In which I fail my roll against snark

Posted May 13, 2008 by
Categories: Uncategorized

Dom women are totally confident and in control of their sexuality! Dom women are proof that BDSM isn’t sexist! And porn isn’t harmful! It’s all just good clean fun! It could NEVER be that you’re actually looking at a picture of a CHILD who is ENSLAVED while you’re getting your rocks off.  Oh no, porn actresses are there CONSENSUALLY.  They get paid for it!  They are so lucky to have the jobs they do!

What has always struck me about the whole argument that professional dominatrix women are proof that BDSM allows for gender free role switching ignores the fact that, just as in all other forms of prostitution, men are paying her to do what they want. In this case, they are paying for the FANTASY that they aren’t really in charge. They aren’t REALLY doing what she wants. They are PRETENDING that what they really want is what she really wants. Then they say throwing a few hundred bucks at her makes it all okay. They walk away scott-free and then she gets the reputation for being a sexually voracious, out of control, bad woman.

Out of the professional scene it is the same, just without money. Dom women always seem to end up doing what fits sub men’s sexual fantasies. Don’t sit there and try to talk down to me like I don’t know what I’m talking about as some outsider academic with my head in the clouds either - I lived in the BDSM culture in 3 different states in 2 different regions of the country for OVER FIFTEEN YEARS.

Anyway - here is what brought this on, the current highlighted atrocity of the day against a little girl.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) — Federal prosecutors have unsealed an indictment accusing a man and woman of training the woman’s child to be a dominatrix, selling her sexual services and photographing some of the acts.

U.S. Attorney John Wood said the case is unusual in that a parent has been charged with the commercial sex trafficking of his or her own minor child.

Todd B. Barkau, 35, of New York state, and the 44-year-old mother were charged in the seven-count indictment. They once lived together in Blue Springs, Missouri, where the sex business was said to have been run.

“Barkau obtained control of a 12-year-old girl and he groomed, trained and forced her to become a sexual dominatrix,” Wood said in Kansas City on Monday.

Barkau was arrested near Niagara Falls and had a court appearance Saturday in Buffalo, New York, Wood said.

The mother was arrested Friday in Dallas, Texas. Messages left at the Northern District of Texas court late Monday were not immediately returned.

Don Ledford, a spokesman for Wood, said that as far as he knew, neither defendant had been assigned attorneys.

The mother’s name is not being published to protect the identity of the daughter, who is now 20.

Federal prosecutors, who investigated the case for nearly two years, have filed a motion to detain both suspects in federal custody without bail.

The indictment says Barkau began training the girl in 2000, when she was 12, and forced her to engage in sex acts with him and with other men. According to the indictment, he also had the girl watch pornography on the Internet as a teaching tool.

Barkau is accused of creating a business out of the couple’s Missouri home when the girl was 14 and marketing her as a 19- to 20-year-old dominatrix on the Internet for about two years.

The mother is charged with encouraging and participating in the venture, the indictment says.

Prosecutors will seek $80,000 the couple is accused of having made through sex trafficking, Wood said.

From the Serious to the Very Silly

Posted May 9, 2008 by
Categories: Gaming

Because patriarchy isn’t just confined to one area or another, but permeates all areas of life like a sponge…

Everyone wants a place to get away to sometimes, to rest from fighting. So after writing up a bunch of frankly depressing stuff on violent abuse and murder of women it would be nice to have a little corner of the world to escape to where that doesn’t happen.

Not possible.

If one is conscious of the oppressive effect of the patriarchy, that is, if one chooses not to stick one’s head in the sand and ignore it, one finds there is no where to escape it. Not the radio, not television, not movies.

And not in my escapist fantasy game, World of Warcraft.

I may have mentioned before I am part of an all female character guild. EVEN IN A FANTASY GAME, where the player can choose a female or male character at will, even when my guild only requires the character be female and not the player, I find myself CONSTANTLY having to defend this to other players. There is a steady stream of criticism. Even when this guild exists in a fantasy world among cultures which are written to be totally patriarchal, even when there are guilds within the game segregated by every other way one can segregate the players, class restrictions, nationality and race restrictions, etc., the idea of an all female character guild is attacked.

Today I got to hear that all “girls” organizations lead to “man-hating feminazism” - even though when the patriarchy creates segregations for men and women it is not questioned. This is a military organization - I’ve heard few people suggesting that male and female soldiers be trained together. But since it is woman founded and woman run? It’s a problem. “Oh girls only organiazations make it harder to attain equality! I’m a rabid equalist!”

No, not even in a fantasy game can you have a women’s space. Even though many of the actual players are male, even though most of them play straight characters, we still get lampooned as “man-hating lesbians”.

In the meantime I have joined other guilds, and in the larger ones the boy’s culture of gaming comes out very strongly. I’ve written about the more egregious examples of it before. The fact remains that since in our guild one is supposed to roleplay a female character at all times in game, the culture within our guild is much different from the larger gaming culture within wow, which is VERY masculine, VERY anti-female, where rape jokes are common, where having your cartoon character attacked badly is commonly referred to as “being raped”. A gaming culture where several of the larger player organizations exclude FEMALE PLAYERS because “women cause trouble in guilds”. A culture where men openly say women are incapable of leading a decent organization in a FUCKING FANTASY VIDEO GAME because women just aren’t capable of being in charge of anything. And in the midst of that having a small, nearly defunct in fact, guild of female CHARACTERS only, we are seen as rabid man-haters. For trying to have one small recreational corner of the fantasy world in which men’s power gaming, fantasy or otherwise, aren’t the focus of the game play.

And you know, I have tried to encourage male players who have a problem with it to roll a female character and join, to show that this isn’t something scary and horrifying, just a guild that focuses on female character relationships. And you know what a lot of them will say?

“Oh I could NEVER play a female character. I wouldn’t know how! It would feel too weird. That would just be creepy.”

Men who play female characters are routinely maligned on official game forums (one reason why we require our members to not discuss their real life gender in game or on the forums.) I can understand why, for reasons of being socially ostracized alone, men would feel uncomfortable playing female characters. But that isn’t why they say they don’t want to. While they are playing a character who is an Orc, or and Elf, or a zombie raised from the dead, they won’t play a female because THE NOTION SEEMS TOO FOREIGN TO THEM. Yes, to the average male player I’ve spoken with, they feel more comfortable pretending to be a sentient humanoid cow or a magic-using zombie than a human woman.

Of the men who do play female characters, many of them do it in order to have cyber sex with other characters. It’s a practice so common this is assumed to be THE reason why a male would roll a female character. There are guilds made up of men who play female characters so they can be fake prostitutes. No, really. Where does one begin with that?

The men who roll female characters and DON’T do it for reasons of cybersex almost always defend their heterosexuality thus:  “Well if I’m going to be looking at a cartoon character for hours on end I want to see something sexy that I like to look at!”  It’s okay for a man to have a female character if he distances himself from it and objectifies her cartoon form sexually.  He cannot identify with her, however, and still be considered “a real man”.  In a way, the men who refuse to play female characters so as to distance themselves from the sexualization aspect of the issue are the best one’s - however I have also noticed such men tend to have very conservative views of what is proper female sexual behavior, and mask it in “a belief in chivalry” and roleplaying a “benevolent” sort of patriarchal man, the nice father, the protective brother, the defender of his chaste women family members and their reputations.  Can’t win for losing.

On the other hand, I know women who roll male characters and hide their real life genders simply so they can play the game WITHOUT being sexualized or considered automatically to be a less than competent player. Even though the gamer population is largely made of younger people who supposedly are “less sexist” than older generations, it is still so bad that women are resorting to the stealth method long used of old, in which pretending to be a man was the only way to get respect.

There is no women’s space so innocuous that it will not come under attack. No place anywhere that can be marked off as a women’s only zone, no place where women are supposed to have a respite from the patriarchy, not even for one - fucking - minute.

