal feminist principles.

    Let’s consider the case of intersex children, who are all too often neglected when it comes to the topic of genital mutilation. As we all know, many parents and doctors are so uncomfortable with their child’s natural genitalia that they force them to undergo involuntary sex reassignment. It seems this discomfort comes from society’s rigid notions of binary sex and gender. Parents assume their children will be ashamed of their genitalia, and believe that surgically altering their genitalia is sparing them from painful humiliation. So, it seems to me the first hurdle is getting parents to discard gender binary and see intersex genitalia as normal, healthy, natural, beautiful, and sexy rather than an ugly, ridiculous, disgusting, aberrant deformity or defect. That in itself is a huge challenge.

    Because forcing elective genital surgery on children is seen as ethically permissible in some cases, it makes it much easier for parents to view sex-reassignment surgery as beneficial and ethically permissible. Within the medical community, adopting a strong ethical principle that only the patient themself can consent to elective surgery would go a long way to preventing.

    Many people believe that male genital cutting is beneficial and without psychological harm while believing female genital cutting is without benefit and may cause significant long-term psychological distress. (Unfortunately, I have seen these sexist sentiments repeated here.) This creates a lot of confusion for parents of intersex children. How are they to decide whether removal of prepuce of their intersex child is good circumcision or bad circumcision?

    The best argument I am familiar with is that all forms of involuntary child genital cutting (including sex-reassignment, female circumcision in all its forms, and male circumcision in all of its forms) are medically unnecessary (i.e. elective rather than therapeutic), may cause long-term psychological harm (i.e. a sense of betrayal, sense of unwholeness, reduced capacity to experience sexual pleasure), and violate the child’s right to bodily integrity (whose body? whose choice?).

    Again, I am looking for strong, effective, universal feminist arguments against all forms of forced child genital cutting, rather than arguments against just one type of genital mutilation.

  38. woozy says

    @45
    Very true.

    It’s really a hard episode to justify on any level. I think it works best as a “Hey, you said you wanted classic Star Trek flavor; well, *this* is the crap that classic Star Trek was” but then I’m probably just making excuses.

    When I first saw it, I was concerned that basically the “solution”, as well as having no choice, effectively ended both of the colonies’ motives for starting the colonies in the first place. (“Colony A: you can no longer be clones and isolated. Colony B: you can no longer be self-determining. Tough shit for both of you”.) If you can’t pursue the ideal of the colony in the first place, *and* you lose all choice in the matter what’s the point of even continuing the colony anyway. I felt a more satisfying, but still a failure, resolution would be to just tell the colonists to all just give up and go back to earth…. Which I guess the *did* say when they told the daughter she could be abandoned on the nest space station.

  39. says

    In reference to comments up-thread about black women, about experiences of empathy (or of a lack of empathy), and about feminism among African American women, I’m still learning.

    I live in the USA and am speaking mostly about day-to-day experience here in the “wild west.” As most Pharyngulites already know, I read a lot from a broad range of sources. I still seem to be ill-informed.

    To my frequent surprise, there are effective artists, leaders, etc. that I don’t hear about. Where the hell am I supposed to read about/hear about these black females, and the organizations that nurture them? I often feel invisible because I’m a woman, and an older woman at that … but there are entire subsets of other women that are hidden from me, women I admire when I do get one of those surprises that shouldn’t be a surprise. There are women who are subjected to the invisibility syndrome more than I am.

    One example from the many powerful organizations that nurture black female leaders:

    Why would my mom more than likely be voting for Hillary Clinton? Because my mom was a Delta. For those of you who have no clue what that means, Deltas are not an airline—it is the short name for a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, the second oldest, and the largest, black female Greek letter organization in the world, with over 900 chapters worldwide, and over 250,000 members.

    In 2013, Hillary Clinton spoke to 14,000 Deltas in Washington, DC. There were 20,000 of them at a convention celebrating 100 years of Delta Sigma Theta. […]

    Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the future of the Voting Rights Act is in “real jeopardy” following the Supreme Court’s decision striking down a portion of the law, telling a prominent organization of black women that Congress should act to preserve “fairness and equality” in the nation’s voting system. […]

    Yes. Holy crap, yes. We are still fighting for voting rights.

    My mom died in 1998. She was one of those black women who the Democratic Party could depend on to vote in every election—local, state and federal. She voted in all her teacher’s union elections as well. She was very proud of being a Delta, because of the organization’s long history of service, support, and activism. […]

    African Americans also have informal networks of social clubs, barber shops, and beauty parlors, where black Americans of differing social strata interact as they do in church. But if a politician wants to plug into an organized and historic powerhouse of black womanhood, he or she had better find the black sororities. […] black Greek networks have provided our community with political leadership. […]

    Not often discussed is the fact that Mitt Romney won the white female vote. But he didn’t win black women, and whatever racist clown the Republicans run in 2016 won’t either.

    Democratic politicians who want to get elected, especially to national office, would be wise to pay closer attention to developing ties in the black community. […] But more important than counting staffers of color is determining what power those people have to influence and formulate policy, and what networks are they plugged into. […]

    This history of the largest block women’s organization in the United States is not only the story of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (DST), but also tells of the increasing involvement of black women in the political, social, and economic affairs of America. Founded at a time when liberal arts education was widely seen as either futile, dangerous, or impractical for blacks, especially women, DST is, in Giddings’s words, a “compelling reflection of black women’s aspirations for themselves and for society.” […]

    Much more at the link. This is fascinating history, as well as important present-day political and social dynamics. Black women who wanted to participate in the early suffrage marches were sometimes hampered by their white counterparts. That’s history. Recently, a female CNN anchor, Erin Burnett, mistook black female activists from Zeta Phi Beta for gang members during protests in Baltimore. That’s present-day.

    A few names of black female leaders about whom I’m currently reading:
    Barbara Jordan
    Mary McLeod Bethune
    Dorothy Height
    Charlayne Hunter-Gault
    Attorney General Loretta Lynch

  40. says

    @woozy

    When I said glimmers of progress that’s exactly the dynamic I was thinking of: the pushing of boundaries as they were when the show was made: Uhura, not only a receptionist, but she gets under the counter and does some rewiring, and in an emergency takes over piloting the ship–it happened only for a couple of minutes, but it happened–and those were skills she was expected to have. Women as programmers, historians, archaeologists, engineers (and outranking a man!), JAG lawyers, Federation diplomats. How awesome is that when most television was pretty much showing women as mothers, teachers, nurses, and secretaries, here were women as professional experts in fields that were exclusively the province of men in real life? But yes, much of that promise was stifled by the countervailing sexist treatment that came along with it.

    Oh… and remember the energy creature that imprisons/cares for Pike (it was Pike, wasn’t it?) and the big surprise that universal translater translated the voice as female, not as an arbitrary random choice, but because there are universally recognized characteristics and the entity was female because it thought like a female (if you can consider that sort of brain activity thinking)?

    Zefram Cochrane. This was the episode (“Metamorphosis”) I was just about to bring up in answer to komarov. Stay tuned, it’s a bit long and I’m going to have to go back to the show to get some quotations right instead of from memory. Short version: I found this episode to be quite as quietly sexist as “I, Mudd” was blatantly sexist.

  41. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 7/9:
    Please, when discussing the shortfalls of ST:Voyager, in terms of feminism; i.e. examples of the lack thereof. Let’s stop highlighting 7 of 9’s catsuit. I remember Jeri Ryan being asked about the overtones of such a costume, which she acknowledged, and claimed the costume as her choice, when she had been given the option of choosing something different. I agree that it was somewhat misogynistic to initially put her in such a costume; however, it must be recognized that they gave her the choice and she stuck with the initial costume (claiming it to have been far more comfortable than the uniforms of the rest of the cast, who claimed them to be pinchy and stiff, etc.) Let’s discuss more scriptbound issues than just the eyecandy of Jeri’s costume.
    In ST:V’s defense, (to be Cpt. Obvious) having the Captain be a female tough was pretty groundbreaking [pun]. TOS was far behind; highlighting more relevant political issues of race & coldwar & hippies & prostitution (Mudd). TOS was overwhelmed and cut short.

  42. says

    Suicide spike boosts oversight of California women’s prison:

    Four women have killed themselves at California Institution for Women in San Bernardino County in the last 18 months, according to state records. The suicide rate at the facility is more than eight times the national rate for female inmates and more than five times the rate for the entire California prison system.

    Such deaths in custody have drawn scrutiny since Sandra Bland was found hanging in a Texas jail cell after a traffic stop that gained national attention amid increased focus on police practices, though she died in a county jail and not a state prison.

    In California, the Institution for Women is the only women’s prison in the state to have had any suicides in the last five years, and another 20 of the prison’s 2,000 inmates have attempted suicide during the last year and a half.

    It is a shocking turnaround at a facility that last year was cited as a rare example of California providing proper mental health treatment for inmates. All four women who died were receiving mental health treatment in the days before their deaths.

    The prison’s psychiatric program was promoted as a positive example in May 2014 by Matthew Lopes, a federal court-appointed overseer who monitors mental health treatment for inmates. Of six inpatient programs for mentally ill inmates statewide, he found that only the one at the women’s institution was providing proper care.

    But this January, court-appointed suicide expert Lindsay Hayes labeled the prison “a problematic institution that exhibited numerous poor practices in the area of suicide prevention.” They included inadequate suicide risk evaluations and treatment and not checking on inmates as often as required by department regulations.

    That was before Gui Fei Zhang, 73, killed herself a day after being released from suicide watch in February, according to the advocacy group California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Stephanie Feliz, 34, hanged herself less than a month later after several previous attempts and after seeking emergency mental health care the same day she died, the group said, citing letters from her fellow inmates.

    “(W)e have women dropping like flies, and not one person has been questioned as to why we believe they are killing themselves,” inmate April Harris, who has been in prison since 1998, wrote to the coalition after Feliz’s death. “I have never seen anything like this. Ever.”

    Before the recent surge, there were three suicides at the institution in 14 years.

    Cirese LaBerge, who was incarcerated with Feliz for more than a decade, told The Associated Press her friend “was a young, pretty blonde and full of life” who grew despondent in the months before her death.

    “I could see her downward spiraling and asking for help, and didn’t receive it,” said LaBerge, who was paroled from the prison in March. “It just seems like they’re housing the mentally ill and not getting them the help they need.”

    California prisons have long had a suicide problem, but not among female inmates.

    Suicide is predominantly a male phenomenon in prison as in society at large, yet women at the Southern California prison have been killing themselves at “an astronomical rate,” said Jane Kahn, an attorney who has fought to improve prison suicide prevention efforts.

    By comparison, there were no suicides in any of California’s three women’s prisons during a similar 18-month period in 2011-12.

    The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation studied each suicide once it realized there was “a cluster, a spike” at the women’s prison, said spokeswoman Dana Simas.

    “They could not identify one single underlying issue that indicated that CDCR had any deficiencies in mental health treatment, in lapses in supervision. There were so many variables in each individual’s case that it didn’t point to anything specific that CDCR was doing wrong,” she said. However, the department increased mental health training for prison employees, with extra supervision for some who had “performance issues,” she said.

  43. AlexanderZ says

    Passengers on Porter flight clash when male ultra-Orthodox Jew refuses to sit next to woman:

    Former Halifax chef Christine Flynn said a flight attendant asked if she would move when an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man refused to sit next to her aboard Porter Airlines Flight 121 on Monday. She declined, uncomfortable with the other passenger’s manner, she said.
    “He came down the aisle, he didn’t actually look at me … or make eye contact. He turned to the gentleman across the aisle and said, ‘Change,’” Flynn told CBC News.
    The matter was resolved when another passenger volunteered to switch seats, but Flynn is now seeking an apology from Porter.
    “He could have made a plan, he could have put in a request,” Flynn said on CBC of the other passenger. “When someone doesn’t look at you, and when someone doesn’t acknowledge you as person because of your gender, you’re a lot less willing to be accommodating.
    “Leaving it to the last minute and expecting me to move is appalling. He’s expecting me to fall in to that archetypical feminine role and acquiesce.”

    Ibis3 #28 said that LGBT news are also accepted, so:
    16-year-old stabbed in Jerusalem pride parade succumbs to wounds:

    Three days after being critically wounded by an ultra-Orthodox man that went on a stabbing rampage at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, Shira Banki, a 16-year-old Israeli teen succumbed to her wounds Sunday afternoon. Five other people were wounded in the attack.
    Police confirmed that the suspected stabber is Yishai Schlissel, a Haredi man from Modiin Ilit who stabbed three participants in the 2005 Gay Pride march. He was recently released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence.
    Banki was a high-school student from Jerusalem, studying at the Hebrew University High School. She took part in Thursday’s parade to show solidarity with her LGBT friends. She is survived by her parents and three siblings; her family decided to donate her organs.
    In a statement issued Sunday, her family said: “Our magical Shira was murdered because she was a happy 16-year-old – full of life and love – who came to express her support for her friends’ rights to live as they choose. For no good reason and because of evil, stupidity and negligence, the life of our beautiful flower was cut short. Bad things happen to good people, and a very bad thing happened to our amazing girl. The family expresses hope for a less hatred and more tolerance.” The family requests the public respect their privacy as they grieve.

    ____________________________

    Re: Star Trek:
    ST, all of it, was sexist by design. I remind you that Gene Roddenberry invented the pon farr (a once-in-a-seven-years period in which male Vulcans become violent unless they have sex with a woman, willing or not), wrote the Ferengi so that in their society all women are naked slaves, and created the character Tasha Yar, who is supposed to be a rape survivor from a planet like Mad Max, but who tries to have sex with everyone on the crew in the second/third episode of TNG (The Naked Now) and in the next episode (Code of Honor) secretly wants to have sex with her kidnapper.
    If that wasn’t bad enough, here is what was going on behind the scenes of Star Trek. A very abridged tale because it doesn’t include the many actress who played Kirk’s woman-interest-of-the-week and said they were harassed by William Shatner. Or the reason why Gates McFadden left the set for a year (rumored to have been harassed by Maurice Hurley, Gene’s right-hand man and the chief writer and showrunner for early TNG).
    That show was fucked up as all hell.
    _________________

    woozy #43

    Or, I’m overthinking it.

    Very much so. “Up the Long Ladder” was written by Melinda M. Snodgrass (who also gave us “The Measure of a Man”). She tried to make an episode that explores the intricacies of culture, reproduction and human cloning. That is until the aforementioned Maurice Hurley saw the script and decided that this calls for a comedy episode, populated with everything he found amusing – Irish stereotypes and implied rape!

  44. komarov says

    Re Star Trek (Woozy and Seven #38, #39, #40, #43, #45)

    First off, I’ll have to skip ahead in my rerun to Turnabout Intrude. I shall brace myself.
    Mind you, it wasn’t me who said anything about glimmers of hope in TOS. :)

    I’d give Star Trek a good, well, positive rating in progressiveness in general, not for feminism in particular. As far as gender goes they really did not do that well. They fell for – or happily followed – many tropes and stereotypes for men and women. Extreme examples could be Troi (Empath, emotional, sensitive, caring —> female) and Worf (Emotional yet restrained, aggressive plus Klingon Strength and Honour —> male). If they really wanted to break preconceptions they should have reversed the genders. They even kind of did with the Tasha Yar … experiment (?) which ended quickly and pointlessly (her death being pointless was the very point of that episode). Whoops, there goes your strong female survivor type character, just because I can *splat*

    The TNG episode with the cloners and the decidedly Irish farmers was rather bad. Aside from Picard’s charming ultimatum there is also the woman effectively leading the farmers. She was basically just another version of Mudd’s wife, the nag. And she went right for that ‘bossy women’ stereotype, bellowing orders, yelling, shouting and inspiring universal dread in the men – farmers, cloners, and starfleet alike. Because apparently that’s the only way a woman in charge can be like.

    But Star Trek did get better at this. Both Janeway and Torres did were good characters I thought. Both occupied leadership roles, were good at it and, as a bonus, were technically minded, with Janeway being the scientist and Torres the engineer. Despite being in charge they steered clear of the bossy trope.
    I’m not sure where to put Seven of Nine. She changed a lot over the course of the show and given the character’s background I’d struggle to differentiate between ‘female character gone wrong’ and a ‘feature of liberated Borg with literally no human experience whatsoever’. One thing I do remember reading is that the actress playing her apparently fainted repeatedly because of the skintight suit. That ought to have told the producers / writers / whoever* that this was a terrible choice of wardrobe. They could have put her in a uniform or virtually anything imaginable, but nope, it had to be the suspiciously curve-emphasising outfit.

    *That and common sense, creative pride and higher standards for oneself for being involved in Star Trek. Bloody hell.

    P.S.: Thanks for making me think all this through again. Makes me feel even more miserable about Star Trek. Damn!

  45. komarov says

    Re: slithey tove #50

    Sorry, your post wasn’t up when I started mine. I’d be happy to ignore the wardrobe from here on in. Incidentally, I wasn’t aware it was her choice, I just remembered an interview somewhere where she mentioned that she’d occasionally faint wearing it. It seems odd, but if it was her choice I’m not inclined to argue with it.

  46. otrame says

    Re: Star Trek TOS,

    I was in my teens when TOS started. I loved it of course. People have mentioned the sexism that is rampant on the show and I certainly agree, but I would like to point out that in those days, having a woman on the bridge of a military vessel, even as just a technician, was considered very daring. Yeah, I know, but it was. There was a lot of discussion about it. I heard people my parents’ age talking about how “unrealistic” that was. It was a huge deal at the time. An utterly competent, cool and collected professional woman working around all those men without behaving like a strumpet was unheard of unless she was 45, fat, and ugly. Watch any other TV show from that period and you will see what I mean. And to top it all off, she was black, too. I’m not sure, but I think she was the first black second-tier character (one step down from the main stars) who was not a maid. I Spy, the first American TV show with a black main character, was not until 2 year later (and CURSE that rotten bastard for tainting that achievement so horrifically).

    Younger people see the “hints” of progressive ideology in it. It actually pushed some old, evil boundaries very hard. The consensus was that they could get away with it because it was “the future”. I know the mini-skirts and the confinement of women to largely traditional working roles of secretaries and nurses rankles, and it should, but it was a commercial venture in a culture of rampant sexism and it actually tried to reach past that a little bit. Again, yes, sexist as hell, but please give them a little credit for moving in the right direction.

  47. AlexanderZ says

    komarov #54

    They even kind of did with the Tasha Yar … experiment (?) which ended quickly and pointlessly (her death being pointless was the very point of that episode). Whoops, there goes your strong female survivor type character, just because I can *splat*

    She left the show on her volition. The way her death was portrayed was more due to the incompetence of the writers. Here is how she described her role (and why she left):

    I think they would have been very happy for me to wear really tight outfits and heels and stick my tits out – believe me, they suggested it, those very words were actually used.

    To the credit of later TNG writers they (*major spoilers*) wrote her a better death and brought the actress back in a different role.

  48. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    slithey tove @ 50

    Please, when discussing the shortfalls of ST:Voyager, in terms of feminism; i.e. examples of the lack thereof. Let’s stop highlighting 7 of 9’s catsuit. I remember Jeri Ryan being asked about the overtones of such a costume, which she acknowledged, and claimed the costume as her choice, when she had been given the option of choosing something different. I agree that it was somewhat misogynistic to initially put her in such a costume; however, it must be recognized that they gave her the choice and she stuck with the initial costume (claiming it to have been far more comfortable than the uniforms of the rest of the cast, who claimed them to be pinchy and stiff, etc.) Let’s discuss more scriptbound issues than just the eyecandy of Jeri’s costume.

    First, I didn’t actually bring up 7s catsuit. Second, do you have a source for Jeri Ryan claiming the catsuit as her choice? Third, I don’t much care if it was Ryan’s choice. Having a character in a skin tight suit and extremely high-heeled shoes is obviously a sop to the male gaze.

    Also with regard to the suit, Jeri Taylor, who famously insisted that Deanna Troi be given a proper uniform also has made feeble excuses for not also pressing for Seven to have a proper uniform. The argument was that Troi, being the ship’s counselor, needed to be respectable and so got to wear real clothes. Seven, because she wasn’t in a position of taking care of anyone, apparently wasn’t entitled to respect.

    But it wasn’t really the suit I was talking about, or at least not only the suit. Seven was made to live in a damn cargo bay through the entire series. A room that literally anyone could walk into. She had exactly zero space on the ship that was hers.

    komarov @ 54

    One thing I do remember reading is that the actress playing her apparently fainted repeatedly because of the skintight suit. That ought to have told the producers / writers / whoever* that this was a terrible choice of wardrobe. They could have put her in a uniform or virtually anything imaginable, but nope, it had to be the suspiciously curve-emphasising outfit.

    The problem was actually the full blown Borg gear. There was a piece at her neck that pressed on her carotid artery when she turned her head a certain way. I don’t think she every actually passed out but it made her lightheaded. Once they realized what was happening they modified the suit.

    They even kind of did with the Tasha Yar … experiment (?) which ended quickly and pointlessly (her death being pointless was the very point of that episode). Whoops, there goes your strong female survivor type character, just because I can *splat*

    Another thing about Yar was that she was always letting her emotions run away with her.

  49. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    I remind you that Gene Roddenberry invented the pon farr (a once-in-a-seven-years period in which male Vulcans become violent unless they have sex with a woman, willing or not), wrote the Ferengi so that in their society all women are naked slaves, and created the character Tasha Yar, who is supposed to be a rape survivor from a planet like Mad Max, but who tries to have sex with everyone on the crew in the second/third episode of TNG (The Naked Now) and in the next episode (Code of Honor) secretly wants to have sex with her kidnapper.

    Roddenberry’s original concept for Betazoids (Deanna Troi’s race) involved them having 4 breasts. Thankfully he was at least talked out of that one.

  50. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Speaking of implied rape, the Voyager episode Retrospect.

    It involved Seven suddenly having a viscerally negative reaction to a weapons dealer the ship encountered and having a panic attack when she was confined in the biobed in sickbay. After some prodding by the Doctor, Seven remembers having been accidentally shot by one of the weapons they were looking at and waking up on an examination table and hearing people talking about harvesting nanoprobes from her to sell. It’s pretty obviously meant to be analogous to rape.

    Kovin, the weapon dealer insists that no such thing happened, but there’s an investigation. The Doctor gets very caught up in it and convinces Seven to be angry about it. He tries talking to her about dealing with her resentment etc. and her initial reaction is “what resentment”. Then the Doctor talks about what a terrible violation Kovin committed and Seven eventually becomes angry about it and decides she wants to see Kovin pay. The Doctor turns it into something of a personal crusade.

    The initial idea is that the evidence at hand is consistent with Seven’s story but not Kovin’s but, once they research it a little further, it turns out that the evidence doesn’t support either story more than the other. Kovin ends up running away and when Voyager catches up to him (having discovered that they’re no longer so certain of his guilt) he doesn’t trust them and attacks. His weapons overload and his ship blows up.

    The episode ends with Seven shouldering just as much of the blame for the whole fiasco as the Doctor even though he’d had been extremely leading when he was trying to get her to remember what happened and, by his own admission, knew nothing about her psychology. At the moment where Kovin’s ship explodes, Janeway turns to fix Seven with an extremely stern look.

    I was really squicked by it because it plays into the whole idea of women frivolously accusing innocent men of rape and the men’s lives being ruined, etc.

  51. AlexanderZ says

    sindi #46

    Again, I am looking for strong, effective, universal feminist arguments against all forms of forced child genital cutting, rather than arguments against just one type of genital mutilation.

    I have to agree with previous replies: Any genital mutilation is wrong because the parents don’t own the child. The child, nor is any human being, a property – they are people with the right to bodily autonomy. Parents are custodians of their children and must act to protect their children’s rights, not to infringe them.
    If anyone inquires doesn’t that mean that parents can’t tell their children anything? the answer is no – parents can, and should, take care of their children. This includes telling them (not) to go to certain places or do certain thing, because those things can be harmful for the children, even if the child may not be aware of the danger or dislike being restricted by their parent. Nevertheless, the important issue is the child’s well-being – children are told to take unpleasant medications because that will benefit their health. In what way does genital mutilation protects the child?! If it doesn’t then it’s a needless, painful, surgical intervention that is completely unnecessary. If the answer is because society demands it/the child won’t fit in otherwise then the answer is that society must change, and you can point to many other societies that don’t practice genital mutilation, or even other Muslim societies that don’t practice FGM.

    As for FGM as a sub-set of genital mutilation: The purpose of all FGM is to curtail the woman’s sex drive so that she’ll be a “better” wife. This means that at the woman’s infancy/childhood the nebulous desires of her yet to be determined husband are put above her own – she is a means to an end, becoming the “perfect” wife, societies dictates are put above her humanity – she has no right to choose whether to undergo the FGM or not, and finally her husband’s desires are put above her own – both because that’s the real reason behind FGM, and because in societies that practice FGM the woman is owned by her husband.
    In short, FGM is the complete objectification of women at every stage of their life. It’s a central part of showing that women are less than human, their bodies are controlled by others for the benefit of others (be that their future husbands or society’s traditions).
    ___________________

    Seven of Mine #59

    Roddenberry’s original concept for Betazoids (Deanna Troi’s race) involved them having 4 breasts. Thankfully he was at least talked out of that one.

    Oh, I forgot about that one. He also wanted the Ferengi to wear huge codpieces to cover their enormous dicks, as well as wanting their their culture to have twenty unique sexual positions which he was happy to elaborate on.
    Good that was vetoed by the other execs.
    ___________________

    Ibis3 #60

    And then ruined it again by making her the captive of the Romulans, rape victim, and unwilling mother of Sela.

    Yes. They wanted Crosby back and that was their “brilliant” way of doing so – the daughter of a raped and later murdered Yarr.

  52. AlexanderZ says

    Seven of Mine #61

    Speaking of implied rape, the Voyager episode Retrospect.

    Don’t forget “Blood Fever” where Vorik fights Torres because he’s undergoing pon farr and needs to rape her. Or “Body and Soul” where The Doctor takes over Seven’s mind and body and runs around doing “antics”, which include having Seven strip naked for him.
    Star Trek was fucked up, period.

