I am a doom cat of cognative dissonance
I am a doom cat of cognative dissonance
Left-wing men are the worst hypocrites for normalising violence against women. You expect misogyny from right-wing conservatives who are anti-abortion, slut-shaming arsewipes. But, it’s those men who think they are the Dude who are the real problem in rape culture. It’s celebrities like Leonardo Dicaprio and Colin Farrell who hang out at the Playboy mansion who normalise the patriarchal construction of women as fucktoys. It’s Hugh Hefner who thinks his financial support for Roe vs Wade makes him a Dude [cus, it had nothing to do with him being allowed to fuck as many women as possible without consequece]. Or, Rolling Stone magazine who have Charlie Sheen as their cover story despite his clear history of serial domestic violence and his abuse of prostitutes [not to mention glamourising his descent into drug addiction]. It’s Roman Polanski and Chris Brown being given standing ovations despite taking no responsibility for the very serious crimes they committed. I never see mentions of Sean Penn’s arrest for domestic violence mentioned in articles lauding his status as a Dude. PETA have given props to Tommy Lee for his financial support whilst conveniently ignoring his convictions for domestic violence against his now ex-wife Pamela Anderson. Anthony Kiedis, noted supporter of Barack Obama and PETA, isn’t exactly boyfriend material with his personal history of VAW [not to mention the lyrics to The Adventures of Raindance Maggie are on the wrong side of the rape apologism debate]
Why do we only ever see female celebrities posing naked in Playboy and never male celebrities posing naked in Playgirl? Why do female celebrities have to ensure they look fuckable at 40 and have to pose naked to do so? When was the last time George Clooney, noted Dude, required to get his cock out in order to conform to the Patriarchy’s beauty standards? Okay, PETA, misogynists that they are, do have male celebrities posing naked but the image of Dave Navarro in his “Ink not Mink” campaign is nowhere near as well known as the image of Pamela Anderson defined as chunks of meat by PETA. Yeah, I’ve been harping on about PETA here recently, but, really, they are the line in the sand. Supporting the rights of animals whilst helping to perpetuate rape culture is pretty much the essence of hypocrisy.
WikiLeaks @wikileaks Despite not even being charged, Assange is the most rape-smeared man in modern history. 2x to 4x that of DSK, depending on how you measure.
It’s just a #facepalm moment. Now, I haven’t read the whole of this blog but the first bit was enough to make me think the author was a dingbat with some serious paranoia issues. And, I’m sorry, but hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London whilst having a tantrum about being questioned [and not arrested] just makes Assange look like a complete prick [not to mention guilty]. Assange supporters could join with Ched Evans supporters and form a supergroup of whiny-arsed, stupid nincompoops with serious delusions of grandeur. We could call them: The Quintessential Nincompoops.
It is perfectly possible to campaign against racism or investigate corruption in government or be an environmental activist and still be a misogynist and rapist. The Occupy Movement went out of its way to disassociate itself from the women who were raped in their camps in Glasgow, New Haven, London, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Dallas [and the list goes on]. These Dudes implied, rape after rape, that the women weren’t actually “involved” in the movement or were “vulnerable” and shouldn’t have been there, or were “prostitutes”. Because, women who get themselves raped clearly brought it on themselves by being vulnerable or prostitutes or pretending to be activists. Or, some other fucking misogynistic horseshite. It just made it easier to for the right-wing arseholes in government to dismiss the entire movement.
It would be nice if those men who self-identify as “Right-On Dudes” got off the hypocritical bandwagon in behind the anti-choice, slut-shaming arsewipes and started taking the systemic violence against women seriously. Feminism needs more men who are willing to stand up in the fight against domestic violence and sexual violence. But, we need men who aren’t hypocrites. We need men that understand the systemic nature of VAW and who are willing to start changing the misogynistic discourse which places all women on a spectrum of Patriarchal Fuckability. We need men who do understand that Hugh Hefner’s “relationship” with his multiple girlfriends were abusive. We need men to understand that abusing the body of a prostitute is VAW; that pornography is VAW.
We need men who understand that misogyny is just as harmful to society as racism, homophobia and disablism are.
We need men who aren’t hypocrites.