Straight women take note by the way - there is a lesson in the above for you if you didn’t catch it. Even if you’ve never been attracted to a woman in your life you should support lesbian rights and combat anti-lesbian sentiments. Because any time you try to stand up for yourself? You will be labeled a lesbian anyway. There’s a further lesson in that. What do men consider straight women, by that logic? Doormats, apparently. You can only be accepted as a proper straight woman if you don’t challenge men or make them feel bad by excluding them, even from a very tiny space, even if it is just excluding them for half an hour from a small social circle. (When traveling with the Rainbow People, every once in a while there would be a “sister circle” - a small women’s only social group for the women to sit and talk to each other without men or children around - nothing feminist intended, there were “brother’s circles” sometimes too - and men would invade them. “Honey I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, let me in!”) Men MUST invade every space. In the meantime, huge tracts of space in this world are marked “for men only” either openly or by a sort of de facto segragation.

And my little pretend-girls only club bothers them so much.

And maybe I go on too much about something which ultimately “doesn’t matter”, but the mere fact that is is something which doesn’t matter but I am constantly attacked for doing it - the mere fact that I cannot have even the smallest corner of this workld to escape constant male criticism - doe smatter.

It’s the patriarchy, all the way down.

Female and Imprisoned in the US - A Snapshot

Posted May 6, 2008 by
Categories: Double Standards, Racism, Sexual Violence, Silenced Women, Violence against women, Women's Health, Women's Mental Health, poverty

On December 31, 2006, 2,258,983 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails – an increase of 2.9% from yearend 2005, less than the average annual growth of 3.4% since yearend 1995…the number of women under the jurisdiction of State or Federal prison authorities increased 4.5% from yearend 2005, reaching 112,498, and the number of men rose 2.7%, totaling 1,458,363.”

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm

For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report…Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world…The report said the United States is the world’s incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/28/prison.population.ap/index.html

In examining the increase in female prisoners, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that about 1 in 3 women were likely serving time for a drug offense as compared to 1 in 8 in 1986 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999). The Bureau of Prisons reports that almost 80% of their female population is incarcerated for drug-related offenses. This compares to only 26% of the 1981 female federal prison population that was held for drug offenses…While men too have suffered as the United States continues its imprisonment binge (Austin & Irwin, 2001), there has been a measurable gender-based difference in the rates of this increase. This difference is most apparent among women of color (Bush-Baskette, 1998)…A study by the Sentencing Project (Mauer, Potler & Wolf, 1999) found that, between 1986 and 1995, drug offenses account for about one-third of the rise in male prison population but fully half of the increase in the female prison population… Compared to white women, women of color are also more likely to be arrested, convicted and incarcerated at rates higher than their representation in the free world population.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/communities/women/womeninpriso/

There are 148,200 women in state and federal prisons. In federal women’s correctional facilities, 70% of guards are male. Records show correctional officials have subjected female inmates to rape, other sexual assault, sexual extortion, and groping during body searches…Guards threaten the prisoner’s children and visitation rights as a means of silencing the women. Guards issue rule infraction tickets, which extend the woman’s stay in prison if she speaks out…Women inmates suffering from treatable diseases such as asthma, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, cancer, late-term miscarriages, and seizures have little or no access to medical attention, sometimes resulting in death or permanent injury. Instances of failure to deliver life-saving drugs for inmates with HIV/AIDS has also been noted…48-88% of women inmates experienced sexual or physical abuse before coming to prison (as many as 90% in New York and Ohio prisons), and suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. Very few prison systems provide counseling. Women attempting to access mental health services are routinely given medication without opportunity to undergo psychotherapeutic treatment.

Over a five-year period, the incarceration rate of African American women increased by 828%. (NAACP LDF Equal Justice Spring 1998.) An African American woman is eight times more likely than a European American woman is to be imprisoned; African American women make up nearly half of the nation’s female prison population, with most serving sentences for nonviolent drug or property related offenses…Although 2/3 of crack users are white or Hispanic, defendants convicted of crack cocaine possession in 1994 were 84.5% African American.”

http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/womeninprison.html

The majority of women prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent crimes such as prostitution, fraud or drug offenses. Only 36% of arrested women are arrested for violent offenses.”

“Poverty is one of the most significant factors in women’s involvement in the criminal justice system. In 1994, 80% of women in prison reported incomes of less than $2000 in the year before their arrest, and 92% reported incomes under $10,000.”

“Women who are violent offenders are even more likely to have been abused and to be incarcerated for responding to that abuse violently. As many as 90% of the women in prison today for killing men had previously been battered by those men.”

“Once in prison, many women are subjected to further violence at the hands of prison guards. In 2004, allegations of staff sexual misconduct were made in all but one state prison in the U.S. and in 41% of local and private jails and prisons. Prison guards accused of sexual misconduct often go unpunished. In 1997 only ten prison employees in the entire federal system were disciplined for sexual misconduct.”

“Amnesty International declared that the shackling of pregnant women prisoners during labor is a human rights violation. This is a widespread practice in U.S. prisons… A 1999 report by the Justice Department indicates that approximately five percent of female prisoners, or about 2000 prisoners annually, arrive pregnant. Shackling during labor may cause complications in childbirth, such as hemorrhage or decreased fetal heart rate.

http://www.aclu.org/womensrights/violence/25829res20060612.html

Current statistics cite about 92 percent of incarcerated persons are serving time in prison on drug-related charges. Of that population who is female, 75 percent are mothers, who, before they were incarcerated, were their children’s primary caretaker. Children pay the price for their parents’ crimes. In addition to suffering emotionally from having had their mothers taken from them, children are sometimes separated from all family at the time of their mother’s incarceration, when they are placed into foster care.
http://www.womenandprison.org

There are no criminals here at Riker’s Island Correctional Institution for Women, (New York), only victims. Most of the women (over 95%) are black and Puerto Rican. Many were abused children. Most have been abused by men and all have been abused by “the system.”

There are no big time gangsters here, no premeditated mass murderers, no godmothers. There are no big time dope dealers, no kidnappers, no Watergate women. There are virtually no women here charged with white collar crimes like embezzling or fraud. Most of the women have drug related cases. Many are charged as accessories to crimes committed by men. The major crimes that women here are charged with are prostitution, pick-pocketing, shop lifting, robbery and drugs. Women who have prostitution cases or who are doing “fine” time make up a substantial part of the short term population. The women see stealing or hustling as necessary for the survival of themselves or their children because jobs are scarce and welfare is impossible to live on. One thing is clear: amerikan capitalism is in no way threatened by the women in prison on Riker’s Island.

Most of the guards are black, usually from working class, upward bound, civil service oriented backgrounds. They identify with the middle class, have middle class values and are extremely materialistic. They are not the most intelligent women in the world and many are extremely limited.

Most are aware that there is no justice in the amerikan judicial system and that blacks and Puerto Ricans are discriminated against in every facet of amerikan life. But, at the same time, they are convinced that the system is somehow “lenient.” To them, the women in prison are “losers” who don’t have enough sense to stay out of jail. Most believe in the boot strap theory - anybody can “make it” if they try hard enough. They congratulate themselves on their great accomplishments. In contrast to themselves they see the inmate as ignorant, uncultured, self-destructive, weak-minded and stupid. They ignore the fact that their dubious accomplishments are not based on superior intelligence or effort, but only on chance and a civil service list.

Many guards hate and feel trapped by their jobs. The guard is exposed to a certam amount of abuse from co-workers, from the brass as well as from inmates, ass kissing, robotizing and mandatory overtime. (It is common practice for guards to work a double shift at least once a week.) But no matter how much they hate the military structure, the infighting, the ugliness of their tasks, they are very aware of how close they are to the welfare lines. If they were not working as guards most would be underpaid or unemployed. Many would miss the feeling of superiority and power as much as they would miss the money, especially the cruel, sadistic ones.

