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Always in My Head: A London Calling Series - The New Year (Death Cab for Cutie)

Happy New Year, Readers!

I’ve been struggling to get through some parts on ITHOLA but didn’t want to leave you without a bit of New Year’s Eve fun so here it is. I hope you enjoy it!!

New Year’s Eve 2017: Harry

The New Year (Death Cab for Cutie)

2017 is coming to a close and I feel like it just started yesterday. It’s been a wacky and wonderful year that I honestly have a hard time believing that it was my life. I watched the people I love do absolutely incredible things that make them happy while getting the opportunity to travel the world while supporting the man I love. I wanted to take a minute to look back on the year that was and bring you along on the journey with me.

If there was a theme to this year it was new adventures. Kim and Nate brought twins into this world. Cam and Alyssa had a beautiful baby girl. Lizzy expanded the bookshop to include a real cafe as part of it and not just me with an espresso machine. Frankie and Patrick painted the bar, which isn’t really an adventure but TOTALLY was. Lyla styled and did makeup for her very first magazine cover! And my boys…oh my boys have had the best year ever. From #1 singles, albums and movies to babies to sold out tours. These four dudes have gone on to blow the minds of the people who love them with the successful next chapter in life that they’ve each created on their own. And while we know I love all four of those guys that allowed me to follow them around with a camera, sing show tunes at the top of my lungs in the streets of foreign countries, and be the crazy person that I am, one of them holds the keys to my heart and soul. It’s hard to put into words just how proud of him I am. He was in a film that debuted at #1, he had an extremely successful album, both commercially and critically that most important of all was loved by his fans around the world, a sold out world tour, a second planned and on sale, appeared on Saturday Night Live, and the list of things he’s done keeps going from there. And then there were my adventures. I toured the world with the man I love which meant I got to photograph the world with that man by my side. I am getting the chance to write more which fills my heart up so much. I got to spend time with my family and be with the people I love most in the world as they do amazing things.

So in honor of adventures here are a few photos of the adventures that H and I have had this year.

Sometimes the two of us just have fun with a camera when we are trapped places and can’t get out an explore, which sadly happens more than I would like. But this man is the greatest model a photographer could ask for. And this photo is one of my favorites. The way he’s looking at me through his hair, just about ready to play with his lower lip because he knows it makes me crazy, that as soon as I took the photo he started laughing me and chasing me around the room. This photo captured a moment at the beginning of this crazy year that was shared just between the two of us but was worthy of the world being let in on. H, thank you for supporting my work in more ways than just reading what I write or looking at my photos but allowing my work to be part of how you show the world what you’re up to. You’ve been my biggest cheerleader for the last almost 3.5 years and I’m so grateful to have you.

Those Styles kids should be models. I swear. My foray into freelance writing that has happened over the last several years (not just on my blog but in other places) has been strictly because these two humans believed in me and encouraged me to write and not just write about my life on a blog but write about things that matter to me. To use the voice and platform I’ve been given to make a positive impact on the world. They have helped me through some dark times and been with me to celebrate during the light. Over the years, Gemma has become one of my best friends and I feel lucky that the man I love has a sister who I love. Thank you for your endless support of me, your brother and our relationship. We are both unbelievably lucky to have you.

So I mentioned those times where we are stuck inside and can’t go anywhere. I’m not the only one looking through the viewfinder on a camera during those moments. H thinks he’s a fashion photographer sometimes and starts directing me around hotel rooms and rentals and our houses to make me pose for him. He’s crazy and I love him but some of those pictures are amazing. You’ve all seen them before, placed into my blogs so you can see my face on occasion, you just perhaps didn’t realize he was the photographer because he refuses to take credit. This is one of the photos where I feel he truly captured me. The smile on my face is because of him being goofy. I very rarely stop smiling during those moments because it’s as if the world stops and the two of us are able to just be for a while. Thank you for always keeping me laughing, Dimples.

That moment where all our dreams came true. When H’s dreams come true, my dreams come true. But the night at The Troubadour was the night that LITERALLY MY DREAMS CAME TRUE. I mean we’ve gone to see Fleetwood Mac together several times, I’ve met everyone and they are truly magnificent people who are loving and welcoming to these two crazy kids who were raised on their music. But getting to see my idol share a stage with my fiancé was one of those moments where I nearly stopped breathing. Her voice soundtracked so much of my life, her style influenced mine, the way she lived and loved showed me that growing up and following society’s rules didn’t have to be in the cards for me. From the very beginning Harry has known that I wanted to grow up to be Stevie Nicks and he’s loved and encouraged that in me. I can still close my eyes and hear their voices together. I want to thank every fan who posted a video or took a photo because I only managed to get these two because I was in the balcony with Harry’s guests BAWLING MY EYES OUT. I am sure everyone remembers my absolutely incoherent blog post about that night, I still haven’t found the right words yet and just manage to ramble on about how much I love Stevie Nicks. Stevie, thank you for your support of Harry and the friendship you’ve provided to him. Thank you for not thinking I’m a freak with how much I love you. And thank you so much for this moment. Watching him get emotional on stage was something I knew he was fighting but you have meant so much to him over his lifetime that having you share a stage with him was something he hadn’t ever imagined. You made our dreams come true.

If a moment could be bigger than Stevie (which is debatable) it would be one of these two moments. To listen to Harry and his band perform in these two legendary locations gave me goosebumps. Abbey Road Studios in London and Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center. The best of the best have performed in these places. I shed a tear during both and I had my Mom with me during both. Having her be able to travel with us in her retirement has been an absolute joy…pun intended. Harry loves to make really bad jokes about my mother and her name being Joy. I’m sure that due to his stand up career during his shows you can all imagine just how weird my life is sometimes. Thank you to everyone at Abbey Road, that helped film the documentaries for H’s album, and everyone at SNL for allowing me to hideout with my camera. Someday he and I are going to look back on these photos and wonder how this was our life. You’ve all made it special, so thank you for being part of it.

Alyssa and Cam welcomed their first little girl this year. Charlotte is the light of their lives and mine! To see my best friend, my sissa, become a mother has been incredible to witness. She’s a natural and this little girl is already breaking the hearts of every boy in town, including her Uncle Harry’s. What can I say? She loves me more! I hated being away for so much of Alyssa’s pregnancy and had even offered to come back home for the final month before Lotte came into the world, but Alyssa insisted I spend the time with Harry. I did manage to get back just in time to be there when Lotte was born. Watching one of my best friends as she created life was literally one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever witnessed. Yes, I was in the delivery room with her. No, Cam was not. He passed out and hit his head. It’s a good thing I’d been Nate’s back up for birthing classes with Kim! Alyssa, thank you for having my back since high school, for being my best friend in the universe and allowing me to spoil the shit out of your little girl. Having you with me in London has been amazing and I’m so glad I get to be around to watch Lotte grow up. Cam, thank you for taking care of these two beautiful girls. I’m glad you are here to protect them when I am gone. Charlotte Ann, my beautiful little girl, you are going to rule this world someday. Watching you grow up is going to be so much fun.

Watching my best friends go through pregnancy and childbirth was such a beautiful thing. Kim was literally glowing through her entire pregnancy. Nate will point out that she was often glowing with rage at him for getting her ‘knocked up with two boys’. But the moment those two boys screamed their way into the world she was in love. Getting the opportunity to photograph her during her pregnancy was an honor. And those Salisbury twins own my heart. Harry and I both miss all of the babies that are part of this crazy family we have so much when we are away from home for extended periods of time. I think they are all already used to FaceTime and think that anytime Aunt Annie and Uncle Harry come to visit that there will be a new toy, onesie or stuffy to give them. What can I say? Guilt from being away from home when your friends’ kids are growing up is real. Kim, thank you for allowing me to take these photos. For not killing me when I stole some of your candy when you were pregnant and for letting me love on your boys as if they were mine. You have been so supportive as I’ve gone through a rough part of the road of life and being able to be part of these boys’ lives has made the road smooth out.

And now you can see why I am so in love with them! Look at those faces. Max got a little tired of dealing with me trying to take their photos and face planted into the bed. I’ve taken so many photos of these little guys in their short time on earth that by the time they are older and Kim and Nate are required to find old pictures for something they will probably have several million to choose from. Max and Jack, Aunt A and Uncle H love you both so much. We can’t wait to spend the evening with your Mummy and Daddy tonight to snuggle and love on you while we welcome in the new year.

Speaking of adorable twins…my better half made a music video that involved children and puppies. One of those children was dressed as him. I feel like the entire day everyone kept commenting that she looked like she could be Harry’s child, which is sometimes hard for me to deal with, but on that day it wasn’t. She did look like she could be his and boy did her curls make me miss his! All of those kids were wonderful to work with and Harry had to take a few of the puppies out of my bag on the way home from set because I wanted to bring them all home. I love animals and can’t wait for a time in life where we are home enough to be able to have one. When we were home for an extended period of time at the beginning of the year and last year I worked with a local shelter to foster some kittens and let me tell you, watching Harry bottle feed a litter of baby kittens is one of the cutest things on the planet and is as close as we are going to get to midnight feedings. Thank you to the cast and crew of Kiwi for bringing the weird sugar induced visions of my love to life. This was one of the strangest sets I’ve ever been on and I loved every minute of it.

Another one of Harry’s photos from this year. I even let him help pick a few of them for this blog, this was the one he insisted on being in here. This was me over our New Year’s vacation last year. We opted to spend the time somewhere warm with Harry’s Mum and Robin. It was a great way to spend time with the two of them and get them away from home for a while. It was truly one of the most wonderful vacations we’ve taken and I loved the chance to spend time with Harry’s family. H, thank you for always making sure that there’s a photo of me and forcing me to get out from behind the camera. You are the best there is.

