holy rape culture, batman

I've been bitching about this and pointing people toward it since it came out last week, yet somehow, I've neglected to blog on it. So here goes, short and sweet:

Amnesty International poll shows that 1/3 of people (in the UK) believe a woman can be to blame for "getting herself raped."

You are at least partially to blame for getting raped if you have:
-been drinking
-worn "provocative" clothing
-not clearly and/or forcefully enunciated the word "no"
-had sex with people before
-done something "obviously" unsafe (e.g. walking alone on the street at night, etc.)




You'd think that the feminist community would rise up and do something about this, or at least denounce the 1/3 of people in the UK that participate in this victim-blaming bullshit.
And, for the most part, a lot of them have. Amanda at Pandagon posted a nice piece on this bullshit, Nick Kiddle at Alas wrote on victim-blaming bullshit (though not directly tied in to the Amnesty poll), Jill at Feministe responded to Nick's post on Alas, and Jessica at feministing blogs on the poll as well.

The comments on the first three (pandagon, feministe, and alas) are worth reading through, if only to make your blood boil with more victim-blaming bullshit coming from self-avowed "feminists".


Ok, now I'm going to do my real work. I swear.

ayotte hearings started today

I need to be writing my 2 papers that are due tomorrow, not blogging, but for archival's sake, I felt I needed to post something about this today...


(Activists on both sides outside the Supreme Court today.)

Arguments on the Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England started today. (An AP article)

I'm cautiously optimistic. After all, the article starts out with this:

The Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with a New Hampshire law that requires a parent to be told before a daughter ends her pregnancy, with no hint the justices were ready for a dramatic retreat on abortion rights under their new chief.

John Roberts, newly appointed Chief Justice, of course, was an asshat, not quite understanding that SCOTUS cases set precedents for the entire country to follow, and while they may be based on specific individual cases, have repercussions far, far exceeding said individuals. He was complaining that the specific case didn't involve a "medical emergency," which is the main contention against the parental notification bullshit laws in New Hampshire, but I suppose he could've been worse...

Scalia, too, was an asshat, basically arguing that the requirement of a judge's permission to override the parental notification thing "takes 30 seconds," and so, does not constitute an undue burden.
Jennifer Dalven (one of my new heroes) argued against this bullshit in a filing by PPNNE, though: "In an emergency, a woman needs to go to the hospital not a courthouse."

Most of the other justices, though, actually did their jobs and critically looked at the information presented. Let's just hope that most of them have working consciences. Unlike Scalia.


Well, it should be interesting, at least...........

samsung's gender regime

hat tip to feministing for this one...


Samsung is marketing a new cell phone to women. A "girly" phone, if you will.



Not only is it pink and sparkly (ew), but it has new, "girly" features, like a shopping list-maker, biorhythms, horoscopes, a fat calculator, and an ovulation calendar.

I'm not gonna lie -- the ovulation calendar's a good idea. Probably the only decent feature of the phone. (Even if the article does poo-poo it, implying that it's ridiculous for your phone to know when it's your time of the month...always keeping up the facade of menstruation-as-dirty/embarrassing, that patriarchy is...)

But seriously. The rest of it is fucking ridiculous. Horoscopes? A fucking fat calculator? I thought we were supposed to be empowering women, helping them not to hate their bodies, not invalidating and trivializing their lives. Silly me. I must've forgotten that:

best thing EVER

Pam over at Pandagon posted about this Baptist pastor in DC named Willie Wilson who thinks the world is being taken over by lesbians.
No, seriously.

Real Quotes:

"Lesbianism is about to take over our community. I'm talking about young girls. My son in high school last year tried to go to the prom. He said, 'Dad, I ain't got nobody to take to the prom because all the girls in my class are gay. Ain't but two of 'em straight, and both of them ugly.'"
....
"But … women falling down on another woman, strapping yourself up with something, it ain't real. That thing ain't got no feeling in it. It ain't natural. Anytime somebody got to slap some grease on your behind and stick something in you, it's something wrong with that. Your butt ain't made for that."
....
"No wonder your behind is bleeding. You can't make no connection with a screw and another screw. You need a screw and a nut."
....
"The situation is so grave that it should be declared a national emergency."

A great, great sermon, if you ask me.
There are more links at the pandagon post linked to above, but there's a Flash animation that someone made over at somethingawful.com that's absolutely fucking fabulous, and you MUST check it out.
Go here for the Flash animation.

