I feel there should be an equivalent of Godwins Law for feminism, which is this: as soon as a man decides to play “devil’s advocate” in a discussion about rape, the discussion is over.
yo fuck yellow fever, fuck the hypersexualization of asian women, fuck human trafficking and the mail order bride industry, fuck the stereotype that asian women are submissive and subservient and how that god awful stereotype is perpetuated in most of the media and literature including asian women written by old white men, fuck the fact that the u.s still has bases in the philippines and other parts of asia where #rape cases of u.s soldiers assaulting the women there are rarely if ever brought to justice
fuck imperalism, fuck rape culture, fuck the patriarchy
FUCK ALL THAT SHIT
but happy asian-pacific heritage month HAHA. we are not objects, we are not things, and our heritage is not something to be erased!!!!
[tw: rape/victim blaming]
If owning a gun and knowing how to use it worked, the military would be the safest place for a woman. It’s not.
If women covering up their bodies worked, Afghanistan would have a lower rate of sexual assault than Polynesia. It doesn’t.
If not drinking alcohol worked, children would not be raped. They are.
If your advice to a woman to avoid rape is to be the most modestly dressed, soberest and first to go home, you may as well add “so the rapist will choose someone else”.
If your response to hearing a woman has been raped is “she didn’t have to go to that bar/nightclub/party” you are saying that you want bars, nightclubs and parties to have no women in them. Unless you want the women to show up, but wear kaftans and drink orange juice. Good luck selling either of those options to your friends.
Or you could just be honest and say that you don’t want less rape, you want (even) less prosecution of rapists.
If women covering up their bodies worked, Afghanistan would have a lower rate of sexual assault than Polynesia. It doesn’t.
If not drinking alcohol worked, children would not be raped. They are.
If your advice to a woman to avoid rape is to be the most modestly dressed, soberest and first to go home, you may as well add “so the rapist will choose someone else”.
If your response to hearing a woman has been raped is “she didn’t have to go to that bar/nightclub/party” you are saying that you want bars, nightclubs and parties to have no women in them. Unless you want the women to show up, but wear kaftans and drink orange juice. Good luck selling either of those options to your friends.
Or you could just be honest and say that you don’t want less rape, you want (even) less prosecution of rapists.
“
| — |
A Short Post on Rape Prevention (via brute-reason) Exactly. Be honest: You don’t give a shit about rape victims. You don’t fucking care. You make excuses for the rapists all the damn time. This is about policing women’s bodies and telling them to just ‘shut up and stop complaining about your rape because you deserved it’ (via sourcedumal) |
Men who harass women on the street are part of the same spectrum of the rape culture. They use their power and male privilege to intimidate women and restrict their equality. And, like abusers, they use it to control women. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how many women adjust where they walk, what time of night they walk, how many people they walk with, what they wear etc. Street harassers, like rapists, have been able to control women’s behaviour. Even women who have never been raped have learned very early that they are not safe on their streets and their communities.
“
| — | Hollaback Vancity (via funeral) |
There’s a poisonous double standard in our society which says that it’s reverse-sexist and wrong for women to feel threatened by creepy-awkward male behaviour because our fear implies that we hold the negative, stereotypical view that All Men Are Predators, but that if we’re raped or sexually assaulted by any man with whom we’ve had prior social interaction – and particularly if he’s expressed some sexual or romantic interest in us during that time – it’s reasonable for observers to ask what precautions we took to prevent the assault from happening, or to suggest that we maybe led the guy on by not stating our feelings plainly. The result is a situation where women are punished if we reject, avoid or identify creepy men, and then told it’s our fault if we’re assaulted by someone we plainly ought to have rejected, avoided, identified.
“
| — |
The Creepiness Question « shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows Example: Judge To Woman Sexually Assaulted By Cop: ‘When You Blame Others, You Give Up Your Power To Change’(via albinwonderland) |
The Awful Gender Politics of “We Saw Your Boobs”
So let me just get two things out of the way before I get really, really deep in detail about one specific aspect of the Oscars intro last night:
1) it was super, super-long and self-indulgent. Even by Oscar standards. It was like half an hour before anybody got an award and I laughed maybe twice. Seth McFarlane being delighted by himself is ok when sublimated into a half-hour cartoon, it’s not really tolerable when mugged at the screen by a guy in a suit for the same amount of time. It isn’t actually funny, and thus fails the first test: the test of comedy.
2) in the thick of the “We Saw Your Boobs” song, which must have lasted five minutes all by itself, this line jumped out at me: “Jodie Foster in ‘The Accused’”. And I thought to myself “wait, isn’t her nudity in that movie part of a *rape scene*?” It threw a really sour note into what was supposed to be light-hearted.
But the in-depth thing I want to talk about is the “reaction shots” to the song, pre-taped by game actresses who were playing along. The substance of these reaction shots highlights just what’s so awful about McFarlane singing this song: mortification from most of the actresses and a little fist-pump of triumph from Jennifer Lawrence when he says we haven’t seen hers.