This photo is framed and displayed in a place of prominence in all of our living rooms. Harry is so lucky to have such wonderful parents, but beyond that he was lucky to have had Robin as a part of his life for so long. His sense of humor always had me laughing, often at Harry’s expense. His smile was infectious and the way that he waited inside the door for us to arrive and always engulfed me into the biggest hug is something I miss so much. Robin loved me like I was his own daughter and always made me feel like I was part of the family despite what he often referred to as the longest engagement the universe has ever seen. Last spring when Harry and I had gone home to visit I sat with Robin in the garden talking while Harry had gone to run errands with his Mum. I told Robin that I’d begun to think Harry and I should get married soon. That we didn’t need anything special, just a courthouse and a day and that I wanted Robin to pick it. I’ve honestly never even told Harry about this conversation, so babe you might want some Kleenex. Robin told me that he wasn’t going to let me decide to marry the boy just because he was sick. That Harry and I needed to live our lives by our rules and no one else’s. That life was too short to make plans for other people and that when the time was right and we were ready to be married that it would happen but not because of him. He also then told me that secretly he enjoyed watching Harry contort his face every time someone asked him if we’d set a date yet, he just awkwardly answers that we are happy and in love and we’ll send out a save the date when there’s one to save. You’d think after a three year engagement that question would stop, it hasn’t. Anne, your strength during this time is inspiring. You are the rock that this entire family unit is built upon and we are beyond blessed to have you as our matriarch. You are an incredible woman who I count lucky to have in my life. Robin, we all miss you dearly, this holiday season has been dreadful without you there to pick on Harry with me. I promise you that I haven’t let this year go to his head, my gushing in this blog is not a great example of how I’ve behaved without you here. I have to be kind to him on occasion, you know that.

Lou modeling the 2017 treat people with kindness tour tee. The fact that my love has started to get people to focus on kindness makes my heart explode with pride. I see so many people in this world live life guarded because of the fear that the other people they encounter in their day have hearts filled with hate. If people start filling their heart with love and kindness and acting with that in mind the world will be a better place. To my partner-in-crime on the road, Lou, having you with us to start and end this year of touring was a blessing we both are grateful for. You mean the world to us and we miss you when you aren’t there but we are so glad you’re able to be with Lux and your family. Thank you for teaching me the tricks to styling his hair so when he can’t figure out how to do it himself he doesn’t kill me when it falls on my shoulders.

Harry has incredible friends. Friends who have clearly lost their damn minds and let him take over a television show several times. There was the weeklong residency in Los Angeles, performing on the rooftop in London and then the last minute fill in a few weeks ago to help out as James welcomed the newest addition to the family. I appreciate that the crew of Late Late let me run around with my camera all week and take photos to document this part of Harry’s career. To Ben, James and the entire crew at Late Late, thank you! From the bottom of my heart, thank you! You gave Harry a platform to be 100% himself, a stage to sing on, and a place where if the audience didn’t laugh there was a laugh track waiting to be added in post production.

There was this big adventure that happened, Harry became an actor. While the adventure itself took place in 2016 but the world got to see it this year. During the London premiere I took a few moments to allow Harry to walk the red carpet by himself and with Anne and snuck to the camera line where I could snap a few photos. He is so at ease on a red carpet. Chatting with journalists, signing autographs, taking selfies, and making sure that his Mum and I don’t feel like he’s left us alone. While I was occasionally allowed around set to watch what he was doing and was always there to listen to him decompress from the day getting to see him on screen as Alex in Dunkirk was such a mind blowing experience for me. His talent was incredible. The way he looked in that uniform nearly killed me. Though I’m still not 100% sure I can handle the different accent. Sometimes to throw me off if I am acting distracted he will start to slide back into Alex’s accent. A HUGE thank you to Chris, Emma, the cast and crew of Dunkirk. Thank you for believing in Harry and allowing him the chance to take this adventure. Your film is magnificent and I’m looking forward to the next time we all get to be together because I miss each of you dearly.

So Nate is kind of a big deal. He will tell everyone that whether they already know this or not. But this year he actually became a big deal. He closed a record setting case last spring and was featured in several publications because the ‘hot lawyer’ became a thing. When asked for photos Nate refused to work with anyone other than me so I was given the opportunity to have my work published by several national publications, mostly geared towards lawyers, but some were tabloids talking about the ‘hot lawyer’ who was working his butt off to help people. I am so proud of Nate and how hard he has fought to turn his legal career into something that meant more to him. Nate, thank you for being you. One of the best people I know, someone who supports me (and Harry) endlessly, and for being one of the best friends I could ask for. I still don’t always understand what you’re saying but I love you anyway. Thank you for loving Kim and those boys the way you do. Thank you for being a best mate to Harry and standing up for him during those moments where I’m being utterly ridiculous and a horrendous bitch, your words not mine.

This year was clearly the year of my friends kicking absolute ass. The crew at O’Brien’s was featured in a local publication and I was given the opportunity to photograph them. My friends are gorgeous and the recognition they received this year for the things that O’Brien’s is doing to change their game is well deserved. Niki was awarded a few different awards for the menu she has put together and is getting a TON of attention for her amazing food. With Cam and Alyssa behind the bar and Patrick and Frankie running the entire place it’s doing amazing things. And this year they were also the greatest friends I could’ve asked for. From hosting a private album release party for Harry to every birthday party of our little crazy family, O’Brien’s continues to be our home. To all of you, your friendship means the world to me. Thank you for being there through both good and bad and always reminding not to do that shot of Jameson. I love you all and can’t wait for tomorrow when we all get to enjoy time in the bar together in our sweatpants!

Watching this man get on stage and perform every night is incredible. I am so proud of how hard he works and how determined he is to be himself and be the best that he can be. From night one of the tour in San Fran to Radio City and every date around the world he gave 100% every night. His devotion to his craft is inspiring. I can’t wait for the next tour to start so I can see him back on stage again every night, doing what he loves.

I got to see two of my favorite guys perform on the same night at the iconic Hollywood Bowl. Getting the chance to photograph Niall as a solo artist and spend time with he and Lyla for a few hours in the midst of all of this crazy was so wonderful. It made me miss having them on the road with me every day. And seeing the embrace that the boys had as Harry walked off of the stage brought a tear to my eye. They are still so close despite this massive change in their lives. True friendship is the best kind to have.

And since I know he’s reading this I’m going to speak directly to my love for a little bit. Hope you all don’t mind. Harry, thank you for making the last 365 days the best they could’ve been. Despite us experiencing an immense amount of heartbreak this year you moved through life with a smile on your face and reminded me constantly to have a smile on mine as well. You’ve supported me in my dreams by doing everything from being my photographer to being my editor. You’ve held my hand and stood beside me every day of the last year and I don’t even know how to explain how lucky that makes me feel. To be the woman you’ve chosen to be your partner in life is a gift I am still not sure I deserve. I love you with all of my heart and will love you forever. Thank you for being you and for loving me and encouraging me to be me.

Thank you to each and everyone of you who reads this blog. Your support through the last year has not gone unnoticed. You mean the world to me. I can’t wait for the adventures that 2018 will bring and for the opportunity to share them with you. Peace and Love, Annie

Oh and one final selfie of the year before we head out to the Salisbury residence to ring in the New Year with the people we love.

I put the iPad back down on the kitchen counter and walked up the stairs to the office. I found Annie sitting at her desk, her back to the door as she scheduled the various posts for this blog to get shared out through her social media over the next few days. I’d made her promise that as soon as this went up she wasn’t working until at least January 3rd. We needed some alone time and a chance to also be with friends. It truly had been a wonderful, yet rocky, year. She’d stood by my side through it all. The fear of an album that wasn’t what the world expected from me, showing a new side of me with my acting, taking the stage alone for the first time, everything we’d gone through with her health, and the hardest part of all, losing my stepfather. It didn’t matter the punch life through at us she bobbed and weaved like an expert fighter.

“Bravo, Sugar.” She spun in the chair to look at me and smiled as she realized the look on my face was a good one.

“You liked it?” I pulled her out of the chair and sat down before pulling her onto my lap so I could hold her as she did the last bit of work. I kissed her shoulder before resting my head on her back.

“I loved it. The photos that you chose were incredible and seeing the way you look at the world is always something I enjoy. You made me laugh, you made me cry and you made me so excited for the adventures we are going to have next year.”

“It’s going to be an amazing year. We are going to see the world together.”

“Having you with me makes it all better.”

“It makes not sleeping in my own bed every night worth it.” She clicked away on the keyboard. “So are you sad we aren’t going out tonight?” With three kids under one in this group plus all of Frankie and Lizzy’s kids we had all decided staying in was the perfect idea. Everyone was bringing food to Kim and Nate’s for a night of games, music, and perhaps a quieter New Year’s Eve celebration. Though knowing the group of adults that would be there, quiet didn’t seem like an accurate description.

“I’m not sad. I’m excited about a night with our friends and all of the kids. As long as we are spending the evening together it will be perfect.” She turned a bit so she could kiss me.

“You are perfect.”

“I’m not but thank you,” I replied. “Are you almost ready to leave?”

“Yeah, I just need to grab my purse from upstairs. Oh and I got party supplies that are in here.” She gestured to a few tote bags sitting on the sofa in her office.

“I’ll grab those, you go get your purse.” I kissed her one more time before she stood up and hurried up the stairs. I grabbed the bags and saw that they had goofy glasses, streamers and sparklers loaded inside. If there was one thing this woman of mine loved, it was an excuse to give party favors to her friends and take pictures. I headed downstairs and started to get all of the food we’d made for tonight ready to load into the car.

It was a few moments later that Annie came into the kitchen, she looked like a knock-out today. The girls had all decided that even though we were staying in tonight that we needed to have festive attire, or at least they were trying to convince us of that. I put on jeans and a comfy jumper knowing that it was going to be a cold night. Annie had on gold sequin leggings, a black tee that hung off her shoulders and had some metallic saying about champagne on it and some fuzzy furry or feathery jacket. She had heels on but I’d caught ridiculously sparkly slippers in the bag of stuff she was taking to the Salisbury’s house.

“You look cute,” I said as I slid my arms around her and snuggled my face into her neck. “You look cozy in your jumper. Though I’m admittedly disappointed that you didn’t go for sequin bowtie I left upstairs.”

“Oh I thought that was for later when we get home.”

“It wasn’t but I definitely like the way you think.”

“And I like the way your bum looks in these pants.”

“Oh do you?” she asked as she turned around. I squeezed her butt a little making her giggle. “Thank you for this.”

“For what?”

“This life. Letting me decide that we get to be home in England for New Year’s. I know that LA and the party scene call you during times like this but being here with our little handpicked family and all of the babies, it’s just what I wanted.”

