Out and About

extantecstasy:

Because the media reacts like this when we’re less than perfect. Because our emotional range gets stunted and limited.

Because so many aspects of our culture normalize rape on a subconscious level.

Because Kansas and Arizona pass bills that allows the beliefs of a doctor or pharmacist to trump the health of a woman. And because fetuses are becoming increasingly more important than the woman carrying them.

Because a state representative can compare a woman giving birth to livestock.

Because legislature that criminalizes pregnancy and abortion are being forced into discussion again and again. 

Because the rest of the world wants to know why American women aren’t angrier.

Because of bills that limit the time frame of my choices.

Because for some reason, religion is a legitimate reason to interfere in my uterus.

Because the Protect Life Act even exists.

Because women who miscarry or lose their babies are being charged with murder.

Because a woman who tried to commit suicide while pregnant was jailed and charged with feticide.

Because mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound probes are legally defined as rape.

Because ectogenesis technology could further remove birthing rights from a mother.

Because programs like this even have to exist.

Because birth control is suddenly a religious issue. Because women can be fired for using birth control as a contraceptive. Because the benefits of no-cost or inexpensive birth control are overlooked. Because ignorance necessitates posts like this.

Because again and again, organizations like the Medicaid Woman’s Health Program are seen as unnecessary. Because even the Susan G. Komen Foundation tried to stop funding Planned Parenthood. And if you think we’re past that, think again.

Because America ranks among a very small number of countries that don’t have paid, mandatory pregnancy leave. In fact, women routinely get forced out of their jobs for being pregnant.

Because public discourse from men like Rush Limbaugh is insulting and misogynistic and goes mostly unpunished.

Because the U.S. Military has some of the highest rape rates and most reprehensible policies for dealing with them.

Because women are bitches for saying no and sluts for saying yes. Because we are valued by how many or few cocks have been in our vaginas.

Because this is normal.

Because I don’t know a single woman who has not been harassed, derided, assaulted. Because I know many women and girls who have been raped. Because I’ve seen the long term, life long repercussions of sexual abuse.

Don’t tell me there isn’t a war on women. And don’t tell me the economy is more important than this. This barely scratches the surface.

Repeat after Soraya Chemaly: I am a woman and I have these human rights. The right to life. The right to privacy. The right to freedom. The right to bodily integrity. The right to decide when and how I reproduce.

seriouslyamerica:

A few people have alerted me to this video of toddlers and you can watch as a little boy hugs a little girl multiple times and each time he does, she pushes him away. A few of the times, he seems to be prompted to continue by the person with the camera. It’s a full two minutes and nothing changes – he hugs her, she pushes him away, he gets up and hugs her again and she pushes him away again.

Clearly this isn’t street harassment because they know each other and it isn’t sexual harassment because they’re toddlers and don’t have an understanding of all that, but it is a problematic situation in which adults are standing by and letting (encouraging?) this little boy to do something the girl doesn’t want him to do and then instead of helping her use her words to tell him to stop, they’re letting her push him down over and over.

The Good Men Project linked to the video via the How to Be a Dad’s site, where the author labels the post “My Life with Women” and writes, “This one symbolizes every attempt I’ve ever made at relationships with the fairer sex… …. …. until my wife.”

The he writes, “I could be the misogynist here and make some comments about just how badly the lady little treats this fine, young man, but women are pretty great. Maybe this kid needs to get a job, buy a sweet ride (Power Wheels, perhaps?) and learn some Karate, proving himself a worthy love interest?”

And I find that very problematic. Implying that this little toddler and all women who reject men are stuck-up, bitchy, and only after good-looking or rich men is harmful. Instead of looking at the actions and saying, this girl doesn’t want to be hugged, they are focusing on the poor boy and how mean she is. She may have 10 reasons or only 1 for why she doesn’t want to be hugged by him and all of them are valid and should be respected.