The song, the reaction shots and Seth McFarlane’s general attitude are all based on a commonplace and awful trope: that sex is a contest, and that men win and women lose when sex or nudity happens. It’s an archaic, prudish, creepy concept that derives from twisted notions about female purity and women-as-property.
McFarlane thinks if he has seen a woman’s breasts, he has won and she has lost, and he is now entitled to gloat about it. Women whose breasts Seth McFarlane has seen are meant to feel humiliated and degraded by that fact, even though it’s expected of actresses to show their breasts to get work. Meet the expectations placed on you by your industry, talented actresses? Too bad you’ve now injured your own dignity such that Seth McFarlane can mock you about it in front of a billion people. Even if your character is naked *because she’s being raped* (see point 2 above), it still amounts to a victory for Seth McFarlane to have seen your breasts.
McFarlane presents the whole skit as something he shouldn’t do, which makes it even worse, because he wants to get credit for the cleverness of his idea while also pretending it is beneath him. Which is completely candy-ass and cowardly.
The sexuality-as-contest-between-men-and-women thing is bubbling underneath so much that is awful: rape culture, workplace harassment, slut-shaming, abuse-themed porn, pick-up artist culture, etc., etc. It sets aside women as a separate thing from a person, and makes them into an object that is “ruined” by sex or nudity.
In a culture with a healthy attitude about sex and sexuality, McFarlane’s song would have no sting at all, because nudity in film would be a completely different sort of animal: it wouldn’t be compulsory for actresses to draw that “I am pure and don’t ghet naked”/”I am fallen and thus am only good for getting naked” line, and there wouldn’t be shame associated with having been naked on screen. There would be no sting in McFarlane smugly taunting women whose boobs he’s seen.
We don’t, yet, live in that culture. And when Seth McFarlane plays “sex is a contest and YOU LOST, Kate Winslet” for laughs, it’s depressingly clear how far we are from it.Perfect commentary.
The real horror here is that Boys Don’t Cry was based on a true story. Brandon Teena was a real person, who was really brutally raped and killed. The scene that McFarlane is making a sexualized joke out of really happened to a real human being who really died. Because according to McFarlane, breasts exist for men’s amusement, and the total violation and murder of people with breasts is just a big joke because the bodies of women and FAAB people are just hilarious.
When McFarlane reduces Swank’s amazingly powerful performance down to a punchline about her body, he’s doing more than making light of her talent. He’s literally inviting people to laugh at rape and murder. He’s construing breasts as existing for men’s pleasure, whether sexual pleasure or just to make fun of, all the time—even when they belong to people, like Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry, who identify as men. Even when they are exposed as part of a badly injured body, like Charlize Theron in Monster—another film based on a true story. Even when they symbolize the racist sexualization of black women by white men, like Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball. Even when they’re visible during a violent gang rape, as passerby cheer the attackers on, like Jodie Foster in The Accused, once again based on a real-life attack. Even when, like Scarlet Johansson, another target of the boob song, personal nude photographs of them were leaked without consent.
When McFarlane reduces Swank’s amazingly powerful performance down to a punchline about her body, he’s doing more than making light of her talent. He’s literally inviting people to laugh at rape and murder. He’s construing breasts as existing for men’s pleasure, whether sexual pleasure or just to make fun of, all the time—even when they belong to people, like Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry, who identify as men. Even when they are exposed as part of a badly injured body, like Charlize Theron in Monster—another film based on a true story. Even when they symbolize the racist sexualization of black women by white men, like Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball. Even when they’re visible during a violent gang rape, as passerby cheer the attackers on, like Jodie Foster in The Accused, once again based on a real-life attack. Even when, like Scarlet Johansson, another target of the boob song, personal nude photographs of them were leaked without consent.
“
| — | Anya Josephs, Sexism is Not Actually “Edgy” | SPARK a Movement (via sparkamovement) |
These Women Are About To Tell You Some Things That Are Absolutely None Of Your Business
Holy shit women on fire. This video gave me chills. If you do nothing at all today - watch this!
ask one more time why we need feminism
I’m in tears. This is amazing.
Such an incredibly powerful video [TW for mention of rape]
TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF RAPE/VICTIM BLAMING IN RESPONSE TO JENNA MARBLES’ VIDEO ABOUT “SLUTS”
Once again, chescaleigh tells it like it is and saves the world.
(If you don’t already watch her, she makes awesome and super funny videos about race and gender and self-respect and everything worth discussing ever. Go.)
This woman is brave, amazing, and incredibly human. Let’s all go comment and send her lots of love, okay? Because there are already a hoard of victim-blaming arseholes in the comments. It’s hard for women to share in this day and age, especially to discuss an experience as difficult as this, on a forum as open and unmoderated as youtube. So spread the positivity my darlings ♡