“I know it is. And it’s definitely the way we should celebrate this year. Now let’s get everything loaded in the car and head out.”

“Alright.” We put everything in and Annie hopped into the driver’s seat and we took off for Nate and Kim’s. We pulled in at the same time that Cam and Alyssa did. I jumped down and headed over to give Alyssa a hug.

“Happy New Year,” I said as I kissed her cheek.

“Happy New Year to you too, Harry,” she replied. I opened the back door and ducked in to see Charlotte bundled up tightly.

“How is my favorite little girl?” I asked as she started to giggle. “I’ll take that as ‘wonderful and so happy to see you Uncle Harry.’” I scooped her up and kissed the top of her head. Alyssa looked like she was ready to take her. “I’ve got her, don’t worry about it. I haven’t seen her in a good 36 hours.”

“Alright, Uncle Harry. You can have the first round of snuggle time.”

“Thank you,” I replied. She walked over to Annie to give her a hug. Cam, Alyssa and Annie grabbed everything out of the car as we headed inside.

“Hello!” Kim yelled as I opened the door. She appeared in the entryway and started laughing. “How is it that you’re the one walking in with the baby?”

“I kidnapped her from the backseat. She sent me a text on the way over here saying she was excited to see me and no one else.” Kim started to laugh before leaning in to give me a hug.

“The boys might get jealous if Lotte gets all of the love. They missed their Uncle Harry when they had to go visit Nana and Papa for the week.”

“I missed them too. I think I can manage all three of them.”

“I’m sure you can,” Kim said as she laughed even harder. Everyone else came through the door with the bags of stuff they all had.

“Thanks for all of your help, Dimples,” Annie groaned.

“No problem, Sugar. I knew that the hardest thing to carry was going to be Charlotte so I bit the bullet for the team.”

“I’m gonna get no time with my kid tonight, am I?” Cam asked.

“Probably not,” I replied. “She loves me most.” And as if I’d timed it perfectly, Charlotte squealed with delight and snuggled into me.

“She definitely does,” Cam added. I headed into the living room where I found Nate on the floor with both of the boys.

“Happy New Year, man,” I said as I walked towards him. He stood up and pulled me into a hug.

“Happy New Year to you too, buddy. Thanks for coming tonight.”

“Nowhere else in the world we’d rather be tonight than here with all of you,” I said.

“I doubt that you’re telling the truth but I’ll take it.” It didn’t take long for Annie’s bag of tricks to get unloaded. She had a photo booth set up, enough streamers to decorate for every kid in this group’s birthday, and noisemakers galore. By the time Frankie and Lizzy strolled in with their kids and Niki arrived with Tom everything was set up. It was going to be the perfect evening for our little family to spend together. Eventually I was forced into letting Lotte spend time with other people at the party which was okay because it meant I got to eat and roam around without worry about the tiny girl in my arms. We all sat down to eat dinner together and Nate stood to give a toast. “Thank you to each of you for choosing to spend your New Year’s Eve here with us.”

“Nowhere else we’d rather be,” Annie said as she poured champagne into both her glass and mine.

“I know that’s a lie,” Nate continued through a bit of laughter. “We could all be making tips at the bar, having a wild night out, or celebrating in some exotic locale somewhere. Yet, we’ve all decided here is where we want to be. It’s been quite an exciting year. Three new little ones to this group.”

“Sorry we are late,” came an Irish accent from the front door. I leaned back in my chair to see Niall helping Lyla out of her jacket.

“What are you two doing here?” Lizzy asked standing up to hug her sister. “You’re supposed to be in Los Angeles or something.”

“We decided last minute that this was where we wanted to be,” Lyla said as she hugged her sister tightly.

“Literally last minute. Our flight landed about two hours ago. Enough time to get home, shower, and throw something together to bring. I hope you don’t mind that we are here,” Niall added.

“Not at all, mate,” Nate replied as he hugged him. “We are glad you both chose to be here.”

“Nowhere else in the world we belonged,” Niall said with a giant smile spreading across his face. Everyone from the table stood to hug our last minute arrivals and make room for them at the giant table in Kim and Nate’s dining room.

“Now where was I,” Nate started. “Oh right, we added three new little ones to this family. We are in the midst of the final stages of planning the biggest wedding Ireland will ever see. We’ve got a couple of chart topping artists at the table. Two ladies who are embarking on a new adventure with a lifestyle brand. A bonafide writer and photographer. The staff from the greatest bar Camden has ever seen. But what makes this special is that we are all here together. Our little functionally dysfunctional family is here to celebrate the end of a year together and start the next. While we’ve had a lot of wonderful things happen we’ve also been through a lot of hard times this year.”

Nate looked at Annie and I as she rested her head on shoulder. I kissed the top of her head. I squeezed her tightly. This group had gotten us through the greatest and hardest year we’d ever seen together. While there were three new little ones in this group there was one that was missing and always would be. There would never be a little version of Annie or myself present at these functions. We started the year off thinking that we would be starting a family only to find out that we weren’t going to get that chance, now or ever. It was a hard few months of tests and tears. But we came through it as a stronger couple.

It wasn’t just that Nate was talking about though. Losing my stepfather had been hard on this entire group. My Mum and Robin had become an important part of this little family over the years. And since losing Robin this group had become an important part of my actual family. Each of them were there for me, my sister, Annie and my mother. Whether it was calling Mum to check on her or the trip that the girls planned for my Mum’s birthday where they all flew to Los Angeles for a week to spend time with Gemma, Mum and all of her closest friends. They were able to see me play at the Hollywood Bowl and drink mimosas all around Malibu for a week. With Annie and I on the road the girls stepped up. They’d taken trips up to visit my Mum and entertained her while Gemma worked during her trips to London. Without even consulting us they all showed up for Robin’s funeral, which was something neither of us expected. It made me realize just how important each of them were to my life.

“We’ve been there for each other throughout the hard times because that’s what friends do. I am so grateful to have each of you in my life and all of you together in my home right now. Cheers to a wonderful year ahead.” We all raised our glasses to toast the year ahead of us. Annie tilted her head towards mine to kiss me.

“I love you,” she said softly.

“And I love you.” After dinner I found Niall and Nate both sitting on the back deck smoking cigars together. “Niall, you little shit. How did I not know you were going to be here?”

“I am full of surprises. We have been in Ireland with my family since Christmas and just decided this would be more fun than flying to Los Angeles and being in crowded parties while we were tired. We were supposed to fly out to LA two days ago, changed our plans and hopped a flight here. The only people that knew were Lyla’s parents.”

“Why is that?” Nate asked.

“We are all going to get together for dinner tomorrow night,” Niall replied. “She missed Christmas at home with her family to be in Ireland with mine. So her Mum is leaving the tree up one extra day so we can have a family dinner tomorrow night. Her oldest sister is down for the holidays while her kids are on break so it made the most sense to come here.”

“That sounds like fun. I felt a little bad that Annie and I are here instead of back home. But Gemma and her boyfriend headed up there this weekend to spend time with Mum and I think Mum’s tired of me following her around the house. We spent the last two weeks at home.”

“I’m sure Anne enjoyed having you both there. She doing okay?”

“She’s doing as well as can be expected. It was a tough Christmas but we made it through. Although as soon as she reads Annie’s year end blog I’m sure I’ll get another teary phone call.”

“I read that earlier,” Nate said. “She did great. Captured our year perfectly.”

“In more ways than one,” Niall added.

“That she did.” The night continued on with drinks, games and Annie attached to her camera. Finally as the clock got close to midnight we all bundled up and went outside. It was time for her sparkler countdown to the New Year. Each of the adults and the older kids were given sparklers and just in time for midnight lit them off of a candle she’d brought along.

“Ten!” Nate yelled.

“Nine, eight,” the rest of the group joined in. “Seven, six, five, four.” I pulled Annie into my arms and made her drop the camers. “Three, two, one. HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Everyone was shouting and dancing. I pulled Annie into a deep kiss.

“Happy New Year, Sugar.”

“Happy New Year, Dimples.”

bookshopbirdie: Happy New Year from my corner of the world to yours!

AHH!! I can’t even explain how excited I am for everyone to get a chance to read this. I am so happy to be writing something that is present day.

I hope you enjoyed a 2017 recap for our friends in London Calling. It was a rollercoaster of a year for them but just like friends do, they stuck through it together. I can’t wait to hear what you think of this.

I also want to thank each and every one of you who reads what I write. I tallyed it up and I wrote (and published nearly all of it) 295,888 words in 2017. That’s just between these two series. That doesn’t include my writing for work or blogging for fun. Sticking by me through good, bad, and horrific writers block moments has been something that I appreciate. You all mean the world to me even though I don’t know each of you individually.

My goal for 2018: Pass 300,000! I’m so close and a bit pissed that I’m not there. So I hope you’re all willing to stick with me for whatever comes next.

Thank you again for loving the characters I create and being such an amazing support system.

Cheers to 2018!

xx AM.

15 notes · View notes

feminismforme · 8 years ago

Text

johncoveredinjam:

eatyourpaisley:

queenofadodi:

Men had no problem violating women’s bodies while they had on corsets, petticoats and farthingales, so what the fuck makes you think a short skirt has anything to do with it? thank you

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“As the grandchild of Polish and Russian Jews who lost them by the Nazis, no one wants wrenching denunciations of the Holocaust produced more than I do. What Hollywood refuses to admit is that “The Pianist” should never have been made, regardless of its inherent value. Why? Because its director belonged in prison, not in Paris pursing his art. You don’t get to do creative, fulfilling work when you skip bail … you get to hide in obscurity hoping not to get caught. Or, should we start giving Get Out Of Jail Free cards to every convicted sexual offender who might potentially write the next Great American Novel, paint the next masterpiece, compose a triumphant concerto? Oh, right, this logic only extends to already-rich, currently-bankable stars. Like R. Kelly, who released album after album while paying off witnesses and settling out of court with numerous victims to avoid ever having to face rape charges. Meanwhile, girls across the country get a message: If you come forward after a powerful man sexually assaults you, it’s your rapist — not you — who will receive protection.” — Corporate media’s rape problem: Supporting the stars, ignoring the charges (via azspot)

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“Don’t be slutty, don’t have sex. But be sexy. If you’re too sexy though and you get raped, then that’s you’re own fault because you’re not actually supposed to listen to us about being sexy, even though we tell you your value is derived from how sexy you are. If you get into a position of power, we will assume that you used your sex appeal to get there and not your brains and we will mock you even though we told you the only thing that mattered was your sex appeal. Make yourself accessible to me, but holy shit stop being so desperate and needy. Don’t be a tease. If we want to have sex with you, don’t friendzone us, even though we just fucking told you not to have sex.” — patriarchy proverb (via stfueverything)

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Male as protector ataulfomangos:

iambugbrennan:

Protection then becomes a pretext to violence.