(Note: I had to re-load the page numerous times before I got the whole thing to play...if it doesn't loop back to the beginning, you haven't heard the whole thing yet. And believe me, you NEED to hear the whole thing.)




Also, I don't know what kind of (bad) lesbian porn he's been watching, but usually, when lesbians strap themselves up, the point of entry is the vagina, not the anus. I'm not saying that some lesbians don't also enjoy the anal sex, but that's not really the "typical" lesbian sex act. I think he may be getting his homosexuals mixed up a bit...

preventing rape

(got this from my friend's livejournal. thought it needed repeating here.)


-------------------
A lot has been said about how to prevent rape.
Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

instead of (and/or in addition to) that bullshit, how about:

if a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
if a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
if a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
if a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
if a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
if a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
if a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
if a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
if a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
if a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.
if a woman exists, don't rape her.

if a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her.
if your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
if your step-daughter is watching tv, don't rape her.
if you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
if your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.

if your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
if your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.

tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.

don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.


If you agree, repost it. It's that important.

puppy blogging

My dad sent me this absolutely adorable picture of my dog today. It snowed in western NY last night/today.
It's been rainy and cold in western Massachusetts.
Fucking New England.

Anyway, Bonnie (the dog) absolutely loves the snow:

one more reason i'll never move to alabama

On October 19, 2005, Billy Sanford, a 52-year-old gay man in Montgomery, Alabama, was bludgeoned into a coma by a 26-year-old claiming 'gay panic'.

Marcus Dewayne Kelley, a handyman for Sanford and his roommate, told Montgomery detectives he hit Sanford in the head with a hammer because the older man wouldn’t stop making sexual advances toward him.

Not only is this most likely not true (the man had a "roommate," and has been described as "a sweet spirit, a gentle, non-violent soul"), it's sickening that this guy is actually using his fear of gay people as a defense.

Sanford's prognosis is not good. Doctors don't really have much hope for his survival, and even if he does, there will be significant brain damage.



And I know this makes me sound awful, but it's times like these that I'm glad I'm a straight-looking dyke in Massachusetts and/or Western New York. If I were a gay man in these parts, or any kind of queer living below the Mason-Dixon line...I don't even want to think about what I'd have to deal with.



This guy, Kelley, wasn't brought in until very recently. That's a month after the attack happened.
And they're not even charging it as a hate crime, which everyone in their right mind knows it was, because Alabama doesn't include sexual orientation in their hate crime statute. It's attempted murder, period. Which isn't exactly like they're letting him off, but still.

Howard Bayless of Equality Alabama cuts straight to the core:

“If it were a straight person who hit on someone of the opposite sex, he would have gotten a ‘No, thank you,’ and that would have been the end of it.

“We don’t get a polite ‘No, thank you.’ We get clubbed with a hammer,” Bayless continued. “I hope the district attorney prosecutes this to the highest degree.”

reproductive justice for all the privileged

Via my favourite blog (well, one of 'em), mediagirl, I found this account of reproductive INjustice, posted to Revolution Online a few months ago.


It's a perfect example of how, even in a country where abortion is still technically legal, where all citizens theoretically have equal reproductive rights, there are still huge, huge disparities exist between the opportunities of a middle/upper class white woman to terminate her pregnancy and the opportunities of a lower-income and/or minority woman to terminate her pregnancy.

In this specific case:
"Last October, Gabriela Flores [a young immigrant woman working for $150/week in the fields in South Carolina] ended her 16-week pregnancy by taking misoprostol pills sent by her sister from Mexico. She had no choice but to risk her life by taking illegally imported drugs, without any doctor's supervision, because although abortion is technically legal in South Carolina, in Gabriela's situation it may as well have been illegal."

The reasons for this de facto illegality?
Why, every little thing the anti-choice movement has been pushing onto and through the agenda for years.
"South Carolina laws force women to get permission from their husbands, listen to biased anti-abortion "counseling" riddled with misinformation, and to undergo a mandatory waiting period. And abortions after 13 weeks are so restricted that no provider in the state will offer them."




You'd think this would be bad enough. This woman having to perform a dangerous abortion on herself -- a punishable offense in South Carolina -- and deal with the emotional realities of burying the dead fetus she expelled from her body in her backyard. That would be punishment enough for a woman so fucked by the patriarchy, no?

No. Not quite.