“…The guards are usually defensive about their jobs and indicate by their behavior that they are not at all free from guilt. They repeatedly, compulsively say, as if to convince themselves, “This is a job just like any other job.” The more they say it the more preposterous it seems.

http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/texts/assata_wip.html
In the United States felons often face additional consequences, such as the loss of voting rights in many states; exclusion from certain lines of work and difficulty in finding a job in others; prohibition from obtaining certain licenses; exclusion from purchase and possession of firearms, ammunition and body armour; and ineligibility to run for or be elected to public office. In addition, some states consider a felony conviction to be grounds for an uncontested divorce. These, among other losses of privileges not included explicitly in sentencing, are known as collateral consequences of criminal charges. Finally if a felon is not a U.S. citizen, that person may be subject to deportation after sentencing is complete.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony

Girls Just Don’t Like Science

Posted May 5, 2008 by
Categories: Uncategorized

A True Story from my high school chemistry class, which I took when I was 14 years old, where up to that point in time I had gotten nothing but A’s and B’s in science:

The professor, a tall man, walked around the front of the classroom, staring us all down, giving the rules of the classroom. I do not remember how the subject came up, but he soon launched into a diatribe. “Women. Women can’t drive. They aren’t wired for it. And blond women are even worse. And left-handed people are all screwed up too. Also they can’t do math. And they don’t work well in the lab.” A blond girl sitting in front in the row next to me raised her hand.

“But I’m left-handed!”

He shook his head sadly. “Your wiring is all screwed up.” I surreptitiously switched my pen to my right hand and ducked my head.

The year went on. Those flat pumps were the shoe style all the rage. A girl sat taking notes during the lecture, with crossed legs, unconsciously swinging her foot. The pump was attached only to the front of her foot, the heel hanging off. He kicked the shoe from her foot, kicked it around the classroom while still lecturing, then picked it up and put it in the chemical freezer. After class I saw her hanging on to a friend while trying to force herself to put the shoe back on. It was very cold.

I forgot sometimes to pretend to be right handed. One day as I was writing something I saw his shadow loom across me and dared to look up. He looked down at me and frowned, then glanced at my dark hair. “Well - at least you still have one thing going for you.” He stalked off in disgust.

How many little incidents and “jokes” like this does it take? If you were a girl in that class at least part of your attention could not be on the subject matter. At least part of your attention had to be focused on not becoming the object of one of his jokes. The blond, left handed girl who sat near me, by speaking up for herself on the first day, became the official scapegoat for him for the rest of the school year. No one wanted to be in her place. If you can’t focus on your work, instead having to focus on trying to prove yourself to not fit a stereotype that’s been publicly pinned on you, you will not do so well at your work.

I narrowly avoided a D in that class. I had never gotten a D before in any class. Ever. I concluded I must be naturally bad at chemistry.

How many times does this happen?

Just skip this

Posted April 30, 2008 by
Categories: Uncategorized

Some days it is hard to see through this fog.

I can try to drown my pain in alcohol, tranquilizers, obsessive video game playing, too much sleep.  It works, actually.  It numbs things down, makes it all easier to cope with.  It distracts.

I don’t leave the house anymore unless I have to.  I curl up in bed or sit here at the computer.  The weight of everyone’s judgemental eyes became too much for me.

I feel like a failure.  I read the things some of you write, so brave and bold and thought-provoking.  I do not meet your standards for being an activist.  I do not meet my own.  I sit here in the house.  I write.  I try to tell the truth while not stepping on anyone’s toes only to discover this is impossible.  I shut up.  I question myself, find myself wanting.

I saw something the other day that reminded me of old wounds from the psychiatric establishment.  Women who have been abused badly and display all the natural behavior of a human animal given the conjunction of cultural expectations of appropriate feminine behavior and their traumatic past have “Borderline Personality Disorder.”  Men, in the same circumstances, have “Post traumatic Stress Disorder.”  Mostly “BPD” sufferers are women, and “PTSD” sufferers are men.  This is because we whiny womens have to understand that men suffer “real” traumas, like violence and war and stuff, and women just undergo silly traumas they make too much of, like being forced to suck our father’s cock repeatedly as a child (and besides our Oedipal complex made it so we really wanted to do it anyway.)  With amazement some people write “it is interesting how many women with BPD have a history of childhood abuse!” or how often women with BPD also meet the definition of those with PTSD.  Chicks with BPD are clingy and dangerous, undateable due to their hysterical fits and ridiculous clingy behavior.  You can’t trust them.  If you have BPD it is what you ARE, and if you have PTSD you are just an unfortunate victim of bad circumstances.  Women with BPD are bad, crazy women who are self obsessed.  Men with PTSD are brave soldiers who have undergone too much stress.  See how that works?

Never mind that the diagnostic criteria are virtually inseparable.  At least someone finally got a clue.

But aside from all that.  Some days I question it even being a “disorder”.  For example.  One classic “symptom” of PTSD is “distrust of those in positions of authority”.  Really?  I see that, myself, as a mark of clear-eyed vision of the world.  Why the fuck should I trust any authority?  Just because someone is put in a position of authority doesn’t mean they are smarter or more moral than I am.  For fuck’s sake, look at who we have in charge and what they do.  Why the hell would you trust them?  Then there is “hypervigilance”.  Being easily alarmed and always on the lookout for danger.  Women are raped by the hundreds of millions, beaten, stalked, discriminated against, sexually harassed almost ubiquitously.  Being aware of this and taking steps THE WAY WE WE ARE TOLD, especially after having been victimized in the first place, is a symptom of “illness” now, and certainly not a way to cope with a world that HATES US.  Going back to BPD, women’s behavior in relationships is under intense scrutiny.  Never mind that heterosexual relationships and the way they are “supposed” to go are severely stacked against women so that virtually everything she does will be considered wrong.  Women are called “clingy” when they fear abandoment while our society teaches that women are nothing without a man.  Are women with “BPD” just acting out fully what our culture expects of women - a passive, whiny, irrational victim - and then being blamed for being what she is told she should be?

When I was 18 they said I had BPD.  Later they said I had PTSD.  In both cases I have been drugged because my behavior and thought patterns are perceived to be MY PROBLEM.  Never was it suggested to me by any psychiatrist that the problem was perhaps patriarchal society - how it feeds and encourages child abuse and abuse of women - how it encourages women to be dependent and then infantilizes them and mocks them for being infantilized - how the virtual assurance that my abusers would never receive any punishment because no one cares if someone abuses their own family members might be the cause of a very righteous rage on my part - how my reaction to my being shunned by my entire family for telling the truth might be actual grief and the subsequent fears of abandonment are actual perfectly reasonable given that I have been deliberately isolated and cast out - how there is NO ASSURANCE WHATSOEVER in society as it exists now that I might not someday be randomly victimized again.  Also no one suggested in any psychiatric establishment that working to change society might help me feel more “empowered” again.  No, I’m supposed to work on “myself”.  It’s *my* illness, *my* problem, something is clearly wrong with *me* if I can’t just “get over” all of this and forgive and forget.  It’s not as much of a problem to them that violent pigs rape and beat their own helpless family members and never get punished for it, in numbers so high people deny it routinely because they simply can’t fathom that CHILD ABUSE IS THE ORDINARY WAY OF LIFE UNDER THE PATRIARCHY.

And of course in spite of the ubiquity of woman beating and woman abuse in the world, if I should happen to date some violent motherfucker in the future who pretends to be a nice guy at first and then shows his true colors one day when he determines he has gotten me dependent on him in some fashion, like knocking me up, then it is my fault for “being attracted to abusers” and a sign of my mental disease for revictimizing myself.  YES they actually say this.  “the loss of a sense of safety, trust, and self-worth, as well as the tendency to be revictimized”.  These are the hallmarks of “disease” - the loss of a FALSE sense of safety (what woman is ever safe?) the loss of trust (in men, on presumes) AND a “tendency to be revictimized.”  But wait didn’t you just say I wasn’t trusting enough?  If I’m not trusting of men how am I being revictimized?  If I am “being revictimized” doesn’t that mean SOMEONE ELSE IS VICTIMIZING ME?  How is what SOMEONE ELSE DOES a mark of MY MENTAL ILLNESS?

It’s just a game of blame the victim, over and over and over again.