  53. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    There are sort of factions of Voyager fans aligned along axes of which characters they “shipped”. Most people really hoped Janeway and Chakotay (known as J/C in fanfic lingo) would end up together. There are some people who are very appreciative of the Chakoty/Seven (C/7) pairing, me included. Then, occasionally you’ll encounter D/7 (Doctor/Seven) fans. Which is just gross because pretty much all of them, IME, cite My Fair Lady as the reason why. Seven is Eliza Doolittle to The Doctor’s Henry Higgins. The Doctor just deserves her because he made her suitable for decent company despite the fact that Seven makes it quite plain that she feels no physical attraction toward him.

    I could go off on a huge tangent about how much I dislike The Doctor character but it’s mostly not a feminist thing.

  54. Tethys says

    slithey tove

    Please, when discussing the shortfalls of ST:Voyager, in terms of feminism; i.e. examples of the lack thereof. Let’s stop highlighting 7 of 9’s catsuit. I remember Jeri Ryan being asked about the overtones of such a costume, which she acknowledged, and claimed the costume as her choice,

    Incorrect. ;) Jeri Ryan chose to work, she did not get to decide what costume she was wearing. It may be an old topic to you, but the Voyager series is brand new to me. Watching multiple seasons in a short time highlights the various issues with her evolving costume. The silver catsuit is commonly credited with a 60% rise in viewership, which in itself is an example of sexist bias. Seven of Nine does indeed have an amazing body, but IMO the series became more interesting and enjoyable after her character was introduced, and it is Jeri Ryan and better writing which should get credit for the increase.. There are excellent reviews of the various Star Treks on the geek twins, including Troi’s cleavage and 5 horrifying facts about Seven of Nines costumes The borg costume cut off blood flow to her brain. Not mentioned is the glaring obvious logic issue. Why would the Borg give her enormous Barbie boob armor in the first place? Borg do not reproduce sexually or breastfeed, so breasts would be irrelevant.

  55. Al Dente says

    sindi @46

    Most of my reply @22 applies to any genital mutilation. It’s irreversible, violates the victim’s rights, has no health benefits, and can have detrimental or hazardous side effects. AlexanderZ’s comments @62 are also germane. A parent is responsible for a child, the parent doesn’t own that child. AlexanderZ’s last comment about FGM is particularly good:

    In short, FGM is the complete objectification of women at every stage of their life. It’s a central part of showing that women are less than human, their bodies are controlled by others for the benefit of others (be that their future husbands or society’s traditions).

    There are some medical conditions, such as paraphimosis or balanitis xerotica obliterans, which may require circumcision. But there are no good reasons why a medically healthy infant or child should undergo genital mutilation. “Because my culture approves of genital mutilation” is not a good reason.

  56. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Regarding 7 of 9—It wasn’t a “catsuit.” It wasn’t merely “skin tight.” It was a heavily corseted suit that squeezed the body into an unnatural shape. Take it off and you wouldn’t have the same body shape—that’s what corsets do.

    We’re not talking about a suit that just happens to be merely “form-fitting.”

  57. says

    New Ghostbusters cast visits children’s hospital, attracts trolls:

    Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones spent Saturday dressed in their Ghostbusters costumes, visiting patients at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center. Being nice to sick children is generally part and parcel of that whole “being human” thing; and making the rounds in superhero costume is a pretty standard celebrity box to check (remember when Chris Evans and Chris Pratt did this and the internet went insane?).

    But since McCarthy, Wiig, McKinnon and Jones are women who are ruining a beloved franchise, they continue to be worthy of scorn, as does Tufts Medical Center. Tufts posted perfectly delightful photographs on their Facebook page and Ghostbusters truthers descended on photographs of hospitalized children to express their displeasure.

    This morning Tufts had to remind the angry men frothing in Facebook comments over the ruination of Ghostbusters that “any comments with profanity would be deleted.” Seriously dudes, let it go.

    But misogynistic and sexist comments would be ok, huh Facebook?

  58. Dunc says

    Can I put in a shout for Deep Space 9 as the most successfully feminist Star Trek franchise? Sure, it’s not without its flaws (to say the least), but it does have (IMHO) the two most fully developed female characters (Jadzia Dax and Kira Nerys), the best portrayal of a genuinely equal friendship between a man and a woman (Sisco and Dax), and even tackled some explicitly feminist themes – although those episodes were very badly hampered by the whole “comedy Ferengi” thing. I’d argue ’til I’m blue in the face that Dax and Kira were far better developed characters than either Janeway or Torres. Heck, even Leeta had some depth to her (sociologist, math whizz, union organiser), despite the fan service…

  59. Al Dente says

    Dunc @69

    Can I put in a shout for Deep Space 9 as the most successfully feminist Star Trek franchise?

    Sure you can. Personally I think the two best TV SF series were DS9 and Babylon 5, both about people at space stations. Babylon 5 had some good, strong female characters, particularly Delenn and Susan Ivanova.

  60. says

    Reading the posts on the subject over at Butterflies and Wheels, I was wondering if there’s any consensus here regarding the controversy over Amnesty International’s proposal that sex work should be decriminalized?

    Here are the two articles that Ophelia posted and commented on:
    An article opposing the plan at The Guardian
    One supporting it in the Independent

    Many feminist organizations and activists oppose Amnesty on this, and instead support the Nordic model, which focuses on ending demand for prostitution. But of course there are plenty of others who view complete decriminalization as the liberal and progressive policy. There don’t seem to be many topics that divide otherwise likeminded feminists/progressives to quite the same extent.

    Personally I’m skeptical that “abolishing prostitution” is truly achievable, and find the evidence that sex work encourages rape and harms all women to be quite weak, but I’m not sure that complete decriminalization (without strong regulation) is the answer either, considering the exploitation and abuse that goes on…

  61. Tethys says

    Josh

    It wasn’t a “catsuit.” It wasn’t merely “skin tight.” It was a heavily corseted suit that squeezed the body into an unnatural shape.

    The corset was actually a separate article of clothing that was worn under the silver catsuit. It is pictured in my link at 65. Your comment started me thinking about catsuits in general. Though wiki claims that they were known in the 40’s, other more reliable sources show this term as coming into use in the 60’s, I assume as the name of the outfit worn by Catwoman and also Batgirl in the Batman tv show, but I can’t find anything to confirm my assumption. I am struck by how Batmans costume is never described as a catsuit, even though it is. To bring the catsuit subject full circle back to Star Trek, TOS, I also learned this trivia. Yvonne Craig, the actress who portrayed Barbara Gordon / Batgirl was also the green skinned alien woman Marta in episode #69 Whom Gods Destroy

  62. sindi says

    As for FGM as a sub-set of genital mutilation: The purpose of all FGM is to curtail the woman’s sex drive so that she’ll be a “better” wife.

    This isn’t exclusive to female circumcision actually. Male circumcision was thought to cure masturbation and decrease male libido. Another common myth is that male circumcision delays ejaculation and thereby makes them better sex partners/husbands. It is also often claimed that circumcision makes the penis more sexually attractive to women due to aesthetic preference or an inherent grossness of the foreskin. Many men express gratitude for being circumcised because they believe that women would not want to have sex with them, especially oral sex, otherwise. Likewise, many women who are circumcised express gratitude, because they believe that if they are were uncircumcised they would be unmarriable and unattractive to men. Both men and women who are circumcised believe that their genitals are cleaner and improved. It is interesting that survivors of different forms of circumcision cope with living in a pro-mutilation culture in similar ways. Often by desperately searching for benefits and rationalizations to justify what was done, and minimizing, explaining away, or dismissing any harm. Unfortunately, this plays into the cycle of mutilation. When the survivors become parents themselves, they reason that “it happened to me, and I’m fine. therefore there is no reason why I shouldn’t do it to my child also.” Meanwhile onlookers within society hear “it happened to me, and I’m fine” and use such statements to shame and silence survivors who summon great courage to speak out about their anguish and suffering. Of course, we know that this is nothing more than victim blaming. This ignoring and dismissal is a way for the culture to become complicit in perpetuation the sexual abuse of children, because acknowledging the reality of the scale of cruelty is truly overwhelming. It is much easier to distract ourselves or deflect attention using “Dear Muslima” or oppression olympics derailment.

  63. Daniel Dunér says

    I’ve watched every ST episode, but was mostly bored to tears and/or appaled by most of TOS. With the exception of a few clever ideas and some actors being charming.

    But is there any scifi from the 60s that wasn’t steeped in sexism? The most progressive work I can think of is The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). But just like all Le Guine’s books from the 60s it reeks of sexism. It was an important stepping stone towards her becoming the best author ever, but she still had a long way to go. She talks about some of her failures in the super fascinating dual self commentary Is Gender Necessary Redux.

  64. imback says

    @Tony #44,
    Thanks for the inside info. I suppose in order to make the ad themes friendlier, FTB could still shop for a more responsive third-party site to regulate them. But I guess we beggars can’t be choosers.

  65. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    @ Stephen #71

    I’m in the “decriminalize and strongly regulate” camp, myself. It’s happening anyway and there’s no real way to stop it, so our goal ought to be making it safer for all involved. Criminalisation makes it more dangerous, particularly for the prostitutes themselves.

  66. komarov says

    Hm, I do feel rather bad for us flooding this thread with Star Trek when other people are gathering all manner of intersting sources and things to read and discuss.

    Still, on topic, I am not at all happy to learn about the toxic background to Star Trek. I try not to look behind the scenes in general because I rarely like what I see. Hollywood is not a nice place, methinks. Was Star Trek particularly bad in this regard or is / was (hah!) Hollywood generally at that level or worse?

    Beside cursory glances I also avoided at looking too closely at Roddenberry himself, but I’m not surprised he had a hand in some of the most egregious … slip-ups such as the four-breasted Betazoids. (News to me) Nor would I be suprised either if the argument made against those was something along the lines of “Think how complicated the costumes and makeup would be” rather than anything sensible.

    But to be fair to Star Trek (lore, not production), a lot of repair work was done over time, undoing or at least improving on things they had gotten wrong before.
    Consider the first Klingon woman, clicked onto the TNG bridge by Q during the pilot. Essentially a bondage slave girl they managed to ‘overlook’ this manifestation, making later Klingon females into strong and independent (and fully clothed*) characters with their own agenda. In DS9 they also started to show up as regular crew on Klingon vessels, implying more equality for Klingon women (although DS9 lore also restricted their rights in some areas, e.g. cannot lead a house)

    *Yes, I know, cleavage. But otherwise pretty much on par with their male counterparts, including weaponry.

    The Ferengi are another example. In TNG they were all over the place but in DS9 they did manage to condense all those traits into something that actually worked and was an interesting pardoy of the unfettered capitalist.* Considering the constraints from TNG lore that was quite a feat.
    Despite largely being for comic relief, the equality and social justice themes in some of the Ferengi-heavy episodes were still done very well in my opinion. By the end of the show Rom ends up in charge of the Ferengi Alliance. Meanwhile Ishka had already quietly been pulling strings to set change in motion. And Zek was her willing accomplice who understood the purpose of reform when he might just as easily have been portrayed as someone who was being manipulated by a ‘wiley female’.
    That is a huge turn-around from the original Ferengi who didn’t have a fixed role and were – my impression – just used as a handy villain that could be ‘evil’ in whatever manner was needed during a given episode.

    *Over the years they have started to look less and less like a parody…

    Dunc, the women from DS9 are excellent examples, too, for all the reasons you list. The friendship between Sisko and Dax is actually a very good example I hadn’t conciously noticed before. It’s a shame that Hollywood in general seems to think that Woman + Man = sexual tension that will be explored on the show eventually. Usually at length, much to my annoyance.

    Finally, I think all shows (except TOS, which was just episodes rather than a ‘series’) needed an extraordinarily long time to ‘develop’. I haven’t noticed this in any other Non-ST show, but the first season or two always struggle along. The writers and actors seem to know what they have to work with / who they are supposed to be but noone is quite sure what it all means.
    Watching them in succession I think most people will notice the huge difference in ‘feel’ between first and last season of any show. By comparison other shows are almost constant, give or take some general character and storyline development here and there. With that in mind I’d like to think that even the characters that didn’t make it, e.g. Yar, could have turned out to be very interesting. But from what you tell me Crosby was right to get out of there.

  67. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Yeah, I mean, to be fair to Star Trek, they’re way ahead of the diversity game by virtue of even trying and they deserve credit for that. But they’re human beings immersed in the same bigoted culture as the rest of us. I think it’s good to keep it in perspective.

  68. bayes says

    @ Stephen #71
    I’d entirely decriminalize sex work, as many countries have. They tend to discourage brothels, but taking up the life of an escort is not unlawful in many advanced countries. And rightly so. So long as the woman is of age and free to make her own choices, she should be able to do so. I must admit to having known some escorts, and the vast majority are not drug addicts or sex trafficked victims. They are intelligent women, many with college degrees, and quite capable of taking care of themselves. Many have been in the business for years.

    If nothing else, “feminism” confers the right to dictate one’s world for oneself. It is not, in my mind, a license to replace one set of restrictions with another set, no matter how well-meaning. If women are to have maximum freedom, they must be given tough choices to make, and allowed to make them unhindered. I have little patience with “feminists” who present themselves as rescuers and other women as victims. They are little better than the paternalists of centuries past. To me, “feminism” is a call for equality – in pay, in jobs, in life choices. Escorts (as most practitioners beyond streetwalkers prefer to be called today) are not perpetrators nor victims, but merely people earning a living.

  69. says

    Thumper

    I’m in the “decriminalize and strongly regulate” camp, myself.

    That’S actually two different things, but I admit that I only learned about the differentce between “decriminalise” and “legalise” last week myself.
    “Decriminalise” means that you simply remove all laws that forbid consensual prostitution, “legalise” means you regulate, which can effectively criminalise sex workers again.
    Germany is currently debating a change in law that would make sex workers have to:
    -register with the police
    -endure counselling
    -carry secific “sex worker ID”
    Of course there are many reasons why one wouldn’t want to do that, and it would effectively give abusive pimps and corrupt police leverage against sex workers again.
    “End demand” is bullshit. Demand for prostitution isn’t that much affected by prostitution but by the rest of society. Criminalising either end, supply or demand, does nothing but to make sex workers pay the price.
    Even if I believed that all sex workers are poor abused creatures who are forced into prostitution and who just need help to leave the industry, how could I logically demand that their lives be made worse, that they be turned into criminals?

  70. birgerjohansson says

    After the depressing display of gamergate slime, here is something lighter:
    SMBC: “If men continue to be socially unable to enjoy anything considered “girly” …http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3764

  71. consciousness razor says

    Giliell:

    “Decriminalise” means that you simply remove all laws that forbid consensual prostitution, “legalise” means you regulate, which can effectively criminalise sex workers again.
    Germany is currently debating a change in law that would make sex workers have to:
    -register with the police
    -endure counselling
    -carry secific “sex worker ID”
    Of course there are many reasons why one wouldn’t want to do that, and it would effectively give abusive pimps and corrupt police leverage against sex workers again.

    I haven’t thought much about what would constitute a reasonable set of regulations, but it’s certainly not necessary (although it’s possible) that legalization would be bad for them. For instance, it could be about ensuring it is a safe and healthy working environment, or generally that they have all the same protections as any other workers do. And like everyone else, these people and businesses should be paying taxes (along with getting benefits associated with that). Simply revoking laws against it wouldn’t be setting up any systems like that.

    Also, something might be “decriminalized” but there would still be fines or penalties or whatever. The idea is just that it’s not counted as a criminal offense, which requires something more than (say) a fine. It won’t go on certain public records, say, but that leaves a lot of room for harassment and abuse. A lot of the reason for giving people traffic tickets, seizing property, etc., is putting money into the coffers of the city or the police department — and having the opportunity to do that can also give them reasons to detain you, search you, generate suspicion about actual crimes you might have done, and so forth.

  72. says

    What are the arguments, from a feminist perspective, against genital mutilation? I ask because I’ve talked to multiple women who have a pro-mutilation stance…

    Were those women you talked to feminists? Judging by your description, they don’t sound feminist at all.

    And you certainly don’t need a “feminist perspective” to argue against any acts of mutilation of non-consenting children’s bodies, male or female, that are known to cause lots of verifiable damage and no medical benefit. Call me old-school (I plead at least half guilty), but I don’t see that as a “feminist” issue, because I learned about the idea of “not hurting innocent people without good reason” separately from the idea of equal rights for women. From my perspective, the only reason this seems like a “feminist issue” is that feminists seem to be talking about it more than their opponents.

  73. says

    I haven’t thought much about what would constitute a reasonable set of regulations, but it’s certainly not necessary (although it’s possible) that legalization would be bad for them. For instance, it could be about ensuring it is a safe and healthy working environment, or generally that they have all the same protections as any other workers do.

    Arguments for legalization of such things as alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc., are mostly based on the idea that legalization will bring the activity in question “out in the open,” because people will be able, and willing, to engage in such activity without having to worry about the consequences of exposure. This does not apply to sex work, because sex is still a private activity (except for a few exhibitionists), and the people who pay for sex will still have good reason to avoid doing it “in the open:” they’re married, they have kinks they don’t want others to know about, or they just don’t want to be seen pursuing sex, etc. And for this reason, legalization will not bring anywhere near the same benefits to sex work as it brings to, say, the alcohol or weed trade. Even without the draconian phony “protection” rules cited @85 above, most johns will be repelled from areas of “open” sex-work activity, not necessarily because they’re sleazeballs, but because they just don’t want to be seen when they’re engaging in that type of activity.

    I’m all in favor of legalizing and de-stigmatizing sex work; but we should not have too many illusions about how much good we can do in this area.

  74. Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Panda says

    I’m actually just commenting for the sake of the email updates to the thread, but there is a thing I want to actually comment on as well.

    Star Trek definitely falls short of its progressive aims. I think the original series was… less terrible than might have been expected for the time – on one hand, Uhura was a glorified space receptionist, but she was also 4th (I think 4th… maybe 5th?) in command of the Enterprise… of course that’s mostly subtext. I think she does actually take command once, but that’s it. But there are definitely too many “oh-ho-ho, women and their ways” things thrown in. I’m tempted to cite the existence of the female Romulan commander as well, but unlike deep-cover Sarek’s first appearance, she was defeated by seduction and misdirection rather than military guile. (I like to believe that, if we’d seen more Romulans in TOS, we would’ve seen a lot more women in command positions, and they would’ve been legitimate military and diplomatic adversaries, though this might be more a matter of wishful thinking than anything else.) There an awful lot of almost doing a good job, but it keeps on failing. I wonder how progressive it actually was at the time, though? I guess it’s worth remembering that, no matter how radically feminist they may have wanted to go, it still had to get put on tv… not that I think they had shining, perfect ideals that were torn apart by the networks (I mean… Spock’s Brain) but they certainly had to work within the limitations of what networks were willing to show… of course, I doubt they had a sexism quota to meet so… yeah, disappointing.
    TNG has some good moments, some seriously shining brilliance, but the bad really does sour the rest of it. If you ever loved Star Trek, I beg of you, do not watch “Code of Honor.” That was… not good. So much space racism.

  75. Athywren - Frustration Familiarity Panda says

    (Not that I don’t want to comment on genital mutilation or the legalisation of sex work, I just have much less to say that hasn’t already been said.)

  76. says

    That topless protest noted above in KW – Her Ex-Cellency went, and got to hug and talk to the immortal Gwen Jacob. She said there were a fair number of men there taking pictures and video, but rather more of them just being supportive.

    I couldn’t take part, as my hip has been so bad for the last few days I’m basically bedridden. :/

    Enjoying the discussion!

  77. consciousness razor says

    Raging Bee:

    This does not apply to sex work, because sex is still a private activity (except for a few exhibitionists), and the people who pay for sex will still have good reason to avoid doing it “in the open:” they’re married, they have kinks they don’t want others to know about, or they just don’t want to be seen pursuing sex, etc.

    I don’t understand why their privacy couldn’t be legally protected in some way, since it’s a legal activity. I mean, nobody’s saying every legal activity has to be done with your doors open and published in the newspaper. So, along with having the possibility for some legal measures that protect customers (and workers) from disease and violence like I already mentioned, it could (if done right) make the whole thing less susceptible to blackmail and so forth too. Why not? Our doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, pastors, etc., are doing legal activities, and they’re expected to ensure some reasonable level of privacy. Correct me on this, lawyers: whatever rights to privacy a person (or *shudder* corporation) has is still an open question, at least in the US, but as it is those are enforced somehow to some extent, through contracts or regulatory schemes or whatever it might be. Honestly, the whole subject is very murky to me. But however it ought to be, I don’t see why that couldn’t or shouldn’t apply here as well.

  78. says

    re: sex work
    What would be reasonable regulations? I don’t know.
    I’d defer to sex workers to argue what does and doesn’t benefit them and listen to their arguments. I know they aren’t a homogenous group and naturally I agree with some opinions more than with others (for example I don’t buy “no condom-enforcement because people should be able to negotiate this freely” That stinks of the worst of Libertarianism and doesn’t take power imbalences into account.)
    I think one of the things that needs to be established first is what is and isn’t sex work. UN Aid workers demanding sex in exchange for goods those very people are entitled to isn’t sex work. The boss demanding a blow job so you can keep your jobi sn’t sex work. The landlord demanding sex so you’Re not evicted isn’t sex work.
    Offering sexual services so you can make the rent? Sex work.
    All of this doesn’t even touch the problematic areas.
    Many women only choose sex work because they have no other opportunities. And the potential to be harmed is exceptionally high. And this allows men to buy sex cheap*.
    This is both a result, a reflection, and a consequence of the patriarchal inequalities. Guess what, so is cleaning. Women who have few other opportunities clean away men’s shit, and othen you have a racist angle as well.
    We don’t try to change this by taking away the opportunities of jaintors, we try to change this by offering women more opportunities.
    To cut a long argument short, I see many problems and problematic aspects of sex work, but I don#T see how any of this is solved by putting the burden on sex workers.

    *Sex work is heavily male-centred. There are not many non-female sewx workers and even fewer non-male clients.

  79. Tethys says

    I think sex work should be a legal and honorable profession. Prohibition and the resulting black market does nothing to diminish sex work, and deprives the sex-worker of any legal recourse. When you let criminals run an industry, it should not be a surprise that the majority of people who benefit from sex work are traffickers and drug lords. I’ve recommended this documentary many times. It really made me think hard about the issues involved. It was written, and produced by actual sex workers. Their stories are varied, but many have a common theme. All of them are very open about the hazards (serial killers, violent johns and pimps, drugs) and the rewards of their chosen career. When the women are in control of their own product, it can be a beneficial and healthy experience for everyone involved. The film is American Courtesans and it is available free on Hulu.

  80. says

    I don’t understand why their privacy couldn’t be legally protected in some way, since it’s a legal activity.

    In theory, yes, their privacy could be protected. In practice, however, sex workers would still have to identify themselves to the cops to report any criminal or harmful actions (and they’d probably have to name any clients involved as well); their clients would have to do the same if they were victims of crimes; and the very real and ever-present possibility of some bigot or other asshole misusing that information, or abusing the reporting party’s dependence on them, would have a strong deterrent effect on anyone actually using any of the recourse the law gives them. (Note that legalizing sex work probably won’t change male cops’ well-known hatred of sex workers.)

  81. The Raptor says

    Just for something a little lighter. I stumbled upon this, I forget where, and have been enjoying it. http://archiveofourown.org/series/149352

    It’s a gender swap of Harry Potter. He is now a she, Harriet, and Ron is now Ronnie. Hermione is still a woman. This is all fan fic, so its free to read. The author is currently writing book 4.

    What I love about it, is it just isn’t a story about young women, it also touches on LBGT, racism, and sexism, which I really like seeing. There is a whole bunch more lore in these too. The US appears, there’s a civil war between native american mages and other mages. There are more various, magical creatures that play big roles, rather than just accidental characters. The friend group is also bigger than the 3 mains.. there’s a whole team of them, boys and girls. And I like that, because I don’t see that a lot. It’s always boys 2 or 3 and girl 1, and everyone else isn’t involved in whats going on beyond the ways they need saving. This actually lets minor characters be characters.

    I love it. I’ve stayed up way too many nights in a row reading, just like I did the original. It is a real eye opener to the difference of telling more than one woman’s story at a time. So many authors think the key to writing a good woman character is to shove everything they think is ‘woman’ into one character and try to tell all the stories through one person. It never works and never feels right, because they all end up the same woman character, telling the exact same story, in only slightly different ways. (Which tends to boil down to, woman who is always only slightly less successful than the male hero, because the male hero has a special connection to the world. But, if she becomes the love interest to the male hero and follows him, then she’ll become a better person and will find that connection too, but only through him).

  82. says

    Tethys @ 93:

    I think sex work should be a legal and honorable profession.

    Aye, me too. I think sex workers should be able to unionize, too.

  83. says

    @Tony et al
    Thanks for the feedback. I don’t usually comment but I couldn’t help posting in this thread with that video. Next time all add more of a description instead of just dropping links willy nilly

  84. says

    Regarding Original Trek I’m surprised no one has mentioned the first pilot, “The Cage,” which featured the character Number One, played by future Nurse Chapel(and Roddenberry’s girlfriend) Majel Barrett. Given her name she was apparently the second in command of the Enterprise, and behaved in a relatively emotionless manner that was incorporated into Spock when “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was written. Roddenberry claimed that NBC balked on the idea of a female in such a high position, but Star Trek producer Herbert Solow claimed in his book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, that NBC didn’t want a unknown actress getting the role just because she was involved with Roddenberry. Otherwise, according to Solow, they didn’t have a problem with the character. William Shatner has claimed that the character didn’t test well with female viewers of the pilot, which unfortunately might very well have been true given the era.

    Whatever might have happened with the Number One character if she had remained the character of Nurse Chapel wasn’t much of a consolation prize. What do most people remember her for? Having a crush on Mr. Spock.

  85. Saad says

    Caine, #99

    Whew (for now).

    Senate Democrats succeeded in stopping the bill on a procedural vote. Sixty votes were needed to advance it in the 100-person chamber, but it received only 53 votes.

    That’s still pretty scary. Only 7% more of the Senate for it and it would have moved forward…

    ————————

    Kate Mara has to sit through sexist (and racist) interview (looks more like an interrogation setting) regarding her role in Fantastic Four.

    “You’re way, way hot. Why’d you cut the hair? Your hair was beautiful.”