Somebody tipped off the police that she'd birthed a live fetus (she hadn't, nor could a 16-wk-old fetus live outside the mother's womb) and buried it in her backyard. They dug up the fetus and wanted to charge Flores with murder. Had they been able to prove (or manufacture proof) that the fetus was alive when it exited her body, or that it was even viable outside her womb, this would have easily made it through the courts.
Since they couldn't do this, they had to charge her with a self-performed abortion. Because, obviously, she had the choice and privilege to travel 3 hours and spend 2 days getting the abortion that isn't provided anywhere in the state of South Carolina.


She was sentenced to 4 months in jail, and could receive up to 2 more years, and is facing deportation.

Why, you ask?


Because reproductive rights may exist, legal access to reproductive technologies may exist...
but reproductive justice does not exist.
And it needs to.

carnival of feminists, part trois

Directing you all over to the 3rd installment of the Carnival of Feminists, hosted by Sour Duck.



The Carnival Of Feminists is "held on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Hosted by a different blogger for each edition, it aims to showcase the finest feminist posts from around the blogsphere."
Basically, it's a high-profile link dump, where feminist bloggers get to pimp themselves out (in a non-objectifying way).

Each host gets to define their own terms of feminist and their own concentration for their carnival.
This one is "1970s until now" - how 1970s feminism still plays out today, how it's changed, etc. Sour Duck also included other feminist blog posts that didn't cleanly fall under the 1970s/2000s rubric, so it's got a nice balance of just about everything you could ask for.


Definitely worth a look.
Go. Now.

the reproductive rights angle, nerve-style

The Nerve has recently released a reproductive rights special issue, with articles explaining how Feminists For Life is dangerous and notfeminist, the stigma of multiple abortions, being 'pro-choice with reservations', as well as an amazing interview with Dr. Susan Wood, former FDA Director of the Office for Women's Health, and a few other kickass articles.





They're all really worth a read, so go, read them. And here's a little teaser from the interview:

Q: Medically speaking, is this [emergency contraception/Plan B] considered abortion?
Medically speaking, it is not considered abortion. Progestin [the chemical in EC] is the same natural hormone that a woman's body produces while she's breastfeeding to help prevent her from getting pregnant. If you're comfortable with breastfeeding, you're comfortable with emergency contraception.

annnd robertson's off the deep end (big surprise)

The citizens of Dover, PA voted out all 8 school board members who were pushing for the teaching of "intelligent design" in the school district this week.

Good, right?


Evidently, it's dooming for the poor little town, according to Rev. Pat Robertson, who warned the people of Dover of potential "disaster" in their town, and told them not to "turn to God. You just rejected him from your city."

Apparently, you can reject God from an entire city with just one election.
Who knew?

exciting!

So, tonight I went to the opening plenary of the fantabulous Reproductive Justice For All: A U.S. Policy Conference that Smith College is hosting (a joint effort between the amazing Women's Studies department and Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts).

Tonight, there were three panelists:
Loretta Ross (who was one of the main kids in charge of making the March for Women's Lives in '04 such a huuuge success), Silvia Henriquez (of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health), and Karen Pearl (for those of you wayyyy out of the loop, the Interim Pres of PPFA).

It was amaaaazing.

Mainly, the discussion about using "reproductive justice" as a new way to frame the entire movement. Not just a buzzword to replace "reproductive rights" (the legal side) or "reproductive health" (the medical side), but a different avenue to take. It's not at all discounting the importance of these other ways to address the movement, and if what you concentrate on is strictly freedom of choice from a legal aspect, use "repro rights" or "pro choice." Same with "repro health." But reproductive justice takes this allll into consideration, from the human rights aspect to the accessibility differences to the cultural consciousness to the legal approach.



A fun fact: the US is one of the only countries (if not the only country) to see reproductive rights as a legal issue. Almost every other country takes the angle of human rights to ascertain women's rights. Why is it that we're so loath to acknowledge that maybe there are, in fact, human rights violations in this country?




Most of the conference's sessions are closed to the public, since the purpose of this is really to create potential policy initiatives. There are some absolutely fucking amazing people on my campus this weekend, from the remarkable panelists I listed before to Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) to representatives from Planned Parenthoods all over (even Hawaii!) and from NARAL and the Women's Health Project and Third Wave Foundation and Lambda Legal and NOW and National Network of Abortion Funds and SisterSong and Sisters on the Rise and so on and so forth.
And since I'm awesome enough to be a dedicated member of Vox (Voices for Choice, a Planned Parenthood affiliated campus group), I get to be a student volunteer to "watch the door" -- basically, lay the smack down on people who try to get in w/o name tags and then sit in on the meetings, just inside the door.