BY HUB NEWSFEED
“How to Snatch a Chicken: A Tale of How One Cunt fed the Whole of the Group Voina… in honor of their hero, a 19th century political philosopher/prisoner, Voina’s president’s wife dubbed “Vacuous Cunt With Inconceivably Huge Tits,”smuggled a chicken out of a grocery store in said “Vacuous Cunt…” [the journalist comments] : First, the troupe searched for a large and fresh enough chicken. Then, the store isles and CCTV cameras were blocked by the members of the group holding up banners with “FUCK WHORING YOURSELF!” smeared on them in I-don’t-want-to-know-what. The blockade allowed Vacuous Cunt to promptly stuff and smuggle the poultry out of the store, which was then presumably cooked and eaten.[1]
I’ve been following the legal trials of Pussy Riot for several months now. I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable about the directions the press has taken with this case and with the level of celebrity endorsement, particularly on the issue of free speech. Whilst I do think this issue is fundamentally about the right to free speech, I don’t think it is the right to free speech that the media suggests. I have always felt that the right to free speech only supports those in power or a very small group of those with no access to formal power but who can engage with the media. I don’t think discussions about the right to free speech are ever supportive of marginalised groups; no matter how much left-wing men swear it is. Free speech is the rallying cry of pornographers, neo-Nazis, rape apologists, and racists who assert that their right to be a jackass is more important than the harm they cause. Hearing people defend the tenets of free speech always makes me twitchy. Free speech, like pacifism, is a position only available to people with privilege. After all, the right to free speech is irrelevant if you live in abject poverty in a place with no access to electricity and, subsequently, have no real medium in which to assert that right.
A couple of weeks ago the journalist Miriam Elder, who is the Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, tweeted this:
Curious: do you think there would be such a campaign against Pussy Riot if they were men? And such a campaign of support in the west?
I’ve been pondering this since she tweeted it but haven’t quite been able to articulate my concerns about the way the media is constructing Pussy Riot. I’m a big fan of anarcho-feminist punk bands, or any feminist musicians, and feminist performance art but there is something wilfully disingenuous about the uncritical way in which Pussy Riot are being portrayed in the “Western” media. This is not to say that I think Pussy Riot deserve to be convicted for hooliganism in this case. Far from it, I think arresting non-violent protestors is one of the Patriarchy’s favourite power plays. It’s a nasty silencing technique. The three members of Pussy Riot should never have been arrested; never mind convicted. However, I do have concerns about the media’s treatment of Pussy Riot; particularly since Pussy Riot were not protesting the right to free speech. Free speech is somewhat of red herring here. The debate for “free speech” is just the same old “Western” hypocrisy and benevolent sexism pretending to liberate women when all it does is further constrain us.
I haven’t blogged about the lying git that is Assange yet because it makes me both homicidally angry and thoroughly depressed at the number of people who are on the left of political spectrum but also seem to be clinically stupid. It is perfectly possible to have some good political policies whilst remaining a misogynist with a history of sexually abusive behaviour. Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy both being cases in point. Being critical of the Military-Industrial complexes isn’t a get-out-of-jail free card for rapists. Anyone who claims it is is, simply, a rape apologist who is perpetuating and perpetrating rape culture. We shouldn’t be allowing the existence of that kind of misogynistic bollox.
I haven’t blogged about Assange because I don’t want to add to his messiah complex. He is quite clearly an attention seeking whingefest of the most egregious sort. I didn’t bother to watch his speech from the balcony either. I don’t want to waste my time on someone who has their head jammed so far up their ass that they think they are The Second Coming. I genuinely think the media need to stop covering this case. That attention seeking arsehole doesn’t need the publicity. After all, the official Wikileaks twitter feed published this a few weeks ago:
Despite not even being charged, Assange is the most rape-smeared man in modern history. 2x to 4x that of DSK, depending on how you measure.
He doesn’t need the media feeding his messiah complex too. Assange supporters could join with certain footballer’s fans and form a supergroup of whiny-arsed, stupid nincompoops with serious delusions of grandeur. And, then decamp to some remote island somewhere so the rest of us don’t have to listen to their shit.
As much as I hate the idea of giving this arsehole even more publicity, I think keeping silent whilst supposedly intelligent journalists, like, say, John Pilger, are spreading myths is immoral. We need to change the language we use to discuss this case. We need to stop confusing Assange the person with Wikileaks. We need to stop pretending that being right about one thing means that someone is right about everything. It is perfectly possible for Wikileaks to be an important political tool whilst recognising that Assange is a nincompoop. After all, he isn’t the only person who works for Wikileaks AND it’s not like Assange doesn’t already have form for leaving Wikileaks supporters high and dry. We need to start challenging the myth that celebrities don’t need to rape because they could get anyone woman they want. These are exactly the kinds of men who are rapists because they believe they are entitled to whatever they want whenever they want.
The only reason we should be talking about Assange is to support victims of rape; including the two women Assange sexually assaulted. We need to start taking real action in the face of rape myths to support women who have been raped. After all, we all know that one of the reasons many, many women refuse to report their rape is because they are afraid of being disbelieved. The woman Ched Evans raped has had her reputation and name smeared across Twitter by Ched Evans supporters. The two women in the Assange case, who deserve to have their anonymity protected, have had their real names trashed across the internet.
The only reason to be mentioning Assange’s name is to ensure that rape victims know just how many people believe them and will support them.
We need to make our voices louder than the rapists, rape apologists and their handmaidens.
And, we need to get Assange to shut the fuck up.
I’ve not read this poem before but it came up on my FB feed via Wipeout Misogyny. It is so incredibly beautiful and powerful.