    Mara tries to laugh it off a bit, saying “this is a great interview” before calmly explaining that she cut her hair because she can do whatever she wants:

    “I cut my hair for a movie I just did. … I’m an actress, I have to be a chameleon.”

    The interviewer responded by saying he hoped she could grow it back for any future sequels and then complimenting her on her toes, because that is the height of professionalism.

    Article

  86. AlexanderZ says

    re: Sex Work
    I think it would be useful to quote the actual Amnesty paper on the issue, since both of the links in Stephen #71 (not blaming you) were biased and misinformed in their own way (pdf):

    REQUESTS the International Board to adopt a policy that seeks attainment of the highest possible protection of the human rights of sex workers, through measures that include the decriminalisation of sex work, taking into account:
    1. The starting point of preventing and redressing human rights violations against sex workers, and in particular the need for states to not only review and repeal laws that make those who sell sex vulnerable to human rights violations, but also refrain from enacting such laws.
    2. The harm reduction principle.
    3. That states can impose legitimate regulations on sex work, provided that such regulations comply with international human rights law, in particular in that they must be for a legitimate purpose, provided by law, necessary for and proportionate to the legitimate aim sought to be achieved, and not discriminatory.
    4. The principle of gender equality and non-discrimination
    5. Amnesty International’s longstanding position that trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation should be criminalised as a matter of international law; and, further that any child involved in a commercial sex act is a victim of sexual exploitation, entitled to support, reparations, and remedies, in line with international human rights law, and that states must take all appropriate measures to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse of children.
    6. Evidence that some individuals who engage in sex work do so due to marginalisation and limited choices, and that therefore Amnesty International should urge states to take appropriate measures to realize the economic, social and cultural rights of all people so that no person enters sex work against their will, and those who decide to undertake sex work should be able to leave if and when they choose.
    7. The obligation of states to protect every individual in their jurisdiction from discriminatory policies, laws and practices, given that the status and experience of being discriminated against are themselves often key factors in what leads people into sex work.
    8. States have a duty to ensure that sex workers from groups at risk of discrimination and marginalisation enjoy full and equal protection under relevant international instruments, including for example, those pertaining to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities.
    9. The evidence from Amnesty International’s research on the actual lived experiences, and human rights impact of various criminal law and regulatory approaches, on the human rights of sex workers.

    They further explain how sex work should be regulated:

    With regards to entry into sex work, states must:
    *adopt and implement effective programmes, laws and policies, in line with obligations under international human rights law, that ensure no person is coerced into sex work and provide effective remedies to people who have been coerced.
    *provide appropriate support, employment and educational options that actively empower marginalised individuals and groups, respect individual agency and guarantee the realisation of human rights.
    *take all necessary measures to eradicate discrimination against marginalised individuals and groups who are commonly represented in sex work, including discrimination in employment.
    *develop relevant policies and programmes in participation and consultation with sex workers, including those facing multiple forms of discrimination.

    In addressing stigma and discrimination against sex workers, states must:
    *ensure that sex workers enjoy equal protection under the law and are protected from discrimination.
    *take measures to eradicate stigma against sex workers.
    *ensure that sex workers are not denied access to health, housing, education, social security and other services or any government programs because of their occupational status.

    The point about stigma is particularly important because in New Zealand, the country with one of the most liberal prostitution laws, sex workers complain that while they technically have legal rights, the enduring stigma prevents them from exercising those rights.

    This is what they think of so-called Norwegian Approach:

    Bans on buying sex can lead to sex workers having to take risks to protect their clients from detection by law enforcement, such as visiting locations determined only by their clients

    However, the study they cite supports their conclusion (pdf):

    Still, women in the street market report to have a weaker bargaining position and more safety concerns now than before the law was introduced. At the indoors market, prostitutes express concerns for “out-door calls”. They prefer to have customers visiting them at their own apartment or own hotel room. The threshold for reporting a violent customer to the police also seems to be higher after the law. People in prostitution are afraid that such actions will come back to halt them at later stages.

    Nevertheless, the law does have positive outcomes that aren’t represented in the Amnesty report:

    Even so, this analysis finds no clear evidence of more violence against women in the street market after the introduction of the law.

    Our best estimate – with a high degree of uncertainty – is a market reduction of 10-20 percent compared to the situation before the law.

    A reduced market and increased law enforcement posit larger risks for human traffickers. The profit from human trafficking is also reduced due to these factors. The law has thus affected important pull factors and reduced the extent of human trafficking in Norway in comparison to a situation without a law.

    It needs to be said that Amnesty conducted their own research on Norway (as well as other countries with various models of criminalization) with damning testimonials, but the full paper is only available to Amnesty personnel. For example, there is this from Norway:

    In order to evict sex workers under the “promotion law,” Norwegian police must identify sex workers, where they live or work and ascertain whether they are selling sex from those locations. In most cases this information is then used by police to threaten landlords with prosecution, who then rapidly evict sex workers.

    Back to Amnesty:

    In order to protect sex workers from violence, states must:
    *ensure that sex workers enjoy full and equal protection, and effective remedies, under laws on rape and sexual violence (including offences involving abuse of authority), assault, trafficking in persons and all other crimes of violence.
    *introduce all necessary measures to ensure the effective investigation, prosecution and punishment of violence against sex workers (including legal or procedural reforms where appropriate, such as standards of good practice for police).

    Regarding the organization of sex work:

    In response to the human rights violations caused by the criminalisation of sex work, states must:
    *repeal existing and/or refrain from introducing laws that criminalise (directly or in practice) the consensual exchange of sexual services for remuneration.
    *limit criminal prohibitions on the organisational aspects of sex work to those involving clearly defined acts of coercion (such as compelling a person to sell sex through abuse of authority).

    *recognise the rights of sex workers to form and/or join trade unions.

    Leaving sex work:

    In ensuring that individuals can leave sex work when and if they choose, states must:
    *provide adequate and timely access to support – through, for example, state benefits, education and training and/or alternative employment.
    *develop and implement support programmes, in consultation with sex workers – including those facing multiple forms of discrimination, that are responsive to the lived experiences of sex workers and respect individual agency.
    *guarantee that sex workers are not compelled to participate in such programmes (through threat of sanctions etc).
    *take measures to remove common barriers to employment that sex workers face (such as issues relating to criminal records or employment history checks).

    Finally, they have this to say about the claims that supposedly nearly all sex workers are forced to do it:

    Claims that suggest the majority of sex workers enter the sex industry as children, that most were sexually or physically abused as children, are forced against their will to undertake sex work and/or are addicted to drugs have been shown to be misrepresentative of a large proportion of sex workers. See: Van wesenbeeck, I, Another decade of social scientific work on prostitution. Annual Review of Sex Research(12) (2001) See also: Sociology of Sex Work.

    ____________________

    All in all, I think the Amnesty proposal is well based on evidence and morality. I think anyone objecting to it must produce equally strong evidence (the Amnesty paper mas many solid references which I didn’t quote here) if their objection is to be considered.

  87. AlexanderZ says

    Wow, that was a long comment. I hope that’s OK with you, Ibis3.

    My own thoughts re: Sex Work:
    I share Amnesty’s goal of harm reduction. It was already said that sex work is non-monolithic, but I think we can sort it into three classes – relatively privileged citizens who choose sex work, citizens who are forced into prostitution due to extreme poverty, abuse, addiction and the like (many LGBT people fall into this category), and immigrants who are used as sex slaves.
    It seems that there is consensus that the latter two categories outnumber the first category in most countries. Also, it’s obvious that the people in those categories require immediate aid. However, those are also the categories that are least affected by any legislation. While many countries with wildly different approaches to sex work claim to have reduced street prostitution and women trafficking, their reports are contradicted by others, or are partial. The most vulnerable people in prostitution already exist outside the law and the same is often true of their “clients”.
    It seems that only vast changes in the way society approaches homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia and economic inequality between nations can help those people and that’s not something that can be done by one law.

    So what’s left? The first group. They’re not the most in need, but their well-being also matters and they most likely to benefit from legislative change. However, even they claim that legislation is only the beginning of change.
    New Zealand’s prostitution reform (pdf) are very close to Amnesty’s proposal (curiously, the NZ report also shows a reduction in prostitution) and many sex workers in NZ welcomed it. However, they’ve said that the main problem they face is social stigma, which effectively nullifies many of the laws achievements.
    If stigma is a major problem then any criminalization is wrong, including the relatively benign Norwegian model.
    _____________________

    Giliell #92

    To cut a long argument short, I see many problems and problematic aspects of sex work, but I don#T see how any of this is solved by putting the burden on sex workers.

    Tethys #93

    I think sex work should be a legal and honorable profession.

    Caine #96

    Aye, me too. I think sex workers should be able to unionize, too.

    All of that has been tried in Holland and failed miserably. The result was huge increases in women trafficking, criminals taking control of previously non-criminal areas of cities, and the decrease in well-being of all sex workers – citizens and non-citizens alike.
    I know that this seems to contradict everything I wrote previously, but we can’t discard the Dutch Reform if we wish to change sex workers’ lives for the better (strangely enough, Amnesty’s paper never mentions Holland). It would appear that too much legalization is just as bad as criminalization, if not worse. It’s a good thing that Amnesty’s paper stresses the importance of certain regulation, because this looks like one of those issues that requires a two-pronged approach – both legalization and very strong monitoring and regulation.
    _____________________

    Athywren #88

    I’m actually just commenting for the sake of the email updates to the thread

    You can click “subscribe” in the “You can also subscribe without commenting.” line below the comment box.

  88. says

    Caine, #99

    That’s good news. The downside, I expect, is it will encourage the forced birthers to go out and vote in the next election?

    More good news on the same front this week: RU486 has finally been approved by Health Canada. Which will hopefully have the side effect of helping to disenchant Canadian forced birthers about voting for Harper again.

    And check out this story I just found when looking for the link above. Women on the Waves’ new project: delivering RU-486 via drone into Poland.

  89. says

    Alexander Z

    All of that has been tried in Holland and failed miserably. The result was huge increases in women trafficking, criminals taking control of previously non-criminal areas of cities, and the decrease in well-being of all sex workers – citizens and non-citizens alike.

    Has it, or is that just “what everybody knows”? Because I know that there were similar debates in Germany after the very liberal prostituion law did not yield the wanted results (for example, sex workers can have “sex worker” as their legal profession, pay and receive social security, but to this day less than 10 people actually did so). And there were claims of a massive increase in forced prostitution and trafficking. It was claimed that before the world cup half a million women were forced into prostitution, but there’s no actual evidence for that.
    I am interested in reducing trafficking, poverty prostitution and rape. But often the problems cannot be addressed by adjusting the “prostitution” levers.
    If a woman has no other option than sex work to pay her rent and is harmed by this, no change in the laws regarding sex work will help her. If an Eastern European woman is tricked into coming to Germany for “domestic work” and forced into prostitution with the nice hint that it would be really bad if someting happened to her old mum and little brother, how can laws about prostitution help her? I mean, sure, the traffickers and pimps should be prosecuted, but she will hardly go to the police and tell them, will she?
    I agree that sex work is different from most other lines of work, which is why we cannot simply take what’S working there and apply it. Stigma is a huge point, so is “casual” part time sex work, something that’s hardly possible in any other line of work. According to sex worker associations in Germany, a significant part of sex workers is part time on and off, often women who hardly make ends meet and who decide to do sex work for a few days when something unexpected happens like a broken washing machine. There are clearly other methods needed to address this than there are for waiters and jaintors.

  90. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    The result was huge increases in women trafficking, criminals taking control of previously non-criminal areas of cities, and the decrease in well-being of all sex workers – citizens and non-citizens alike.

    That sounds more like a problem of Holland being unprepared to deal with those other crimes than with legal prostitution itself. Of course if prostitution becomes legal, those who would engage in human trafficking and other abuses are going to be drawn to that place because they can’t get busted specifically for prostitution. It makes a convenient front for the other shit they’re doing. But that doesn’t mean prostitution itself is the problem. People always seem to forget that human trafficking, abuse, rape, assault and theft are crimes in their own right when the subject is sex work.

  91. Tethys says

    I can only speculate about the Holland example, but I wonder if sex workers had any input? The documentary I recommended has several excellent suggestions, and since Kristen DiAngelo was lucky enough to survive all sorts of criminals including a serial killer I think her suggestions would be far more effective than anything a bunch of politicians came up with. Speaking of Ms DiAngelo, her twitter feed is an excellent resource on the subject and the source for this link What’s the right Way to Protect Sex Workers?

  92. Tethys says

    Another link to an excellent article, with praise for Australia’s policy, and data from New Zealand’s study. These 3 Graphs Could Change Your Mind About Legalizing Sex Work

    And a look at New Zealand’s decriminalization of prostitution, which was promoted by sex workers and legalized brothels, reveals none of the “catastrophic effects” promised by opponents of the model. A government-commissioned study examining the effects of the 2003 decriminalization law reveals some positive effects like greater likelihood of reporting violence to the police, widespread use of a government guide on health and safety practices in the industry, and no rise, or even a drop, in the number of sex workers in the country.

    The cover image of New York magazine is kind of amazing, powerful, and unsettling. ‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen Dare I hope that some of the sexism battles we’ve been fighting for the past few years are starting to actually create social change?

  93. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    @ Caine

    Saw that on my twitter feed a bit ago. I has a sad. :(

  94. says

    Seven of Mine @ 112:

    Yeah, got an email about it this morning. They did such great work, necessary work. I wish this wasn’t happening.

  95. komarov says

    When I followed Tethys’ link in #110, the sidebar also sent me to this very short article:

    Huckabee Floats Plan To Deploy U.S. Troops To Stop Women From Getting Abortions (Their reference is a bit more detailed)

    Huckabee said he would “invoke the 5th and 14th amendments for the protection of every human being.” […] This suggests a Hucakbee presidency would unilaterally make all abortion illegally [sic] by deeming all fetuses are people.

    (Emphasis mine)

    From the original source:

    But he argued that scientific advancements have now verified that unborn babies are human beings — information he said wasn’t necessarily available when the Supreme Court issued its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

    Not knowing that much about US politics I’d assume this is campaign bluster more than anything else. But even for a bluster its an odd thing to say and Huckabee must have thought it would score him some points, which is rather telling of the right-wing attitude to women. On the other hand I should think the promise to use armed forces on US soil against US citizens wouldn’t play well even with extreme right-wingers even if they are quite happy to indulge in double standards.

    He cited Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln as his inspiration, saying they were previous presidents who have defied Supreme Court rulings.

    If a candidate wanted to take inspiration from Jefferson and Lincoln I’d recommend calligraphy and stove-pipe hats. Practically no chance to alienate voters that way and it would certainly set them apart from the competition.

  96. says

    This is a followup, sort of, to Caine’s link at 99.

    Some Republicans are finding other ways to cut funding for Planned Parenthood:

    Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) announced he had ended the state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood in response to an anti-abortion “sting” video campaign against the reproductive health service.

    “In recent weeks, it has been shocking to see reports of the alleged activities taking place at Planned Parenthood facilities across the country. Planned Parenthood does not represent the values of the people of Louisiana and shows a fundamental disrespect for human life,” Jindal said in a statement. “It has become clear that this is not an organization that is worthy of receiving public assistance from the state.”

    The move comes despite the fact that the two Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana do not provide abortion, which Planned Parenthood confirmed to the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals as part of the state’s ongoing investigation into claims that the organization is profiting off of aborted fetal tissue donations. A third clinic being built in New Orleans plans to offer abortion, but will not participate in the tissue donation programs, a Planned Parenthood executive told the state. […]

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jindal-louisiana-planned-parenthood-medicaid

  97. katybe says

    Just occurred to me to throw in one of my favourite good news resources: http://www.amightygirl.com/ – they have a particular focus on bringing up children, and try to cater for as many interests as possible, plus brilliant book recommendations. I follow their Facebook feed and their long posts are always worth reading through. I know there’s plenty of bad news out there too, but when I want something that celebrates the achievement of women, and encourages future generations to emulate that, this site never fails to make me smile.

  98. says

    Concerning Planned Parenthood and women’s reproductive rights, Hillary Clinton had what I think is the best analysis of the recent hullabaloo:

    […]
    “I’m proud to stand with Planned Parenthood, I’ll never stop fighting to protect the ability and right of every woman in this country to make her own health decisions,” Clinton said […]

    “If this feels like a full-on assault on women’s health, that’s because it is,” Clinton said in the video. “When politicians talk about defunding Planned Parenthood, they’re talking about blocking millions of women, men and young people from live-saving preventive care.”

    “Unfortunately, these attacks aren’t new, they’re more of the same, we’ve seen them in Wisconsin where Gov. Walker defunded Planned Parenthood and left women across the state stranded with nowhere else to turn,” Clinton said. “We’ve seen them in Florida where Jeb Bush funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into abstinence-only programs while gutting funds for crucial family planning programs. And we’ve seen them in Texas where Gov. Perry drastically cut funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings and then signed legislation that forced health centers across the state to close their doors.

    “When they attack women’s health, they attack America’s health and it’s wrong and we’re not going to let them get away with it,” she said. […]

    Politico link

  99. says

    Elizabeth Warren also made some great points during the discussion about the Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood:

    Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was none too pleased with Republican’s attempt to grandstand on the issue of women’s health […], and she voiced her displeasure to her senate colleagues in no uncertain terms on Monday.

    “I come to the Senate floor today to ask my Republican colleagues a question,” she began. “Do you have any idea what year it is? Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s? Or the 1890s? Should we call for a doctor?”

    “Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the United States Senate would be spending its time trying to defund women’s healthcare centers. On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The Republicans have had a plan for years to strip away women’s rights to make choices over our own bodies.”

    Warren explained that in 2013, the GOP threatened to shut down the government if they couldn’t change the Affordable Care Act in a way that would allow employers to deny access to birth control. In March 2015, they stopped a bill that would’ve curtailed human trafficking because it could have allowed for the private funding of abortions. In June, Republicans passed a budget that eliminated Title X. […]

    Warren noted that it’s not just the House and Senate that are involved in this effort, but state legislatures too. “This year alone,” she said, “Republican state legislators have passed more than 50 new restrictions on women’s access to legal healthcare.” […]

    “The Republican scheme to defund Planned Parenthood is not some sort of surprised response to a highly edited video,” she said. “Nope! The Republican vote to defund Planned Parenthood is just one more piece of a deliberate, methodical, orchestrated, right-wing attack on women’s rights.” […]

    “Scheduling this vote during the week of a big Fox News presidential primary debate, days before candidates take trips to Iowa or New Hampshire, isn’t just some clever gimmick,” she said. “This is an all-out effort to build support to take away a woman’s right to control her own body and access to medical care she may need.” […]

    Salon link

  100. Daniel Dunér says

    I have a hard time coming to grips with the idea of building a society that considers buying sex an acceptable thing to do. How can a sex buyer ever be sure of consent? Even ignoring trafficking and forced prostitution, how could anyone ever be sure of consent in a situation where there is such a huge power imbalance? To me, a sex buyer is someone who knows they may be raping someone but just doesn’t care. Or am I just being ignorant?

    I agree that protecting sex workers, who obviously aren’t doing anything wrong, should be the main priority. But there must be a better way than giving sex buyers a pass and a pat on the back? Right?

  101. bayes says

    In today’s world, escorts do not get surprised much. They can vet a prospect before a date is arranged through email and online sites. No escort is ever expected to schedule a date that bothers her in any way. Reasons are irrelevant – the client may simply remind her of an ex, or set off her spidey sense. Many are in the business for years and have a wide stable of regulars. She arranges for other security measures too that I won’t go into. But there is little power imbalance. A client who mishandles an escort will never again get scheduled with anyone who frequents the same sites – there are warning forums and other alarm methods that instantly take him off the “see him” list. She also has her “menu” of acts she will perform, and woe betide the client who insists on going “off menu”. Again, he will lock himself out of the community for quite some time. If he schedules and does not show, again he will be blacklisted. If he refuses to accommodate to her security measures, he likewise will be reported and will go unsatisfied.

    It’s a common misconception that the client has all the power. In some circumstances, that’s true. But the vast majority of working escorts have as much or more power in the transaction as the client. Today’s escort community is well organized. Some will not see newbies; some will after vetting him. Ladies who do not follow these processes are spurned by the more businesslike ones, because they endanger all.

    Under no circumstances do regular clients or ladies tolerate the possibility of rape. Ditto underage practitioners. Law enforcement may wink at regular escort services, but underage or trafficked women will set off huge attention, and the community loathes being spotlighted, as you might imagine.

  102. Daniel Dunér says

    I really hope everything you’re saying is true and representative. But even if that’s the case, there are more factors regarding power. I’m talking about economic factors. How would a sex buyer know if the escort is happy about selling sex or just feel like they have no other choice?

  103. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Daniel Dunér @ 121

    I have a hard time coming to grips with the idea of building a society that considers buying sex an acceptable thing to do. How can a sex buyer ever be sure of consent? Even ignoring trafficking and forced prostitution, how could anyone ever be sure of consent in a situation where there is such a huge power imbalance? To me, a sex buyer is someone who knows they may be raping someone but just doesn’t care. Or am I just being ignorant?

    I mean if your neighbor offers to paint your house because they need to earn money fast to cover some unexpected expense, do you worry that you’ve coerced them? I’m not following why you think consent would necessarily be unclear.

  104. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    How would a sex buyer know if the escort is happy about selling sex or just feel like they have no other choice?

    The choices of literally everyone on this planet are limited by circumstance. If we avoided certain transactions unless we were certain that the person involved was really happy with their work, nothing would ever get done.

  105. Daniel Dunér says

    Also, if it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t talking about rape in the sense of forcing sex via violence. But rather having sex with someone who isn’t in a position to properly consent.

  106. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    I didn’t think you meant using violence to force sex.

    But if you’re excluding trafficking and forced prostitution, that leaves you with people who have chosen prostitution as a means to keep a roof over their head. We don’t apply this standard of “but are they really happy with it” to anything other than sex work.

  107. Daniel Dunér says

    The idea of equating every type of “service exchange” is a very foreign (libertarian (?)) idea to me. Not all actions or “services” are equal. Sexuality is special in many ways, which most people seem happy to accept in almost any other discussions. We usually don’t equate coercing someone into sex with coercing someone into something else they don’t want to do (like painting a house)… except when money is the means of coercion?

  108. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    But why is sexuality special? The fact that it’s taken as self-evident by most people doesn’t mean it is. I’m asking you to justify why it’s coercion by default just because it’s sex. I mean the hypothetical person painting your house would probably rather be spending their Saturday doing just about anything else, but they’d also rather keep a roof over their head than not paint your house. Why is sex work different?

  109. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Or phrased another way: why are sex workers in particular not in a position to consent to that difficult choice?

  110. bayes says

    It’s another unfortunate myth that escorts are desperate women. Again, there is a distinction of hierarchy. Some streetwalkers are indeed desperate and addicted. But that’s the case with any profession. As Thoreau noted, most of us live as quietly desperate people. True professionals in the sex trade are often doing it part-time, and may well have degrees – in some cases advanced degrees. The ones I know are uniformly smart, funny, accomplished, and leave no doubt that they’re willing participants.

    For all of that, how do you know that ANY woman is not being coerced in some fashion, when they’re so skilled at hiding that from men? Is she doing it just to calm him down? To make him tractable and willing to do something for her? The escort clientele has a saying that you pay for sex whether it’s monogamous or with a sex worker. The difference is that you always know the professional’s price and you pay it precisely once. And by the way, it’s considered extremely bad form to haggle over the price. A good client either accepts her rate, or moves on.

    There are some sources you can consult. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and The Commerce of Sex by Elizabeth Bernstein; Paying for It by Greta Christina; Sex Secrets of Escorts: Tips from a Pro by Veronica Monet. And these are only three. The latter’s title is very misleading. The book is not about sex, but about Veronica’s experiences. She points out that a great many clients at her level don’t actually want sex per se, but a companion. She relates how she’s participated in their hobbies and listened to their troubles.

    Other sources abound: http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/meet-high-class-escort-who-revealed-5850501
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_de_Jour_%28writer%29

  111. bayes says

    I believe that Daniel is the unwitting victim of his own upbringing. There is a contingent of people who believe that sex is somehow bordering on the spiritual, that it’s so intimate and complex that it must be kept contained somehow. The temptation is to think that women who have happy frequent sex with multiple partners are somehow in need of protection. It’s likely quite unconscious. But if you can strip away the romantic association with sex from sex itself, it’s easy to see why it’s an entire industry.

    Other countries do regulate the industry, mostly by banning pimps, brothels, underage participation, and so forth. I think England does a fine job of finding a golden mean. There, a woman may freely ply her trade in sex, so long as she is not pimped or in a brothel. Canada was the same way, but is now starting to succumb to the American insistence on dictating the world’s prudery.

  112. Daniel Dunér says

    Seven of Mine, since I’m trying to understand your position, I hope it’s OK if I respond with a few questions.

    If sex isn’t special, then…
    … why do we make such a huge difference when it comes to nagging? Nagging someone into helping me paint my house makes me bad friend. Nagging someone into sex makes me a rapist. Right?
    … why do we make a clear difference between sexual assault and other forms of assault? Should we stop doing that?

    Also, I’m definitely not saying that all people who choose to sell sex are victims or can’t consent. What I’m asking is how a buyer can be certain that proper consent exists?

    I’m happy for escorts who are happy about their work. But that’s hardly the entire picture. To directly quote a woman from the documentary Hot Girls Wanted (about the porn industry):
    “That last part I hated. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I could tell him no. (my emphasis).

    bayes, yeah, sure, I’m actually a spiritual, prude, misogynist who subconsciously pity all my poly/open relationship friends >_>

  113. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Daniel Dunér @ 133

    If sex isn’t special, then…
    … why do we make such a huge difference when it comes to nagging? Nagging someone into helping me paint my house makes me bad friend. Nagging someone into sex makes me a rapist. Right?

    We’re not talking about nagging, though. We’re talking about someone standing on a street corner or working in a brothel, etc. and offering these services to people willing to pay. Just like in my example I used a neighbor offering to paint your house. Nobody is nagging anyone. In the case of sex work, if the prostitute says no to a client and they nag until the prostitute gives in…well, yes that’s rape. But that has nothing to do with sex work.

    … why do we make a clear difference between sexual assault and other forms of assault? Should we stop doing that?