Ohhhhh Smith, how I love you more and more.

exemption from torture as a technique -- seriously?

Sometimes, I can't believe BushCo's complete disregard for human life, especially the Cheney part of BushCo.

Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in a closed-door session.

Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants added, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment in case the president decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.

Is he serious?
Who in the world would get behind this?
Evidently, only 9 Senators are ok with torture. ("The Senate recently approved a provision banning the “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The vote was 90-9.") I would argue that 9 Senators supporting the 'right' to torture anyone, terrorist or not, is far too many, but it's even more disturbing that our Vice President wants to make this absolutely legal.

Because, you know, this is really going to boost the world's perception of us.

Fuck it.
I'm movin' to Canada.
Who's with me?

feminists with eating disorders/disordered eating/distorted body images

Note: This is a non-link-heavy post, written so I can work through some of these ideological debates of seeing eating disorders and related problems as feminist issues.
Also, a disclaimer: In this post, it is not my intention to invalidate those male-identified or non-gendered people's experiences with eating disorders. I address myself to girls and women not because I believe they are the only ones who truly suffer from eating disorders, but because they are the most oppressed by the patriarchal beauty myth, and suffer in greater numbers from eating disorders.
-------------------------------------------------------------


I do not have an eating disorder.
I say this because I have never been diagnosed as such. I won't deny that I go through cycles where I don't eat more than 500 calories a day (if that), where I purge the calories I do eat, where I fight with myself about the prospect of eating a meal or snack or skipping it. However, I've never lost more than 20 pounds from this disordered eating, and I've never really been treated by anyone as though I were anorexic or bulimic, nor do I think I should be. I do not have an eating disorder. I simply partake in cyclical disordered eating.


Given the rest of the content on this blog, and the fact that my major at a predominant single-sex college is the Study of Women and Gender (SWaG), this is hardly the expected mindset. I should be all, "damn the Man" and "fuck the patriarchy" and "down with the beauty myth." And, in theory, I am. In practice, though, it's another story.

My being a feminist does not, unfortunately, make me immune to the widespread dissatisfaction of women with their bodies. I, too, hate my body. Well, that's not entirely true. My ass is pretty shapely. And I enjoy my surgery scar on my knee. But everything else? There's definitely room for improvement, to say the least.
And see? Even that, I know, is problematic. Seeing my body as something that needs to be improving. Wanting that waifish, bony (read: passive, unaggressive) body is purely a product of the patriarchy.
I know this.


And because I know this, I'm having an ideological dilemma. On the one hand, I have the typical eating-disorder-esque mindset of self-hatred and celery sticks*. On the other, though, I fully recognize and acknowledge that the source of the majority of the aspects of this mindset lie in the way that my mind has been socially constructed to play into the patriarchal beauty myth. I recognize these things, but I cannot change them.

Part of the reason I use this disordered eating is because I want that socially constructed impossible ideal of the 6-pack abs - the "perfect" body. I know that this body is largely unattainable, and my desire to attain this level of "perfection" plays easily into the hands of the patriarchy. But that doesn't mean that the social pressures to attain this ideal affect me any less.
But the main reason that I need these disordered eating patterns is control. It is an explicitly personal need to control my life and what happens in it. It being so explicitly personal, it almost becomes easy to dismiss it as not really part of the patriarchy, because it is my (intrinsic?) "nature" that makes me so reliant on the idea of self-control. It's not, and I know this. After all, the personal is political. And the personal, too, is largely socially constructed.
Even so.
I need that control. And no amount of feminist theory can give that to me.



So where does that leave feminism in regards to the prevention/treatment of eating disorders/disordered eating/distorted body images? Is it even relevant? Can it even be helpful?

I'm inclined to say yes, if only because I'm an idealist. But it's a conditional "yes."
Feminism, I don't think, can explicitly do anything for those already severely indoctrinated with the ridiculous bodily ideals of the patriarchy. I'm sure there are cases where feminist consciousness has brought someone out of their eating disordered life, but in my case, and in many others', understanding these social implications does not immunize you, or even seriously protect you, from the patriarchy's message that you must attempt to attain this unattainable, "perfect" body. It might allow you to deflect the more blatant indoctrination of this ideal, but I don't think that anything, really, can protect women from the subtle forms of patriarchal control over our bodies.