And I can’t cope with that.  Is my failure to cope and my willingness to do almost anything to numb the pain of the truth I can’t avoid knowing mental illness, or is it a sort of battle weariness?  Is my not wanting to go outside where I can be vilified or at least stared at with hostility for daring to be a non-skinny woman in this fat hating world good common sense or agoraphobia?  Is my avoidance of social events because I have “social anxiety disorder” or is it that my ex turned everyone in the local, trendy polyamorous sci-fi pagan BDSM community against me so that I can hardly expect to go there without getting the cold shoulder?  Or that he goes to all of these events with his new girlfriend? And spent weeks before he dumped me on a covert campaign to tell everyone all the horrors I supposedly put him through in our relationship (which consisted of being a ‘nagging bitch’ about wanting him to do a fair share of housework and get a fucking job already)?

Gah.

Is there no end…

Posted April 28, 2008 by
Categories: Child Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Violence, Violence against women

As much as I know about what men do…

I have to restrain the urge to vomit upon reading this.

I can’t comment on it. I just can’t.

GAH Before Coffee Even

Posted April 28, 2008 by
Categories: Uncategorized

I check my dashboard and find an incoming link from some gross porn site, quoting some text I wrote about Barbie’s body in a recent post. And yes my first thought was “Oh wow maybe that’s my fault for using the words I did.” Then I snapped out of it. No, the proper response to this is to be angry - angry that I can’t write on my own blog about my own body without it somehow being twisted into something for some guy to jerk off over on the internet. For free even, i get no money for this. And yes that is part of why I took down my story because it began to disturb me to realize or even strongly suspect that rape porn addicts were finding it and using my honesty about men’s abuse of me as jack off material.

Well all I can do is what I always do and hope that some jerk who finds my blog by searching for certain terms gets his pornalicious hard on wilted.

But that’s not why I’m posting this morning (told you I was pre-coffee). I’m having fun now with youtube as a political device. If you like youtube have fun with my new channel!

http://www.youtube.com/anarchafeminist

Unbelievable…

Posted April 23, 2008 by
Categories: Double Standards, Leftist Misogyny, Political Representation

Is all I have to say - simply UNBELIEVABLE that so many people, even people who try to pretend they are feminist, are frothing at the mouth screaming for Clinton to drop out of the presidential race because “she’s lost already”.

THEY ARE IN A DEAD HEAT. THEY ARE ALL BUT TIED. THERE IS NO REASON WHATSOEVER FOR HER TO QUIT.

Spare me the bullshit that a competitive race is weakening the Democratic party. Hey all the ev psych morons are saying the rest of the time how a good hard battle proves who is the truly dominant one and who should be on top and is best for the species in the long run right? Well then the same would hold true for the Democrats.

2008 and people still can’t cope with the concept of a tough woman who won’t just give up and cry the first time things become the slightest bit difficult. To say I’m disappointed would be a gross understatement.

Musings

Posted April 22, 2008 by
Categories: Patriarchal Beauty Lies, Racism, White Privilege

It always makes me nervous to write things like this, as a white woman, who of course has a lot of privilege in this society in ways of which I am both aware and unaware. I fear what I say will be unconsciously arrogant, uninformed, or insulting. Still, its as thing that comes to mind time and again and perhaps other women and girls out there will recognize things like this from themselves. Also as an American I only can speak from the concept of someone raised in America. I have no idea how this works in another country - I suspect in places like Canada and the UK it may be similar, and less so in “non-Westernized” countries.

I don’t want to imitate the “feminism lite” or “but the Patriarchy Hurts Men Too!” folks. Rather what I am curious about, or perhaps theorizing, or otherwise exploring, is the ways in which the White Woman is an icon, an un-reality to which even real “white women” are held and found wanting. As a woman we are all supposed to want to be the White Woman while simultaneously despising her for her stupidity, shallowness, vanity, and helplessness. The White Woman is put on a pedestal for examination by everyone, for false praise behind which lies a not-so-secret desire to knock her down, blacken that pale skin of her face with fists, defile her pristine clean virginity by rape, insult her clothing, her makeup, her body, and then to dismiss her as ultimately irrelevant.

And furthermore there is one central icon of the White Woman, nearly ubiquitous in its popularity and thrust upon even the tiniest female children as part of the brainwashing process on her place in American society, and that icon is Barbie. Barbie is the perfect, iconic White Woman. Her skin is pale and flawless. Her hair is almost always light blond, and long, wavy, flowing. Her breasts are gigantic and buoyant (and completely without those disgustingly sexual nipples), her waist tiny, her hips smoothly rounded without love handles and no trace of cellulite. A lipsticked smile is permanently fixed on her lightly and tastefully made up face. Her eyes are blue, her nose small. She has no wrinkles and her feet are poised to slip into one of the many pairs of high-heeled shoes she owns - so formed, she is literally unable to stand on her own two feet. She comes in any of a number of personas - ballerina, fairy princess, modern car driving fun girl, winter ball gown 2000 Barbie, any of a number of outfits which determine entirely who she is.

Reading various sites today I saw the suggestion for white people to read the Bluest Eye. I had read that years ago and thought on some of the same things I think on now. Oddest of all was the sense of identification.

The highest compliment my mother could pay to any woman was “She looks just like a Barbie doll - she’s BEAUTIFUL!” Sullenly I went about my un-beautiful childhood, brown haired, brown eyed, freckled. We watched Little House on the Prairie - my mother cooed over that gorgeous little blond blue-eyed Nellie Olsen and looked at me sadly, shaking her head. I wouldn’t brush my hair - the tangles made it so that, although long, it bore no resemblance to the smooth tresses of my dolls. Clearly, something was wrong with me, and I knew it. Ugly, ugly, the kids at school called me. I believed it.

I got Barbie dolls for Christmas and my birthday every year, one, sometimes two, a constant reminder to me of what beauty was, what I was supposed to strive for, and how far I fell short. Occasionally, I received a Skipper doll (an adolescent with flat feet who could actually stand up) or some off brand doll. One of these I remember clearly - a doll shaped like a little girl with long dark hair and brown eyes. The make believe games I played with my dolls I remember well and are very telling, and indeed, appalling, to me now, to think back on this and see how deeply these ideas are implanted in my head.

All of my dolls were fairies, mystical beings. The tall, blond, “beautiful” Barbies were “good fairies”. The two or three Ken dolls someone had seen fit to give me were evil violent monsters who wanted to hurt the good fairies and would hatch elaborate schemes to kidnap them and do various forms of harm to them. When kidnapped, of course, they were powerless to resist, but fainted, were easily overcome, and suffered horribly while crying the entire time. And all the schemes they used to kidnap the good fairies were done, of course, with the help of the “bad fairy” - the doll with dark hair.

The one who looked like me.

She lied. She stole. She manipulated them into thinking she was their friend only to betray them later. Everyone knows in the fairy tales, it’s the dark-haired girl who is the wicked temptress, the one who brings down her good, blond sisters out of jealousy. I looked in the mirror every day and knew I couldn’t be “good”. I wanted to scrub away my freckles, pleaded to shake the baby fuzz off my legs at age six, wished I could turn my hair curly and blond, my eyes blue. At six I already knew what was beautiful. I knew beautiful people were loved and admired and the ugly shut out. And I knew I couldn’t fit.

Later in life, as the batch of teen movies of the 80-s came out, I was given another model to look to - the completely non-sexualized intelligent dark haired girl with glasses. The blond bombshell was still there, still most wanted, still shallow, still clearly most highly prized, but sometimes a lower status male who couldn’t get the prize of White Womanhood would stoop toward a lowly wallflower of a dark haired girl! See, there was hope! In the meantime, better study hard to get a job to support yourself, girl, because god knows if anyone will ever marry you.