    Because they’re different kinds of assault? I mean we make a distinction between all sorts of different kinds of assault. There’s common assault, there’s assault with a deadly weapon, there’s vehicular assault and there’s sexual assault.

    Also, I’m definitely not saying that all people who choose to sell sex are victims or can’t consent. What I’m asking is how a buyer can be certain that proper consent exists?

    And I’m asking you, if you don’t think people who choose to sell sex are incapable of consent, why do you question that they’re actually consenting when they’re literally the one offering to perform this service? These are not consistent statements.

  114. Daniel Dunér says

    Minor correction, the quote should have been:
    “That last part I hated. I was terrified, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I could tell him no.“

  115. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    But if someone is saying they don’t feel in a position to say “no” then they’re being forced, which is something you said you were excluding:

    From your # 121

    Even ignoring trafficking and forced prostitution, how could anyone ever be sure of consent in a situation where there is such a huge power imbalance?

  116. Daniel Dunér says

    Seven of Mine @ 135

    I’m asking about nagging, because I’m trying to understand the idea of sex not being special. if sex isn’t special, then why make a difference between nagging about sex and nagging about painting?

    I don’t think people selling sex are always and automatically unable to consent. But I believe that there are plenty of circumstances where external pressures does preclude proper consent. Because, well, I do believe sex is special in many cases and for many people, so the default required level of consent has to be much higher than for other things.

  117. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Who is making a difference between nagging about sex and nagging about painting?

  118. Daniel Dunér says

    Seven of Mine @ 137
    I meant directly forced, for example via violence, threats of violence etc.

  119. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Daniel Duner

    You @ 126

    Also, if it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t talking about rape in the sense of forcing sex via violence. But rather having sex with someone who isn’t in a position to properly consent.

  120. Daniel Dunér says

    Seven of Mine @ 139
    Well, plenty of feminist writers I’ve read and the big sex organizations here in Sweden. I haven’t specifically asked them about painting houses, but there is often a big emphasis on nagging regarding sex and how it is rape. “No means no”, etc.

    But you don’t consider those types of nagging fundamentally different from an ethical stand point?

  121. rq says

    How Our Schools Are Failing Black Girls

    In a recent study focused on how schools respond to black children with behavioral and social challenges versus how they respond to white children facing the same difficulties, sociologist David Ramey uncovered what many black parents, including me, already know: Black children who exhibit “bad behavior” are more likely to have police intervene than medical professionals. “Black students are more likely to be punished with suspensions, expulsions or referrals to law enforcement,” writes the Huffington Post’s Rebecca Klein, who spoke directly with Ramey regarding his research, “a phenomenon that helps funnel kids into the criminal justice system.”

    This kind of funneling has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline, defined by the American Civil Liberties Union as “the policies and practices that push our nation’s schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems,” and which reflect “the prioritization of incarceration over education.”

    Black girls are particularly vulnerable, as they are more likely than any other race of girls (and more likely than white boys) to be suspended and further criminalized. According to the Washington Post, “nationally, 12% of black girls received at least one-in-school suspension, whereas the rate for white girls is 2%, and for white boys it is 6%.”

    As an educator, I find these studies fascinating. As the mother of a black girl who lives with social and behavioral challenges, I find them frightening. My experiences as the mother of a daughter with special emotional and learning needs has shown me exactly how so many beautiful and brilliant black girls end up without the educational experience they deserve, and instead on their way to our nation’s prisons.

    More at the link.

  122. Daniel Dunér says

    Seven of Mine @ 141
    Yes? I’m not sure if we’re misunderstanding each other. I’m talking about people being in a position where they feel they have to say “yes” (because of non-violent reasons, like economic desperation or social pressure) but actually would want to say “no”.

  123. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Daniel Duner @ 144

    But again, the neighbor offering to paint your house. They don’t want to spend a weekend out in the sun painting your damn house. There are a million things they’d rather do. But a weekend painting your house is preferable to sleeping under a bridge for the foreseeable future. The woman who is doing sex work out of economic desperation doesn’t want to have sex with that guy but the rent is due and sex with a stranger is preferable to sleeping under a bridge for the foreseeable future. Why do we trust the house painter but not the sex worker to make that choice?

  124. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    And to be clear, I don’t accept “sex is different because reasons”. I’m not interested in an appeal to the attitudes of society at large about sex. I’m asking for a fact based justification for sticking sex in a whole separate category from any other service one person could perform for another.

  125. says

    Daniel @126:

    Also, if it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t talking about rape in the sense of forcing sex via violence. But rather having sex with someone who isn’t in a position to properly consent.

    Both of these things are rape.

    @133:

    If sex isn’t special, then…
    … why do we make such a huge difference when it comes to nagging? Nagging someone into helping me paint my house makes me bad friend. Nagging someone into sex makes me a rapist. Right?

    Nagging someone about sex, in and of itself, is not rape. The person doing the nagging is an asshole engaging in sexual harassment. If the nagger attempts to engage in sex, then they become a rapist.
    ****

    Regarding your comments about sex being special-that’s an external value placed upon the activity by humans. It isn’t inherently special. In fact, for some people, sex *isn’t* anything special.

  126. Tethys says

    I believe the term that Daniel Duner may be looking for is survival sex. Strong social safety nets, and access to education and good paying jobs for women would mitigate women being forced into sex work as a last resort. The courtesan/ escort relationship is then an adult, consensual, mutually beneficial business exchange. There have been many times and cultures in which Courtesans were high status, independent, and valued members of society. New Orleans in the late 1700’s was famous for the beautiful women of the French Quarter. If wiki is accurate, in 1788 there were 1500 free women of color who lived very comfortable and independent lives in the city, and were well compensated by their benefactors. Excerpt on the subject from a very racist book written in 1943.

  127. Daniel Dunér says

    Seven of Mine @ 145
    Because sex is special? Or isn’t? Which is why I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from on that issue. I get the sense that you think I’m trying to “win” the argument in some sneaky way by changing the subject. But I’m honestly trying to understand your position, because I believe you are more knowledgeable than I am. I’m really struggling to understand the idea of sex not being special.

    There are other things that I also consider worth banning, even if they are preferable to living under a bridge. For example, getting payed to harm yourself (though I’m not saying they are directly comparable!). Maybe I’m being naive, but I want to believe that there are better solutions than giving rich people a free pass on harming desperate people. No blame can be put on the desperate person, but I don’t find it unreasonable to put limits on what those with power can do to others.

    Tony @ 147
    Yes, both are rape. But I made the distinction because I’m interested in the ability of sex buyers to know if proper consent exists.

    Regarding nagging. Hm, I guess that makes sense. But in that case, is there a difference between rape and successfully nagging someone into painting your house?

    Is it really an external value? My understanding is that sex is inherently pretty central in human psychology and it often provokes strong emotional and physical reactions, in a way painting a house generally does not. I’m also fully aware that there are plenty of people who don’t have that connection to sex, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to assume that everyone feels the same way.

    Tethys @ 149
    Thanks, survival sex is a big part of it but it doesn’t capture the entirety of what I’m getting at. The quote/video I linked to earlier was from a woman who voluntarily chose to enter porn, but ended up in a situation where she didn’t feel like she could say no.

  128. opposablethumbs says

    bayes #131

    The escort clientele has a saying that you pay for sex whether it’s monogamous or with a sex worker. The difference is that you always know the professional’s price and you pay it precisely once.

    Now where have I heard something like this before … maybe from people who think all women are essentially parasites and golddiggers out to exploit men, and never independent people who may engage in sex from choice …
    The model where sex is always and only a transaction, a transaction where (to a first approximation) men buy and women sell, is – problematic, to say the least.

  129. says

    Daniel @150:

    Regarding nagging. Hm, I guess that makes sense. But in that case, is there a difference between rape and successfully nagging someone into painting your house?

    Nagging someone into painting your house is not a violation of an individuals’ bodily autonomy. Rape is awful because it is a violation of an individual’s right to exert control over and dictate what happens to their body.

  130. says

    Crap. Forgot this part.

    Daniel @150:

    Is it really an external value? My understanding is that sex is inherently pretty central in human psychology and it often provokes strong emotional and physical reactions, in a way painting a house generally does not. I’m also fully aware that there are plenty of people who don’t have that connection to sex, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to assume that everyone feels the same way.

    I can accept all of that, but does this demonstrate that sex is special? Important, perhaps. But special?

  131. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Daniel Duner

    I don’t think you’re being dishonest. Sex work is not my strong point. It’s not something I consider myself knowledgeable about. I just feel like you’re predicating your whole argument on the premise that sex is just magically different because it just is and I’m trying to get you to articulate why. So far you’ve been unable to do it. If you can’t demonstrate that your premises are true, your argument is not sound.

  132. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    @Daniel

    Is it really an external value? My understanding is that sex is inherently pretty central in human psychology and it often provokes strong emotional and physical reactions, in a way painting a house generally does not.

    Human psychology is heavily impacted by culture and socialization. Even brain physiology is impacted by your lived experiences. Sex being important to human psychology doesn’t preclude that importance being an external value.

  133. Tethys says

    Daniel

    The quote/video I linked to earlier was from a woman who voluntarily chose to enter porn, but ended up in a situation where she didn’t feel like she could say no.

    If sex work was legal, she would have full access to all the rights accorded to workers. It isn’t consensual if consent can not be revoked at any time. Sex workers currently have little to no legal recourse. They don’t have the luxury of even reporting the crimes committed against them, for fear of being prosecuted.

  134. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Maybe I’m being unclear on my position re: sex being “different”.

    Nagging someone for sex involves nagging them to give you access to their body. Nagging someone to paint your house does not. In that sense, yes. Sex is different from other kinds of services.

    However, when it comes to sex work, if we exclude human trafficking and forced prostitution, we’re not talking about nagging. We’re talking about a person making a choice to stand on a street corner and flag down passing cars to offer sex in exchange for money. Or accepting a position at a brothel or escort service and showing up to work. They may have made this choice because their options were severely limited by circumstance but it is still a choice. Literally every job I’ve ever had is something I would have said “no” to if I’d had better options. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t in a position to properly consent to them. If financial desperation doesn’t mean I can’t properly consent to a job as, say, a portable toilet cleaner, why does it mean I can’t properly consent to sex work?

  135. Daniel Dunér says

    Tony @ 152, 153
    So bodily autonomy is what’s special? That does make sense and I tried to articulate something like that earlier. But I don’t think all violations of bodily autonomy have equally strong effects. I would guess that bodily harm and sex place pretty high on the scale for most people, while hugging or hair cutting can be terrible but generally place lower.

    By saying sex is special I don’t mean it’s unique, but that it’s different from painting houses. Maybe the difference between doing stuff you don’t want to do, compared to having stuff done to you that you don’t want to. Where sex is one of the more special/powerful things that can be done to most people.

    Seven of Mine @ 154
    Yes, I’ve tried to mostly ask you about your position in order to understand it. You’ve tried to make me articulate my position. Which means we’ve sort of been talking past each other. It’s just that I currently don’t really care if my argument is valid, I’m mostly trying to understand your position. So that I can sit back later and properly consider my position. So I haven’t really been interested in elaborating on what I believe.

    But I think I’ve at least partly explained why I think sex is special. Most psychological theory I’ve been in contact with seem to treat sex and sexuality as a powerful forces in the human psyche and identity. It evokes strong emotional and physical responses in many people. Being raped or “just” having sex and later figuring out you regret it can have powerful psychological repercussions. While none of these things seem to be generally true about doing boring, menial work–like painting houses.

    Seven of Mine @ 155
    Sure. But I don’t think it’s mainly external (for example, look at people trying to live up to celibacy ideals or “change” their sexuality). But maybe my data is just biased? I guess we could look up some research on it. But I’m not sure if it’s important. Whatever the reason, if sex is important to the psychology of most humans, then my position isn’t really impacted by the reason why that’s the case.

    Tethys @ 156
    But the quote was from the porn industry in the USA, which is legal as far as I know. She entered into the porn industry voluntarily and was interviewed after a situation where she felt she couldn’t say no.

    Seven of Mine @ 157
    I never tried to compare nagging to buying sex, they are two different things. What I wanted to understand was the idea of sex not being “different”, and tried to ask questions which would help me understand your position. Because, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I think there is a difference between feeling forced to do something boring and feeling forced to have your bodily autonomy violated. Where I think it’s reasonable to prevent those with power to violate other’s bodily autonomy. At least for now…. in the long run I naturally want to limit their ability to force others to do stuff more generally.

  136. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Daniel @ 158

    But I don’t think it’s mainly external (for example, look at people trying to live up to celibacy ideals or “change” their sexuality).

    I really don’t understand why you think those examples represent an internal value human beings naturally place on sex. Celibacy ideals usually come from religion as does the idea that sexuality can be or needs to be changed. These are quite clearly external forces.

    Because, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I think there is a difference between feeling forced to do something boring and feeling forced to have your bodily autonomy violated.

    Sex work is choosing to allow someone else access to your body even though maybe you’d rather not. Choosing sex work because you’re out of options does not mean your bodily autonomy is being violated. You are making a choice. It may not be an ideal choice; you may wish there was any other way to get the rent paid but it is a choice. Being “forced” to do something out of necessity is not the same as being compelled to do that thing against your will.

  137. Tethys says

    Daniel

    But the quote was from the porn industry in the USA, which is legal as far as I know.

    I am far from an expert on sex work, but I have educated myself on this issue. There are very few places in the US where filming porn is legal. Even if it is legal, the people producing the porn are not exactly law abiding, sex positive feminists, and the police don’t put much priority on protecting the sex-workers. I think you would find the documentary in my #93 very interesting, it addresses those issues in depth.

  138. Daniel Dunér says

    Seven of Mine @ 159
    Exactly, religious attempts to suppress the forces sex and sexuality always seem to fail. My point was that certain aspects of sex and sexuality seem to be inherent/central to humans. The importance of sex isn’t a culturally imposed thing. The way we think about sex certainly is influenced by our culture, but I think many emotional and physical reactions, the need for intimacy and the need for personal space is innate in most humans.

    Yes, the person selling sex is making a choice. I don’t see how that fixes the problem with the sex buyer not knowing if proper consent exists. I guess it’s one of those liberal things (“people should be able to do whatever they want”, considered right wing here in Sweden) that’s lost on people like me with more of a socialist leaning (“we must protect people from abuse from those with power”, considered left wing). You’re talking about people selling sex being allowed to make that choice, I’m talking about the responsibility of those with power to not abuse desperate people. I really don’t see how sex buyers can be sure they’re not engaged in acts where others feel forced to have sex against their will.

    Do you draw any lines when it comes to people with power exploiting those who “choose” to do things against their will? We both agree that painting houses can be against your will and that we won’t realistically get rid of that dynamic anytime soon. But I also consider the potential harm in doing boring/exhausting stuff negligible compared to having sex against your will. Do you think there are things that cross that line, that should be banned now even if people would be willing to “choose” them?

    I’m going to give a few examples that are not meant to be comparisons with prostitutions, again I just want to understand your position.

    Do you think it should be legal to pay others to sell their organs, mutilate their bodies, sell themselves into slavery or be submitted to torture?

    Tethys @ 160
    But if sex work was legalized it would hardly be handled by law abiding, sex positive feminists either. Right? If someone openly being filmed for a documentary has a hard time saying no in porn, how can a sex buyer ever feel sure that an escort feels safe enough to say no behind closed doors?

  139. says

    Daniel @161:

    My point was that certain aspects of sex and sexuality seem to be inherent/central to humans. The importance of sex isn’t a culturally imposed thing. The way we think about sex certainly is influenced by our culture, but I think many emotional and physical reactions, the need for intimacy and the need for personal space is innate in most humans.

    I understand that this is what you believe, but you’ve yet to present evidence to support this belief. Just because you hold this opinion about sex (and emotional or physical reactions, as well as the need for intimacy) does not make it true.

  140. Daniel Dunér says

    Tony @ 162
    I’m not sure how I’d present evidence in a satisfactory way? But I’ll make an attempt to link some sources.

    Bodily violation in the form of rape or sexual assault seems to have a greater psychological impact than other traumatic events:
    http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/ptsd/rape-related-ptsd-issues-and-interventions

    Although chronic psychopathology does not develop in most rape or sexual assault victims, these forms of traumatic victimization are associated with a higher prevalence of PTSD than are other types of traumatic events.

    Intimacy seems to be a fundamental human need.
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/infant-touch/
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2865952/

    Many children who have not had ample physical and emotional attention are at higher risk for behavioral, emotional and social problems as they grow up.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2088015

    Following the demonstration of a strong association between unsatisfactory physical contact experience and depression a significant relationship is also found between depression and the experience of being not loved. These two relationships are shown to exist independently of one another and when direction of causation is investigated both unsatisfactory physical contact experience and the experience of being not loved are seen to be causal of depression rather than vice versa.

    I’m not sure if I need to provide evidence that the body reacts physically to sex.

  141. Tethys says

    Daniel

    But if sex work was legalized it would hardly be handled by law abiding, sex positive feminists either. Right?

    Prohibition didn’t work, and created huge profit streams for crime syndicates. The sex work industry will exist either way, and it is far more likely that decriminalization and strict regulation that empowers the sex worker instead of the crime syndicates will result in sex positive, feminist porn becoming the standard.. Women are being harmed now on a daily basis. The status quo is unacceptable. We do have data and models of what works and what doesn’t work, it seems reasonable to enact them IMO.

    If someone openly being filmed for a documentary has a hard time saying no in porn, how can a sex buyer ever feel sure that an escort feels safe enough to say no behind closed doors?

    Open communication and negotiation before you ever get anywhere near the doors. Strong trade organizations that provide support, mentoring, and education for sex workers so they are aware of common danger signs, or how to enforce their personal boundaries. Please watch the documentary. Listen to the sex workers. They are the best authority on how to make sex work safe for themselves.

  142. Daniel Dunér says

    Tethys @ 164

    My (fairly limited) understanding is that decriminalization hasn’t worked properly, either. I don’t share your optimistic views of feminists magically taking over all sex related industries. Do you have any data on this happening anywhere? If legalization actually is the only workable damage minimizing option, then I guess I would be forced to accept it. But I don’t believe (don’t want to believe?) that other options have been exhausted and evaluated properly.

    But my main question in this discussion is a less utilitarian one. Which is the accountability of sex buyers and their ability to make sure they aren’t raping. Or having sex with people who actually don’t want to but have chosen to do so anyway, if we’re not considering that rape.

    I can’t watch the documentary on Hulu (I’m not in the US) but I’m looking into other options.

  143. Tethys says

    Daniel

    Do you have any data on this happening anywhere?

    Yes. I have links to that data at #109 and #110 in this very thread. There is nothing magical about it. It’s merely a matter of extending the rights and protections of workers to include an extant black market industry. Money is power. Legalization puts that money and power into the hands of the sex worker, rather than sex traffickers and drug cartels.

  144. bayes says

    I would plead that no one use documentaries as evidence for anything. Documentaries are by their very natures propaganda. Few documentary producers are truly even-handed. And even those that strive for fairness are betrayed by need to edit down complex concepts to compelling visual and aural snatches and quotes.

    Part of the problem here is that we are paring the question to the bone, yet have placed no rigor around it. What is “consent” anyway? Courts are wrestling with it, and philosophers have argued over it. Is sex consensual when one of the partners is dreaming of that Caribbean vacation that starts the next day? What is “power”? What is “control”? We sling these words with vehemence and assurance, yet never quite get around to defining them. We assume that the others know what we mean, or even what WE mean, when it’s not at all the case. It’s long been said in the dominance part of sex work that the submissive is really in charge, and it’s remarkably true. How can that be? If both partners honor a safe word, is the submissive in control, or not? Definition is the most difficult part of any discussion, but the most essential, because when words are completely defined (which never happens in practice, of course) the argument itself suddenly crystalizes.

    Asking for a clear and unmistakable indication of “consent” is asking too much. When I buy something from a homeowner at a yard sale that is obviously old and well used, there is implied consent to its sale by putting it out with a price tag on it, yet there are times when I put down my money I see reluctance and discomfort in the owner’s face. Has consent truly taken place if there is reservation about it? Language is a wonderful thing that simultaneously enlightens and confounds.

    Simply the fact that we’re discussing sex work in these terms is somewhat disturbing, actually. It implies, sotto voce, that we have a right to act on our conclusions, and I’m not convinced that we do. In an ideal world, individual choices would be sovereign, but of course in a real world of interlocking social connections we can’t be so cavalier. Some behaviors must be monitored and controlled. A deli owner who sells tainted meat may kill unsuspecting patrons, so we create a Board of Health to prevent as many illnesses and deaths as we can. But the line should be drawn at a demonstrated social problem, not where squeamishness dictates. It’s that gut-level bias that has consigned women to roles in the past because no one ever bothered to do the calculus of rules versus individual cost.

    Sex work, of course, is portrayed by its critics as victimizing the perpetrators, a curious position if there ever was one. But it permits the critics to occupy both perches at once, as protectors of the society and protectors of the poor, misguided women. Then they make documentaries to demonstrate the supposedly factual situation. Few ever seem to be angry or indignant about male migrant workers who toil in unbelievably awful conditions for pittances. No one questions their consent. But somehow sex work is deemed different, perhaps because it overwhelmingly involves women and their happy dismissal of chastity.

    Economists have a way of slicing through these fogs. They talk about conditions as comparative, with nothing being absolute. If an impoverished and illiterate 15-year-old girl migrates from the farm to the city to work in a sweat shop, it is indeed abhorrent by our standards, but it is very likely somewhat better in her eyes than staying on the farm, where labor is backbreaking and constant and opportunities for any betterment are few. Insisting that our retailers eschew all such manufacturers assumes that we know that working in them is not consensual, when we know nothing of the kind unless we’ve lived among them.

    We should be hesitant to airily apply our learned standards, biases, and hastily acquired partial and distant knowledge to those who actually make daily decisions. It’s a fallacy that our legislators have never adequately overcome. The sex workers I’ve come to know are like everyone else, driven by impulses and needs and making daily decisions. The ones who plan to exit the profession are no more victims than are underpaid mall store retail clerks or frustrated artists in law firms. Sex slavery is miniscule on the ground, and is scant real reason to condemn all sex work. And not all sex workers are delighted with the profession’s demands. But then, most people I’ve known in my life have pursued multiple careers looking for greater satisfaction. That sex workers would dream of it is little reason to assume that they are somehow specially in need of protection.

  145. says

    seven of mine

    But why is sexuality special? The fact that it’s taken as self-evident by most people doesn’t mean it is.

    Yes, actually that means it is special to most people. It does not mean it must stay special. It is a cruel thing to play hyper rational and dismiss the harm people suffer as simply “false consciousness”. There are obviously sex workers who are OK with offering access to their bodies and there are those who are greatly harmed by it, despite all of them having started sex work from similar positions.

    Tethys

    Prohibition didn’t work, and created huge profit streams for crime syndicates.

    That’s the whole point IMO. Discourses about sexuality and sex work are needed, but when the question is “what can we do now to make sex workers safer?”, they’re irrelevant.

  146. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Yes, actually that means it is special to most people. It does not mean it must stay special. It is a cruel thing to play hyper rational and dismiss the harm people suffer as simply “false consciousness”. There are obviously sex workers who are OK with offering access to their bodies and there are those who are greatly harmed by it, despite all of them having started sex work from similar positions.

    This is exactly what I meant. Clearly I haven’t been expressing myself well. I’m sorry I sounded like I was being dismissive of real harm. I only meant to argue that whatever harm is caused is not necessarily an inevitable outcome of engaging in sex work. Much of the harm is caused by culturally unhealthy attitudes about sex in general and sex work/workers in particular. Criminalizing sex work doesn’t do anything to address those attitudes or help people who end up doing sex work out of desperation avoid exploitation, etc. Criminalizing it clearly hasn’t stopped it being a thing. It’s just a lot less safe for people who do find themselves in that position because of stigma and having no legal recourse when crimes are committed against them.

    Criminalizing sex work seems like a band-aid that doesn’t begin to address the real problem of people resorting to it out of financial desperation. If we want that not to happen, the answer is to help people avoid that financial desperation in the first place, not to throw them in jail for trying to make a living the only way they perceive they can.

  147. Saad says

    Since we’re on the topic of sex work, I wanted to discuss something that I’m having a hard time thinking through. I’m no expert on this topic at all so maybe I’m missing something very fundamental.

    If sex work was completely and fully normalized as an occupation (which it should), then we could have sex workers working for legal and legitimate companies (because if it’s a normalized occupation, why would people only freelance?) which would be subject to the various labor rules and regulations, just like a painter, to go with your example, Seven of Mine.

    My question is if in this context sex is being regarded as “normal and not special” as painting someone’s house in exchange for payment, then will that employee working for that company face penalties for backing out of a contract at the last minute? What happens if I’m a sex worker and my employer has signed a deal to have sex with a customer next week at a specific time. And then when we meet on that day, I decide “no, this isn’t something I want to do”. Wouldn’t it be considered unjust and abusive for that company to put pressure on me for doing this? Would it be right for me to lose my job (and my means of feeding myself and my family) over exercising what is fully my right as a human (not having sex with someone I don’t want to at any given moment)?

    So it seems like we have a bit of a dilemma here. Sex work should be completely normal without issues of coercion like painting a house. But then the notion of bodily autonomy enters into the picture and does make the specifics and logistics of the occupation quite tricky. Or are there other services and jobs where such a dynamic exists? I’m trying to think of examples from currently normalized professions. Can a massage therapist working for a clinic refuse to give a customer a massage solely because they don’t feel like it at the last minute and not be penalized or lose their means of income for it? I think I’m picking massage here because that seems close to something that involves bodily autonomy.

  148. bayes says

    For practical reasons, sex work, even if legalized, would not be brought under the same economic conditions as house painters. For one thing, the specter of sex slavery has caused even those countries that legalize individual practice to ban brothels and pimps. It’s a reasonable place to draw the line, I think. You lose economies of scale, but gain a measure of assurance that the lady is indeed in it for her own reasons. In places like England there are essentially “pimps” but they don’t conform to the common stereotype. Rather, they’re usually older women who engage escorts as contractors and arranges for their appointments. Most authorities leave them alone unless there’s reason to step in. Belle used such an intermediary.