Read Kathleen Barry As always, Charlotte Perkins Gilman said it best:

One new indulgence was to go out evenings alone. This I worked out carefully in my mind, as not only a right but a duty. Why should a woman be deprived of her only free time, the time allotted to recreation? Why must she be dependent on some man, and thus forced to please him if she wished to go anywhere at night?

A stalwart man once sharply contested my claim to this freedom to go alone. “Any true man,” he said with fervor, “is always ready to go with a woman at night. He is her natural protector.” “Against what?” I inquired. As a matter of fact, the thing a woman is most afraid to meet on a dark street is her natural protector. Singular

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bye at people who see others with plastic surgery and say “those aren’t her boobs/nose/ass” etc

um bitch yes it is

if she paid for it that shit is hers

did u knit that sweater ur wearing by yourself? no? did you purchase it?

then it’s yours bitch

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Why I Fucking Love Teenage Girls (A Personal Essay from an Almost Adult) fygirlcrush:

A few months ago, I went to a big family gathering at my grandparents’s house and ran into a cousin of mine. She seemed much older than the last time I had seen her (oh, the passage of time), so I asked her what age she was. She replied, “Oh, I’m fifteen.” And my immediate reaction?

“Oh my god, I am so sorry.”

She laughed, which gives me a little bit of hope that maybe, for her, being fifteen isn’t a complete fucking nightmare. But I think she recognized what I was saying on some level. Fifteen is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst age. Wait, maybe fourteen. Thirteen? Twelve was pretty bad, too. Fuck it, they all suck. Nothing summarizes being a young girl better than this simple quote from The Virgin Suicides: “You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.” “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”

It’s amazing, really. I spent my entire childhood counting down the days until I could be a teenager. I planned everything out perfectly: I would go shopping with friends by myself downtown by fourteen, kissing cute boys by fifteen, losing my virginity by sixteen, driving a cute car by seventeen, and off to university to have even more amazing experiences at eighteen. My life would be a fucking commercial, starring me, my best friends, and Jordan Catalano. It was going to happen.

Until it didn’t.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I actually had a few of those things on my list. I drove a pretty bitchin’ baby blue VW Beetle and I did end up going to university. I’m luckier than most. But where were the boys? Where were the cute clothes? Who took my fantasy and dumped a steaming bag of hot garbage juice on it?

We sell this idea of what you’re life is going to be to young girls from the fucking get-go. To be fair, that’s advertising, right? Selling you the life you want, no matter the age? Well, unfortunately, little girls can’t see through the bullshit. We internalize all of it. And that’s what makes the hardships of being a teenage girl sting even more.

I was thrown into the pot of steaming dogshit pretty early. I was wearing a bra at nine, dealing with self loathing by ten, and by twelve, I was officially balls-deep in it. And it didn’t go away. Between twelve and (I’ll be generous and say) seventeen, all the garbage just kept circulating in my system. It would just evolve, or die down, only to flare up at the slightest irritation. That’s what being a teenage girl is: you’re full of poison. Mostly, you just poison yourself over and over again, but sometimes some of it leaks out of you and onto someone else.

At twelve, most girls understand real sadness. Twelve, though it seems so young to us now, felt really old at the time. By this point, you’ve already been told how to be, and realized that you’re not measuring up. By twelve, your skin is already shit, and your body is too flabby or your breasts haven’t come in yet. Worst of all, when you’re a girl, by twelve you’ve probably already been in a situation that made you feel threatened sexually. Let that sink in. From the top of my head, I can think of four moments in my life, before the age of twelve, when someone crossed a line with me. Four. This is not abnormal.

By thirteen, you’re already prepared to destroy yourself. When you’re a sad teenage girl, you try a lot of things out, see which ways work best for you. It’s like you can feel the poison bubbling under your skin, all the time. I recognized this in other girls. I could see them clawing at their skin, lashing out at others, trying everything they could possibly dream up. So they cut themselves, make themselves sick, scream at their mothers, smoke, drink, send pictures to the wrong person, do things they might not want to do. Because literally anything, anything that might make things go away for five minutes, is worth it.

By fourteen, I felt like a veteran. In my mind, I had seen some shit, man. I had felt some fucking feelings. And honestly, I thought things were getting better. I was still a bit broken from things that had happen in middle school, but hey, this is high school! I had been dreaming about this forever! It has to be better, right?

At fifteen, the optimism in me had died. I woke up every day with an anchor on my chest. I went from a solid B student to barely passing. I wouldn’t go out with friends, because suddenly they were branching out, meeting new people, and I didn’t know how to handle that. My lifelong fear of men really didn’t do me any favors with boys. When you flinch every time they move a hand too quickly, and find it nearly impossible to look them in the eye without wanting to throw up, you don’t get asked out much. My mother didn’t know what to do with me, so I would spend all day, every day, locked in my room. University? Fuck no, man. I could barely get my ass out of bed as a basic daily requirement, how could I possibly want to continue my education?

Sixteen was… different. Good and bad. I had woken up from the dead, but it’s not like things just go away. I was doing well in school, I started thinking about university again, and I even hung out with friends sometimes. But things were not great internally. I gave myself over to some extremely unhealthy behavior, which went completely unnoticed. Whatever. It’s still kind of a blur to me. What can I say? I’m an almost adult, I’m allowed to not have everything figured out.

And then, like the rising sun, seventeen happened. I got better. I worked harder. I had a goal, and I was rising to the challenge. I actually enjoyed school, and sometimes, I even went to parties (and had a little bit of fun!). I gained enough control over my unhealthier behavior to start healing, even if the process has been painfully slow. I finally understood what it was like to wake up and be okay. I graduated high school and went off to the university of my choice. Not happily ever after, but I’ll save that for another time.

Now, if you’re still reading, you might be confused. Why am I listing off all the crappy shit I felt between the ages of twelve and seventeen? If you hated being a teenage girl so much, why do you love them?

Because even with every single fucking thing a teenage girl has to deal with, they still manage to do something so mind blowing, yet completely simple: love, unabashedly.

You know those girls everyone loves to shit all over? The ones who really fucking love something? Those girls, man. They take all that energy, all that circulating fire in their veins, and instead of letting it destroy them, they choose to love, ferociously. Be it a band, or a book, or a series of films. They do it to keep themselves sane, and yet we mock them for it. Teenage girls find a buoy for themselves in the sea of emotional ruin, and they hold on tighter than anyone else.

One of the most popular ways people like to hate teenage girls is to complain about their “insane” crushes on boy band members. Now, let me fucking tell you something: those big dumb crushes are what helps a teenage girl develop her sexuality in a safe environment that she can control. In her world, she can listen to One Direction and hear all these songs about how great she is, and how much these cute non-threatening boys want to make her feel special. Why is this so important? Because no one is pushing them. There’s no fourteen year old boy shoving his clammy hands down your shirt without your consent. These fantasy boys are not convincing a girl to send naked pictures, only to show all their friends and call her a slut. In the fantasy land of boy bands, the girl has all the power. And we need to stop judging them for wanting to escape into that.

I love teenage girls because even if they hate themselves, they love other people. I remember how I felt, seeing other girls go through what I was going through. It ruined me. I wanted so desperately to help them out of the muck, but when you’re submerged yourself, there’s not a lot you can do. Teenage girls understand, and they want to make sure no one else feels the way they do. I see it on websites like Tumblr all the time. It’s fucking beautiful.

I love teenage girls because society loves to blame them for everything. The self-obsessed teenage girl is always the face of the “problem” with youth today. Apparently, these superficial teenage girls who love their iPhones too much are the issue. Not, you know, the people conditioning them to believe that their worth is tied to how many Likes they got on their last selfie. No, you’re right, let’s focus on the girls who post on Facebook too much. Great.

I’m in film school now, so often I get asked, “What kind of work do you want to make?” Usually, I don’t have an answer. Good work, I guess? But thinking about it, I know what I want to do: I want to make movies for teenage girls. Stories about teenage girls with agency, who rebel, who take all that energy and channel it into something, even if it’s not necessarily positive. I want to represent the girls I love so much. Because I have been one of those girls, and I will always carry a part of that with me.

So just try and talk shit about teenage girls around me. Just fucking try it.

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commiekinkshamer:

i have no problem with pointing out that anyone of any gender can be an abuser, rapist, pedophile etc because that’s absolutely true.

but the problem with always emphasizing “yes but it happens to everyone, not just women (or people of colour, or trans* people, etc)!” is that it depoliticizes the issue.

violence is not an accident, it is reflective of social power relations that permeate society at every level

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“Like most girls, my daughter hears, “That’s a pretty dress, did you pick it yourself?” or “What lovely hair you have,” or “You have the most amazing eyelashes,” or “I like the bows on your shoes,” or “You are so cute” almost every time somebody engages in conversation with her.