Looking back on this now, it strikes me that much of this probably stems from racism and how deeply internalized it is, even being used within white culture against other people who “pass for white” and consider themselves white without question. This becomes more interesting to me as, within the midst of a genealogy project I undertake for my family, I find strong evidence we are NOT purely descended from nice, safe, European ancestors. Of course this is not something anyone talks about or wants to acknowledge among them, even though, looking at my family from an outside perspective, there is a distinct lack of blue eyed blonds - in fact, almost everyone in the family has hair ranging all the way from dark brown to jet black, deep brown eyes, and skin that tans a deep brown with surprising ease. The likelihood of us having an unbroken “pure” string of European ancestors seems low indeed. Yet we all identify as “white”.

Speaking of which, I now am recalled to a situation in the family about which I will only speak of in the most general of terms in order to protect those who don’t wish to be identified, in the way, way off chance that anyone would figure out who I am from this blog.

A certain uncle of mine had two wives. His daughter from a first marriage lived with him, and I was given to understand the second two children of his lived with the mother. She was kept away from us - a number of ugly things were said about her character and why he’d chosen to divorce. Having never heard her perspective on the matter I cannot say what really happened. But as I grew older and heard my mother’s occasional whispers on the situation, I grew to understand that not only had she been adulterous, but she had crossed racial lines to do so. The daughter he took with him was purportedly his own, and passed for white - the other two children were clearly of non-white ancestry, thus he rejected them and we did not associate with them. (I did meet her sister a few times, and saw a picture of her brother.) It was not until I was an adult that I thought carefully one day about my cousin’s appearance and asked my mother if, in her opinion, she could really have the father she supposedly had - in other words, was she possibly non-white as well? My mother said she’d wondered but never dared say a word.

I have to wonder now how many families that are supposedly “white” and how many people who are supposedly “white”, have such secrets. Now, my cousin passes for white. I will not pretend otherwise, and will not say she does not have white privilege. What I will say is that to some extent every “white” person with brown hair and eyes should perhaps consider that their “whiteness” is a carefully contrived pose not resembling any pure line of descent from European ancestors alone - that in short, being “white” is a sham, a social position rather than any objective condition of being. Furthermore, I would posit that the worship of the fair-skinned, blue-eyed blond is racism white people turn even against themselves and use to rank white people against other white people in a game of supremacy. Appearances always being used against woman more than against men, this practice comes out to hurt women in the end more so than it does men, of course.

And to anyone who wants to point out some famous dark haired actress or model, all I can say is this:

While watching “Weeds” a few months ago, one of the characters said disparagingly of another male character with whom he was angry, “What sort of grown man has blond hair anyway” - the implication being that he dyed it and that this was an undesirable trait unfitting of a “real man”. I laughed, finding it funny, but it got me thinking. And thinking, and… I went to our office the next week and we had a meeting, and as I looked around the room I noticed - every single woman there except me bleached her hair. They were all naturally dark-haired, but they universally lightened their hair. All the men were dark-haired as well, or were, before they had gone gray - but none of them lightened theirs.

Who is blond, really, truly blond, not just with light brown hair, but that “flaxen” appearance?

Scandinavians, a very homogenized, light-skinned European culture…

And children. I know lots of kids who are blond in their youth and whose hair darkens to brown in adulthood.

Dark hair is a characteristic of most of the human race, particularly in adults.

So the question is, is the extremely common bleaching and lightening of hair I witnessed among women my (all white) office a literal attempt to “white wash” away any hints of non-European ancestry, or an attempt to infantilize women? Or both?

I come to no real conclusion here, I guess. Just pondering things that still bother me late at night.

A Whimsy Struck Me (Ow)

Posted April 8, 2008 by
Categories: Uncategorized

So you know, people who don’t have a lot of money don’t own houses, they live in apartments, and when you live in apartments, you move a lot. And when you move a lot, you get other people’s junk mail. All of this is a long inane intro to the subject, I know. But as the title indicates, I’m feeling WHIMSICAL.

So I get these little packages, addressed to a former resident, from a chain drug store that shall remain unmentioned and yesterday I was looking through the incredibly huge stack of unsorted junkmail we get here and pulled out one of these small boxes. “Total Protection Inside!” it promised.

Well I got very excited, because as a woman who lives in a world seething with misogyny, I always I feel I could use me some protection. I jumped up and down! (Okay, not really). Protection? In such a small box? TOTAL protection? What was it? A gun? A little tiny missile launcher? A do-it-yourself home castration packet? The final paperwork putting the ERA into action?

(You know what’s coming, right?)

No, it was none of these things. It was… A MINIPAD!

TOTAL RELIABLE PROTECTION!

I CAN ALWAYS FEEL SECURE NOW!

I AM EMPOWERED BY THE COTTON WAD BETWEEN MY LEGS THAT COMES IN A PRETTY BOX DECORATED WITH FLOWERS AND PEARLS. SO EMPOWERED!!!

Because you know, the absolute worst thing that can happen to a woman anywhere, at any time, is that her “feminine protection” might fail slightly and any alert person (who was obsessed with staring at her crotch) might become apprised of the fact that she is a normally functioning adult female.

Oh I… think I need coffee.

BABALON/Babylon

Posted March 30, 2008 by
Categories: Christianity, Mothers, Religion, Silenced Women

(channeled directly from the Goddess August 10, 2006)

A million million lies told about me and still I am here, my existence defying you - you, men, who call me the embodiment of all evil, seductress, murderess; you, men, who make me the scapegoat for all your inner self-loathing and fear of your imperfect human bodies and your lusts and urges and needs - you, men, who though violence and manipulation have created a world in which most women have no recourse for survival but to trade their beauty (as defined by you men) for sustenance, and tell you the lies you demand to hear so as to avoid violent death at your hands; and who then turn upon beautiful women and insult them for the only option left to them - whore.

Yes, I am a whore, as are all women, be they wife or prostitute - I am a whore, my red lips dripping with sweet honeyed lies, my legs spread open to give you pleasure; in marriage, providing you with children, and thus family and immortality. In return for these gifts and services, you have waged war upon me, smashed and burned the earth that bears my name; hit and hurt and enslaved and mutilated and starved and killed women, who are my emissaries; and then you preach from pulpits and courtrooms and street corners that whores are the symbol of immorality. You resent the wives and whores upon whom you slake your lust: so resentful that when they ask a fee merely sufficient to sustain their lives that you consider them greedy; so resentful and fearful when they experience a drop of pleasure while servicing you that you name them undisciplined, animalistic sluts; you resent your wives so much that you become furious when they ask you for any recompense for their unpaid services to you; and after using their youth to bring you children and then abandoning them, you are filled with resentment when they petition your courts of law to force you, the unwilling and selfish husband, for sustenance, after having provided for your comfort and pleasure for years. You want to hear women say you are good, powerful, big, strong and invincible; you demand to hear this, but inside you know you are a mere flawed mortal, and you don’t want to know this. Despite your protests, you don’t want the truth. You want pleasant lies, and furthermore, you want this false flattery without recompensing those who must survive by flattering you.

Yet in spite of this violence that you feel confers greatness upon your shoulders, you are but men. You can try all you wish to create a god in your likeness, try all you wish to imbue him with the power of woman and goddess in your imaginations - Zeus giving birth from his head, the universe springing effortlessly into existence from one words from the lips of Jehovah - but it always rings hollow, always degenerates into pointless violence and hate and bloody war. Nothing built on these unnatural lies can prosper. No matter how much you would like to deny the power of woman and goddess, to pretend your dick is the image of a great male creator, no matter how much you would like to pretend the words that issue forth from your bearded lips create and shape the world; it is still only women who give birth - and this is not effortless, instant and painless. You adore your own destructiveness- which you mistake for power - glorying in your clever inventions of guns and bullets and bombs that can undo nine months of a woman’s effort and pain in an instant. But you are still mortal, and if you succeed in destroying me by destroying women’s hearts, souls, minds, bodies and creations, all you have managed is suicide.

This man Aleister Crowley, my prophet, knew my power but denied knowing. Having once seen me, he was a helpless adorant for the rest of his life, but in his pride and fear of the knowledge of my ultimate power, he repeated the lies of men to assuage the knowledge of his impotence; pretending women are inherently passive, fertile fields in need of a man to infuse them with life, both in a physical and a metaphysical sense. From time to time he experienced bouts of divine inspiration in which he sung my praises:

“There is a cry in an unknown tongue. It resounds through the temple of the universe; in its one word is death and ecstasy, and thy title of honor, o thou, to thyself High Priestess, Prophetess, Empress, to thyself the Goddess whose name means mother and whore!”