    There is also the problem of stigma. Few escorts admit to the whole world what they do, because they know what the trolls will likely do. Like cats, they rely on cover to maintain security. Even family members often don’t know. I know of one escort who was a “traveler”, meaning she ventured to different cities in her region and set up appointments ahead of time there. She had years in the trade and a regular string of willing clients in each location. But her son had no idea what she was actually doing. Interestingly, she traveled with her beloved little dog.

    Many escorts just prefer to be entrepreneurs. The modern Web makes it possible. I’ve been mightily impressed with how well the ladies run their businesses. There are spats, inefficiencies, and so forth, just as there are with any businesses, but on the whole there are few problems compared to the number of appointments. These appointments take place constantly, all day and all night, in every urban and suburban area. I’d bet that there is one happening right now within 50 miles of just about every contributor here. The sheer numbers are enormous, but vastly underestimated by the “civvies”.

  149. says

    bayes @167:
    Consent is not hard to understand. People obtain consent all the time for all manner of things:
    “May I borrow your phone to call someone?”
    “Can I use your laptop to check my email real quick?”
    “Since you’ll be at work all day, would you mind if I used your car for some errands?”

    Asking for a clear and unmistakable indication of “consent” is asking too much.

    No. It is not. In the case of sexual activity, it is absolutely vital in ensuring that both parties are willing to engage in a particular sex act. The type of language you’re using is, quite frankly, scaring me.

    ****

    There has been another shooting:

    A gunman opened fire Wednesday at a movie theater outside Nashville, Tennessee, police said.
    Police, who received a call about an active shooter at the Carmike Hickory 8 movie theater in the suburb of Antioch just after 2 p.m. ET, told NBC News the suspect was dead after being shot by police.

    Police said the suspect entered the Carmike Hickory 8 theater where “Mad Max” movie was showing, carrying a hatchet and a gun.
    The gunman exchanged fire with police in the theater and was later shot and killed by SWAT, police said.

    One person may have suffered a wound from the hatchet, police said. NBC affiliate WSMV reported that witnesses at a nearby business reported one person was covered with blood.
    The gunman carried with him two backpack style bags. One was on his person and the other was left in the theater. Police were working to clear the bags.

    I think it is relevant to this thread because of the movie he went to. Fury Road is a movie with a strong feminist message.

  150. says

    @Alexander Z
    Thanks for the links. I’d read Greta’s post a year or so ago, but lost the link.

    I agree with Giliell that sex is special today for many (most?) people, but we don’t know if it needs to stay that way. I don’t think we’ve found evidence of that in monkeys generally (or has anyone heard of such findings?). We do live in a culture of shame, particularly body shame and sexual shame, so that probably contributes a lot.
    As for improving the position of sex-workers, I think (moral) destigmatisation is probably as important as legalisation. I’ve never understood how doing something for money should be morally wrong / contemptible, if paying someone to do it isn’t.

  151. says

    A group of 10-year-old kids were kicked out of a basketball tournament because there was one girl on their team.

    Ten-year-old Kymora Johnson has been playing on an all-boys basketball team since she was five. […]

    The Charlottesville Cavaliers were preparing to move on to the finals of last weekend’s National Travel Basketball Association tournament when the team was hit with some devastating news: The Cavaliers would not be able to continue in the tournament. They had been disqualified, along with one other team, for having a girl on their roster.

    “I can’t believe this is 2015, and my daughter isn’t allowed to play with boys. What message does this send to other girls? What message does it send to boys?” Johnson’s mother, Jessica Thomas-Johnson, told the Washington Post.

    NTBA credited the disqualification to a new policy which banned girls from competing in the tournament after receiving “complaints from parents.” According to Cavaliers coach Joe Mallory, he and the team were not informed of this change in policy during their registration process, nor was Johnson told during her individual registration and in-person interview process in which she had to state her name and birth date and present her birth certificate.

    It wasn’t until the team had played five games that the tournament organizers informed the team that they would be disqualified, even if Johnson did not represent the team or play in the remaining games. […]

    http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2015/08/05/3688390/basketball-team-girls-disqualified/

  152. Tethys says

    bayes

    I would plead that no one use documentaries as evidence for anything.

    Clearly you have not watched American Courtesans. It is written and produced by sex workers. Their stories are directly relevant to this discussion I am quite sure that the opinions and experience of sex workers constitute evidence. For anyone who wants to understand how the industry operates or why women would choose to be a sex worker, it is very enlightening.

  153. bayes says

    @Tethys
    The reason I have little faith in documentaries is that most documentarians do not pursue a truth, but attempt to argue for an a priori position. I have much more faith in academics, books, and the like by those who have cause to know. It tends to be more reasoned and balanced. First-hand knowledge is good, supplemented by research by qualified individuals. American Courtesans may be balanced, but most documentaries are not. That’s why academics don’t cite or rely on them. Witness the horrendous ones produced to discredit Acorn. If one can watch a documentary and retain the base skepticism of “Well, that’s one person’s opinion”, then they likely do little harm. But it’s possible to rely on them far too much. When a student once insisted that I watch Waiting for Superman, I responded that I didn’t need to – I was familiar with the literature and knew the material already. He wasn’t satisfied with that answer, because he wanted me engaged emotionally too. That’s the danger of documentaries, the substitution of emotion for sober truth.

    As to the issue of consent, assuming too much freight in a word is a sure way to foster misunderstanding. A definition of a word should include whether the user means an absolute or a relative meaning. In the case of consent, how can anyone be sure that any “consent” is truly pristine and pure? If I ask to borrow a cell phone from a friend, how can I be certain that the friend is not complying only to placate me, and not because he is truly sanguine about surrendering his phone? It’s not hard to imagine degrees of consent, ranging from grimacing reluctance to joyous compliance, although it might be hard to tell which end of the spectrum is active at any given request. That’s why I still maintain that an overt behavior cannot convey the degree of consent. That is a state of mind. If a woman sighs and turns to the bed, saying “Let’s get this over with!” she is arguably consenting, but only a narcissist would conclude that she’s happy about it. In such a case, has she “consented” in spirit as well as behavior? Her behavior is beyond question but her state of mind has likely not yet reached what most of us would accept as real consent. Consent is such a view is not a binary condition, but a range of shades of conditions.

    This is why I contend that asking for “consent” as an unmistakable signal is asking too much. We act on what little we observe, and that must be enough. Human communication is enormously noisy. A firm “No” is unmistakable, but “Oh hell, I guess!” is in the middle somewhere. She may have just consented legally, but from a relationship standpoint, the consent is not so easily inferred. A lawyer would doubtless see this scenario differently than would a therapist.

  154. komarov says

    Re: Lynna OM #175:

    Waiting to disqualify the team until after they had played several games and were moving towards the finals amplifies the apparent pettiness by a factor of 10.

    […] they would be disqualified, even if Johnson did not represent the team or play in the remaining games. […]

    Make that 100. Because once something is contaminated with ‘girl’ there is no scrubbing it clean.

    ———————

    And for a change of pace, something a little more lighthearted: Feminists in the wild

    (Video linked via WeHuntedTheMammoth because that’s where I got it from and because I don’t want to bungle up youtube links and accidentally embed something)

  155. Tethys says

    Consent is easy. I hope what I am about to say doesn’t violate PZ’s new discussion thread policy, but several comments by Bayes have set off all my Bayesian priors. “Warning, warning, this person is not to be trusted.” , though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was bothering me until I read his opinions of what is consent at #177. (ugh…no)

    167 ~ It’s long been said in the dominance part of sex work that the submissive is really in charge,

    Asking for a clear and unmistakable indication of “consent” is asking too much.

    Coupled with the rambling at 177, it seems clear that Bayes is a male dom who frequents sex workers. it is also clear that he is all about trying to push their boundaries for his own gratification. I would never get behind closed doors with this person, even if you paid me. I also really don’t like the squicked out reaction I am having to his comments, but that just might be me.

  156. says

    Tethys @179:

    I also really don’t like the squicked out reaction I am having to his comments, but that just might be me.

    No. It’s not just you. I’ve cringed several times reading their comments, bc I’ve seen the ‘consent is too difficult to obtain’ “argument” too many times. In my experience, there’s a certain group of people who make those claims. I don’t like those people at all.

  157. says

    ***Curator mode***

    @Tethys #179

    These are the rules: “The idea is to simply inform. Share ideas. No fighting.” If ” it gets gossipy or turns to arguments between participants” PZ will be shutting it down. To that end, I’m going to try to keep discussions from getting derailed by discussions about commenters, their motives, or their characters.

    If you want to discuss the definition of consent or critique bayes’ framing of it or how what they’ve said makes you feel, please go ahead. If you want to ask them about their sexual behaviours I don’t see a problem. Let them speak for themselves, or not, as the case may be. But don’t speculate about another commenter’s trustworthiness, gender identity, sex life, or attitudes toward their intimate partners. Thanks.

    ***Curator mode off***

  158. says

    Perhaps this is a good time to dust off the CCC once again.

    CCC (Crystal Clear Consent)

    * First of all: Understand that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are willing to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.

    * Making absolutely sure that consent is obtained and mutually agreed on. This does not include trying for consent when a person is not in condition to grant consent.

    * No doubts as to whether consent was obtained.

    * No guesses as to whether consent was obtained.

    * No assumptions as to whether consent was obtained.

    * No doubt as to whether any partner was capable of giving consent at the time.

    Crystal Clear Consent includes Fully Informed Consent. Consent granted under deception is not CCC, it is manufactured consent.

    * If you use deception to gain sex–impersonating another person, lying about contraceptive use, failing to disclose STDs–you are denying your partner the right to fully informed consent.

    * If you are not sure whether or not you have an STD, disclose this uncertainty. If consent is granted, take responsibility and use protection. Just because you didn’t know for sure is not a defense.

    * If you whine and wheedle about using protection a/o contraception, you are not in CCC territory. You are willing to rape.

    * Lying about or withholding information that, if known, would’ve resulted in dissent is rape.

    * If you consent to X activity under Y conditions and the other party changes those conditions to Z, then you have not consented to what is happening.

    Crystal Clear Consent Practices:

    * Understanding that consent may be withdrawn, by any involved party, at any time. Initial consent does not mean you get to carry on if consent has been withdrawn. In other words, people are allowed to change their mind at any point.

    * If you have not had sex with a given person before, mutually understood language with confirmation is the best way to attain Crystal Clear Consent. Relying on body language or assuming consent without clarification is nearly always insufficient with a new partner. As you get to know your partner(s) better, you will get better at reading nonverbal / nonlingual cues, but clear communication is still absolutely necessary. It is important to remember that rape can still be committed within the confines of a relationship, at any stage. Consent that is not communicated is not CCC.

    * If your partner is communicating something, do not assume that it has nothing to do with consent.

    * If you initiate or offer and are declined in the context of a specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtations setting, do not initiate or offer again until one of the following four occur:

    1. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering and been declined by you.

    2. the other party has taken a turn initiating/offering, was accepted by you, but after the activity lapsed you wish to restart.

    3. it is an entirely new romantic, sexual, or flirtatious setting.

    4. An amount of time has passed that is inverse to the number of times they have accepted your offer before. While it may be acceptable when dating to offer again in a week or in a closer relationship to initiate again after, say, one day [or whatever is the negotiated norm in said relationship] it’s not acceptable to ask someone again if you’ve just met them.

    * If you initiate or offer and are declined in a context that is not specifically romantic, sexual, or flirtatious, do not initiate or offer again. Seriously.

    * If you’re beginning a new relationship or going for a casual hookup, enthusiasm is key! Your new partner should be enthusiastically and happily involved with you. If no enthusiasm is present, it’s best to go for more communication and put off sex for a while.

    * A person who wants consensual sex doesn’t want to commit or experience rape, and a person who rapes does. Whether a given rapist wants their victim(s) drugged, unconscious, frightened, intimidated, trapped, manipulated or tricked, or just pestered until they give in, the rapist wants the end result to be that a rape happens. That includes being forced to penetrate someone else.

    * Contrary to what is often thought, consent is not difficult. If you still aren’t clear at this point, read this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/09/20/consent-is-hard/ and this: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/06/if-consent-was-really-that-hard-whiny-dudes-would-fail-at-every-aspect-of-life/

    * Don’t want to listen to us? How about MIT:

    Effective Consent is:

    – informed;

    – freely and actively given;

    – mutually understandable words or actions;

    – which indicate a willingness to participate in
    – mutually agreed upon sexual activity.

  159. bayes says

    @Tethys #179

    I interpret your comments as inviting a response. And the fact is that you are mistaken on both personal counts. But even if I were engaged in such behaviors, it would not affect the point I’m making.

    Humans feel compelled to do things for reasons other than intimidation. This complicates the very idea of consent. A very good book on the subject is “Influence” by Cialdini. For example, there is the effect of consistency, in which we strive not to appear “flaky” to people whose opinions we care about, so we act consistently even when such consistency is inconvenient. For example, a mother who has let her child play with her cell phone for years may feel reluctant to let that child play with her new one, but be mindful of the howl the child may issue at what seems like inconsistency and consequent unfairness. Many times, we do things just because refusing is deemed more trouble than it’s worth. Is this coercion? Possibly. Is it true consent? Arguable.

    This is why I said, above, that consent may mean something radically different to a prosecutor and a therapist. A woman throwing up her hands and saying “Okay, if that’s what you want, fine!” might satisfy a legal definition of consent, because she did not say “no”. But a therapist might well see that statement as lacking true consent, because emotional agreement seems absent. Consent, like any other state of mind, is ripe for endless interpretation and fine distinction. Ask any long-suffering prosecutor who has been called upon hundreds of times to determine whether the facts in a case justify a charge. Only a small percentage are so egregious and obvious that charges are a no-brainer.

    By the way, the dynamics of BDSM are psychologically fascinating. Here’s a rather interesting blog entry by a professional dom exploring whether the statement that the sub has the power in the relationship is accurate: http://67.159.222.79/sadiescolumns/sub/subincharge.htm. You can find yet more about it by reading authors like Greta Christina. There is now a surprisingly large literature on all forms of sex work.

    To sum up all of my statements to a single point: It is no one’s business what a woman chooses to do with her body, whether to preserve it eternally sexless, or use it to make money. It is no one’s business who sells sexual services, and who buys them. These absolutes come with the expected exceptions: no coercion, no underage participation. The woman must be a free agent. I recognize that these states have gradations – all distinctions do. But they will suffice for the time and place. And I recognize that this is a Western viewpoint, not shared by a vast number of those not raised in my society.

  160. Tethys says

    Ibis

    If you want to discuss the definition of consent or critique bayes’ framing of it or how what they’ve said makes you feel, please go ahead. If you want to ask them about their sexual behaviours I don’t see a problem. Let them speak for themselves, or not, as the case may be. But don’t speculate about another commenter’s trustworthiness, gender identity, sex life, or attitudes toward their intimate partners. Thanks.

    I apologize for speculating, I did not mean to cast aspersions. Let me rephrase. I find bayes comments about how consent is difficult and fuzzy to be immensely triggering. I reasoned that others were having the same reaction.

    Caine ~ Perhaps this is a good time to dust off the CCC once again.

    Thank you.

    bayes ` I feel your comment invites response……

    I scrolled down before I read most of your response, and I truly do not care what activities consenting adults engage in. Your posts about consent depict harassing/pressuring a partner into grudging compliance. I fail to see how they are relevant to a discussion about legalization of sex work, and really don’t wish to discuss it further at this time.

  161. bayes says

    @Caine #182
    What you’ve listed is a fine attempt, but it doesn’t suffice for understanding. Nor do any of the policies promulgated by MIT or any other institution (MIT, by the way, is not the final word on as many things as is commonly believed). Writing more words doesn’t necessarily improve focus.

    The problem is that all words have vagueness. If you want a sorry slog of proof, read case law, especially at the high federal levels. It’s astonishing how much can turn on an interpretation of a word that most would swear is all but impossible to misunderstand. And “consent” is one that’s gotten batted about more often than a cat toy. Words like those from https://medical.mit.edu/community/violence-prevention/consent, such as “informed” and “enthusiastic”, can be traps as easily as declarations. How is one “informed”? To what degree? How does one determine enthusiasm? Insisting on stolid sobriety before accepting consent will entangle a vast number of otherwise consensual occasions.

    This may seem like pedantry, but anyone responsible for enforcing such policies knows that it is not. No lawyer would believe so. This is a problem known to researchers as well, who encounter the need to “operationalize”, or make concepts visible and to differentiate. Machine learning has the same problem. It occurs everywhere in all forms of investigation and practice. Every such attempt inevitably concludes that exercises in policy interpretation are like any other form of test, populated with true positives, false positives, true negatives, and false negatives. Thousands of lawyers earn their daily bread by debating interpretations of language, even language that’s meant to be strict, as much of legal language is intended to be. Want more exhibits? Look at the Everest of case law around the simple concept of acceptance in contract law, which is roughly equivalent to “consent”.

    A policy is generally desirable, but simply having one, or listing one, is but one step in a journey of a thousand tentative, delicate steps.

  162. says

    bayes @ 185:

    What you’ve listed is a fine attempt, but it doesn’t suffice for understanding.

    There were a number of collaborators on the CCC, it’s not some sort of attempt, special for you. As for not sufficing in regard to understanding, well, that’s pure bullshit. I’d recommend you stop attempting to clothe yourself in wordy obscurity, in favour of simply stating whether or not you think consent should always be obtained and observed. Contrary to many of the cries heard over consent, it’s not at all complicated.

  163. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    CCC isn’t sufficient for understanding what, precisely, Bayes?

    Because CCC isn’t a definition of consent. It’s not there to help anyone, much less any one particular special snowflake, understand consent.

    Rather it’s a statement of why consent is important and some suggestions about how one might obtain it IF one actively seeks the goal of not hurting others, not violating others, putting a point just-fine-enough on it, not to rape others.

    Of course there are misunderstandings about consent. Of COURSE there are different definitions of consent that apply to different contexts, even to different sexual contexts.

    The conclusion one is to draw from that is not that

    Asking for a clear and unmistakable indication of “consent” is asking too much.

    Let me quote from the CCC:

    Understand that if you go forward with initiating sexual activity not knowing if consent exists, you may or may not be raping someone, but you have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that you are willing to rape someone. Black areas make you a rapist, grey areas make you willing to rape.

    You’re not actually fighting over definitions. You know what consent is. You simply don’t know if it exists in certain cases. To wit:

    When I buy something from a homeowner at a yard sale that is obviously old and well used, there is implied consent to its sale by putting it out with a price tag on it, yet there are times when I put down my money I see reluctance and discomfort in the owner’s face. Has consent truly taken place if there is reservation about it?

    If you honestly can’t tell if your sex partner is consenting, then you have several options. But let’s just focus on one. Imagine not knowing if your sex partner is consenting to a particular act, but choosing to go forward with that act or not.

    Now regardless of your confusion, your sex partner either is or isn’t consenting. So in choosing to go forward with the particular act in question, you are either raping someone, or you are not, and you don’t know which.

    If you choose to do something which may or may not constitute rape, and you are aware that it may or may not constitute rape (as you are aware of the ambiguities in whether or not a person has consented), then the choice to do that thing fundamentally requires a willingness to rape.

    You can certainly be willing to rape if you want; I prefer my partners to be unwilling to rape. So do many other people. Thus the CCC provides tools for thinking about not-so-much about what consent is (though there is a little of that) but why it is important and what to do when one is not certain of another’s consent.

    The fact that you believe that it’s “asking too much” that people clearly indicate consent is strong evidence that you believe people shouldn’t ask their partners to be unwilling to rape.

    That’s fucking frightening.

  164. Rob says

    Giliell @ 81

    I’m in the “decriminalize and strongly regulate” camp, myself.

    That’S actually two different things, but I admit that I only learned about the differentce between “decriminalise” and “legalise” last week myself.

    Actually no, decrimininalisation means that the activity is no longer a criminal offince. It does not mean that there are no regulations. The Prostitution Reform Act 2003 in NZ specifically states:

    Purpose
    The purpose of this Act is to decriminalise prostitution (while not endorsing or morally sanctioning prostitution or its use) and to create a framework that—
    (a) safeguards the human rights of sex workers and protects them from exploitation:
    (b) promotes the welfare and occupational health and safety of sex workers:
    (c) is conducive to public health:
    (d) prohibits the use in prostitution of persons under 18 years of age:
    (e) implements certain other related reforms.

    In addition to the basic framework of rights and requirements the Act creates, Local Government Authorities can (and do) set by-laws around areas in which brothels may be established, the size and nature of the brothels, signage and whether street walking is forbidden. In theory a Council could try to ban prostitution completely within their territory, but in practice our planning laws would make that impossible. Note, they could not make the act of prostitution illegal, just the operation of a brothel. however, the only Council I am aware of that stated the intention to do so backed down after getting legal advice.

  165. opposablethumbs says

    CD @ #189
    Well said. I’d Q the whold thing FFT but that it’s a bit long for that.

    I also think that bayes‘ #131

    The escort clientele has a saying that you pay for sex whether it’s monogamous or with a sex worker. The difference is that you always know the professional’s price and you pay it precisely once.

    is problematic in that it seems to me to imply uncritical acceptance of the notion that in all het encounters the man is essentially buying sex and the woman is essentially selling it. This is a belief that inevitably muddies thinking both about actual commercal transactions in actual sex work, and about sex which is not a commercial transaction (as well as implying that sex as a mutually consensual activity between equals simply doesn’t exist, and that women cannot and do not ever enjoy sex but only engage in it for ulterior motives; again, problematic to say the least).

  166. Saad says

    Target stores to end gender-based signage

    Attention Target shoppers: Say goodbye to “girls’ building sets” and “boys’ bedding.”

    The big box retailer announced Friday that it will start phasing out gender-based signage in some departments. The shift comes in response to customer feedback that distinguishing between products for girls and boys is unnecessary and maybe even harmful.

    Parents and gender equality advocates welcomed the news as a significant step with potential to inspire other retailers.

    “This change is a step towards removing gender limitations in childhood, but when one of the world’s largest retailers does this, the ripple effect will be significant,” author Melissa Atkins Wardy said in her blog, Pigtail Pals & Ballcap Buddies, which promotes gender-neutral toys, apparel and other products for children.

  167. says

    Re Saad’s comment #194, good. That’s one small step for Target. I wish other stores would follow suit.

    In other news, a Catholic hospital in Illinois is causing big problems for women who want control over their reproductive rights:

    When Angela Valavanis established her birth plan for delivering her youngest child, she indicated that if a C-section was medically necessary, she wanted to get a tubal ligation at the same time. But, at the last minute, the Illinois mom was denied the sterilization surgery because the hospital where she was delivering was a Catholic institution and policy dictated it couldn’t perform contraceptive procedures — something Valavanis was never made aware of throughout her pregnancy.

    “The idea that I would go through a surgery and six weeks of healing and then go in for a second surgery for this was completely ridiculous to me,” she says. Performing tubal ligations during a C-section, because the patient is already in surgery, is common practice so as to avoid extra, unnecessary operations. “Had I known about all of this in advance, I would have reconsidered my options and likely have gone to a different hospital.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/mom-denied-procedure-during-c-section-sparks-125525974617.html

    http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/a-risk-of-harm-catholic-hospitals-ban-on-tube-tying/383903/

    […] “I’m thinking, you know, if I tie her tubes I’m going to get kicked off the staff. And I just don’t think that’s right,” said a doctor who faced just such a scenario. […]

  168. rq says

    What You MUST Know About Planned Parenthood and Black Women, and how the attack on Planned Parenthood is important.

    The most recent anti-Planned Parenthood video took aim at Black women, communities and history. Just days after what would have been Emmett Till’s 74th birthday, Students for Life unveiled a video in which clinic staff allegedly scrutinized an aborted fetus. “Call him Emmett,” suggested the video, and make him this century’s civil rights symbol — just like the 14-year-old Emmett Till’s murder by White Mississippi racists galvanized the modern civil rights movement.

    Let’s call the video what it is — the latest in the anti-abortion movement’s appropriation of civil rights and its crass manipulations of history. And it won’t be the last because abortion opponents have long capitalized on the very real history of how exploiting Black bodies has been foundational to the United States, whether we talk about slavery, medical experimentation or mass incarceration. But while “pro-lifers” seek to sway Black people by acknowledging the past, they spin history and foster myths and misconceptions about not just Planned Parenthood, but also Black people’s responses to various reproductive and sexual-health issues.

    Here’s a guide to help you sift through the distortions behind such videos and the fury of anti-abortion Tweets targeting Black women (i.e. the #unbornlivesmatter hashtag.)

    1. This isn’t the first time that anti-abortion groups have effectively called Black women murderers. The Emmett Till video compares Black women who choose abortion to a group of White men who killed a Black youth for allegedly whistling at a White woman in 1955. Black women making a legal and personal choice about whether to become parents is not comparable to White men committing kidnapping and homicide to maintain White supremacy. But anti-abortion groups frequently erect billboards that show pictures of Black babies with slogans like “The most dangerous place for a Black child is in the womb,” despite reams of statistics and real-life examples of how the world outside the womb means that Black children have higher chances of going to inadequate schools, lacking health care, and being under police surveillance.

    2. Abortion foes say: Abortion clinics target Black communities by situating clinics in Black neighborhoods. Research from the New York-based Guttmacher Insitute, researches sexual and reproductive health, found that 60 percent of abortion-providing clinics are in predominately White neighborhoods. But, even so, abortions are part of the continuum of women’s health care, along with Pap smears, contraceptive, maternal health care. And doesn’t everyone want to have health care nearby?

    3. Myth: Black communities are inherently anti-abortion and anti-birth control. Not so. Black women make up about a third of those who get abortions in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than their share of the population because Black Americans comprise about 13 percent of the total U.S. population. The disparity can be explained, say public-health scholars, by how often Black women have unintended pregnancies, a measure that’s related with access to contraception. But while Black women are much more likely to have abortions than White and Hispanic women, it’s worth remembering that one in three U.S. women will have an abortion in her lifetime.

