“Homophobia is not actually straight men being afraid of gay men. It’s straight men afraid of any man treating them like they treat a woman.” quoted in Manifest: Transitional Wisdom on Male Privilege as a viral cartoon
Feb 16 2023
Well-put, Charlotte Knowles
“Women need to recognize that their husband refusing to do any childcare, cleaning, or cooking is not just a result of ‘cultural differences’, it’s a result of him being an arsehole.”
“Living the Life of the Mind: General Strike? What About a Gendered Strike!?” Charlotte Knowles, The Philosophers’ Magazine 98 (2022)
Feb 15 2023
How to Negotiate a Raise (if you’re a woman)
Brilliant piece at McSweeney’s: How to Negotiate a Raise (if you’re a woman)
Feb 10 2023
“And I’ve had enough.” Speech by Sarah Field
“If you cannot define women, then you cannot defend them.”
“Its purpose [meeting of Leeds City Council] was not to tell Trans people what is best for them, but to tell politicians and lawmakers what is best for women.”
“And I’ve had enough.”
“So to be clear: men in this city can access a woman’s changing facility, toilet, leisure facility or support group or service – anywhere they are vulnerable, traumatised, undressed or asleep – because men might at some point feel like they are something which the council says is indefinable, but might mean he once wore something which may or may not be something a woman might also wear.”
“… several men out on the street openly watching pornography in their cars as women stumbled to them to be used and discarded for a fiver. During the day I was approached by punters three times in 10 minutes while simply standing by a car for some fresh air at 2pm. We are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds so men can buy the addicted bodies of the most vulnerable women in the city.”
“I’m often asked how I would feel if I was born in the wrong body. And I say, I’ve been feeling like that every single day for as long as I can remember. You only have to go into a shop, turn on the TV, open a magazine, click on the internet and women are assaulted with GET A BIKINI BODY, 12 WEEKS UNTIL YOUR CHRISTMAS PARTY BODY, GET THE BODY YOU DREAM OF, THE BODY OF SOMEONE 20 YEARS YOUNGER, THE BODY YOU DESERVE. Botox, surgery, hair removal, Photoshop, permanent makeup, designer vagina. We get it.”
“I’m truly sorry for any man who feels imprisoned and tortured by masculinity. But that is something for men to deconstruct, to dismantle and to overthrow. … But it is not the moral duty of women to facilitate that.
Read the whole thing here.
Feb 05 2023
MacKinnon on free speech – so very astute
“The free speech of men silences the free speech of women.”
from Feminism Unmodified (1987)
Feb 05 2023
The Brilliant Monty Python on trans …
And to think they said all this over 40 years ago. Yup. 1979.
Feb 01 2023
from Ejaculating Responsibly: a whole new way to think about abortion, by Gabrielle Blair – A MUST-READ
from Ejaculate Responsibly: A whole new way to think about abortion, Gabrielle Blair
[P]regnancy and abortion are not ‘a woman’s issue.’ men don’t play a minor or supporting role in pregnancy. Men’s lifelong continual fertility is the central driving force behind all unwanted pregnancies. [All.] p8
We treat ejaculation as something that happens at random, that is unintentional, that is impossible to anticipate or predict. p17
Women— [Actually, just read the whole of chapter 4: Ovulation is Involuntary, Ejaculation is not.] p19
We don’t mind if women suffer, as long as it makes things easier for men. [the title of chapter 10.] p48
When men choose to have condom-less sex, they are putting a woman’s body, health, social status, job, economic status, relationships, and even her life, at risk in order to experience a few minutes of slightly more pleasure. … Would men really choose a few moments of slightly more pleasure over risking a woman’s whole life? [italics mine] [Yes. Apparently.] p57
If Person One knows they have an STI and transmits it to their partner, Person Two, in many states that’s a crime, and Person One can be prosecuted by the state. Additionally, Person Two can bring a civil suit against Person One. If your bodily fluids have the potential to harm your partner [and she’s made an incontestable case that pregnancy has that potential] [actually, she establishes that harm is a certainty], it’s your responsibility to ensure they don’t. p70
If you have a son, his sperm can “infect” any woman he has sex with. … Pregnancy and childbirth are known to kill women. Pregnancy and childbirth are highly likely to leave permanent scars and cause future health problems … Unplanned pregnancy and childbirth can have a significant negative impact on the quality of life for the future child and their parents. A man’s sperm can cause a huge amount of damage. p71
Don’t ask: Why don’t women pick better men? Instead, ask: Why are there so many abusive men? And: Why don’t we teach men not to abuse? p87 [Though I’d also ask: Why do they have to be taught not to abuse?]
