May 10 2023
from Jack Holland’s A Brief History of Misogyny
(All quotes are from Jack Holland’s A Brief History of Misogyny)
“It was a battle for the ultimate mechanism of control within a woman’s body—her reproductive cycle. For a woman, this right is the most crucial of all, and the key to achieving real autonomy. Misogyn denies her autonomy; her subordination depends on the lack of it.” (p237) Well-put.
“Before, men had women more or less at their mercy in deciding whether or not to employ condoms, the most common contraceptive device. In theory, of course, a woman could refuse to have intercourse with a man unless he wore one, but in practice men bullied, coerced, bllackmailed or otherwise pressurized women into taking risks for the sake of the man’s pleasure.” (p238) Which is why men should never be trusted with any sort of competing goods decision: they think that their ten seconds of pleasure (or, as is often the case, relief) outweighs a woman’s nine months of pregnancy, seven-plus hours of labour (with various physical injuries, temporary and permanent, up to and including death) (as well as the emotional pain due to forced motherhood), five years of round-the-clock vigilance and nurturing, and another ten years of care.
“When I told people I was writing a history of misogyny, I got two distinct responses and they were divided along gender lines. From women came an expression of eager curiosity about what I had found. But from those men who knew what the word ‘misogyny’ meant—” (p268) Stop right there. Because that pretty much says it all.
“What history teaches us about misogyny can be summed up in four words: pervasive, persistent, pernicious, and protean.” (p270) Again, well-put.
“Had the victims of [Gary Ridgeway’s] murderous rampage been Jews or African Americans, there would have been a national alarm sounded, and acres of print covered with soul-searching questions about the state of race relations in the United States as we enter a new millennium. But the actions of a Ridgeway, or a Jack the Ripper, are usually left to a psychiatrist to explain. Their urge to kill women is seen as an aberration when in truth it is simply an intensification of a commonplace prejudice.” (p271)
Apr 25 2023
Like night and day indeed.
2 women entrepreneurs who invented a fake male cofounder say acting through him was ‘like night and day’
“It was like night and day,” Dwyer told Titlow of working through Mann. “It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with.”
Read the whole piece here:
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/witchsy-founders-created-fictional-male-cofounder-2017-8?amp&r=US&IR=T
Apr 22 2023
“What would I be …”
“What would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?” Jessica Valenti, Sex Object
Apr 20 2023
about trans’women’ competing in women’s sports
“One TIM actually tried to explain that as someone truly dysphoric, he’d NEVER want to be on a girl’s team. Beating them all and crushing them with ease would only underline his male body, not validate his feminine identity. Mr. Be Kind didn’t understand this and asked why he wouldn’t want to be on a team with girls who shared his “gender identity” and the TIM added that he’d feel ashamed for cheating girls, especially with his male body. And that’s a very good point- I don’t believe that men who enter women’s sports are dysphoric in the least. They’re very happy with their male bodies.”
from https://www.ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/18221/how-come-it-s-never-on-trans-people-to-be-kind
Apr 16 2023
Language Matters
Compare ‘So he fucked her and now she’s knocked up’ with ‘So he made her pregnant and now they’re saying it’s his fault’.
Apr 15 2023
from Rebecca Solnit’s Recollections
From Rebecca Solnit’s Recollections of my Non Existence
“To be a young woman is to face your annihilation in innumerable ways ….” (p4)
“I was often unaware of what and why I was resisting ….” (p4)
Yes. Let’s not understate the value of having words for what we experience. The words ‘sexism’ and ‘misogyny’ didn’t always exist, so it was hard to identify, let alone talk about, what it was …
“The fight wasn’t just to survive bodily … but to survive as a person possessed of rights, including the right to participation and dignity and a voice.” (p4)
“… back when I was trying not to be that despised thing, a girl, and ….” (p6)
“sometimes at the birth and death of a day, the opal sky is no color we have words for, the gold shading into blue without the intervening green that is halfway between those colors, the fiery warm colors that are not apricot or crimson or god, the light morphing second by second so that the sky is more shades of blue than you can count as it fades from where the sun is to the far side where others color are happening.” (p7)
Best description of a sunset (in San Francisco) I’ve ever read!
“What is rape but an insistence that the spatial rights of a man, and by implication men, extend to the interior of a woman’s body …,” (p77-8)
So well-put.
“Most urban women, you know, live as though in a war zone….” (p98)
Yes. I’ve often said living as a woman in our society is like living in an occupied country. And men have no idea. Most men.
“There are three key things that matter in having a voice: audibility, credibility, and consequence. … Gender violence is made possible by this lack of audibility, credibility, and consequence.” p229, 231
fiction