If family, friends, shop assistants, complete strangers, and even Santa only remark on how girls look, rather than what they think and do, how can we expect girls to believe that they have anything more to offer the world than their beauty?” — How To Break The Ice With Little Girls That Doesn’t Involve Commenting On Their Appearance (via brute reason)

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“If you kill a person, you’re a murderer. If you steal, no one would hesitate to call you a thief. But in America, when you force yourself on someone sexually, some people will jump through flaming hoops not to call you a rapist.” — From my latest at the Guardian, When you call a rape anything but rape, you are just making excuses for rapists (via jessicavalenti)

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Men still have trouble recognizing that a woman can be complex, can have ambition, good looks, sexuality, erudition and common sense. A woman can have all those facets, and yet men, in literature and in drama, seem to need to simplify women, to polarize us as either the whore or the angel. - Natalie Dormer

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“Pornography reveals that male pleasure is inextricably tied to victimizing, hurting, exploiting; that sexual fun and sexual passion in the privacy of the male imagination are inseparable from the brutality of male history. The private world of sexual dominance that men demand as their right and their freedom is the mirror image of the public world of sadism and atrocity that men consistently and self- righteously deplore. It is in the male experience of pleasure that one finds the meaning of male history.” — Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (via staininyourbrain)

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“17% of cardiac surgeons are women, 17% of tenured professors are women. It just goes on and on. And isn’t that strange that that’s also the percentage of women in crowd scenes in movies? What if we’re actually training people to see that ratio as normal so that when you’re an adult, you don’t notice? …We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there’s 17% women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33% women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.” — Source: NPR: Hollywood Needs More Women

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“I don’t have the language for this substratum of violence we refuse to name as such. I don’t mean the non-rape-rape, the assaults that don’t result in bruises. This article is not a repetition of the now-cliché reminder that most rape isn’t a stranger jumping out of the bushes. I mean the texture of 20-something heterosexual sex in America, the insidious habits and habituations that look exactly like violence except, somehow, we’ve decided they aren’t violent. We chalk it up to awkwardness, or kink, or just plain old misogyny that is so commonplace and inevitable that resisting it would be like protesting the weather. I find that friends who have been raped before and named that for what it was are no more willing to insist upon the inexcusability of this excused category. Nor are the organizers, the feminists with boots on the ground and the right vocabulary at the tip of their tongues. A woman is only allotted so much anger in her life. In crossing that limit she is rendered hysterical and invisible all at once. What is bad enough to cash your tokens? We’ve decided that if it isn’t what we call violence, we will count our blessings and take it like a woman. (“Women are afraid that men will kill them.”)

The ubiquitous negotiations and morning-after bruises and disappearing condoms aren’t what we talk about when we talk about sexual violence.” — That bad (via brutereason)

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malesexistbehavior:

this-tragic-affair:

ok so all these guys who are like “men have it hard too!!! we’re expected to be manly and emotionless, we have feelings!!!” do realize that it’s other men who enforce those standards on guys. literally guys created those standards to be more powerful than women. so maybe instead of getting angry at women for talking about their oppression, realize that you should be fighting with women against unfair gender expectations and inequality

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“When you want to fall — fall. Evaporate and condensate, but when you rain, come down as a fucking hurricane.

If the birds stop chirping, if the sunlight forgets you, if you’ve got your shirttail caught in the fence of your spine, and you have no way of getting loose,

remember that I am here, that I will bail you out of your own prison, that I will lay with you the morning after you fall in love and tell you that it’s okay to love, that it’s okay to trust another human being with more than you knew you could.

I will tell you how I held you as a child, listened to your heartbeat on those sleepless nights, that I loved your small body and your pebble fists and blessed the skeleton inside of you —

that you are not beautiful because a boy tells you so, but beautiful because you exist.

And I apologize for giving you such nervous hands and a sine wave heartbeat. And when you start putting question marks after everything you say — know that

I may not always have the answers, but together, we can try to make sense of it all.

I’ll take you back to my West Virginia. My Gloucester. My honeysuckles and tool sheds. The chicken coops. The abandoned loves. I’ll show you what the August grass feels like. I’ll distract you with tree roots, with atlases, with lessons about the sea, and until your question marks are bent into arrows, I will not

stop. So shoot them blindly. Hurt and be hurt. Be the bird as much as you are the hand.

For I will stand behind you, breaking every vow that I made to protect you. When I notice your wings are peeking out from beneath your shirt collar, I’ll

tie my hands back from clipping them. I will hide every rope in the country so that the love inside of me doesn’t tether your ankles to home.

You are seventeen, and you are free.

But when you want to come home, I’ll be here. In the wind chimes, in the small moths that flutter towards your light, in the way dawn still breaks the same blue eggs in every place that you decide to go,

I’ll be here. Less a ghost than the wind. Less the wind than a soft hum in the back of your throat, telling you that it’s okay to sing, that it’s okay to bray,

that your song is a song that you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to understand.

That when the birds talk you into flying south, it’s okay to pick up and leave.” — "To My Daughter At Seventeen," Shinji Moon (via commovente)

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“What To Do When Your Boyfriend’s Asshole Best Friend Says, “Hey, Never Trust Anything That Bleeds For Seven Days And Doesn’t Die, Right?” OR The Only Poem I’ll Ever Write About Periods. Don’t excuse him because he’s had at least three lite beers and is sweating through his black button down that his mom or exgirlfriend probably bought him. Don’t excuse him because he’s been turned down by the last six girls he went on dates with after meeting them on tindr with a picture that’s seven years old Don’t excuse him because he’s usually such a nice guy because you don’t want to be a bitch because you don’t want to cause a scene because when you were seventeen your sister told you no one likes an angry feminist

Tell him, Hey, Asshole: Let me explain something to you. Every goddamn motherfucking month since I was eleven, a part of me tore itself to shreds ripped itself apart inside me and then remade itself.

So yes, I bleed for seven days and I don’t die You know what else can do that? Gods. Immortal beings. Things of legend. Fuck, I can even create life.

So I say, never trust anything that can’t bleed for seven days and not die. You know what that makes it? Weak Fallible Mortal. So let’s see, hon, What you’re made of. If you can bleed for seven days and not die.

Rip out his jugular with your teeth. And when he bleeds for seven seconds and dies, spit on his corpse and say, I thought not.” — Katherine Tucker (determined-in-slc)

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“It’s not that women shouldn’t get plastic surgery; it’s that they should make every effort for that surgery to be invisible, seamless, unnoticeable. Good plastic surgery is OK, but “bad” plastic surgery — surgery that makes itself visible — now that’s abject.

Why? Because it shows that the work of performing ideal femininity is just that: work. And ideal femininity never illuminates itself as a construction; it must present itself as “natural.” Which is also why it comes as such a surprise when someone like Beyoncé speaks openly about the exhaustive regimen necessary to get her body into post-baby shape: It speaks truth to the lie of the effortless, immaculate, eternally young and fit female form.

Plastic-surgery shaming is thus tantamount to blaming the victims of this ideal for working so hard to achieve what we’ve told them, for decades, they must do. It’s bullshit, it’s unfeminist, and it’s just one of many ways in which society damns women for taking its ideals concerning sexuality or the body to their natural extension.” — What’s Really Behind The Ridicule Of Renée Zellweger’s Face

People were cruel about her appearance for years (I’ve heard those stupid lemon-sucking “jokes” countless times), then act shocked that she altered her appearance and criticise her for that as well. Whether you get plastic surgery or not, you just can’t win.

(via fucknosexistcostumes)

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anonymous asked: As a guy in terrified. If I piss a woman off, all she has to do is falsely accuse me of rape, then my life will be ruined. I'll be labeled a sex offender and go to prison, because the judge always listens to the woman as they see her as a damsel in distress. I'm terrified. The accusations are happening more and more because of feminism. This is why we need Men's Rights.

okcreepsters answered: As a woman I’m terrified. If I piss a man off, he might threaten, assault, rape, beat, batter, or murder me; then my life will be ruined. I’ll be labeled a “slut” who “wanted it” and have my character dragged through the mud, either by law officers, my friends and/or family, or the court of public opinion, because of rape culture. Violence against women is happening more and more because of men like you. We are literally being killed, tortured, and abused by male entitlement.

This is why we need Feminism.

okcreepsters:

yeahlikethedeliveryservice:

If judges “Always listen to the woman” then why is it that 97% of rapists are not punished even when they have been convicted? And although nearly one in evry five women actually does report being raped, anywhere from 54% to 90% of rapes go unreported, because women know that 94% of reported cases don’t end in a conviction, they typically end in the woman being accused of being a slut, sometimes facing massive social shaming that can end in serious consequences, such as academic retaliation if you accuse the wrong boy at school, further sexual violence and even discharge from the military if you report your C.O., and the ever-present fear that a man you accuse will come after you, rape you again, beat you, possibly even kill you—and if they didn’t care the first time, why would they care if it happens again?

Trust me, sweetheart. your fear is completely unfounded. Men do not need activists for their rights. Men need to wake the fuck up to the privilege and rights they already have and stop acting like scared children every time the faintest whisper of a glimmer of what it must be like to be a woman threatens to become even the faintest part of their reality.

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clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead:

"The only thing more disturbing than that paradigm is the fact that most rapists are normal guys, guys we might work beside or socialise with, our neighbours or even members of our family. Where men’s violence against women is normalised in our society, we often we compartmentalise it to fit our view of the victim. If a prostitute is raped or beaten, we may consider it an awful occupational hazard ‘given her line of work.’ We rarely think ‘she didn’t get beaten – somebody (i.e a man) beat her’. Her line of work is dangerous, but mainly because there are men who want to hurt women. If a husband batters his wife, we often unthinkingly put it down to socio-economic factors or alcohol and drugs rather than how men and boys are taught and socialised to be men and view women.

…

What would make this tragedy even more tragic would be if we were to separate what happened to Jill from cases of violence against women where the victim knew, had a sexual past with, talked to the perpetrator in a bar, or went home with him. It would be tragic if we did not recognise that Bayley’s previous crimes were against prostitutes, and that the social normalisation of violence against a woman of a certain profession and our inability to deal with or talk about these issues, socially and legally, resulted in untold horror for those victims, and led to the brutal murder of my wife. We cannot separate these cases from one another because doing so allows us to ignore the fact that all these crimes have exactly the same cause – violent men, and the silence of non-violent men.”

from When Will We Stop Being Shocked At How Normal A Rapist Seemed by Jill Meagher’s husband

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“Female-assigned intersex kids’ vaginal canal size is also assessed by doctors, to ensure that it’s long enough to fit a penis inside of it. Doctors might surgically construct or re-construct vaginas, which can result in a host of health problems and necessitate multiple, multiple surgeries. This is especially the case since most intersex kids have these surgeries very young, and when their bodies grow into their adult forms, more surgeries are necessary to keep their vagina size in proportion. Non-surgical methods are also used to increase or maintain vaginal length by regularly using medical dildos to stretch the vagina over months and years. (It’s kind of like braces for your vagina, but much, much worse.) Just like there are no standards for how long a clitoris “can” be before it’s classified as a penis, there aren’t absolute standards as to how long a vagina is for it to be of “normal” length. I had a dilation procedure performed for almost every exam I had with intersex doctors from the time I was 8 until I was 16, so that they could check how long my vagina was as I grew. I absolutely hated these procedures. I mean, imagine a man as old as your father or your grandfather, who you don’t know, inserting a medical dildo into you each time you saw him, knowing that you can’t question the doctor’s orders and just accept that you have to undergo these uncomfortable procedures for your health. Imagine a decade or so later, realizing that these procedures did nothing to track your health, and had everything to do with grown men feeling good about the fact that you could fuck some dude someday like a “normal girl”. That all those traumatizing procedures weren’t actually medically relevant at all, and it actually was within my right to refuse those examinations.