I do think, however, that feminism's role in this issue of eating disorders is one of prevention, of preventing the indoctrination of young girls into this distorted body image cult. There is, unfortunately, little that can be done about the women who have already been indoctrinated by the patriarchy, an indoctrination that runs much deeper than we could possibly hope to reach. But it can change for the future generations. And, really, it must.


---
Because I can't really go a post without linkages...
some links:
confronting bulimia, anorexia, and feminism, by jennifer wells

eating disorders: a feminist issue, by tara eastland

adios barbie, with fun feed-the-starving-model game

about-face, with stats, gallery of offensive advertisements, and more

article on somethingfishy: does society influence eating disordered behavior in women?

article on somethingfishy: feminist perspectives on eating disorders



----------------------------------------
*Stolen from a planned parenthood Love Your Body Day magnet. Oh, the irony.

pick your battles?

(making up for lost blogging time...)


Eleanor Clift over at MSNBC has a rage-inducing article about how Dems need to "pick their battles": that is, our left-leaning elected politicians shouldn't "waste their time" filibustering Alito's nomination There are, supposedly, "bigger fights coming down the pike."

Ummm.
Wait, so the impending overturning of Roe v Wade and a woman's rights over her own body aren't the right battles to choose? Riiight.

Clift gets into the (increasingly Democratic) stance of pessimism, and claims that the Alito issue is an "unwinnable fight," and instead of worrying our silly heads over his taking away our fundamental rights to our own uteruses, we should worry about when John Paul Stevens, "the most liberal member of the court" steps down or dies. (He is, after all 85.)


I guess I don't understand why it is that we should ignore a fight that, by the way, we can win, just to wait for a fight that may or may not happen while the Shrub is president, a fight that, fate willing, won't happen for a while now.
Are we (as liberals) that inept at multi-tasking that we really can't fight Alito and be prepared to fight Stevens' replacement at a later date? Because, really, I'm pretty sure we're quite capable of doing so. No thanks to you, Eleanor Clift.

back-blogging #3

And, finally, stuff on Samuel Alito, Bush's newest nominee to the Supreme Court.


Fittingly, on Halloween (October 31st), Bushie nominated a rich, uber-conservative white guy to replace the moderate Sandra Day O'Connor.

Almost immediately, left-wing groups and pro-choicers were speaking out against this man. Different from Roberts, and even Miers, where we waited to see if maybe, just maybe, they weren't as bad as we feared, this backlash was pretty much right off the bat.
Perhaps it has something to do with Alito's nickname, given because of his ideological similarities to our favourite Justice, Antonin Scalia (aka Asshat Numero Uno of the Supremes):
Scalito.

First, Democratic leaders in the Senate denounced him, from Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont (who cast a "yes" vote on Roberts, the douchebag) to Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts to, of course, my fantabulous Senators from NY - Clinton and Schumer.

Then, NARAL Pro-Choice America announced its opposition to Alito's nomination.
As did Feminist Majority, NOW, PFAW (People for the American Way), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and moveon.org, among others.

Needless to say, this guy isn't exactly well-liked.


The Washington Post put out an article explaining why Alito would likely vote against Roe.

Fantastic.




In other news, Bushie's approval rating dropped wayyyy low this week. Nothing like pandering to the small wingnut portion of your base and pissing off the rest of the country to make your approval ratings soar.

back-blogging #2

(From October 29th)

I love me my wingnuts....


Almost as good as Pat Robertson and Focus on the Family....

Pam over at Pandagon calls him, "a Fred Phelps wannabe without the budget to travel." I call him just plain crazy. He's a psycho pastor guy from Wisconsin working in Freeport, Illinois, and absolutely hates those (ew! gross!) homosexual people.

His name: Ralph Ovadal.
His "church"*: Pilgrims Covenant Church

*I put "church" in quotes because this is the website's description of themselves: "an independent, unlicensed church which is fundamental in doctrine."
At least they're not being supported by the rest of the Christian faith.