Right To Life
A woman is not a pear tree thrusting her fruit in mindless fecundity into the world. Even pear trees bear heavily in one year and rest and grow the next. An orchid gone wild drops a few warm rotting fruit in the grass but the trees stretch high and wiry, gifting the birds forty feet up among inch long thorns broken atavistically from the smooth wood.
A woman is nota basket you place your buns in to keep them warm. Not a broodhen you can slip duck eggs under.
Not the purse holding the coins of your descendants till you spend them in wars.
Not a bank where your genes gather interest and interesting mutations in the tainted rain, any more than you are.
You plant corn and you harvest it to eat or sell. You put the lamb in the pasture to fatten and haul it into butcher for chops. You slice the mountain in two for a road and gouge the high plains for coal and the waters run muddy for miles and years.
Fish die but you do not call them yours unless you wished to eat them.
Now you legislate mineral rights in a woman.
You lay claim to her pastures for grazing, fields for growing babies like iceberg lettuce.
You value children so dearly that none ever go hungry, none weep with no one to tend them when mothers work, none lack fresh fruit, none chew lead or cough to death and your orphanages are empty. Every noon the best restaurants serve poor children steaks.
At this moment at nine o’clock a partera is performing a table top abortion on an unwed mother in Texas who can’t get Medicaid any longer. In five days she will die of tetanus and her little daughter will cry and be taken away.
Next door a husband and wife are sticking pins in the son they did not want. They will explain for hours how wicked he is, how he wants discipline.
We are all born of woman, in the rose of the womb we suckled our mother’s blood and every baby born has a right to love like a seedling to sun.
Every baby born unloved, unwanted, is a bill that will come due in twenty years with interest, an anger that must find a target, a pain that will beget pain.
A decade downstream a child screams, a woman falls, a synagogue is torched, a firing squad is summoned, a button is pushed and the world burns.
I will choose what enters me, what becomesof my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives.
I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand.
There is no birth control which is 100% effective. Most women know that every time they have PIV, they are risking pregnancy. We have sex because we enjoy it; despite the knowledge of all the possible lifetime consequences. We know the difficulties of choosing whether or not continue the pregnancy. We know that many women do not have a choice; whether it is because there is no access to abortion in their area or if poverty will force a “choice” on them. We know what pregnancy can do to our bodies in a “normal healthy” pregnancy; never mind one in which we could potentially have SPD, anaemia, gestational diabetes, hyperemesis, or pre-eclampsia. We know the all the possible consequences of giving birth; vaginally or via caesarian. We know the possibilities of post-natal depression, tearing and even the fact that domestic violence frequently starts or gets more severe during pregnancy. We know the statistics because we know the realities. We see them every day in our families and our friends.
The real question is why do so many men (and some women) assume that men should face no consequences for fathering a child? And, why does the government support the right of these losers to fuck women with impunity whilst slut-shaming those women for having sex? Why does the government think it should punish some women for withholding contact from abusive men without punishing those same men for the abuse or their failure to pay maintenance? Why do men get to do whatever they want whenever they want with no legal or moral requirement for them to act like an adult?
Here’s the thing: I think withholding maintenance is financial child abuse. If you help create a child, then you damn well better financially support them. Men who withhold maintenance to punish the mother are committing child abuse. Failure to support your child is neglect and should be legally recognised as such. If the primary carer, otherwise known as the mother, could go to prison for child neglect for failing to adequately feed and clothe their child, then why shouldn’t the erstwhile “father”? These men aren’t “good fathers” and the pretence that they are actively harms children. Children need good, kind men in their lives. They don’t need abusive arseholes who prioritise fancy cars and booze above the basic needs of their children.
And, yeah, I think men who don’t bother to financially support their child, shouldn’t be allowed access. Deliberately withholding support should be a legally valid reason to deny contact. Men who use access to control their ex-partners should be prohibited from contact. Men who commit domestic violence against their partners shouldn’t be allowed contact with their children. If you assault your partner, then you can’t ever be a good father. Good fathers are not abusive. Children deserve the right to be raised in a happy and secure home; not one in which their “father” gets to dictate everything that happens just because he has a penis.
Failing to support your children means you aren’t a real man. You deserve to be named and shamed. You are responsible for the feminisation of poverty.
You are the reason our old government had to subsidise single mothers through tax credits and income support. You are the reason that these same women will be pushed further into poverty by our current government of misogynistic arsehats. These are the people who are destroying our families; not single mothers who are desperately trying to feed and clothe their children whilst dealing with abusive men and a society that doesn’t think men should be held responsible for anything. Ever.
Canada has a much better track record with child maintenance than the UK. The assumption there is that men should pay to support their children in order to prevent women’s dependence on the welfare state. Perhaps our current government of nincompoops should have looked into that instead of slashing the welfare budget creating a whole new generation of vulnerable children being raised in poverty. These are the consequences for failure to pay in Canada