I didn’t know any of that at the time.

I also had no idea that I wouldn’t want to ultimately have the kind of sex they assumed I’d be having, adding yet another layer of this-was-totally-unnecessary/messed-up to my history.

Other kids shouldn’t have to go through this. Other adults shouldn’t have revelations some day far into the future that what was happening to them WASN’T okay, and their traumatic feelings ARE valid, and the whole system of how intersex people are conceptualized and “treated” IS entirely fucked.

And it’s gotta change. We’ve gotta change it.” — Claudia at Autostraddle

I just read this article and was reminded once again how invisible the intersex community often is… we need to signal boost this shit to let people know that this kind of “medical treatment” is NOT okay.

(via bossybussy)

when something qualifies as rape or sexual assault in any other context it should not become magically acceptable when doctors do it. i don’t know why that’s such a difficult concept for people to understand.

(via rapeculturerealities)

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things i need white feminists to do before i will take you seriously callingoutbigotry:

eshusplayground:

so-treu:

i need you to come to terms with the way white women have facilitated some of the most unspeakable violence upon black and brown and indigenous people, bodies, and community. often in the name of white womanhood. often in the name of freedom. often in the name of feminism.

i need you to understand that you killed Emmitt Till. i need you to think about all of the black men and boys that have been murdered because either you accused them or your men took it upon themselves to defend *your* honor. i need you to look at pictures of lynched bodies and think about what role you played in it.

i need you to know the names of the women raped by U.S. military in countries we invaded, in part because feminists said we needed to save the women and/or children and supported the various invasions.

i need you to know that those reproductive rights you all are up in arms about were created via the destruction and maiming of black and brown bodies. i need you to know who Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy are, and what was done to them. i need you to know the names of the Puerto Rican women who were lied to and who died so that The Pill could bring you your precious sexual liberation. i need you to know the central role white women played in sterilization programs that targeted black women, poor women, anyone they deemed too “feeble” to procreate. i need you to think about why more big name feminist organizations are up in arms about the most recent kick up about contraception than about sterilized black women getting compensated for what was done to them.

i need you to understand that at this point, it’s not about privilege. it’s not about you being able to find products that work with your hair no matter where you go. it’s about people’s lives. it’s about WOC lives and a centuries old disregard white women have shown for them. it’s about that fact that white women have been an active agent in the destruction of our communities, our histories, and our families. for centuries.

and WOC don’t owe you a damn thing. not. one. thing.

so get that through your skulls then maybe we can work together. maybe. A good resource on the dangerous, painful, and deadly medical malpractice and experimentation inflicted on Black women for the benefit of white women is Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

-----------------------------------------

In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that – hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly – whether physically, emotionally or both – in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to just give him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance!

—Lamenting The Friend Zone, Or: The “Nice Guy” Approach To Perpetrating Sexist Bullshit

----------------------------------------

Six in 10 girls quit activities they love because of how they feel about their looks

Sorry that this isn’t Architecture related, but this is a serious issue. I can tell you from a personal point of view that I actually quit hockey when I was younger because of my self esteem issues. Girls and boys all around the world find a sport they love, but have it cut short because they do not like the way they look.

Girls and boys need their coaches, parents, friends etc. to help them through this. They need to be told that they should focus on their love for whatever sport it is instead of feeling bad about the way they look.

Pass this on, and let people know that everybody has a chance to be who they want to be without thinking about the way they look.

------------------------------------------

When My Daughter Asks If Anyone Will Ever Love Her

writingsforwinter:

I will tell her, history is filled with ruins,

the history of love most all, and you may encounter several of them

along the way. But most of those ruins were caused by wars,

and your heart is so open and ready, so wanting,

that even a sniper would never dare to shoot it down.

I will tell her, you are skin filled with questions and bones

scored by bitten-back words, and yes, someone

will want to hear all of them one day,

no matter how long it takes to empty you

of the desire to apologize as soon as you open your mouth.

When my daughter asks if anyone will ever love her,

I will tell her, whether or not you know it yet,

someone you’ve never met before is hoping

to become someone you have met before, and will continue to meet

for the rest of your life.

Will tell her, the alphabet was created for communication

but you will know when someone loves you

by the way they forget every single letter

just by looking at the back of your neck.

Will tell her, you are beautiful in each time zone-

and one day, you will find someone

who will tell you so in every single one.

And finally, to my daughter I will say:

but all of this is unimportant

unless you love yourself. ------------------------------------------------------

wondermaid:

if you think gender has nothing to do with rape you need to fucking do your research

here look i’ll do some for you

99% of rapists are men 91% of victims are women no one is saying that men can’t be raped we would NEVER say that. but when we are talking about the prevalence of rape culture in a patriarchal society, that’s when we are focusing on women. and you all only ever bring up male survivors to derail discussions and further your anti-feminist (misogynist) agendas anyway. --------------------------------------------------------

mikroblogolas:

society teaches women that if they haven’t been kissed by a man or had sex with a man, there must be something wrong with them. men learn that if women don’t want to kiss or have sex with them, there must be something wrong with women (and possibly the government and world), not themselves. ------------------------------------------

Gender dictates our physical movement, how our walk should look, our mannerisms, how we sit, the tone of our voice, it dumbs girls down, it restricts our choice of childhood toys and teenaged sports, it chases us out of STEM subjects, it tracks us into lower paying career opportunities, it guilts us into constant caregiving, it despises us as we age, it mocks and belittles our concerns, it says we lie about rape, it prostitutes us, it marries us and beats us, it denies us control of our own bodies, it keeps our brain-dead bodies alive against our express wishes, so that the government may harvest another citizen from us, it aborts us or abandons us 10 days after birth simply because we are female.

Women and girls are oppressed on the basis of our biological sex. That oppression takes many forms. The social control system which is used to frame all of this oppression as natural and desirous is called Gender. Femininity, with all its harmful effects, is forced onto females.

” —

ppp

(via

radical-bias

) ------------------------------------------------------

modifiedmummytobe:

Instead of me having to explain why I don’t like rape jokes, how about you explain why you find them funny. ----------------------------------------------------- “

Radical feminists often argue that BDSM practice is about degrading, humiliating, violating and torturing women. It is patriarchal violence against women—whether it occurs in your bedroom, on your computer screen, or is simulated during your lunchtime book reading.

We do not blame women who participate in it, but we will analyze it through a feminist lens.

BDSM is the legitimization of domestic violence against women. Case in point: The Feminist and the Cowboy. Author Alisa Valdes wrote an erotic semi-autobiographical book about a dominant lover who violently f’ked her under the guise of consensual “play”. After her book was released, Vales wrote a blog post detailing the real life abuse that the “cowboy” inflicted on her. Though the abuse was framed as consensual in her book, her real life experience with the cowboy involved being raped, verbally abused, threatened, and abandoned once he discovered her pregnancy.

Similarly, during a recent BDSM play abuse session, abuser Steven Lock strangled a woman he had recently met on a dating site with a rope, chained her to his bed, lashed her 14 times, f’kd her, and then left her chained. She had to call a friend to help her escape, but Lock was cleared of all abuse charges once he claimed the assault had been “consensual”.

BDSM occurs in the context of patriarchal rape culture, where women always “deserve” the rape, violence, abuse and death that men dish out to them, and women who object to this treatment are called names, and dismissed out-of-hand.

One of the names we are called is “sex negative”, which as many of us know, is actually a code word for “frigid” where “frigid”, as many feminists know, is actually a pejorative referring to our refusal to please men. Radical feminists embrace our refusal to give a f’k about what men want, so we are happy to be considered prude if it means liberation for women.

We are also told that we are “slut shaming” when we object to BDSM, even though we know that no woman is a slut, and no woman is to blame for the ways that men abuse her.

We are told that we are “not respecting the agency” of women who “choose” to engage in BDSM when recognize that playing a submissive role in sexual situations is likely born out of Societal Stockholm Syndrome. We never, however, blame the women who participate in the practice– our blame sits squarely on the shoulders of men who dominate women.

In so blaming, we are told that we are “kink shaming” the men who like to beat and sexually torture women for fun. A good example of one such man is Snowdrop Explodes who was invited as a “BDSM expert” to talk about BDSM and abuse on the site Womanist Musings. It was revealed that this so-called “expert” had in the past blogged without apology about his plan to rape and murder a woman in his local park. These are the types of men we are “kink shaming”.

Women who suffer abuse from BDSM are often blamed for having not “said the safe word” when they express discomfort about the abuse they received, which is clearly a case of blaming the victim.

Often women who report on the abuse they experience are silenced, as Vales was when her agent forced her to take down her confessional blog post, or as her new boyfriend does by thanking the cowboy for “taming her”.

Radical feminist are infuriated by this normalization of male abuse of women. (Just this morning I saw a copy of 50 Shades of Gray for 30% off at the local grocery store ferchrissakes). But there is one objection sometimes brought up when discussing BDSM that I haven’t yet addressed. That objection is: What about the submissive men in BDSM? They consent to violent beatings and humiliation too, so how can you say BDSM is strictly violence against women?”

Firstly I’ll point out the fairly obvious: violence, humiliation, and abuse against any person is dehumanizing and wrong.

Leaving this point aside, however, I’ll note that the majority of BDSM occurs in a male-dominant/female submissive context.