Aleister Crowley, “The Law is for All

But ultimately he was a slave to his youthful programming in the religion of the false slave god and his culture, which supported the slave god’s warped view of the universe in which women are considered less than men, and while laboring under this illusory spell he wrote the following drivel:

“My Son, I charge thee, howsoever thou beest provoked thereunto, tell not the Truth to any Woman. For this is that which is written: Cast not thy Pearls before Swine, lest they turn again and rend thee. Behold, in the Nature of Woman is no Truth, nor Apprehension of Truth, nor Possibility of Truth; only, if thou entrust this Jewel unto them, they forthwith use it to thy Loss and Destruction.”

In addition to this slander against women - and through women, me - he continually parrots the ideas put forth by those ancient followers of the slave god - namely, that women are inherently passive and can only become fulfilled when they are entered by a man - that women can only become fully human when filled with a man’s penis or sperm or by his will and purpose in life. Crowley taught that women are but hollow vessels without purpose, and that all energy and will are inherently male.

These are the lies echoed by male scientists, who are very frightened by the spectre of the awesome creative power of women: so they spin fables about the mightiness of spermatozoa, only a tiny fraction of the size of the female egg, warring with one another over their “prize” with the winner taking all. Now, it is revealed, the sperm are drawn to the egg, which chemically calls them, and she herself selects her partner - or eschews them all - and indeed, in some species, she reproduces herself without any male input at all. The egg, in addition to holding fully half the genetic information needed to create a unique human individual, also carries the food necessary to sustain a new life after its initial early conception; upon which time it affixes itself to the inner wall of the woman’s womb, after which time the woman’s body does all the work necessary to turn the embryo into an independent human being. The male emissary’s contribution is all but negligible - the male sperm are at the mercy of the woman’s body and her egg’s choice of partner, and not the spermatozoa’s ability to win its place in the genetic lottery.

In a similar vein, men cannot force the love of women, although you have tried since time immemorial to force a woman’s heart by killing or humiliating one another. By abusing your blessings of larger size and greater physical strength to threaten women with bodily harm; and, by brute force, creating a cruel society in which she is powerless, resourceless, and friendless, and thus has no choice but to turn to you and attempt to win your favor, you are able only to force a simulacrum of love and loyalty, for only true devotion wins a woman’s heart - and even then, only at her whim.

And this is what frightens men, the deep inner knowledge that they cannot force this love. Without woman, they are nothing and they know they are nothing. In vain they try to turn this around, claim women are unfulfilled and empty without their mighty, sacred penis, without their invincible, invading sperm to create small male copies of themselves - but they lie. From woman man is born, from woman he is fed, by woman he is dressed and bathed and clothed in childhood; from woman he draws his comfort and pleasure in youth; from woman he learns the comfort and stability of home, family, and children in adulthood; by woman he is nursed and fed in old age; and by woman he is washed and mourned after death. It is rare men do these things for one another, these tasks of life and sustenance; and yet men demean these tasks without which they are lost and purposeless, sneer at the few men with the inner strength to perform them, and react with violence towards the small class of men who have learned to nurture one another. Yet those men are the few men who truly know me - the men who can nurture are the only men who are fully human.

But in spite of men’s widespread cruelty and lack of humanity, women do often find themselves filled with love for them - women around the world continually making sacrifices of their time, resources and energy to go beyond the work of survival which is largely their province - around the world, women are the majority of farm workers, food preparers, child care workers, and nurses to the sick - to create comforts in the home for their husbands and fathers and brothers and sons. And yet men are ungrateful, even ignorant of the existence of this sacrifice. They imagine, in a form of twisted, mental sickness, that sacrifice is one man dying a torturous death in order to afford victory for one group of men over another in a pointless, endless conflict over territory, resources, or theological differences. They simply do not see the daily, continual sacrifice of billions of ordinary women who love them and give up what little they have for them in return for little or no thanks. They consider it an inborn right to be waited upon by women. They then deny their need of women and claim women need their protection in order to survive and thrive. But this is not now and never has been true.

It is only my deep compassion and its reflection in the hearts of women that enables men to survive. Without this incredible compassion, women would stop cooking for men, sewing their clothes, cleaning their homes, nursing them through illness, and begging them on bended knees to stop their endless wars. What would you do without women to serve you, oh you men who are contemptuous of gays and women, who pride yourselves or find it a source of amusement that you are unable to cook or wash your own clothes or manage to maintain your abodes in a livable fashion? What would you have left if women’s compassion for you ran out? Already a small percentage of women have grown weary of your inability or refusal to behave as human beings and refuse to join with you, and what we see of men left to themselves is quite revealing. Men without women die sooner due to recklessness or physical illness or violence at the hands of other men. Bachelors who brag about their independence from women are liars - they buy or rent women’s bodies for a few moments of comfort. Men without wives become violent and dysfunctional, commit more crimes, and are more likely to be jailed. Women on their own, on the other hand, live longer, have fewer health problems, do better in academic settings, and in all areas of life are happier. Men know this, and thus, bring all their force of condemnation down upon women to try to stop them from being able to live in peace if they choose to live apart from men. Women who choose to live without men, either living alone or living solely with other women, or who choose to raise their children alone, are subject to mockery, violence, discrimination, and punishment under the system of “law” and “justice” which men have set up to give themselves power. Still, in spite of these punishments with which women living without men are visited, their health and happiness are improved. Women living without men are all but freed from the possibility of rape, murder, regular beatings, and continual demands to put their needs last.

Yet as testament to women’s love and compassion for men, most women do not eschew their company, but instead, actively seek it out. However, even this evidence of deep forgiveness and kindness in women is sneered at by men, who use women’s compassion to excuse their violence and degradation of them, saying this is something women desire, making their willing sacrifice for the sake of men’s continued survival a wish to be victimized. It matters not to you how often women protest your violence, your insults, your cruelty - unless women show themselves to be as cruel as you, you insist their refusal to behave in the same insane, bitter, violent murderous fashion as yourselves indicates they are “natural victims”. Indeed, women are so much more deeply ethical than you that you can scarcely imagine it. Revenge, a great error of thought that has done more to perpetuate misery upon humanity than any other human practice, is practiced almost solely by men. Men enshrine revenge in law and gleefully execute and torture and imprison others under the rationale of “justice” or “crime and punishment”. Men enshrine revenge as “honor” and use honor as a pretext for everything from private duels between men to win “rights” to a woman who may not want either of them; to an excuse to brutally slaughter a woman who has dared seek sexual pleasure in ways men deem unseemly; to an excuse to wage war upon entire nations, slaughtering and raping men, women, and children alike, burning the crops they grow for food, burning or bombing their homes so they die of exposure. Women’s failure to do this until they are under the most severe duress from men’s violence is not a sign of weakness - women’s refusal to seek revenge is the saving grace of humanity.

Yet women have begun to realize we must do something to save you men from killing yourselves by killing us. Women realize this because I have decided enough is enough, and I have placed this sure knowledge in their hearts. Compassion and mercy can only go so far - our meekness and mildness in the face of your constant hostility and refusal to consider the consequences of your actions only encourages you to hasten to take part in behavior which will doom all of humanity to a gasping death on a desert planet denuded of trees, bereft of any other life forms, and blasted to glass by your favorite toys, bombs. I gave you the chance long enough to learn these things on your own, confident in your mental abilities, sure that you could not be so foolish as to ignore the signs of what your own destructive habits have wrought. One would think you would not be so foolish as to ignore global warming, killer hurricanes, men unable to find mates by the millions in the most populous areas of earth - India and China - because you have killed so many women that the natural gender population has been reversed. But somehow, you have managed to allow the basest parts of your brain override your consciousness. It will take women to shake you awake from your fevered dreams of glory through death, as you have proven you are unable to think this through for yourselves.