And this, my friends, is priceless:

Fascism is a political system whereby all opposition to and dissent from the government is disallowed and crushed. Fascism is a philosophy which tolerates no deviation from an established norm, that being the dictates of a powerful elite. Fascism is opposed to the eternal, unchanging, objective law of God and is based on the subjective desires and goals of those who have the power to crush their opposition. In many Western nations, a form of fascism has taken root and presents a clear, present, and growing danger to Christian liberty and the Church of Jesus Christ. This force for evil may justly be referred to as "homo-fascism" due to the fact that those espousing and driving it have as their goal to demonize, marginalize, and silence any criticism of or opposition to homosexual acts and the sodomite agenda.

Proof of this Homo-Fascism:
-Gay-Straight Alliances in schools (indoctrinating the young'uns! Oh no!)
-The National Day Of Silence (interrupts our lives! seeing discrimination in my face! i can't handle it!)
-Protests against the Red Cross' (discriminatory) policy on not accepting sexually active gay men's blood
-of course, liberal gay bias on college campuses
-the obvious connections between all gay people and support of the Nazi/neo-Nazi movement
-the obvious connections between all gay people and support of the communist party (which, of course, is evil)


Oh, also, "PFLAG kills children." Seriously.


The best thing from the "church's" website:






And one last thing to make your blood boil:
(On the "lies" the high school GSAs are propagating:

First it was the physical violence epidemic against "GLBT" youth which, in reality, was a sodomite or lesbian occasionally getting a bloody nose for sexually hitting on a red-blooded American male or female in the locker room.

[Edited To Add]
Oh wait, there's more.
Some handy pamphlet-type things, to condemn those queers:
Is someone You Know A Bugger?


Homosexuality: The Truth (Christ Can Set You Free)

Do Homosexuals Spend Eternity in Heaven or Hell? (Hell, of course)

Rape, Murder, and Homosexuality (Obviously all synonyms...)



That's all.

back-blogging #1

(The following posts will be stuff I've posted elsewhere, but not here yet. This is from November 2nd.)






Oh yes.
Traditional Values Coalition has a new site up, "exposing the myths of homosexuality."
(Click on the banner above.)

It's absolutely fucking fabulous.
I'm sitting here, laughing my ass off at the computer screen out of the sheer ridiculousness of it.

They even have The Homosexual Agenda available (in pdf format). I know that I've always been curious as to what exactly our agenda was. It's good that these Traditional Values folks are cluing me in.
Evidently, they got this from "the homosexual magazine," Guide, published in 1987. I'd like to think that "our agenda" has changed at least a little since then. Probably as a copyright infringement, they reproduced the entire article.
It is, evidently, "a blueprint for homosexualizing our culture and demonizing opponents who are opposed to [redundant much?] the normalization of sodomy."
Also, evidently the Reverend Louis P. Sheldon knows so much about the Homosexual Agenda that he published a book on it, The Agenda: The Homosexual Plan to Change America. It still weirds me out that these crazy gays-are-evil people know more about this agenda I'm supposedly enforcing than I do.

There's a lot of shit about the "link" between homosexuals (men, of course) and pedophiles. Because, obviously, raping little children is completely comparable to having consensual sex with another adult who shares the same desires as you.

Awesomely enough, they claim that "the homosexual movement's roots in America are based in Communist ideology." Evidently, this is an evil, bad, terrible thing.
ompare "the homosexual movement" to Marxism and, of course, communism.

Also on the site:
The evils of the transgender movement. (Which, I warn you, is incredibly offensive to anyone with a conscience.)

"Proof" that gay sex (again, always male) leads to death. Nevermind that the fastest rising population of newly infected people is straight high school and college-age women. Oh no. If you're a guy, and you bang another guy, there is no alternative but for you to die. (Also, evidently, you die from "HIV infection," not AIDS...good to know that they know the basic facts of the disease...)

And, of course, who could forget the Recruitment of Children part of the Agenda?

One of the best, I think, is the comparison of "homosexual propaganda" to Hitler's propaganda. Because, of course, the inhuman massacre of millions of people is entirely comparable to promoting tolerance. Obviously.

And there's more. Explore. Be amused. It's funny.


The scary part?
These fuckers are serious.

the patriarchy, explained

I've got a paper on Cherrie Moraga (yay) to write, so in lieu of actual blogging, I'm leaving you all with a link:

Indispensable explanation of the Patriarchy (and the patriarchy) via Twisty Faster over at I Blame The Patriarchy.


This, my dears, is why i heart feminists so much.


(Go. Read. Now.)