In preparation for her documentary The Price of Pleasure, Chung Sun studied 50 of the 275 most popular pornographic films as noted by best-selling and most-rented list reported by Adult Video News. In the films, men being spanked constituted less than 3% of the total spankings that occurred onscreen. In fact,

“most of the targets of physical aggression were women, who usually responded with expressions of pleasure (encouragement, sexual moans, etc) or with no change at all in facial expression or interruption of action.” (quoted from Big Porn, Inc, page 172-173)

So we know that male recipients of aggression constituted less than 3% of the on-screen spankings tallied in the study. The fact that the vast majority of recipients of violence on screen in the most rented videos tells us something about BDSM. It tells us that BDSM is an instrument of violence, and the target of that violence is women.

Obviously, the small number of male submissives will never be able to “even out” the harms inflicted against women in BDSM. It is never okay for women to be abused by men.

Radical feminists know that patriarchal society is set up with a sex-based hierarchy, and that hierarchy is perpetuated using gender. Masculinity is the gender males are socialized into, and it consists in valuing domination, power, invasion, and taking-up-space. Femininity is the gender females are socialized into and consists in submission, powerlessness, having no boundaries, and taking-up-as-little-space-as-possible. As Lierre Keith puts it, “Gender is who gets to be human, and who gets hurt”.

In the context of life as a man in the dominator class, a small percentage of men may wish to “try on” what they perceive to be a feminized role during sexual interactions. They may find themselves turned on by imagining what it might be like to be sexually terrorized. They may get a boner from temporarily adopting the submissive—aka feminine—role. These submissive roles are often explicitly feminized, and submissive men are often referenced as “sissies”– a word used to humiliate men by implying that they bear some resemblance to their much-despised counterpart: woman.

But radical feminists know that “trying on” a submissive role is the action of a supremely privileged individual, who, as a part of his Sunday-Funday-f’k-fest, wants to “spice it up” by having his nipples tweaked. But he can always put away his ball gag and join the world of men and masculinity. We women, however, cannot escape the day-to-day sexual terrorism that he vacations in, because it is our lives.

The existence of male submissives in BDSM practice does nothing to excuse, nullify, or disprove the fact that BDSM is violence against women. We know that liberated sexuality does not follow the patriarchal model of dominance and submission, and that BDSM is the normalization of domestic violence.

” —

Liberation Collective: BDSM is Violence Against Women

--------------------------------------------------------

smoochums:

women grow hair on their boobs and their butts and their legs and their arms and their stomachs and their face and really anywhere their genetics decides to have hair and it is perfectly normal what isnt normal is men who have never touched a razor trying to shame women for not looking like a hairless baby ----------------------------------------------

shakethecobwebs:

deathexclamations:

shakethecobwebs:

boycott dudes who manipulate you into meeting their emotional or sexual needs but won’t date you 2k14 why the fuck are you interested in someone like that in the first place ? Fuck anyone who tries to manipulate you. manipulation, by its very definition, is not a choice.

so maybe you should take your victim-blaming somewhere else.

----------------------------------

“Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours of a woman’s body takes on as she matures - the fuller breasts and rounded hips - have become distateful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men.” — Sandra Lee Bartky,

Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power

(via

sociophilia

) ----------------------------------------------------------

altonym:

why does EVERY thing made for male survivors have to have some part of it that goes “SEE, this happens to MEN too” with the implicit tone of “so there, misandrists, the dark secret you were trying to hide!!!!”

like do you really think that for every pound not spent on male survivors, another chocolate truffle gets purchased for the minibar at the women’s shelter jazz lounge?? nobody gives a shit about survivors in general and that actually disproportionately affects women so I just don’t get what the point is, and I am literally within the subset you are claiming to speak on behalf of

say “these are male survivors”, say “the abuse of men can sometimes differ in nature” (because for some forms of abuse that’s true) but you do nothing for us by posing male survivors as a group as some kind of anti-feminist gotcha, it’s just dehumanising, it’s clear to me that people who do that don’t actually care about abuse survivors but do care about slam-dunking their angry message board reply ------------------------------------------------------

“The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.”

― Simone de Beauvoir

--------------------------------------------------------

herbackrowkings:

lalondes:

>teenage actress’s private nudes get leaked

>teenage actress is reviled as a slut and a whore and a bad role model

>james franco asks a seventeen-year-old girl if he can meet her in a private hotel room

>james franco gets to go on saturday night live and joke about what a silly doofus he is for soliciting sex from a girl literally half his age ------------------------------------------------------

howunpleasant:

when i was little i actually questioned why girls were supposed to cross their legs and when i was told “because boys will look up your skirt” i said “then tell boys not to look up our skirts” and my grandma got really angry with me but my uncle thought i was great and gave me a high five -----------------------------------------------------

“To expose the victimization of women by men is to be blamed for creating it and for making women into passive victims. The liberals fail to recognize that women’s victimization can be acknowledged without labeling women passive. Passive and victim do not necessarily go together. It is the liberals who equate victimization with passivity. It is they who devise this equation […] It seems obvious that one can recognize women as victims of surrogacy, pornography, and prostitution without stripping them of agency and without depriving them of some ability to act under oppressive conditions.” — Janice G. Raymond, “Sexual and Reproductive Liberalism”. (via

womentoadmire

) --------------------------------------------------------

“Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: My worth is my sexuality. I’m dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries. That shapes their ideas about the world around them. No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can’t be trusted. It doesn’t take long for children to begin to act in accordance with these belief systems.

For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant. The lessons learned during sexual abuse are valuable ones for recruitment into the commercial sex industry. As Andrea Dworkin once said, “Incest is boot camp for prostitution.” Numerous studies estimate that 70 to 90 percent of commercially sexually exploited youth and adult women in the sex industry were sexually abused prior to their recruitment. No other industry can boast of such a large correlation between early sexual abuse and future employment. Sexual abuse lays the groundwork.” — Girls Like Us, Rachel Lloyd, p 65 (via

smashesthep

-------------------------------------------------------

“Rape jokes are not jokes. Woman-hating jokes are not jokes. These guys are telling you what they think. When you laugh along to get their approval, you give them yours.” — Thomas Millar,

Meet the Predators

------------------------------------------------------

“I reject all of this stupid, boring, outdated shit. I reject your numbers. I reject the idea that my personality is a negligible variable in the equation of my happiness. I reject the implication that you understand my relationship better than I do. Do not insult my intelligence by telling me that the best way to avoid divorce is to marry a stranger when you’re too young to even know yourself. Don’t try to bluff me into swallowing your lie that a world with more marriages is objectively a better world. You cannot trick me into believing that divorce is a failure of society and not a grand fucking triumph, and you will not drag me and the rest of society into the past with you.

It’s no coincidence that the people most concerned with clapping a chastity belt on the entire earth and swallowing the key are the people currently (and historically) in power in our country. And it’s also no coincidence that the people with the most to gain by maintaining “traditional” family structures—by keeping women dependent and docile and shutting everyone else up—have the least nuanced understanding of how actual human beings interact with one another romantically. It’s almost as if they’ve never known what it’s like to really connect with someone as a human being—to love a partner as an equal, not as a bank account or a body. What a pathetic, lonely life that must be.” —

Sex Is Not an ‘Economy’ and You Are Not Merchandise

--------------------------------------------------------

“The violence we teach our sons in teaching them to Be Men is the same that keeps us up at night worrying about our daughters.” — (via moeyhashy

) ------------------------------------------------------ “

Ambition is demanded of us because we know mediocrity is not an option. When society tells women that if we are just averagely good-looking, or averagely smart, or reasonably high-achieving, we will never be loved and safe, perfectionism is an adaptive strategy. We learn that if we want love and security, we have to be perfect, and if it doesn’t work out, well, that means we just weren’t good enough. And we know it probably won’t work out well. Girls aren’t fools. They know what is being done to them. They know what means for their futures in terms of money and power.

Girls get it. An under-reported, crucial facet of the study is the extent and cynicism of girls’ concerns about economic equality and unpaid work. A full 65% of girls aged 11-21 are worried about the cost of childcare, and while 58% say they “would like to become a leader in their chosen profession, 46% of them worry that having children will negatively affect their career.

Girls know perfectly well that structural sexism means they can’t have everything they’re being told they must have. They are striving to have it all everyway, striving to have everything and be everything like good girls are supposed to, and it hasn’t broken them yet, for good or ill. That’s is one reason young women still do so well in school and at college despite our good grades not translating to real-world success. It’s one reason we’re so good at getting those entry-level service jobs: we are not burdened by the excess of ego, the desire to be treated like a human being first, that prevents many young men from engaging proactively with an economy that just wants self-effacing drones trained to smile till it hurts.

The press just loves to act concerned about half-naked young ladies, preferably with illustrations to facilitate the concern. Somehow nothing changes. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe part of the function of the constant stream of news about young girls hurting and hating themselves isn’t to raise awareness. Maybe part of it is designed to be reassuring.

It must be comforting, if you’re invested in the status quo, to hear that young women are punished and made miserable when they misbehave.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat it: for all those knuckle-clutching articles about how girls everywhere are about to pirouette into twerking, puking, self-hating whorishness, we do not actually care about young women - not, that is, about female people who happen to be young. Instead, we care about Young Women (TM), fantasy Young Women as a semiotic skip for all our cultural anxieties. We value girls as commodities without paying them the respect that both their youth and their personhood deserves. Being fifteen is fucked up enough already without having the expectations, moral neuroses and guilty lusts of an entire culture projected onto this perfect empty shell you’re somehow supposed to be. Hollow yourself out and starve yourself down until you can swallow the shame of the world.

We care about young women as symbols, not as people.