Men, I am coming back. I am reincarnating not in one woman, as you think any male deity must reincarnate in one man who will hold supremacy over all other men - but in all women with the courage to open themselves to my presence. These women, my “warriors”, already exist, but their numbers will only increase. You name them, and me, “man haters”, but this is foolish, childish - stopping you from continuing your games of war and power and dominance is the truest way to show you love. We cannot continue to pretend that men have the capacity to make decisions that affect others without the supervisory capacity of woman. You have had this role for several millennia now and it has proved to be an unmitigated disaster. It is time to step down, accept your inadequacy, and learn from women as they rebuild the world you have nearly destroyed. Because of our deep compassion for even your biggest flaw, which is overweening self-esteem, we will not even demand that you have no position of importance or control - but whatever position of power you have MUST be overseen by woman. There is no other way to keep you from slipping back into your violent, destructive ways.

You may argue with this message as you will, but it will make no difference. Even as you bluster and rage and spit at this truth which you do not want to hear, I am visiting the hearts of the courageous women around the world who have had enough of your battering, your rapes, your guns, your bombs, your theft, your poisoning of the earth, your wanton murder of other species. You will not notice a change at first, but the tide is turning and before you know it, the waves of woman love and world-changing power will be sweeping you to your knees.

And to those of you men who accept this message with open heart, who grieve upon seeing the horrors other men have perpetrated upon women and upon the earth, I give you this comfort - that this shall not continue, that your voice will be heard and respected as my power moves throughout the world, that you will not be punished (as other men will not be punished) by any deprivation of any thing that you need. Your lives will be spared, deserving or not - you will have clothing, food, shelter, and luxuries to delight the senses. All you need to do is to master your greatest flaw, pride, when you witness women fixing that which you have broken without asking your permission or input. The rest will be easy, easier than you think. For in spite of all the crimes men commit that I have outlined here, we do not wish to eliminate you. Men exist for a purpose, although not the one most seem to believe they exist for now. Women want you: they want you for entertainment, for art, for music, for comfort. Women want you for practicing the arts of love. Women want you that they might converse with you and share imaginative dreams, that they might hear you spin tales of wonder that inspire their own tales. Women admire the display of your strength when it is shown in contests that hurt no one. Women want to play with you and dance with you and laugh with you. Let go of the lying voice of the slave god that says you must dominate and enslave women to prove your worth - this lie causes you the utmost unhappiness.

And to those women who read this - know that I am within you, hear my voice and feel my strength as I send you out into the world to take it back from the hands of these foolish male children who do not know what to do with its wonders. Be bold! Be brave! Refuse to accept male dominance and be a pillar of strength and support for those women in whose faces you see me shining through. Do not give in to the male-created games that pit you one against the other - learn to love yourselves through loving each other, and thereby love me.

For I am BABALON the Great, mother and whore, priestess and prophetess, I am Ishtar, Innana, Isis, Semele, Kali, Demeter, Ceridwen; I am the ‘wicked temptress’ who entices men to love and life, I am the bearer of the grail from which all may drink freely and thus lose their lonely individuality; I am Mystery; I am the great cities in which humanity comes together for companionship; I am the land in which humans first thrived; I am the mother of you all.

Sorry if this is becoming the fat blog or something, but…

Posted February 3, 2008 by
Categories: fatphobia

Fat man loses half his body weight by making a few simple lifestyle changes!

“OMG this fat slob who ate lots of hamburgers and drank milkshakes every day finally straightened up and made some SIMPLE LIFESTYLE CHANGES and now he lost half his body weight and he’s never been happier!”

Well gee. I weigh nowhere near 400 pounds but I’m a lot shorter than this guy. I do weigh a lot, so much that according to some people if I weighed half of what I do now (which would make me much too thin, truly) it would be an improvement. But what are these simple lifestyle changes he made?

“Today, he runs 30 to 40 miles a week, works out two to three hours a day, does yoga in the morning and squeezes in a push-up whenever he gets a chance at work.”

So basically he exercises 4 hours a day.

This is “moderate?”

No no, this is obsession. This is working like a slave. This is what it takes to stay thin when you are genetically large.

Oh and notice how they blow off all his health problems to his weight and skip over briefly the most known bad health factor he had at the beginning of the article:

Novak had gone to smoke a cigarette. “We were walking back up to our seats, and I started getting winded…” “

Yes, cigarettes will make you feel winded and they can and will kill you. Funny how I know people just as large as him who do not get as winded as he mentions when climbing a hill. Who happen to not smoke. And skinny people who have died young of cancer because they did.

But anyway. All the other stories they link to in the side bar say the same thing, once you cut through the garbage. These people became thin by becoming FULL TIME ATHLETES, the type of people who are obsessed with diet, exercise, running, and the like - not through “simple lifestyle changes” like switching to lower fat foods or skipping a second helping.

4 hours of exercise a day. Oh but he started out with “just” an hour of walking a day - to walk a mile, the article says - as fat as I am, it only takes me 20 minutes to walk a mile, which is about an average pace. But let’s skip aside that - which hour during the day should I begin my “journey to fitness”:

1. An hour sometime in the morning before I go to work, which would mean before I have to get my child ready for school, and he has to leave the house at 6:45 am (he gets up around 6) so around 5 am I could go walking for an hour - alone, in the dark, in the New England winter?

2. An hour sometime during my workday, when I only technically get a 45 minute lunch?

3. A hour after my workday, which would mean after the commute home, after my child is fed supper, so sometime about 7 or 7:30 at night after I’ve been occupied with work/school or getting me and family ready for work/school or commuting to work or home from work for 12 hours? Again, when its dark out, alone, in a New England winter?

And don’t tell me about gyms. I can’t afford a gym, and I don’t have a car to get to one, there are none within walking distance of my house. Yes, I did shell out for an exercise bike, which, I am often snottily told by fitness snobs, is the “least effective form of exercise.” So much for encouraging fat pigs like me to make “small but healthy lifestyle changes”.

Oh he did a low-carb diet, too. Need we mention again how a high protein diet is something only accessible to those of moderate to higher income? Go to the store and make a spot price check of foods with various types of protein vs. foods that are mainly starch and you will see why this is a factor.

Note the end where he attributes his success to his family. By this he almost certainly really means his wife, who presumably takes care of “his kids” while he works out.

So, easy lifestyle changes that can make you thin:

Be a man, with a privileged income, a slave-wife who will attend to all of the things you neglect while you make exercise your full time job and go to expensive gyms with lots of equipment that make it easy for you to get a full body workout.

The really sour side of me also would like to point out that it’s only been two years. I wonder how he will look ten years from now? Since almost no one ever keeps off weight that long. But they never tell you that side of the story - it wouldn’t do well to make up lazy gluttonous fatties feel properly bad about ourselves.

*wanders off to sulk and continue recovering from this horrible plague called the flu*

Musings on Fat Hatred

Posted January 29, 2008 by
Categories: fatphobia

A brief review of fat hatred in contemporary movies and literature

Misery, by Stephen King
The fat woman as hysterical, insane, killer. Various scenes where she is shoveling food into her mouth mindlessly whilst making a horrible mess. Obsessed with entrapping a man since of course anyone as fat as she is couldn’t attract one by normal means. Message - fat women are hysterical, out of control, manipulative, and dangerously insane when rejected, as they always will be because they are unwantable as they are. (Repeat theme throughout Stephen King’s books, although this is the only one which comes to mind with the fat woman as main character. Also note that fat people can be protagonists in Stephen King’s books - so long as they make an effort to end their slobular ways and lose weight by the end of the novel.)

Dune, by Frank Herbert
The ultimate bad guys, the Harkonnens, are led by a man so fat he cannot even stand on his own two feet without the help of suspensor devices. He has become this way by sheer decadence and gluttony. He is portrayed as sexually debased (homosexual, which Herbert considered an illness) but diabolically intelligent. Message - fat men can be powerful and intelligent, although ultimately their gluttony (which is the sole cause of their fatness) contains the seeds of their downfall.