    4. If you read “Hotep” propaganda — the outraged thoughts of latter-day male Black cultural nationalists who frequently confuse Black liberation with Black female submission — you would think that early Black nationalists were uniformly against birth control. It’s true that many Black nationalists of the early and mid-20th century felt that birth control (along with police violence, hunger and poor urban schools) was part of a genocidal plan to wipe out Black people. But there was debate about contraception and abortion within the Black Panther Party, specifically, and Black nationalist communities at larger. Not surprisingly, many Black nationalist, feminist and radical women questioned the idea that it was the job of the sisters to birth as many foot soldiers for the revolution as possible. First, they understood that, as Frances Beal wrote in her seminal 1969 “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female” essay, “rich White women somehow manage to obtain these operations with little or no difficulty [before abortion was legal]. It is the poor Black or Puerto Rican woman who is at the mercy of the local butcher. Statistics show us that the non-White death rate at the hands of the unqualified abortionist is substantially higher than for White women.” Mary Treadwell of Washington, D.C., said it was possible to believe in Black freedom and to reject the idea of the reproductive numbers game where Black people had to out-procreate Whites to build power: “There’s no magic in a home where someone has reproduced five or more Black babies and cannot manage economically, educationally, spiritually nor socially to see that these five Black babies grow up to highly trained Black minds.”

    More points at the link.

  169. komarov says

    Re #198:

    Just watched the clip and ‘what the hell!?’ springs to mind. Batchelor carried herself extremely well, though I’m not quite sure if this was professionalism and will power or if maybe she herself was too surprised to actually react in the moment.
    As for this not catching on, assume the worst. The clip is already on youtube and it’s the sort of thing that will probably ‘go viral’. And the FHRITP-crowd will think it’s awesome. So brace yourself for copy-cats and worse.

  170. says

    The following excerpt is from an article about Ronda Rousey, arguably the greatest fighter in the world:

    […] We shouldn’t forget that it took patriarchal America a full 50 years to grant universal suffrage to women after the right was given to freed male slaves, considered little more than beasts by millions of Americans at the time. What then did they think of women? That the softness attributed to women was also a softness of mind, a weakness of judgment — an untrustworthiness, in other words.

    That gentleness imposed on women is nothing less than subjugation. […] A wife can be called a man’s “better half” when everything else about the expectations of the culture, and in the marriage itself, says otherwise.

    Rousey is not gentle, not in the ring. But she can be: She’s a “big crier,” both strong and vulnerable — like we all are. She can be glamorous, funny and witty in between bloodying up her opponents. All of which is to say that she’s a full person, and she demands to be understood as such. She’s not bound by old rules, and she requires to be understood in her completeness […]

  171. says

    You know the little tag line they put on the screen when they do reports on the news? The CBC coverage of the incident is calling this “CBC Reporter Rattled On Live TV”. Otherwise, the coverage seems to be taking the incident very seriously so that’s good, but I gotta say I’m not pleased by that. It seems to be trivializing to me. Also, I’m thinking that it sets up the future harassers and assaulters of women journalists with a great name for what they’re doing.

  172. says

    Remembering Dr. Claudia J. Alexander:

    Dr. Claudia Joan Alexander was a geophysicist and a planetary research scientist with the United States Geological Survey and with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She served as the final project manager on the Galileo mission to Jupiter. She was NASA’s project manager and scientist in the triumphant European-led Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. She passed away on July 11, 2015, at the age of 56.

    […]

    Dr. Alexander’s luminous portrait smiled back on us throughout the memorial, with the dates of her life: 1959–2015. Those years marked humanity’s first great leap into space. She was born when most rockets failed, a year after Explorer 1 scratched its way into orbit, the year when Luna 3 sent back the first glimpse of the Moon’s far side. We lost her in the year when New Horizons kissed Pluto on the cheek and as we waited and hoped for sunlight to tickle Philae back to life on a comet on arguably her greatest triumph, the Rosetta mission. In the meantime she explored Jupiter while women like her, pioneering women from every corner of America and the world, took their places among the stars.

    Is this not an impressive resume all by itself? Claudia Alexander lived at a moment unique in all of human time. Before 1959 the question of why we explore space could be answered only in sketchy terms: the Mallory argument, for example, that we must climb Everest because it’s there; or in terms of some presumed value in geopolitics; or in sci-fi suggestions that some vast treasure lies out there for us to harvest. So there was no answer. She was here in that thin slice of history when the question was still asked and when the answers still needed to be spoken with force and zest. She understood every technical reason, but her first response to the question was in her eyes and her smile—we explore space because reaching out confronts questions that are huge, timeless, and thrilling to ask. We explore space because the first answers we get from glimpsing ancient light and touching distant worlds around us and compel our hunger for more. In just one splendid lifetime in one induplicable moment in all of human history we have grown as a species and looked anew at the universe around us and at our place in it.

    From 2015 forward there will never again be a need for an answer. Space is delivering value vaster than anything we expected, and that will only grow, so no one ever need ask again why we do it. Of course we explore space. We’ll never stop. Thank God we still live in the time before all this becomes routine. We still get to say can you believe how great this is?

    She got to do it and she got to tell us why we do it. There were just a handful of people in our time with the combination of hands-on technical brilliance and the colossal human empathy that it took to communicate the numbers and the heartbeat, the cool physics, and the hot thrill. She had the engineer’s execution and the magician’s enchantment. She was an ambassador of why we travel into space.

  173. says

    Now that she dared to question some of Donald Trump’s misogynist comments, Megyn Kelly has been the target of attacks from Trump (including more misogyny), and she is being attacked by other right-wingers.

    […] “The more she sells out, the wider her nostrils have become,” Savage said. “Have you seen them flair? This woman was once pretty and the more she has sold out the wider her nostrils have become. They’re almost porcine. She snorts her insults at America.”

    Right Wing Watch link

    What amazes me about this additional commentary from the right is that they invariably focus on Kelly’s appearance, and then they disparage her appearance.

  174. says

    Ibis3 @207, I certainly hope that rape victim has someone in her corner to fight that ridiculous demand for her entire sexual history.

  175. says

    Good on Daniel Davies who apologised for his assault on Megan Batchelor. A real, sincere, thoughtful apology. He’s done at 17 what many guys twice his age would balk at doing.

    Daniel Davies, 17, reached out to Batchelor on Twitter Monday, identified himself and said he regrets his actions.

    “At the moment I thought it was kind of a joke, then I stepped in your shoes, that’s when I kind of realized that it all was not a joke at all. That’s your career — obviously it’s also your body and you have complete control of that and without anyone else’s consent, they do not have the right to do anything to anyone,” Davies told Batchelor.

    Davies interrupted Batchelor’s live television report from the Squamish Music Festival Friday evening. Batchelor then filed a complaint with the Squamish RCMP.

    “Until I took a step back and I kind of put myself into your shoes, that’s really when I realized it all kind of just hit me,” said Davies.

    “Honestly, I wish I actually understood that before I did it, but like I said, I made the mistake already and I want to make the best of the situation.”

    I just hope the harassment Batchelor’s received since reporting the incident will die down. Her twitter feed is full of assholes.

  176. Yellow Thursday says

    My boss, who is an odd mix of liberal and conservative, referred to and addressed colleagues (fellow loan officers) as “girls” during a meeting this morning. And I don’t feel comfortable bringing it up to him because of the negative response I’ve gotten from other managers (some of them women) at the same employer when I brought it up to them in the past. I know banking is a conservative field and upper management is primarily men, but at least 2/3 of the employees are women. I wish we were beyond this.

  177. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Everyone on my Twitter feed was talking about that Bic image. Some of the comments on the FB page are pretty great. There response was basically “we meant it to be empowering so it is”.

  178. Yellow Thursday says

    @Ibis3

    Apparently, my relationship with my boss is better than I thought. I worked up the courage and mentioned it to him in private, and he completely agreed that he shouldn’t have said it. I told him that I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, but I had noticed how he addressed the other loan officers as “girls.” He said he hadn’t realized he’d said that, but that he was glad I’d brought it to his attention because he shouldn’t say things like that. He didn’t quite apologize, but as long as he changes his behavior, that’s what’s important.

    So it turned out to be a good experience.

  179. says

    Yellow Thursday @217:
    Glad that turned out fairly well for you.

    ****
    South African women speak honestly on sex in new web series:

    South African actress Mmabatho Montsho has produced a ten part web series, “Women on Sex”, focused on sex and it’s impact on the day to day lives of women in South Africa. It includes interviews with notable South African television and radio personalities and many other women.

    The August 7th debut of the series coincides with the first week of South Africa’s Women’s Month, a yearly commemoration of the women who led a historic march against apartheid laws in 1956.

    “There are so many factors that influence not only how and when black women have sex, but also how, where and when we are able to talk about it freely,” Mmabatho said in a press release. “Social media has provided a wonderful platform for black women to ensure that their voices are heard and as a budding director, I felt I could contribute another platform for candid conversations about sex and to put it on record. It is a conversation that needs to be encouraged beyond Women’s Month.”
    Check out the first episode Friday, August 7 on YouTube, and find out more on about the series Facebook and Twitter. Watch the teaser for the series below!

  180. Nightjar says

    Hey, I have important news to share! We’re done with the patriarchy, everyone! The Microbiome Destroyed It (along with the ego and vaccines). Witness the destruction:

    Deep within the substratum of humanity’s largely unquestioned assumptions of what it means to be human, the microbiome has also fundamentally displaced a latent patriarchal prejudice concerning the relative importance and contribution of the man and woman towards the health and ultimately the continuation of our species.

    It has been known for some time that only women pass down mitochondrial DNA, already tipping the scales in favor of her dominant position in contributing genetic information (the seat of our humanity or species identity, no?) to offspring. The microbiome, however, changes everything in favor of amplifying this asymmetry of hereditary influence. Since we are all designed to gestate in the womb and come through the birth canal, and since the neonate’s microbiome is therein derived and established thereof, it follows that most of our genetic information as holobionts is maternal in origin. Even when the original colonization eventually changes and is displaced through environmentally-acquired microbial strains as the infant, child, adolescent, and then adult, develops, the original terrain and subsequent trajectory of changes was established through the mother (unless of course we were C-sectioned into the world).

    Put in simpler terms: if 99% of what it means to be human is microbiome-based, and if the mother contributes most, if not all, of the original starting material, or at least the baseline and trajectory of future changes in the inner terrain, then her contribution becomes vastly more important than that of the father.

    Moreover, the conditions surrounding gestation (important because of maternal-to-fetal microbiome trafficking in utero), her general health, and the way in which she gives birth (home, birth center, or hospital) now take on vastly greater importance than previously imagined. In other words, being born in a hospital via C-section and vaccination, will produce, genetically and epigenetically, a human that is so different – qualitatively – from one born at home, naturally, that they could almost be classified as different species, despite sharing nearly identical eukaryotic DNA (remember, only 1% of the holobiont’s total).

    Given this perspective, obstetric interventions are the archetypal expression of a male-dominated paradigm that seeks to manage a woman’s birth experience with largely unacknowledged consequences for the health of our species. Protecting health and preventing disease has now been traced back to the origins of the microbiome, best expressed through natural birth in the home, which has been estimated to be as much as 1,000 times safer than a hospital birth despite propaganda to the contrary.

    Oh, wait. This is actually a guy using a bit of microbiome overhype to lecture women on the correct ways to have babies, and on how having them via a C-section and then daring to vaccinate them is so so so bad that it’s like the poor kids are not even human anymore. How do you dare, women. Tell your OB to fuck off and let the anti-vaxxer idiot manage your birth experience instead!

    Sure, this has something to do with the patriarchy. But “destroying” isn’t quite the word here, is it?

    And so, 10,000 years later, the world ruled by monotheistic, male-principled religious and cultural systems, both in secular and religious form, it seems that the facts of our biology are now intervening to shake up these largely subconscious belief systems in favor of an ancient truth: women are superior to men, fundamentally. (Though it is not a type of superiority to be used against the “weaker sex”: men, rather but to denote a higher responsibility, and perhaps greater need to be supported by men to get the job done, together, as inscribed in the natural order of things and its inherent design.)

    The birth process, also, has been described as the closest thing to death without dying (it is ironic that anesthesiology, which could also be described in the same way, makes obstetrical interventions like C-section and epidural possible, at the same moment that it negates the spiritual experience of natural birth/women’s empowerment we are describing), offering women a window into the ‘in between’ and a direct experience of Source that men, less likely to experience it naturally would later emulate and access through the various technologies of shamanism.

    Women are superior to men, but need to be supported by men to get the job done, because that’s the natural order of things. He calls this feminism. Or rather “Birth Feminism”. Except this is not feminism at all. It’s sexism dressed as woo.

    As a woman, as a feminist, and as a microbiologist, I feel all around disgusted.

  181. chigau (違う) says

    Nightjar #221
    That is an … interesting … article.
    Full of ducks.
    May the Source be with you!

  182. komarov says

    Fascinating. So apparently “genetic density” is an important factor. A rotten can of corned beef probably hosts just as much genetic density as the – any – microbiome. I’m not sure what the implications of that are but they are sure to be as profound as any of the author’s musings on the microbiome and the patriarchy.

    But I’m glad to see he managed that sharp turn from the microbiome through pregnancy to the evils of GMOs and industrialised agriculture, fitting it all into a single article. It saves me reading another one.

  183. Nightjar says

    chigau,

    May the Source be with you!

    :)

    ***
    komarov,

    So apparently “genetic density” is an important factor.

    Someone should probably inform him that if the genes of our microbes are going to be taken into account for species definition purposes, it’s not just the humans that are born through C-sections that are going to be classified as a different species. It’s practically everyone. Soon enough you would have 7 billion species of former Homo sapiens on Earth. It’s complete nonsense.

    But I’m glad to see he managed that sharp turn from the microbiome through pregnancy to the evils of GMOs and industrialised agriculture, fitting it all into a single article.

    Yeah, I’m not entirely sure how GMOs ended up there. I don’t even know how the vaccines got in there.

    The C-section stuff I get. It’s undeniable that the microbiome of babies born via C-sections is radically different from that of babies born through the birth canal. The former start off with their gut flora resembling their mother’s skin flora, the latter start off with it resembling mother’s vaginal flora. And yes, it is very likely indeed that this has important consequences for their health and that the vaginal-flora babies are better off.

    But going from this to “women should all give birth at home, endure as much pain and risk as possible, otherwise their kids are a DIFFERENT SPECIES and they will never experience SOURCE nor be offered a a window into the ‘IN BETWEEN’!!! Well. That’s just. I don’t even.

    The reasonable thing to do, of course, is to look for solutions. Reasonable solutions. Like manually inoculating C-section delivered babies with vaginal bacteria. There is some research being done into this already. C-sections aren’t going away, no matter how much this guy wants it to happen. Neither is the spiritual experience-denying epidural (another thing that I’m not sure what the microbiome has to do with it).

    This guy is basically using some cool discoveries about our gut flora to try to lend some credibility to a) his anti-vaxxer idiocy and b) his view that women must necessarily suffer during delivery, otherwise it’s cheating. Needless to say, it doesn’t work.

  184. says

    Big trigger warning for rape.

    An article in the NY Times looks at the theology of rape promulgated by ISIS.

    In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

    He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.

    When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.

    “I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity. […]

    New York Times link

  185. says

    Trigger warning for rape.

    See comment #225 for the beginning of the discussion of ISIS and the theology of rape.

    More on the organized nature of the sex trade started by ISIS

    “It was 100 percent preplanned,” said Khider Domle, a Yazidi community activist who maintains a detailed database of the victims. “I spoke by telephone to the first family who arrived at the Directory of Youth in Mosul, and the hall was already prepared for them. They had mattresses, plates and utensils, food and water for hundreds of people.”

    Detailed reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reach the same conclusion about the organized nature of the sex trade.

    In each location, survivors say Islamic State fighters first conducted a census of their female captives. […]

    Months later, the Islamic State made clear in their online magazine that their campaign of enslaving Yazidi women and girls had been extensively preplanned.

    “Prior to the taking of Sinjar, Shariah students in the Islamic State were tasked to research the Yazidis,” said the English-language article, headlined “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour,” which appeared in the October issue of Dabiq.

    The article made clear that for the Yazidis, there was no chance to pay a tax known as jizya to be set free, “unlike the Jews and Christians.”

    “After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided” as spoils, the article said. […]

  186. Tethys says

    Egad, holobionts? That article has multiple head desk scale errors, but this line really stood out for it’s sheer density of wrong.

    The birth process, also, has been described as the closest thing to death without dying

    Huh, I have given birth three times, and died once. I found the two experiences completely opposite, and I have never heard anyone describe giving birth as deathlike. Dying was completely painless. Labor and delivery redefined the word pain, but it was also kind of amazing and empowering.

  187. Saad says

    Parents file lawsuit against doctors for performing “corrective” surgery on their intersex child

    In a first of its kind lawsuit, Greenville, S.C., residents Pam and Mark Crawford are suing the doctors who gave their adopted son sex assignment surgery while in foster care. MC, who had been deemed a female by doctors, had surgery at 16 months to “correct” his status as intersex (having both male and female genitalia), but is struggling with this assigned identity now at 10 years old. His parents are grieving that such a decision was made for him before he was able to make it himself.

    “We just hate that there were choices made that could have a significant impact on his being able to be a man,” Pam Crawford tells Newser. “We just don’t want people to have to go through what he’s going to face.”

    BuzzFeed reports that after seeing the adorable photo of MC on an adoption website, the Crawfords knew they wanted to adopt him. Understanding the site featured many children with health problems, they decided to contact the South Carolina Department of Social Services to find out what was the matter with MC, who seemed in perfect health. It was then that they were alerted to the fact that he was born intersex; the agency detailed that MC was born with both a penis and vaginal opening, along with an undescended testicle on the left side of his body, and both ovarian and testicular tissue on the right side. Doctors reported MC’s hormone levels were consistent with a male baby at his age.

    Pam Crawford’s first thought was that she hoped MC had not undergone a surgery, but much to their dismay, they found he had, being officially assigned the gender of female. Now, reaching closer to the formidable teenage years, MC identifies as male, and the Crawfords are calling his surgery a form of genital mutilation.

    “…It’s become more and more difficult just as his identity has become more and more male,” they say in the video. “The idea that mutilation was done to him has become more and more real. There was no medical reason that this decision had to be made at that time.”

  188. Nightjar says

    Saad, #229:

    I really don’t like the way they decided to end that article…

    In a 2006 report made to The New York Times, Larry Baskin, chief of pediatric urology at the University of California said that doing nothing for the child, on the other hand, may still be too risky. “There haven’t been any studies that would support doing nothing,” he said. “That would be an experiment: Don’t do anything and see what happens when the kid’s a teenager. That could be good, and that could be also worse than trying some intervention.”

  189. Rowan vet-tech says

    Because in all of the history of humanity, no intersex children were born up until the age of modern medicine and surgical intervention. None. Not even one. Therefore not mutilating children could be awful for them!

  190. Nightjar says

    Rowan,

    Exactly. I also wonder what these awful, unpredictable risks are that will show up when the kid’s a teenager. I’m afraid they may be related to the existence of bigots and fears about how the kid will deal with discrimination. And it really bothers me that some people think the solution for that is to mutilate children so that they won’t upset the bigots and their cherished binary thinking. Instead of going after the bigots they go after the kids. It’s so fucked up.

    ***

    On a different note, a friend just pointed me to this Pitchfork article on the unequal treatment of male and female artists by the media: Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and the Gendering of Martyrdom

    In the course of Amy, a newscaster reports on Winehouse’s infamous meltdown in Serbia by commenting that “she had the chance to make a big comeback and she totally BLEW it!” while laughing through a segment that dovetails with George Lopez announcing that Winehouse had won a Grammy by saying, “someone call and wake her up at 6 PM and let her know” before calling her “a drunk” with a derisive scoff. A slurry of ugly tabloid images fly across the screen and we see paparazzi preying upon her existential nadir– meanwhile, Montage of Heck posits a cache of neat magazine covers that offer obsequious, reverential coverage of a man whose drug addiction was portrayed as incidental to his supreme talent. Even though both deaths were motivated by depression underscored by narcotics and celebrity, Montage depicts a context in which the public was willing Cobain to succeed, whereas Winehouse, when confronted with similar drug-addled obstacles, was met with ridicule and slander. If Amy proves anything about the life and times of Winehouse, it’s that newscasters, tabloids, and even respected media outlets reported on her shortcomings with enough thinly-veiled aggression to weaken what little resolve the drugs hadn’t already sapped. Cobain’s struggle with drugs, meanwhile, was all but an open secret while he was alive, whispered about or written around in order to maintain good graces and access to the superstar and his band.

    The unequal treatment here is not new.

    The way media dotes over its tortured male artists while undermining the personal struggles of women who suffer the same is nuanced, but a look into the archive suggests the phenomenon is well documented across race, genre, and generation. When Janis Joplin died on October 4, 1970 the New York Times called her a “misfit” whose “behavior was explosive” and remembers her as “drinking from a bottle at her concerts” and “screaming obscenities at a policeman in the audience”. Two weeks prior when Jimi Hendrix died– also at the age of 27– the same paper’s headline referred to him as a “Top of Music World Flamboyant Performer Noted for Sensuous Style” above an article that failed to highlight his fabled and widely-acknowledged affinity for mixing drugs with alcohol, even as new evidence emerged that he was wildly out of control during his final days.

  191. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    I also wonder what these awful, unpredictable risks are that will show up when the kid’s a teenager. I’m afraid they may be related to the existence of bigots and fears about how the kid will deal with discrimination.

    You’re on the nose, but not quite at the tip.

    This, in general, is indeed the justification doctors use for these surgeries. It is this frame that leads them to call the existence of an intersex child a “psychosocial emergency” – note: not a medical emergency – and that then doctors employ with each other to feel better about hacking off genitals that aren’t theirs.

    However, that is by far not the worst of it.

    At one SSSS conference, a doctor who performs (or, at least, at the time was a doctor who was performing) clitoridectomies on intersex kids for social reasons attempted to convince people skeptical of his approach that he was the good guy in the scenario.

    How?

    >>>[PARENT OF ALL TRIGGER WARNINGS]<<<

    He related the story of a child whose father tried to hack off the clitoris of his own child. (I don't remember the age, but young enough to be entirely subject to his power and old enough to be horrifyingly aware of the violence, maybe 4, certainly thereabouts. This wasn't a neonate.)

    With scissors.

    That's right, with scissors.

    In his deranged, violent mind, he was "partially successful".

    "Partially successful" is how the doctor also described this violence.

    If you need an 11th vomit bucket, please grab it now. And maybe three more.

    The doctor went on to say that he had – when the child came in for medical attention because repeatedly closing the scissors on the child's clitoris left the poor kid maimed, bleeding, and screaming but not entirely without a visible genital appendage – surgically completed the clitoridectomy.

    He did this to “prevent abuse” to the child in the future.

    Nowhere in the records that I could find did the doctor describe reporting the violent horror to state children’s services. Nor did he describe his dogged efforts to remove that raging, evil man’s parental rights. Nor did he describe the prosecution of this father, nor even the length of the resulting sentence for this attack that is so overwhelmingly horrible even though I haven’t read the original account in at least 10 years, and even though I have lots of experiences talking about just this – I’ve been paid to talk about just this as a professional consultant – I’m crying and shaking as I type this.

    Nope.

    The “happy ending” is that when the father wanted to sexually mutilate his child, there was a doctor on hand to help the father complete the intended sexual mutilation.

    I’d like to think that the doctors who perform these surgeries today wouldn’t think that the surgery could possibly be justified on the basis of parents’ violent abuse.

    But I don’t trust them farther than they’d penetrate the floor of the Grand Canyon if I pushed them off the edge.

  192. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Oh, also?

    Catholic hospitals frequently have policies banning the use of their medical facilities by their employees or even doctors with hospital privileges for the purpose of vaginoplasties on adults.

    They also always or nearly always have policies banning the use of their facilities for abortion, because a fetus can feel pain, dont’cha know?

    When I was researching it at the time, I called about a dozen Catholic hospitals, maybe 15. Most were in the metro areas of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. 2, I remember, were in NY. 1 other one was east coast somewhere – I don’t remember at this point.

    Not only did none of them have policies in place against the mutilation of children’s genitals for social reasons, several of the people that I talked to thought I was a crank for even asking – like it was a big gotcha and of course nobody has those policies and I was a fringe nutcase who was going to paint them negatively without any evidence at all that such was justified.

    Which is wrong.

    Which is why they don’t paint persons negatively without any evidence at all that such is justified.

    No, they just hack off individuals’ genitals without any evidence at all that such is justified.

    Clearly I’m on the ethical fringe.

  193. Nightjar says

    Crip Dyke,

    Damn. That’s beyond horrifying. I.. don’t even know what to say. Of course I was thinking of the “psychosocial emergency” kind of justifications. “Let’s mutilate kids to protect them form cold-blooded mutilation” wouldn’t even have crossed my mind if you didn’t share that horrible story.

    I’m even angrier now at the way the author of that article decided to end it. It’s like they just had to remind the reader that, hey, these parents think the rights of their child were violated, but what do they know, here’s an actual doctor saying it’s totally okay to mutilate intersex kids for their own good. Couldn’t risk having their readers empathize too much with the kid’s story and conclude the parents are right, apparently.

    I think I’m going to cry myself to sleep now. I’m already beginning to cry anyway.

  194. komarov says

    After enduring mounting displeasure the overlord has dissolved the lounge and thunderdome. Instead we now have ‘custom made’ threads like this one, although the topics aren’t necessarily all that narrow. If you want to discuss misogyny among atheists this is still the place, I should think. Read Ibis3’s post (#7) as an introduction for this thread.

  195. says

    Political film made by women about women brought to life after 40 years:

    As the Huffington Post stunningly reported earlier this week, Year of the Woman, a documentary about the feminist political movement in the ’70s, is finally available online after … wait for it … 40 years of sitting in distribution hell. That’s right. This movie has been waiting on a wide release for four freakin’ decades. And for what?

    In the description for the film on Vimeo, it’s said that Year of the Woman, which looks at “women’s rights proponents at the 1972 Democratic Convention” including Shirley Chisholm (the first African American woman elected to Congress and also the first woman to run for a Democratic presidential nomination), actually played in theatres in 1973 and it was hot ticket too, attracting a huge line of wannabe viewers. As it turns out, however, Year of the Woman only played for five days before it was pulled.