No means no, even when you’re a toddler. Especially when you’re a toddler. Fifteen percent of sexual assault and abuse victims are under age 12. Teaching kids how to protect themselves at a very young age is crucial to helping them know how to prevent or get help if they are victimized and can teach them skills they can use all of their life.

This attitude that women owe men attention no matter what contributes to how, when some men are ignored or rejected by the women they harass on the street, they call them a bitch, a ho, throw trash at them, chase them, or tell them they were ugly anyway. Instead of thinking logically about all the reasons why a woman may not respond positively to a man who hollers at her on the street, men feel it is an affront on their masculinity and lash out.

Another problematic aspect of the video is the number of people who applauded how persistent the kid is. Some people in the comments of posts talked about being disappointed he never got her in the end. Guess what, you don’t always “get the girl” in the end. No means no! 1,006,970 women and 370,990 men are stalked annually in the U.S. We need to teach kids, especially boys because they are the bulk of the stalkers, not to follow or keep hugging etc women and girls who clearly don’t want that attention.

So those are my thoughts on the video, what are yours?

source: http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/2012/05/toddlers/

FUCKING THIS.

Agreed!

(Source: captain-sonic)

trubr0wn:

bankuei:

People seem able to hold two objects in their hands, but not two thoughts in their heads.

1. Asian Americans were lynched, run out of town, murdered, deported, and put into concentration camps.  Asian Americans suffered terrible violence and oppression.

2. Asian Americans now suffer lesser oppression than many other POC, and are held up as a “model minority” as a tool to show why all the other POC are terrible people, and often recruited to engage in perpetuating the oppression.

#1 seems to always be the thing people want to erase.  It’s important to erase it, because it invalidates the sales job that #2 provides.   See, when there is less oppression, people succeed more.  (which, points out all too well, when you see other POC as collectives failing, then you have to go, “Oh, look, oppression, and where does it come from?”)

That said, erasing the past is part of what makes it so easy for many Asian Americans to hop on the anti-blackness bandwagon - when you forget that you, too, were a lynching target, then all the “Negroes LOL!” hate shit seems like it puts you above them.  

That is, of course, until someone decides you overstep your bounds and you realize, just cause they let you in the house, don’t mean they stopped considering you a slave…

So, this is how I look at it - when I see people don’t know about our history - I look at us for not studying it, for not acknowledging it (and calling out white power structures who inflicted it upon us), I look to the white people who erase that history every day, who minimalize it, who try to slap me on the back and tell me, or us collectively, we’re not “like those people over there”, and I look to the education system that makes that all happen.

You know who I look to way last at the end of that line?  The fellow POC who may be ignorant, but it’s not their fault between white erasure, and the all-too-often Asian American complicity in making it seem like we’ve always been the best of friends and not that they’ve gone hard on us and seem to never care when we end up dead.

I point to racism as a society wide version of an abusive family. You have the abuser, and a whole lot of the family trying to side with the abuser so they, too, don’t get hit.  And the one person in the family everyone blames, because no one is willing to stand up and acknowledge who the true source of suffering is.

There’s a whole lot of ways POC reinforce shit on each other, but as far as I’m concerned White Supremacy is the source and the head, and that will always get my first attention.

i wholeheartedly agree with all of this. i just hope some of my fellow asian-americans don’t use this as an excuse for their anti-blackness (which, if they get the point, they won’t).

stfuconservatives:

persephonemag:

Over the past months and years you have been making it pretty clear that you seem to not want women like me in your church. Lately you tell me that taking control of my reproductive system is wrong, that the women religious I hold in high regard for their work for the impoverished and ill are incapable of directing their own efforts to minister to Christ’s brothers and sisters, you advocate laws that deny rights to so many, and now you are launching an investigation into the Girl Scouts of America, a group that goes out of its way to be inclusive of girls of all walks of life, to see if they are somehow being “anti-Catholic.”

Shortened version: Catholic Church, your leadership is bad and you should feel bad.

-Jess

Oh man, this could have been written by any number of my actually Catholic relatives.

(Source: persephonemagazine.com)