Fag Hag, by Robert Rodi
Hysterical fat woman who can’t get a man of her own obsesses over her gay friend, encouraging him to do drugs and ultimately wrecking all of his relationships with her manipulative ways, until he meets a stand up man who won’t put up with her womanish foolishness, at which point she goes off the deep end and kidnaps her friend until she can show him the light and make him fall in love with her. Message - fat women are hysterical, out of control, manipulative, and dangerously insane when rejected, as they always will be because they are unwantable as they are.

Maia, by Richard Adams
The head bad guy is a ridiculously fat man who needs help for all of his daily functions, having eaten himself into immensity deliberately as a show of decadence and power. He is portrayed as sexually debased (a sexual sadist and a rapist) but diabolically intelligent. Message - fat men can be powerful and intelligent, although ultimately their gluttony (which is the sole cause of their fatness) contains the seeds of their downfall.

Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
Fat man who is disgruntled at not having enough respect and power screws over his employers quite successfully. He eats messily and is generally a slob. In the end he dies as a result of screwing up his own get-away. Message - fat men can be powerful and intelligent, although ultimately their gluttony (which is the sole cause of their fatness) contains the seeds of their downfall.

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words…

Posted January 25, 2008 by
Categories: Uncategorized

A video can sometimes do even more.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tluogv9EGTQ

I recommend both for the beautiful music and for the powerful images within.  Safe for work if you are allowed to surf the net or listen to music.

I can so relate to this.

Posted January 15, 2008 by
Categories: Uncategorized

Iron My Shirts

Posted January 8, 2008 by
Categories: Double Standards, Political Representation

Yeah well, I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m disappointed. It doesn’t matter how impeccably perfect her political record is, a female is not seen as a human being and will not be allowed to take charge of anything in this country. People were mainly okay with pretending she was just one of the boys and they were beyond all of that until time came to vote.

My favorite bit of cognitive dissonance for the week comes from the juxtaposition of these two stories:

1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080108/ap_po/clinton_laundry_9

Oh and get the headline - protesters “ask” Clinton to iron their shirts.

“two men stood in the crowd and began screaming, “Iron my shirt!” “

“the seemingly sexist protest”

Because you know, they scould have been protesting about um. Hmmm. Permanent press and its effects on the environment!

But don’t worry ladies, Naomi Wolf, who wrote one clear headed book and ever since has bent over backwards to prove she’s really nice and okay and not strident or anything, wants us to know;

2. Message, not gender, turns voters off Clinton

“None of the polling or the focus groups indicate that people are … (snubbing) her because she is a woman but because of a deficit in how she is projecting leadership,” Wolf said.

“If anything, she is too entrenched, too competent a leader. She … has been on the world stage and people (voters) are sick of people who are … on the world stage,” she said.

Yes Naomi, sexists never lie about their sexism. Hilary’s problem is that she’s too good at her job. Wait, what?

Then another commentator says “Clinton faced a struggle her rivals rarely confront to balance the appearance of toughness with a softer quality U.S. voters look for in female politicians, said academic Barbara Kellerman, who published “Women in Leadership” in 2007 and has written numerous other books on the subject.”

“If her candidacy does not succeed I hope that women will learn the right lessons from her defeat and not make overarching conclusions about how impossible it is (for women) to get to the top,” she said.

Indeed. She failed because she couldnt manage to simultaneously seem tough and unfeminine in all those ways we are told being feminine - i.e., emotional - makes one unable to make any rational decisions and therefore makes one unfit for leadership, and, at the same time, show emotion and that mysterious feminine soft quality which is demanded. In other words, she failed at doing the impossible but us naysayers shouldn’t take that as evidence that women are screwed no matter what.

Remember, it isn’t about sexism at all! It’s all about Hilary Clinton’s faults for er, being too perfect and competent. Sexism isn’t why she’s losing. Iron my shirts.

Oopsie

Posted December 17, 2007 by
Categories: Uncategorized

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071215/ap_on_fe_st/odd_ladies_nights

 Men whining about “ladies nights” at bars being “discriminatory”.  Never mind that everyone knows the whole purpose of ladies nights are to ensure a sizeable stock of rapeable women for the male patrons of the bar to choose from (as women who have had even one drink will find it almost impossible to get either a conviction against a man who rapes them or any sympathy from even friends and family, let alone anyone in the so-called “justice” system).  No, it’s “discriminatory” because it means men have to pay more money for recreation. 

 But the punch line is at the end of the article where the lawyer claims it’s “unconstitutional”.  No, it isn’t.  You know why?  Because THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT NEVER PASSED.  There is no constitutional protection of equality between men and women.  Funny how guys only ever notice this when it affects some petty amusement of theirs, such as being able to get cheaper beer.  When it affects the health and lives of women on a daily basis, such as in ubiquitous pay discrimination, health insurance discrimination, and lack of reproductive rights (which has a direct impact on women’s lives and health, and is not just some matter or “convenience” as the woman hating anti-abortionists would have us believe), why then there’s always a “good reason” for it.

But god forbid you guys should have to pay a little more to get drunk!  That’s anti-constitutional!  Cry me a fucking river.

Happy Chanukah!

Posted December 4, 2007 by
Categories: Uncategorized

From a commenter, and from my own research, I offer you the following two links:

http://www.ritualwell.org/holidays/chanukah/Newblessingforchanukah

http://telshemesh.org/tevet/chanukah_ritual_for_the_seventh_night.html

Question

Posted November 25, 2007 by
Categories: Uncategorized

I’m opening comments on this until I get an answer, but don’t worry trolls, I will delete and ban you as soon as you pop around to be obnoxious.

Does anyone have links to any good feminist Chanukah prayers or rituals?  Let me know if you do.  Thanks in advance.

Language, Resolutions

Posted October 22, 2007 by
Categories: Racism, Sexist Language, White Privilege

I’ve decided to try to stop using the word “bitch” (unless deep in the discussion of dog breeding, an unlikely scenario since I am not a big dog fan). This came about after a discussion in which an otherwise well-meaning white person mentioned being annoyed that “they” are allowed to call “themselves” that but “we” aren’t. Now I myself have never felt somehow mysteriously unprivileged because I don’t have the “right” to refer to someone by a derogatory racial epithet. I find the idea ridiculous. I don’t remember how, exactly, I was programmed to behave in the manner I do considering certain words, but I know although my childhood programming against “cussing” in general wore off years ago, I find I cannot even bring myself to type certain words. I don’t see any reason to break myself of that - why would I even want to use a word that is used solely to hurt others?

But there is the “problem” of some oppressed groups using epithets against themselves. When challenged by those in the privileged majority thusly: “How come you can call yourself that but I can’t?” a variety of responses are used.

The reality (as I see it, of course) is that calling oneself by a favorite derogatory epithet of the ruling class for your group, be it that you are female, non-white, non-heterosexual, non-dominant-religion-practicing, is a form of internalized oppression. If you are calling yourself this, there isn’t even a need for someone else to put you down. You are doing their work for them!

So I am going to stop referring to myself as a “bitch” every time I stand up for myself or even when I lose my temper at someone in a way which turns out to be unfair. I am going to try to stop referring to my boss as a bitch when she is behaving like the horrid person she is. (Although alternative non-gender specific invectives will be employed, oh yes.) Also in the “out-box” are several other gender laced invectives that I will not abuse your tender eyes by repeating here. Anyone who wants to use this as evidence of my “Puritanism” and anti-free speechism should be aware that: most “polite” people are appalled by my freedom with language and the latitude I allow my child with so-called “bad words”; Puritans believed in hard work and cleanliness while I am a lazy slob who spends much of her free time gaming; Puritans believed in going to church many hours a week and as a pagan I am hard put these days to even celebrate anything formal 8 times a year; also, I had sex five times this weekend, with two different people, names shall remain undisclosed. So let any accusations of repression on my part be therefore put to rest.

Yeah I know this is real 101 stuff here. Please be patient with me. I have years of liberal-progressive-libertarian brainwashing to overcome.