“Patriarchy teaches us that sex, for women is a giveaway, while for men it is a takeaway. She saves herself, gives herself to the right one, and then her virginity is lost. In this equation, there is nothing in sex that’s for her to take. Whereas he takes and scores and there is nothing in sex for him to give. When her mind is programmed to give, she struggles to say ‘no’. When his mind is programmed to take, he struggles to accept ‘no’.” (from The 8th List of Shit That Made Me a Feminist, Farida D.) p87
I’m trying to imagine how our culture would react if men with children peed themselves every time they jumped or sneezed [a common ‘side-effect’ of pregnancy and childbirth]. I don’t think the medical community would be okay with that. I think the issue would be solved by now. p93
I think it’s safe to say that if sex were as risky for men as it is for women—with an unwanted pregnancy potentially leading to loss of social status, loss of career, a disruption of their education, physical disability, death, and the permanent responsibility for another human—that men would insist on having a choice in the matter. [Yeah. Why I wrote What Happened to Tom.] p96
If a man ejaculates irresponsibly and causes an unwanted pregnancy, he faces zero consequences. He can walk away at any time, and our current culture doesn’t really do much (or anything?) to discourage it. [Yeah. Given p91-95, impregnating should be consider premeditated aggravated assault, the full damages of which to be determined after childbirth, and putting male DNA on record at birth would enable charges to be confirmed.] p107
Our society is set up to protect men from the consequences of their own actions [like we do for children]. Our laws and policies could not be better designed to protect men who abandon the pregnancies they cause. p109 [see the full list of evidence on p109-110]
Sperm should be considered a dangerous bodily fluid that can cause pain, a lifetime of disruption and even death for some. Sperm can create a person. Sperm can kill a person. Sperm cause pregnancy, and pregnancy and childbirth can result in physical and mental health issues for women, as well as negative impacts to her social status, job status, and financial status. p112
Jan 31 2023
And again, and again …
“… highest population density” (p57, Climate Wars, Harald Welzer) should read “… highest frequency of men fucking women”.
“a dramatic rise in population figures” (p63, ditto) should read “a dramatic rise in men fucking women”.
I see this again and again and again … This stork/cabbage patch theory of the origin of life. It’s like men have a complete disconnect between putting their sperm into women’s vaginas and creating human beings.
Is it because they don’t personally experience, physically or emotionally or (to the same extent) financially, pregnancy and childbirth? But what about raising children? Ditto (to the same extent)? But there’s a lot of other stuff they don’t personally experience but can imagine, anticipate, quite well.
Jan 31 2023
from Climate Wars, Harald Welzer
“If one were to imagine the ‘go on as usual’ strategy at the level of individuals, one would immediately think of a sociopath who has no problem consuming seventy times more than anyone else while largely relying on their raw materials — or someone who uses fifteen times more energy, water and food than the less well-off and discharges nine times more pollutants into the atmosphere. Such a personality would also be totally unconcerned about the lives of his children and grandchildren, accepting that, because of him and his kind, 852 million people worldwide go hungry and more than 20 million are refugees.” from Climate Wars: Why people will be killed in the twenty-first century, Harald Welzer (p165)
fiction