    Eventually, as the Washington Post tells it, Year of the Woman was bought by a woman who was “convinced it was a masterpiece.” But in the eyes of distributors, it was no masterpiece. In fact, following its initial run and until a screening at the Sarasota Film Festival in 2004, it was shown but once in public, and only to those who attended a fancy gala fundraiser for a Harvard library. This film was never put out on VHS or DVD. The only way you could see it was if you called up the filmmaker, Sandra Hochman, yourself and asked to see it. That’s precisely the way HuffPo‘s Jason Cherkis ended up seeing it recently, an how it eventually ended up on Vimeo, available, finally, to us all.

    So what was it about this film that it need to be tucked away from view for so long? Well, some say Year of the Woman was “too radical” for its time. Radical in that it talked about real issues happening between men at the time (Chisholm’s political run, and whether or not fellow Democratic nomination hopeful George McGovern would be pro-life or pro-choice….) Oh, and in addition to featuring many women activists of the time including Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, Coretta Scott King, Shirley MacLaine and Nora Ephron, the film was produced and shot entirely by women, including a future Oscar winner, a future leader at the Directors Guild of America, and a woman who would go on to direct important female-led shows like My So-Called Life and Girls. And that amazing fact, according to Hochman, was deemed a problem. As she told the Washington Post in 2004, “I guess in 1973 the world wasn’t ready for a group of beautiful women talking about [penises].”

  196. rq says

    Why Sheneque Proctor is NOT the Female Eric Gardner

    If you’re on this site then you already know Malcolm X was a prophet.

    He said 50 years ago that ”the most disrespected person in america is the Black woman, the most unprotected person in america is the Black woman, the most neglected person in america is the Black woman.”

    In the early moments of 2015, we’re left to ponder 18 year old Sheneque Proctor spending her last hours disrespected, unprotected, and neglected in a jail cell. Unfortunately she may be receiving the same treatment in her afterlife.

    Proctor was allegedly found dead in a cell by Bessemer, Alabama cops on Nov. 2, and the uncertainty of the circumstances surrounding her passing are troubling. The coroner’s office said she died of a drug overdose, but their recent track record gives that account as much validity as monopoly money.

    Proctor had asthma and according to one report the cops heard her “snoring loudly” at around 3AM. No one willing (or able) to talk truly knows what happened that night, but given her status as a Black youth and the cops’ reputation many are crying willful neglect at best and foul play at worst.

    What’s almost as troubling though is the coverage, or lack thereof. Her death has received no mainstream media attention. A brief sweep of mainstream news sites returns 0 mentions. Apparently Proctor and Gamble mulling whether to put Tiger Woods in commercials is more newsworthy than a young mother dying.

    There are a few sites that are discussing her story, but in a problematic manner and they need to be hit with a reality check:

    Sheneque Proctor is NOT the “female Eric Garner”. She is Sheneque Proctor, her own woman, her own person, another possible victim of the United States’ racist, draconian police system.

    Creating that tag and using it sharpens a double edged sword that marginalizes two Black lives and contributes to intersectionality that leaves Black women at the bottom rung of a society in the gutter.

  197. Saad says

    Kentucky high school student sent home because her collarbone showed in her outfit

    Stephanie is a student at Woodford County High School in Kentucky. According to Stephanie’s mother, Stacie Dunn, she was sent home from school last week for this supposedly revealing outfit. In case you are wondering what exactly she’s revealing in this outfit that looks exactly like the typical kind of comfy outfit most of us wore on a daily basis when we were students, let her mother explain:

    So this is my daughter at school today. I had to come to the school because according to her school principal what she is wearing is out of dress code and inappropriate for school. When I got there I found a group of female students standing in the office due to being out of dress code also. This is ridiculous! WOODFORD County High School and the principle have been enforcing a dress code where as girls can not show even there collar bones because it may distract their male class mates.

    There’s a picture of Stephanie in the offending clothing there.

  198. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I think I saw a picture of the chaste young lady in the news earlier today. I said to myself “what is the problem??????????”

  199. rq says

    Amy Poehler’s brand of feminism just urinated on black women worldwide

    Amy Poehler has recently been reprimanded by the media for featuring a joke about R&B singer R. Kelly urinating on Blue Ivy, Beyoncé’s child, in her upcoming show, Difficult People. The joke, which is spoken by Julie Klausner’s character, perpetuates the rape-culture plaguing Western societies and is bizarre, due to Poehler’s self-prescribed identity as a feminist. But, in the context of white feminism, her editorial behavior is nothing short of mundane.
    […]

    In action, white feminism ignores other forms of marginalization affecting women of color. They fail to recognize that women of color do not experience sexism the same way they do. White feminism is truly only concerned with freeing cis middle-class white woman from their single bond: sexism. They deny the extent to which women of color experience racism, transphobia and ableism. And, unfortunately, they are the faces people see when they hear about feminism in mainstream media. White feminists like Poehler, Allen and Taylor Swift are suffocating feminist spaces for women of color to reside peacefully.

    White feminists love to peddle the all-inclusive definition of feminism: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. But they do not abide by their own philosophy. White feminists love to tell men to “check their privilege” when it comes to sexism, but when it comes to racism or transphobia, they rebuff all criticisms directed towards them. What they fail to realize is that, even when it is not intentional, their actions are damaging and degrading women of color. Black women’s perceptions is black women’s reality. Black women’s lived experience is much more valuable than white feminists perceptions. So instead of denying your racist actions, recognize that what you are doing and saying is real and devastating to women of color all over the world. Realize that calling out women for their racism and transphobia is not a form of pitting women against each other. It is an authentic attempt to derail a narrow form of feminism.

    Stop centering your whiteness — get real and get intersectional.

  200. says

    El Paso abortion clinic will be first to reopen in Texas:

    An El Paso clinic shuttered by Texas’ tough abortion laws is set to become the first to reopen since the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of key restrictions nearly two months ago.

    The reopening of the Reproductive Services facility would mean the country’s second most-populous state has 20 abortion clinics — down from 41 in 2012.

    “They are ready and eager to reopen as soon as they get their license from the state,” said Stephanie Toti, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the El Paso clinic.

    The clinic first sought a license six months ago and believed its efforts would be further helped by a June 29 Supreme Court ruling that suspended parts of Texas’ abortion restrictions, which were approved in 2013 and are among the most-stringent in the nation. But the Texas Department of State Health Services didn’t issue the license while it awaited guidance on how to proceed.

    U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel provided that Monday, ordering Texas not to enforce a rule that clinics must meet hospital-like surgical standards that could delay the license for the El Paso clinic — and decreeing that state officials could be held in contempt of court for failure to comply.

    Department of State Health Services spokeswoman Carrie Williams said she didn’t know how long it will take to issue the clinic’s license.

    “We are processing the licensing information, but I’m not able to provide a timeframe yet,” Williams said Wednesday in an email. “If our review shows everything is in place, we will issue the license without delay.”

  201. says

    “We are an afterthought” says one black Mormon woman:

    When Mica McGriggs was a young girl living in Arizona, she had a typical Mormon upbringing. Except for one thing: she was black. “Every summer the youth, 12 through 18 [year olds], would do a pioneer trek and dress up like pioneers and pull carts. And I already didn’t wanna dress up like a pioneer,” said McGriggs. “I knew that wasn’t right inside. I knew if I were in that time I would have been a slave. I would have been property.”

    Now 25 and a doctoral student at Bringham Young University, McGriggs stands out as a vocal critic on the lack of diversity in the Mormon church.

    On Tuesday, the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) announced that three of the religion’s top female officers would be appointed to high-level councils that take part in church governance. Those positions were previously only held by men. The Salt Lake City Tribune said leaders called the announcement “a moment to savor.”

    But the article raised questions about the dearth of black and brown women’s visibility in positions like these.

    McGriggs, who was quoted in the article, doesn’t see the change as wholesale progress. “When things open up for women, that comes from a place of white privilege,” she said. “Of course these positions are open to all women. However, the women that are always going to fill those seats are going to be white women just because of the racial makeup of our leadership as it stands.”

    The top positions in the church are all currently held by white men. The church, according to the LDS website, is led by 15 apostles. At the top is the president of the church who appoints two apostles and together, the three make up the “first presidency,” the church’s top officials.

  202. says

    Littleton model claims bill Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her:

    Thomas claims that during a four-day mentoring trip to Reno, Nev., she was drugged. She says she awoke on a bed with the naked actor sexually assaulting her.

    After Thomas’ experience, which left her tormented with self-doubt and feelings of guilt, she said she picked herself up and moved on. She met with a psychiatrist. She married and raised three daughters. She earned a college degree and taught music in public schools for 12 years before starting her own music business.

    Thomas later told her husband of 29 years and each of her now-adult daughters separately about the incident, but, to protect her octogenarian parents, she didn’t go public with her story. Thomas decided to step forward in January, after her mother told her that she had known about the assault since it happened in 1984. In an interview with a CNN reporter in February, Thomas reveled in the chance to confront Cosby and support a growing sisterhood of women she says are wrongly smeared as accusers and not portrayed as victims.

    No longer the naive, star-struck fledgling actress and model she was 31 years ago, Thomas is on a campaign to expose what she believes is an all-too-common dirty part of the Hollywood experience. She is accepting media engagements to educate young people how to avoid falling into the same trap she did.

    ****
    2 more women accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault and drugging:

    Charlotte Fox, an aspiring actress at the time of the alleged assault, said she met Cosby in 1974 while working as an extra on the movie Uptown Saturday Night. Fox alleged that Cosby invited her to the Playboy Mansion, where, she said, he then drugged and assaulted her.

    “We ate and drank. I became ill,” Fox said. “The next thing I remember was that I was sort of awake, in a bed, with no clothes on, and there was Mr. Cosby, in a robe, crawling from the bottom of the bed. I was incapacitated and couldn’t say no. He engaged in sexual activity with me. It was not consensual. I was afraid to call out.”

    Another woman, identified only as “Elizabeth,” was a 20-year-old flight attendant in 1976 when, she said, she met Cosby. She stated that she had dinner with Cosby and was invited to his hotel room, where she said she was forced to perform a sexual act.

    Although many people have questioned why it has taken Cosby’s accusers so long to come forward, Allred made it clear why they were speaking out now.

    “They are speaking out now because they want the world to know what they allege they were forced to suffer because they had the misfortune to meet a man that they admired and thought that they could trust, Bill Cosby,” Allred said at the news conference. “It is not too late for them to become empowered women.”

    That fucker got away with hurting a lot of women and at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the numbers reach 75 or 100.

  203. says

    Here’s a Storify–The ‘Genderbread’ plagiarist:

    Sam Killermann, the “It’s Pronounced METROsexual” guy who invented the Genderbread Person, is found to have plagiarized from the work of intersectionally marginalized people while using it to paradoxically “advocate” for them in his public talks and brand new book. Here’s the investigation.

  204. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    from DailyKos:

    She asked are you pro-life. I said yes.
    I believe in prenatal care for all women.
    I believe in making sure everyone has adequate nutrition.
    I believe everyone should receive medical care. No one should die because of an untreated chronic disease, inadequate pain control or lack of prevention.
    I believe everyone should have safe shelter and a place to call home.

    She asked – what about an fetus are you pro-life. I said yes.
    I believe any mother who wants to complete her pregnancy should have the quality medical care to make that happen without barriers.
    I believe in a women can make her own life decisions.
    I do not believe in the death penalty.

    She hung up

    A very non-argumentative response to such a “leading” question.

  205. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    regarding the controv of Target removing gender labels from their toy aisles:

    psychotherapist Tom Kersting—expressed concern that the lack of boy-girl labeling would lead kids to question what their gender is.

    Is he saying that gender disphoria can be prevented with constant reinforcement of binary gender labels on everything?
    I for one see no problem in presenting kids with the ability to choose the toy they like, without labels that tend to tip the decision process. In fact, I see that as the first step to teach kids to think rationally, and experiment through the decision process. Case, where they think they might like a toy, but play with it a while and then decide, “no, not for me”. Where they may get into sharing, “I don’t like this toy. here, you wanna tryit?” what’s the problem?

    Franklin Graham — son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, and president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association—[…] “I think Target may be forgetting who has made their stores strong,” Graham wrote. “It’s not gender-neutral people out there — it’s working American families, fathers and mothers with boys and girls they love.”

    ohh, so since people are not “gender neutral”, nothing should be. Everythings got to me labelled either “boy” or “girl”, to maintain the rigid status of Womenz workin 4 Menz.

    then again, my opinion don’t matter. in my youth, the “girl” label on things made them the “forbidden fruit” and roused my curiosity. So I’m imagining how my youth might have been, if those curiosities weren’t distracting me so much.

  206. rq says

    Seriously, I can’t even begin. Female Attractiveness Linked To Lower Body Fat, because it’s all about the looks and the titties. Plus they didn’t control for a bunch of things, and I bet they didn’t control for what people actually thought was attractive versus what they thought they were supposed to define as attractive (whether consciously or unconsciously). I still don’t really understand the point of the article except to tell women how they can please the male gaze.

  207. blf says

    Qatar Airways will no longer sack cabin crew who become pregnant or marry:

    Airline reacts to pressure and will relax policy which banned crew from becoming pregnant or marrying within first five years of employment

    Qatar Airways has relaxed controversial policies which meant cabin crew were sacked if they became pregnant or got married within the first five years of employment, airline officials said on Wednesday.

    The restrictions, which had been condemned by the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), had been phased out “over the past six months”, a spokeswoman said.

    “Our policies have evolved with the airline’s growth,” she said.

    Under the new regulations, women who become pregnant are offered temporary ground jobs and staff can also get married after notifying the company.

    I have no idea if any male employees have to notify the company before getting married. Or, for that matter, if it really is as regressive (albeit not as bad as before) as it sounds — there’s often adjustments to insurance / coverage arrangements and other such matters, so it’s quite(?) common to let the HR people know about marriage.

    Other regulations which had drawn complaints from staff — such as women crew members must be picked up from work only by their father, brother or husband — are thought to remain in place, at least for now.

    I would love to watch what the “husband” in a lesbian relationship picking up her partner…

    Qatar Airways has about 9000 cabin crew and about three-quarters are women.

    In June, the ILO had called on the Doha-based airline to scrap contracts concerning rules on pregnancy, saying they were “discriminatory”.

    I have no idea who owns Qatar Airways.

    In Qatar itself, there has been a long-standing issue of near-slave-condition “employment”, and high death rates, of the many thousands of workers (mostly east Asian, as I recall) who are building the arenas, hotels, etc., for a forthcoming soccer World Cup. The Qatar monarchy (“government”) has been dragging its feet over doing anything about the abuse, hiding behind FIFA’s seeming lack-of-interest in anything except additional bribes.

  208. says

    Bucking trend, Ohio doctor opens clinic that provides abortion services:

    Dr. David Burkons graduated from medical school and began practicing obstetrics and gynecology in 1973, the same year the Supreme Court issued its landmark abortion decision in Roe v. Wade.

    Burkons liked delivering babies. But he is also committed to serving all his patients, including those who choose abortions.

    On a recent day a 30-something woman comes to the clinic. She is six weeks pregnant. Her birth control failed her, she says. Burkons greets the woman warmly as she comes to the clinic for the second round of the medical abortion process, a two-dose drug regimen to end a pregnancy.

    “We’re going to give you this,” Burkons says, handing the woman the pills.

    “And what are these two?” asks the woman, who requested anonymity.

    “These are the misoprostol pills,” Burkons says.

    On this day a steady stream of women visit Burkons’ clinic for medical abortions.

    Since the Roe v. Wade decision, Ohio has been a trendsetter in passing restrictions on abortion. So it is especially unusual that in a small Ohio town, an hour south of Cleveland, a new clinic that performs abortions opened its doors last year.

    Burkons wanted the clinic to be personable, with minimal wait times.

    Initially in his new clinic, he could only administer the pills that induce medical abortion. But this summer, after 18 months of state inspections, rejections and — finally — acceptance, he began performing surgical abortions as well.

    I hope that he and his staff are able to remain safe. I am almost certain they’ll face threats to themselves as well as the clinic itself.

  209. says

    This woman’s views about abortion and bodily autonomy are wretched:
    http://www.cw.ua.edu/article/2015/08/feminism-includes-pro-life-beliefs

    Last Friday, I attended the UA Feminist Caucus’ rally and was met by a diverse array of students, including many men. This heterogeneous mix of students scattered about the Ferg promenade could be touted as an example of increasing inclusivity and acceptance of the modern-day feminist movement; as a pro-life feminist, however, my views are completely rejected and my presence unwanted. In fact, many feminists, including bell hooks, author of “Feminism is for Everybody,” would go so far as to say that being pro-life is equivalent to being anti-feminist.

    “But, but, but…I want equal treatment, education and pay for both men and women!” stammers my inner feminist. “And I stand for the idea that a woman’s worth extends beyond her physical attractiveness or sexuality. Aren’t these part of feminism? Can’t I be a part of this too?”
    “But, but, but…I want equal treatment, education and pay for both men and women!” stammers my inner feminist. “And I stand for the idea that a woman’s worth extends beyond her physical attractiveness or sexuality. Aren’t these part of feminism? Can’t I be a part of this too?”

    The answer is a resounding ‘no.’ My ideological disagreement on one point of modern feminism has made me completely ineligible to join, whereas queer and intersectional feminists, who carry with them varied views, have been welcomed into the larger movement with open arms. If feminism means something different for every person, then why is it that my feminist views are of lesser value?

    Of course, all the modern feminists out there are chortling at the naivety of my question: “You [pro-life feminists] are unwelcome in the movement because your view infringes upon women’s rights to their own bodies, their bodily autonomy, a right that is, in essence, the very principle on which feminism is founded.”

    But our feminist foremothers, Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, among many others, saw abortion as “child murder” (Susan B. Anthony) and as “the ultimate exploitation of women” (Alice Paul). Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that “when we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we wish.” The first feminists recognized the humanity of pre-born children and did not see the exclusion of their rights as necessary for the advancement of women.

    Modern-day feminists can defend bodily autonomy for women all day long, but the reality is that the argument does not make sense and cannot be consistently applied. Does the right to bodily autonomy extend to women who are nine months pregnant? What if they decide as they are giving birth that they changed their mind and no longer wish to be a mother? What about new mothers?

    I think most people, including some modern-day feminists, would say ‘no.’ Because the bodily autonomy argument really does not work since no one is truly and completely ‘autonomous.’ It is undeniable that at some point in time, another person has helped us through life, and to say otherwise is foolish.

    I also recognize that it would be foolish for us as a society to think that poor pregnant mothers, because they, too, are ‘autonomous,’ do not need help. I would like to see feminists and pro-lifers working together to provide material and emotional support to poor pregnant women and mothers, instead of focusing all their energy on promoting bodily autonomy or illegalizing abortion, respectively.

    Modern-day feminists should treat abortion as it is, not an inalienable right that should be celebrated with parades and balloons, but the loss of a developing human’s life. They should treat abortion with some amount of reverence and grief, even if they still believe abortion should be kept legal. And, at the very least, I want to see modern-day feminists honor the first-wave feminist’s beliefs on abortion and truly embrace the ideal that feminism is for everybody—even pro-life feminists.

    Right now, I have two of the three comments in that thread.

  210. Rowan vet-tech says

    While arguing with an antivax person a little while ago, I found a ‘fun’ statistic. They were arguing that parents didn’t want to risk severe reactions such as anaphylaxis (trying to avoid the omg autism claim, this person was). So I looked up the stats on the MMR vaccine with regards to anaphylaxis. 1 in 100,000. Then, out of curiousity I looked up the united states maternal death rate. 28 in 100,000. I’m 28 times more likely to die from pregnancy related complications than I am to have an allergic reaction to a vaccine. That number, by the way, translates down to 1 in 3600, which is a terrifying number to me. Other countries have far scarier numbers (1 in 10) but that 1:3600 is still far too frequent. No one should be *forced* to face those odds. They can chose to, and should be supported. But to be *forced* to face that risk? Oh HELL no.

  211. Rowan vet-tech says

    To make this even scarier, the number of car related fatalities in the united states is 11.6 in every 100,000. I’m twice as likely to die from a pregnancy related complication than I am to die from a car accident.

  212. blf says

    Rowan vet-tech, I haven’t looked-up the numbers and so am relying entirely on memory (always a worrisome sign), but as I recall, USAbsymalian has one of, if not the, highest infant mortality (and, I think, related, such as birth complications) death rates in the developed world. That was pre-ACA, and whilst ACA may be changing that, if my memory is correct, my speculation is it’s still quite bad.

      ──────────────────────────

    On a totally different subject, from the UK, ITV apologises for poll asking if rape is ‘ever a woman’s fault’:

    Online survey for talk show Loose Women, prompted by recent comments by singer Chrissie Hynde, leads to angry criticism from viewers and charities

    ITV has issued an apology after a backlash over an online poll for its Loose Women programme, which asked whether women were ever to blame for being raped.

    Results of the poll, carried out in light of comments by the Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde last week, were overwhelmingly negative but the fact the question was even asked sparked anger.

    One volunteer for a charity that supports rape survivors said the poll had already led to clients contacting her with concerns and warned it could stop others from coming forward to report crimes against them. Rape Crisis called the poll “ill-considered, insensitive and insulting” and said responsibility for rape always lay with the perpetrator.

    The poll was published online before a panel discussion about Hynde’s remarks on the daytime programme. Hynde had told the Sunday Times magazine that when she was 21 a motorcycle gang member promised to take her to a party but instead took her to an empty house where she was assaulted.

    But, she added, she took “full responsibility” for what happened, and she went on to say that women who dress provocatively while walking down the street drunk were also to blame if they were attacked. “If I’m walking around in my underwear and I’m drunk? Who else’s fault can it be?” she said.

    In light of Hynde’s comments, the Loose Women poll asked: “Is it ever a woman’s fault if she is raped?” An overwhelming 87.85% of respondents said no.

    Katie Russell, the national spokeswoman for Rape Crisis England & Wales, called the poll completely inappropriate and said her organisation was disappointed that the ITV show could think otherwise “even for a moment”.

    “Legally, not to mention morally, rape is always 100% the responsibility of its perpetrator and no one else,” she said […], adding that self-blame and shame were a major reason for many victims not reporting attacks to police.

    I would add to that the UK goons are not too great at investigating reports (although I don’t think there is a backlog of uninvestigated “rape kits”), and when they do stumble across a suspect, the usual problems happen and if there is even a trial, it frequently is the victim who is tried.

    “A programme like Loose Women could choose to use its high profile to raise awareness and understanding of rape, its impacts and prevalence, and to support and encourage survivors to seek services like those Rape Crisis offers,” she added. […]

  213. opposablethumbs says

    http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/08/lost-genius-the-other-mozart-sister-nannerl

    Maria Anna (called Marianne and nicknamed Nannerl) was – like her younger brother – a child prodigy. The children toured most of Europe (including an 18-month stay in London in 1764-5) performing together as “wunderkinder”. There are contemporaneous reviews praising Nannerl, and she was even billed first. Until she turned 18. A little girl could perform and tour, but a woman doing so risked her reputation. And so she was left behind in Salzburg, and her father only took Wolfgang on their next journeys around the courts of Europe. Nannerl never toured again.

    xposted to Art thread.

  214. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Giliell (in #265),
    Ah, so that’s the phenomenon.
    I know cocktails are considered “girly” , but when I was celebrating my birthday at work I noticed most guys wouldn’t touch the cake. I think just one ate it (and went for seconds and thirds and we all love him that way). Now that I think about it, when a couple of colleagues and I (all women) used to have a public stash of chocolate, none of the men ever took it and if we discussed what we would buy it was always “girls and their chocolate”.

    How strange.
    I probably never noticed that before because my dad has a sweet tooth so I never saw such behaviour at home.

  215. says

    beatrice
    Cupcakes!
    They’re probably the most girly thing ever, and one of my specialities is strawberry cupcakes. Many boys won’t even touch them because the frosting is pink because that’s what you get if you mix vanilla buttercream with strawberries.
    Most of my friends and family seem immune to this when it comes to food, but “girly drinks” are something else (except for Mr.)
    The backside is that if you honestly like things like Single Malt you’re being accused of just playing cool.

  216. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Giliell,
    Well, sexist stereotypes are no fun if they don’t screw all sides.

  217. rq says

    NC Law: Teens who take nude selfie photos face adult sex charges

    After a 16-year-old Fayetteville girl made a sexually explicit nude photo of herself for her boyfriend last fall, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office concluded that she committed two felony sex crimes against herself and arrested her in February.

    The girl was listed on a warrant as both the adult perpetrator and the minor victim of two counts of sexual exploitation of minor – second-degree exploitation for making her photo and third-degree exploitation for having her photo in her possession.

    A conviction could have put the girl in prison and would have required her to register as a sex offender for the rest of her life. A plea bargain arranged for her in July should clear her record next summer.

    With the growing popularity of sexting among teens, two researchers said the courts would fill with defendants like this girl if the Sheriff’s Office were to arrest all the teens who make nude photos to share with their love interests.

    Were such a standard to apply nationwide, “you’re talking about millions of kids being charged with child pornography,” said psychologist Jeff Temple of the University of Texas Medical Branch.

    Actually I just didn’t know where else to put this. I recently posted an article about a young boy facing charges, also for having his own nude selfie on his own phone. I’m just flabbergasted at the implications that you, yourself, are not allowed to own naked photos of your own naked body. It’s like a revocation of ownership. Or something. Should I be throwing out all my baby photos, if I ever plan to move to the US (not in the works)?

  218. says

    What’S next, outlawing mirrors cause you could look at yourself?
    Making masturbation a crime because you haven’t reached the age of consent yet and are now the victim and perpetrator of statuary rape or child abuse all by yourself?
    Feminists are often accused of hurting “real” victims of sexual violence by “calling everything rape”, which is n’t true, of curse, but if there ever was such a case, it’s this.

  219. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    I’m sorry for the victims of this ridiculous war on sexuality.

  220. komarov says

    Re: #270

    By that logic every home video and family photograph could be classified as illegal surveillance.* The whole family could be charged, including small children for ‘aiding and abetting’ their criminal parents.
    Wild guess on my part but the same people usually crying about small government and limited interference are presumably either silent on the issue or supporting the long, prying arm of the law.

    More seriously, if someone can be charged and convicted for having nude pictures of themselves, then the resulting precedent might be used to hammer down medical practitioners as well. Just one ‘lewd’ picture of a patient in some medical file and the staff and facility could be in trouble. It’s no more insane than these teenagers being charged in the first place. And it’s just the thing certain groups would use to shut down abortion clinics and any other health services they don’t like.

    *The irony of being charged with illegal surveillance by the US government would be delicious. But not worth it.

  221. says

    Alicia Keys ‘A revelation’:

    For as long as I can remember, I’ve hidden myself. It might have started in school when I realized that I caught on to things a little quicker, and teachers started to show slight favor to me, or use me as an example. I remember feeling like my friends would make fun of me or look at me as if I was different from them and so… I started hiding. Not intentionally, I didn’t mean to, but I did. Little pieces at a time.

    I definitely started hiding when I got old enough to walk down my NY streets alone. I started to notice a drastic difference in how men would relate to me if I had on jeans, or if I had on a skirt, or if my hair was done pretty. I could tell the difference, I could feel the animal instinct in them and it scared me. I didn’t want to be talked to in that way, looked at in that way, whistled after, followed. And so I started hiding. I chose the baggy jeans and timbs, I chose the ponytail and hat, I chose no makeup, no bright color lipstick or pretty dresses. I chose to hide. Pieces at a time. Less trouble that way.

    I remember feeling that same way when I first started to get recognized as an artist. I had the baggy/braided/tough NY tomboy thing mastered, that was who I was (or who I chose to be) and I felt good there. Then, because of the way I spoke or carried myself, people started calling me gay and hard and I wasn’t gay, but I was hard and although I felt comfortable there, it made me uncomfortable that people were judging me and so slowly I hid that side of myself. I put on dresses and didn’t braid my whole head up, so people could see more of the “real” me, even though at that point I’m sure I was more confused then ever of what the real me was.

    I remember one interview I gave had strong social thoughts from a book I just read. The writer misunderstood me and wrote something that I didn’t say. I felt judged by those reading it. Out came the shell again and me under it. Hiding, piece by piece. Little by little. More and more.

    I became comfortable hiding, my intelligence, my physical appearance, my truths, my thoughts, myself.

    To this day, every time I get out of the shower to get dressed, I swear the first thought that comes into my head is, what can I wear that won’t cause too much attention when I go pick up Egy, or head to the store, or go shopping, or visit a friend etc.

    And just the other day it hit me! OMG! Alicia!!! Why are you choosing to be that person?? That is so old and outdated!! STOP!!

    You are allowed to be smart
    You are allowed to be beautiful
    You are allowed to be radical and have strong thoughts that others might not agree with
    You are allowed to be tough
    You are allowed to be sexy
    You are allowed to be bold
    You are allowed to be shapely
    You are allowed to be kind
    You are allowed to be yourself!!

    And guess what!?? I can be all these things all at the same time. I don’t have to give up one to be the other. I don’t have to hide anymore, I don’t have to pretend and hold back, I don’t have to think that my intelligence, beauty and sensuality are intimidating to others. Who cares??!!! I don’t have to think my silliness, clumsiness, or hallmark card optimism, is something I can’t be proud of! Who cares????!!!!

    I don’t have to try to go unnoticed
    I don’t have to fit in
    I don’t have to close up my thoughts and only speak my truth through songs!

    I can speak it everyday
    Live it everyday
    Be it everyday
    Dress it everyday
    Show it everyday
    Grow it everyday!!!

    I only got 28,000 of those days. So what the FUCK am I waiting for??
    And dammit that’s what I’m doing!!!!

    I’m happy that she’s at the point where she feels comfortable being herself and living life on her own terms.

  222. says

    Fuck
    Spain has restricted abortion.
    Not as drastically as planned at first (only in cases of rape and life of the pregnant person), but underage people need parental approval. So they can “counsel and guide their daughter”.
    Because a kid might never have some sensible reasons as to why they need an abortion but cannot tell their parents. Like having been raped by their father. Or coming from a very religious family. Or ….

  223. dianne says

    @Giliell: Yeah,trying to force underage girls to tell their parents that they want an abortion, even in the absence of abuse, always works out so well. Just ask Becky Bell’s parents.

  224. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    If someone is considered old enough to carry a pregnancy to term (if her parents decide that for her) , then she’s old enough to choose who she wants to inform and make her own decision about keeping the pregnancy.

  225. emergence says

    Hey guys, I have something that I want to ask.

    Feminism is another one of those issues that I’m sympathetic to, and I think I should know more about, but don’t have much information on. I’m okay when it comes to noticing flaws in the reasoning of antifeminists that blame rape victims for getting raped, or other similar arguments that rely on rationalization more than empirical evidence. However, I’m significantly less capable of challenging claims made by antifeminists that involve empirical evidence or lack thereof. I don’t have enough of an understanding of biology to judge the merits of evolutionary psychology, I don’t know enough about the statistics on rape to evaluate claims that most rape victims are lying, and I haven’t done enough research to understand gender disparities in employment.

    I wish that I could “learn how to learn” about these subjects so I can make informed judgements about them. How can I do that?

  226. says

    emergence @282:
    Regarding statistics about rape victims, check out RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network. That link is a good place to start. They have a wealth of resources. Many of which are in image form which can be easier to grasp and digest.

  227. Spacy Tracy says

    emergence @282,
    One thing you can do is to always ask for evidence and specific citations when people assert things, and then simply go have a look at that evidence and those citations and see if they back up what the person said. You don’t necessarily need to even offer counter arguments; just checking to see if the other person is reporting the facts accurately will carry you a long way. Not surprisingly, you’ll find that the person has got it wrong in many cases, whether they are cherry picking and leaving out relevant information that contradicts their assertions, or they genuinely misunderstand, or they are outright lying.

    No matter if you discover the person was right or wrong, and no matter if you ever manage to convince them when they are wrong, in any case you’ll always learn more about the topic in the process and at the same time you’ll become more familiar with your interlocutors’ most often cited sources.

    This typically doesn’t require extensive research either. It’s just checking to confirm that what someone claims is actually supported by the sources they cite. If they can’t back up their assertions without some form of evidence, then what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

  228. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Just watched Emmys.
    A major winner was Amazon’s Transparent which personally I have never seen, nor ever even heard of. It seems the title is a portmanteau of “trans” & “parent”; being a comedy series about a parent (played by Jeffery Tambor) who is a trans and finally comes out to his family, and begins transitioning. The story (presumably)concerns all the obstacles (s)he overcomes with their sense of humor.

    The acceptance speech by creator Jill Soloway, for Directing, noted that in many states, a landlord would be legally allowed to deny tenancy status to her Moppa (being a trans):

    Soloway explained that if her Moppa wanted to rent an apartment, 32 states’ laws would not protect her from housing discrimination based on her gender identity. “We don’t have a trans tipping point,” Soloway said, “we have a trans civil rights problem.” She then urged viewers to support the Transequality bill, also known as the Equality Act, a bill that would add “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to a preexisting list of legal protections from discrimination.

    Jeffrey Tambor’s acceptance speech thanked the trans community for their courage:

    “I’d like to dedicate my performance to the trans community,” Tambor said. “Thank you for your patience, thank you for your courage, thank you for your stories, thank you for your inspiration, thank you for letting us be part of the change.”

    *bravo*, to both

  229. Saad says

    Colleges revoke Bill Cosby’s honorary degrees

    Fordham and Marquette universities have rescinded from Bill Cosby his honorary degrees amid allegations from women accusing the comedian of sexual assault.

    In Milwaukee, Marquette’s Board of Trustees approved a resolution Thursday rescinding an honorary degree presented to Cosby in 2013. The degree was immediately rescinded, the school said.

    Fordham’s Board of Trustees also voted to take back an honorary doctor of fine arts degree given to him in 2001.

    Both Jesuit schools said it is the first time they have rescinded an honorary degree.

    Cosby admitted having extramarital relationships with several women, including some who now accuse him of sexual assault. He has never been charged with a crime.

    “As a Jesuit university, Fordham could no longer stand behind the degree it had bestowed upon Mr. Cosby, hence this unprecedented action,” the New York City university said.

  230. Saad says

    California kindergarten student kicked out of Christian school because she has two moms

    A five-year-old San Diego, Calif. girl is at home, instead of starting off kindergarten with her friends, because her school, the Mt. Erie Christian Academy, refused to welcome her any longer because she has two moms, KGTV reports.

    The child, who had attended Mt. Erie for pre-school and summer school was abruptly cut off when her parents were called in on the Friday before Labor Day, just before school started, where the pastor broke the news.

    “It was heartbreaking,” Sheena, who didn’t want her last name to be used, told the news station. “I didn’t finish the conversation with them when they took us in the room because I just, I didn’t want to look at them any longer. I just couldn’t believe that they did that.”

    “They told us, ‘oh this is not about your child,’ but it is about my child,” the stay-at-home mom added.

    The mothers are seeking an attorney to file a civil rights lawsuit against the school. When asked by the news team if it was discrimination to stop the child from attending because of her mothers, a woman who described herself as the school’s director, said, “The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. We don’t condone any sinful lifestyles.”

  231. blf says

    Men dominate news coverage in the US by a factor of 5 to 1 over women:

    Comprehensive research of newspapers shows how women are marginalised

    [… A] survey of more than 2,000 US newspapers, magazines and websites has found that five of six names in news coverage were men.

    It underlines research led by Jane [Martinson] for Women in Journalism three years ago. But I don’t think the point can be made too often.

    The Daily Beast’s report on the study published in the American Sociological Review is headlined Media is still for men, by men.

    The research was comprehensive, analysing content dating from 1983 to 2009 and cataloguing the incidence of male vs female mentions in news content. The central finding: men were the central figures in 82% of the coverage.

    The authors of Paper ceiling: the persistent underrepresentation of women in printed news argue that it is caused by two factors. One, the media’s focus on the “highest strata” of individuals; and two, the lack of women in these positions.

    […]

    Despite more females being employed in the industries studied — business, technology, entertainment, and sports — the gap has remained stagnant in some areas and worsened in others.

  232. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Okay, this is odd:

    I now have 3 reasons to use the identity “Crip Dyke” in grant proposals. The most recent being an idea by a fellow Pharyngulite who is interested in collaborative research. I could use another identity for that research, but then I couldn’t share it here…and would even be a bit uncomfortable with the other party sharing this research here, even though the idea is fantastic and many here would find the total project interesting as it involves agriculture, psychology, language, feminism, ethics and economics.

    The other two are less important to me, so not being able to use Crip Dyke would be less a tragedy, but on the other hand, they are things I don’t need on my CV and arose out of online work and thus are things that I’d **like** to use Crip Dyke for. I’d like using the Crip Dyke identity even more (for these other 2 projects than for the first, bigger one), but need it much less, if that makes sense.

    So, yes, Card is a jerk, but he did point out that it’s possible to become a “thought leader” or “public intellectual” or whatnot while being entirely unknown as a human body. On the internet nobody knows you’re Demosthenes, or whatever. (Yes, Demosthenes, fuck that Locke person.)

    So what would it mean to start a side-career as Crip Dyke? Can a Crip Dyke be taken seriously in a grant application?

    And, more interesting for this thread, this is a specific instance of a more and more common phenomenon. What is the feminist interest in preserving the option of a separate, public (internet) identity? Does it matter that I created the identity 20 years ago when I was routinely getting death threats? Does it matter that I haven’t gotten a credible death threat in a long time now? Does it matter that I have kids now and didn’t then?

    Obviously separate public/private spheres is a concept that’s really hurt women in the past. But my work attempts to undermine that division in many contexts. Does that make me a hypocrite?

    Should feminists want internet names to have the possibility of lives of their own?

    Obviously, I should make clear, we seek a just world in which the pressures that led me to create a separate internet identity do not exist. There is a long tradition of arguing that harm reduction is the enemy of eradication. If you take a simple view that eradication is too important to tolerate harm reduction measures that wouldn’t be necessary in a just world, that’s fine, but I already know that point of view exists.

    If you want to make that argument, perhaps you could address the specific case of internet identities and their partial severability from the identity one uses in meatspace? – especially one’s legal identity in meatspace and/or one’s family identity in meatspace.

  233. tbtabby says

    The Gamergate comic is at 170 likes, 142 dislikes now. I also notice that the critical comment I made about it this morning is still pending, but a comment saying Zoe Quinn looked hot, made by a user with a Nazi emblem as an avatar, was allowed.

  234. blf says

    Oops! “Never has an advert backfired so spectacularly.” French broadcaster’s anti-sexism advert pulled for being sexist:

    France 3 ad met with derision on Twitter, as it showed domestic life in disarray due to ‘all the women’ being presenters on the state network

    It was meant to be an advert for the importance of gender equality and women in the workplace.

    But a 40-second film boasting of the French public broadcaster France 3’s large number of female presenters was in fact so sexist that it was instantly pulled in the face of widespread criticism.

    To the stupefaction of feminists and commentators on French social media, the advert opens showing a deserted house where everything is going wrong.

    Something is on fire in the oven as it billows smoke, a child’s room is untidy and in disarray. A man’s shirt is in flames as the iron rests on it, and the bathroom — with the toilet seat left up — is filthy.

    Even the dog is whingeing as it waits to be walked. As the camera pans around this domestic apocalypse, a famous 1970s French pop song croons: “Where are the women?” Then, as a shot shows a wardrobe full of neatly stacked shoes, a message appears on screen telling us that all the women “are on France 3” where “the majority of our presenters” are female.

    […]

    The new head of France 3, Delphine Ernotte, the first woman to hold the role, immediately ordered the film to be pulled. […]

    Ernotte […] has a reputation for ruthlessly combating sexism and promoting equality. […]

    Prenons La Une, a collective of female journalists, told 20 Minutes the advert “feeds cliches rather than deconstructing them. You get the impression that the people who made this video start from the principle that a woman is always behind her ironing board, that she has a massive shoe collection.”

    I haven’t seen it — or, for that matter, much of France 3 — but wonder if this was a badly-botched attempt at irony?

  235. Saad says

    Excerpts from letter written by Alabama woman who is in jail for “chemical endangerment” of her fetus

    On 29 April last year Amanda Kimbrough sat down in her cell inside the notoriously tough Tutwiler women’s prison in Wetumpka, Alabama and began writing a letter in which she described her feelings of loss and remorse. It was a poignant moment, as six years earlier to the day her only son Timmy had been born prematurely and had died from complications at birth after only 19 minutes.

    “Tim Jr would be six years old [today],” she wrote, “and not a day goes by I don’t think of him. While I was out we keep his grave decorated and kept up, my husband and family do while I’m here.”

    That Kimbrough – Alabama offender 287089, as the state branded her – should be thinking of her son on the anniversary of his death needs no explanation. But the poignancy of the letter is heightened by the knowledge that it was because of Timmy’s stillbirth at 25 weeks that she was locked up in the first place.

    Kimbrough was prosecuted for the “chemical endangerment” of her fetus relating to her on-off struggle with drug addiction. The case was pursued so forcefully by the state of Alabama that she was charged with a class A felony – equivalent to murder – and taken all the way to trial, in what is thought to be the only full trial hearing of its sort in the country.

    [. . .]

    Later, the profound legal issues raised by the case would rise up through appeals all the way to the Alabama supreme court, the highest judicial panel in the state, where it would set a new precedent. In effect, it renders all pregnant women vulnerable to prosecution for any harm they might cause their fetus at any time after the moment of conception.

    Absolutely sickening and rage-inducing.

  236. blf says

    This is from The Grauniad’s “Brain Flapping” series, which takes a snaky science-based look at various events and whatnots, Breasts: the ultimate weapons:

    Female comic and video game characters often engage in combat while wearing outfits that are very revealing, particularly around the breast area. This is because the scientific properties of breasts mean they’re formidable weapons which shouldn’t be concealed

    Forget guns. Forget nukes. The real ultimate weapon? Breasts.

    Exposed breasts are a significant tactical advantage. In pop culture, large-breasted women fighters invariably wear very revealing, breast-emphasising outfits. There are numerous examples in comics […] and video games […]. Presumably such capable individuals would be able to wear what they like, so why would they choose to expose so much skin to danger?

    You might think it’s just a cheap and crude tactic by male-dominated industries to get more attention from what they assume to be their young heterosexual male audience. But you’d be wrong. The creators of these scantily-clad protagonists are aware of a greater truth; breasts are actually the most awesome weapons a human can possess, and to cover them up limits their effectiveness. […] This may all seem far-fetched, but the science backs it up.

    Stability
    […]
    When undulated in the correct manner, large breasts can act as tuned mass dampers, aka harmonic absorbers. […]

    More proficient female fighters have also mastered their breast to achieve rotational movements to induce a gyroscopic effect […]

    Offensive capabilities
    […]
    Outside of child rearing, breasts actually produce a powerful corrosive acid, like hydrochloric acid in the stomach but much worse, strong enough to dissolve the flesh from an enemies bones and, given enough time, capable of burning through most refined metals.

    […]

    The alternative physics of breasts
    Breasts don’t obey the usual laws of physics. Video game makers figured this out long ago, which is why breasts in video games often behave in such surreal ways.

    This is because breasts extrude into a slightly different dimension, one visible from ours that we can still interact with, but with its own subtly different properties and physics.

    For instance, size and mass fluctuate more often in the breast dimension, hence bra measuring is so imprecise; the breasts are actually shifting in size and shape constantly due to their exotic physics.

    […] Bullets and blades are very dangerous to humans due to the laws of conventional physics, but breasts don’t obey these laws, so are practically invulnerable to traditional weapons. You seldom see any of these comic or game characters with damaged breasts, and now you know why.

    And if they’re invulnerable, there’s no real point in covering them with clothes. Clothes are damageable, so you’ll just ruin a good outfit.

    […]

  237. katybe says

    I might cross-post this to Arts too, as a book recommendation, but this morning I started reading Do It Like A Woman, by Caroline Criado-Perez, and it’s fascinating. She’s interviewed a whole bunch of women in all sorts of different fields who are trying to change the world, and is divided into sections entitled Doing It…, Speaking…, Leading…, Advocating… and Choosing Like A Woman. I’m delighted to be introduced to so many great women doing incredible things, and really loved the section on Afghan women’s poetry groups – I’m intrigued by the 2-line landais they’re writing as a form of rebellion! Not quite read half of it so far, but feel it merits a recommendation anyway. Oh, and if her name rings a bell – she’s the woman who started the campaign a couple of years back to get a woman on British bank notes, and subsequently attracted abuse and threats.

  238. says

    Giliell @ 297:

    I totally do that. Don’t cry, don’t complain, just take it.

    Aye, me too. It’s been remarked on a number of times. My favourite was a male doctor, so surprised he blurted out “that makes grown men scream!” Yeah, well, they’re allowed, aren’t they?

    Recently, I was assigned an additional person at the pain clinic, a nurse practitioner who is a woman. She was going over my pain meds, I made a murmur now and then, when she said “wait, you don’t have enough to take X a day, do you? I said I did not, and when she enquired as to why I didn’t say anything, I just shrugged and told her that I’ve found it does little good to say anything. At least my meds were increased.

  239. says

    From Feminist Batwoman. Patricia Hill Collins (whose 1992 book Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology reintroduced and helped popularize the concept of intersectionality in the 1990s) was recently asked her opinion on white feminists’ use of intersectionality as feminist theory:

    But at the end of the talk, their was a question and answer section. I had decided to ask her a similar question I asked Kimberle Crenshaw. How do you feel about the ways white feminists have taken your work on intersectionality as a feminist way to be more inclusive while erasing the creations as part of a Black feminist tradition and without a dedication to Black women’s lives in any way?

    She gave an anecdote. She asked if the House of Blues was still in Cambridge or Boston. We said yes. Recently I was at a Bootsy Collins show there, maybe a year ago. So yes, it was there. I was so suprised when I arrived. And she elaborated on why with her anecdote.

    She said what has become of her work on intersectionality and Crenshaw’s as well is what has been done to Blues, Jazz and Rock. When I went to the Bootsy Collins show I was actually appalled at how WHITE the audience was. these are NOT true Bootsy fans or lovers. but once whiteness gets their grasp on something they love that Black people have created, they have to make it more and more inaccessible to Black people while also whitening it to be no longer noticeable as a Black creation.

    what i love about her response is that she didn’t use the word appropriation once. she simply said, over the years, Blues and Jazz has become almost unrecognizable. white men who wanted that feel, that experience, went on to imitate the sounds and creations without actually having the background experience. structurally, some of these things end up similar. however, the heart and soul of the creation is gone and the creators have been erased. when Black fans can’t go see Bootsy Collins at the House of Blues because of the cost or white men are continually praised as the creators and best artists in Blues, Jazz and Rock n Roll, the complete erasure and appropriation of that creation has taken place.

    this is what White Feminism has done to intersectionality. White Feminism has no commitment to Black women. to our lives, our narratives, our concerns or our histories. Patricia Hill Collins had and has a complete and total commitment to Black women. her work is based on a long standing oral and academic tradition of remembering and honoring those who came before her. who helped to shape these ideas. and most importantly, they center the Black womans experience in all of it.

    intersectionality is meant as a bottom up approach, not a top down approach. those with power cannot be “intersectional”. you are also not living intersectional experiences. intersectionality was always about exposing the ways Black women are caught up in multiple systems of oppression, namely race, gender and class, but often many more. it is meant to help Black women understand their experiences in a white supremacist patriarchal culture like the U.S. or much of Western nations that have applied this model onto most cultures from the outside. most importantly, it is meant to help Black women see the ways their experiences are connected to one another and not a product of self-deficiency but structural real systems that have cultural and economic benefits for ruling/dominant classes.

    understanding Black women live intersectional experiences gives us insight into the ways race, gender and class, heterosexism and more all work together in ways that restrict Black womens access to resources. and access to resources is what is really one of the most important things needed in Black women’s lives. which white feminism is not committed to in any way. when Black women learn more about classism, sexism, racism, heterosexism and more (such as transmisogyny, islamophobia, convicted felon status, etc) and how they work, we learn more about how we can define ourselves without those systems imposing our identities onto us. we can also learn more about how to combat and navigate these systems.

  240. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    http://jezebel.com/germaine-greer-says-caitlyn-jenner-transgender-women-a-1738550360
    An icon of feminism continues her transphobia. Says the usual misconception of “surgery turning a man into a woman”, Disregarding the fact that the surgery is not considered a transformation, but a correction, by those who request it. That is, Caitlyn Jenner (for example) was a woman long before surgery, struggling to masquerade as a man because her body did not conform with her personality. Gender disphoria is not just a euphemistic label for “those (yucky) people”, but a real affliction where one disagrees that one’s body represents them in terms of gender presentation.
    I can understand Greer wanting to retain focus on the struggles of all women in misogynistic society, yet it is better to not point at TG’s as “stealing the spotlight”. I’d recommend inclusion rather than exclusion: Recognize that transphobia highlights the issues she’s been discussing all along of women being downtrodden by misogyny.

  241. emergence says

    Alright, I read something that disturbed me recently; apparently there was this girl who was drawing Steven Universe fan art that made some of the heavier set characters skinny, made dark-skinned characters fair-skinned, depicted characters of ambiguous gender as conventionally gendered, etc. Apparently, people who disliked this sent her abusive emails and she eventually attempted suicide (although I think she survived).

    I’m honestly worried that this might be a rare case of social justice advocates inflicting the exact same sort of abuse on someone that the racist MRA-types usually do. We used to think that it was unlikely for atheists to go on shooting sprees, or harass people online, but that wasn’t exactly correct. I have to wonder if another group that we identify with might have its fair share of assholes too.

    As far as I can tell some MRAs seem to be latching onto this as proof that SJWs are evil, as if MRAs have any room to talk after having done this sort of thing multiple times and made excuses for themselves. Nonetheless, I would be very ashamed if it turned out that people who advocate social justice were just as capable of harassment and bullying as people who oppose it.

    Has anyone else heard anything about this? Am I missing any important details?

  242. says

    emergence @305:

    Alright, I read something that disturbed me recently; apparently there was this girl who was drawing Steven Universe fan art that made some of the heavier set characters skinny, made dark-skinned characters fair-skinned, depicted characters of ambiguous gender as conventionally gendered, etc. Apparently, people who disliked this sent her abusive emails and she eventually attempted suicide (although I think she survived).
    I’m honestly worried that this might be a rare case of social justice advocates inflicting the exact same sort of abuse on someone that the racist MRA-types usually do.

    1. How do you know the people who sent the abusive emails were social justice advocates?
    2. It would help assess the situation if you included a link to the story you’re talking about.

  243. emergence says

    Tony @306

    You might actually have a point about me jumping to conclusions. The place where I first noticed it was on Know Your Meme, and I haven’t actually checked anywhere else. I suppose it’s more than possible that the article is skewed or misleading. On the other hand, some of the people who work on the show have publicly condemned the people who harassed her, so I don’t really know.

    Anyway, here’s a link to the site:
    http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/zamii070-harassment-controversy

    Sorry if I brought up something without any real merit.

  244. says

    emergence @307:
    There’s no need for an apology. I didn’t say it was without merit. A young girl left a message saying that she was going to commit suicide. That’s serious. The reason why is attributed to her receiving harassment. I dug around a little and didn’t find much more information than what was provided at your link. So at this point, I don’t see *who* harassed her. It could have been advocates of social justice. But I don’t see enough to make that determination yet.

  245. emergence says

    Tony @308:
    I just really don’t want this to end up with the social justice side being just as unethical and sadistic as the anti-social justice side. It’s painful to think that someone could have been hurt for the sake of a cause that I value. While I’m really hoping that it isn’t the case, I couldn’t in good conscience ignore it if it was.

  246. says

    emergence @309
    I understand. I hope you recognize a few things though:
    1-even if SJ advocates were involved, that is on them specifically and does not automatically blemish all other SJWs; they don’t represent “our side”-i.e. all SJ activists (no more than the antifeminist contingent of the atheist movement represents all atheists). This would be a different story if massive numbers of SJ advocates engaged in the harassment.
    2-people are complex, and even those fighting for SJ are not perfect. I don’t say this to excuse their actions, but rather to point out that it might be a good idea to keep in the back of your mind that even people with the best of intentions in some areas can fuck up. That’s one of the reasons ‘No gods. No masters. No heroes.’ is a a phrase I agree with.
    3-if SJ advocates were involved, that doesn’t invalidate the fight against injustice