” — Girl trouble: we care about young women as symbols, not as people

(via sociolab)

-----------------------------------------------------

“It is not just sexual assault survivors who need their abortion covered. Yes, there is an added dimension of cruelty when you’re talking about denying women who get pregnant as a result of rape care and coverage. But we cannot create a hierarchy of “good” and “bad” abortions. Or of “deserving” women. One in three American women will have an abortion, and the circumstances behind that pregnancy is none of our business—and it certainly should have no bearing on whether or not women can afford to access care.” — Jessica Valenti,

Please Don’t Call it ‘Rape Insurance’: Michigan’s Anti-Choice Bill Hurts All Women

--------------------------------------------------------

“The messages you received from your family or your childhood experiences may have caused you to believe that assertiveness is unacceptable or even dangerous. Practice saying the following: I have the right to be treated with respect by others. I have the right to express my feelings and opinions. I have the right to say no without feeling guilty. I have the right to ask for what I want. I have the right to make my own mistakes. I have the right to pursue happiness.” — Nice Girl Syndrome, Beverly Engel

------------------------------------------------

Probably no man has ever troubled to imagine how strange his life would appear to himself if it were unrelentingly assessed in terms of his maleness; if everything he wore, said, or did had to be justified by reference to female approval; if he were compelled to regard himself, day in day out, not as a member of society, but merely (salva reverentia) as a virile member of society. If the centre of his dress-consciousness were his cod-piece, his education directed to making him a spirited lover and meek paterfamilias; his interests held to be natural only in so far as they were sexual. If from school and lecture-room, Press and pulpit, he heard the persistent outpouring of a shrill and scolding voice, bidding him remember his biological function. If he were vexed by continual advice how to add a rough male touch to his typing, how to be learned without losing his masculine appeal, how to combine chemical research with seduction, how to play bridge without incurring the suspicion of impotence. If, instead of allowing with a smile that “women prefer cavemen,” he felt the unrelenting pressure of a while social structure forcing him to order all his goings in conformity with that pronouncement.

He would hear (and would he like hearing?) the female counterpart of Dr. P*** informing him: “I am no supporter of the Horseback Hall doctrine of ‘gun-tail, plough-tail and stud’ as the only spheres for masculine action; but we do need a more definite conception of the nature and scope of man’s life.” In any book on sociology he would find, after the main portion dealing with human needs and rights, a supplementary chapter devoted to “The Position of the Male in the Perfect State.” His newspaper would assist him with a “Men’s Corner,” telling him how, by the expenditure of a good deal of money and a couple of hours a day, he could attract the girls and retain his wife’s affection; and when he had succeeded in capturing a mate, his name would be taken from him, and society would present him with a special title to proclaim his achievement. People would write books called, “History of the Male,” or “Males of the Bible,” or “The Psychology of the Male,” and he would be regaled daily with headlines, such as “Gentleman-Doctor’s Discovery,” “Male-Secretary Wins Calcutta Sweep,” “Men-Artists at the Academy.” If he gave an interview to a reporter, or performed any unusual exploit, he would find it recorded in such terms as these: “Professor Bract, although a distinguished botanist, is not in any way an unmanly man. He has, in fact, a wife and seven children. Tall and burly, the hands with which he handles his delicate specimens are as gnarled and powerful as those of a Canadian lumberjack, and when I swilled beer with him in his laboratory, he bawled his conclusions at me in a strong, gruff voice that implemented the promise of his swaggering moustache.” […]

He would be edified by solemn discussions about “Should Men Serve in Drapery Establishments?” and acrimonious ones about “Tea-Drinking Men”; by cross-shots of public affairs “from the masculine angle,” and by irritable correspondence about men who expose their anatomy on beaches (so masculine of them), conceal it in dressing-gowns (too feminine of them), think about nothing but women, pretend an unnatural indifference to women, exploit their sex to get jobs, lower the tone of the office by their sexless appearance, and generally fail to please a public opinion which demands the incompatible. And at dinner-parties he would hear the wheedling, unctuous, predatory female voice demand: “And why should you trouble your handsome little head about politics?”

If, after a few centuries of this kind of treatment, the male was a little self-conscious, a little on the defensive, and a little bewildered about what was required of him, I should not blame him. If he presented the world with a major social problem, I should scarcely be surprised. It would be more surprising if he retained any rag of sanity and self-respect.

” — From the 1947 Dorothy L. Sayers essay “

The Human-Not-Quite-Human” oh my god, this is from 1947. doesn’t it show how much things HAVEN’T changed that I read through this whole thing assuming it was from a current article or essay, until I got to the date at the end?

-------------------------------------------------------------

kittiepawz:

Rape is the only crime in which the public strongly believe the perpetrator’s identity should be protected.

As rape is a crime which is overwhelmingly committed by men against women, policy enacted to protect the perpetrator’s identity would technically be sex discrimination.

The fact that rape is the only crime in which the victim is typically believed to be lying is due to the cultural myth that women are innately vindictive and attention seeking. This myth is so powerful that it has even filtered into the justice system; in both the UK and US it is not uncommon for detectives to assume a woman is lying about rape within the first 24 hours of meeting with her due to judgements about her sexual history or her failure to behave how a female rape victim is ‘supposed’ to act. The fact that only women are placed under this scrutiny when reporting rape is sex discrimination.

The fact that women like layla ibrahim, who had copious amounts of physical evidence and testimonies from professionals confirming that she was indeed raped, was sent to prison for making a false rape allegation, is not new or even particularly unusual. In 2012 30 women in the UK were wrongly sent to prison for false rape accusations. If you want to talk about people getting wrongly sent to prison, perhaps we should take a look at these women. In almost all of the cases it was discovered that the police failed to do their jobs (failing to follow up on witness accounts, failing to either collect or process evidence, forcing a confession from the victim when they decided based entirely on their own judgements that she was lying).

The belief that false rape accusations are incredibly common and women are very likely to falsify claims is sexism and, because of the fact that this sexism has real life implications for these women, it is discrimination. The fact that this point is proven over and over by legal professionals, academics and actual living proof of the countless women who have experienced this discrimination and yet people still choose to ignore the facts is willful ignorance.

Sexism is alive and well in 2013, and the fact that people who contribute to this discrimination can even attempt to deny that fact is truly astounding. ------------------------------------------------------------

“It can be said, quite credibly, that excessive consumption of alcohol is connected to a wide array of health and behavioral problems. It can also be said – credibly again – that the incapacitation caused by extreme intoxication makes women more vulnerable to sexual assault.

But here’s the thing: the first kind of connection is sustained by mere biology; the second is not. The nausea, the headache, the loss of concentration, the risk of addiction – all these ills are connected to excessive drinking because of the effects of alcohol on the human body, and they give men as well as women some excellent reasons to practice moderation.

But the special risk that drunkenness poses to women – that’s due to a social climate that tolerates sexual predation. When we tell young women to stay sober in order to avoid getting raped, we send the message that we do not intend to change that social climate, that we have chosen to regard misogyny as inevitable.” —

Advising Women Against Drinking Also Sends a Dangerous Method - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

(via

brutereason

) ------------------------------------------------------------

“A false accusation of rape is, indeed, a fearsome prospect. But the likelihood of being falsely accused of rape are no different from that of being falsely accused of any other crime. And women are far more likely to be raped than men are to be falsely accused. The insistence on treating the two as equally prevalent issues is ….an entitlement.” —

5 ways sexual assault is really about entitlement - Salon.com

(via

brutereason

) --------------------------------------------------------------

“A woman from the audience asks: ‘Why were there so few women among the Beat writers?’ and [Gregory] Corso, suddenly utterly serious, leans forward and says: “There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the ’50s if you were male you could be a rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up.” —

Stephen Scobie, on the Naropa Institute’s 1994 tribute to Allen Ginsberg (via thisisendless) Absences of women in history don’t “just happen,” they are made.

(via queereyes-queerminds)

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cunicular:

Your first time is NOT supposed to hurt

You are NOT supposed to bleed

If you bleed, that is NOT your hymen being ‘popped’, it is a tear due to lack of sexual arousal and natural lubrication.

This is all a MYTH perpetrated by men so they don’t have to make sure you are comfortable and sufficiently aroused enough before you have sex with them. It is an excuse to disregard and hurt you.

I just really want women to know this. --------------------------------------------------------

“When we talk about feminism we must also talk about race, because they are inextricably linked. What women of color go through is very different from what white women go through and you can’t ignore that when talking about feminism.” — April Householder (my feminist film professor)

------------------------------------------------------------ "Yes" doesn't always mean "yes" when you haven't created a situation in which your partner feels comfortable saying "no."

veeisagenderneutralname:

I feel like this should be obvious. But every time I see someone say “yes means yes; no means no” I cringe a little. Consent isn’t always that simple -----------------------------------------------------------

“[TW RAPE JOKES]

So here’s the real reason that rape jokes are troubled territory -

Because rape victims say so.

They get to say that. They get to feel that way. On this, they get to set the cultural rules.

It’s not about right or wrong, or logic versus emotion, or arguments of over sensitivity or hypocrisy - you have the free speech to make whatever jokes you want or talk about rape in whatever way you feel is illuminating. But they get to be upset about it. And call you on it. And be hurt by it.

But consider this:

You get to not be a rape victim.

They, however, are not afforded that luxury. Ever again.

” — Chuck Wendig (via

vickiexz

) --------------------------------------------------------

“And you tried to change, didn’t you? Closed your mouth more. Tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake… You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that. And if he wants to leave, then let him leave. You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.” —

Warsan Shire, For Women Who Are Difficult To Love

(via

coyotegold

) ----------------------------------------------------------

“So if you want to be helpful, stop it. Stop it right now. Stop telling us we need to be less sensitive, or need to learn to take a joke. Stop explaining abusive behaviour to us. Stop implying feminists like being offended. Stop telling me you’d listen to women if we weren’t so angry.

Because I am angry and I’m sorry if anger makes you uncomfortable but for me, it’s a relief to realise after years and years of being quietly defeated, just how angry I now find I am. The anger reminds me that buried beneath the worthless, self-loathing teenager who whispers “it wasn’t rape,” whispers that I misunderstood, and that she will protect me by staying invisible, there’s another voice. That voice is tired of being told to shh. She knows it was rape. She always knew it.” —

An open letter to gaslighters on triggers, trauma, and women’s anger | The Fementalists

(via

brutereason

) ------------------------------------------------------

“Girls, adults are afraid of your sexuality. The moms who are teaching their boys that you’re nothing but a seductress if you dare go braless or post a selfie where your [gasp] shoulders are exposed are terrified. I’m not sure what makes them afraid. It’s possible that they think their sons will burn in eternal hell, that they’re worried you’ll knock on their door pregnant one day soon or something that’s less easy to identify. Just know that adult women who are concerned about teenage girls not wearing bras are fearful women. Know that women (and men) who are operating out of fear have no advice to give that’s of any value.” —

FYI: An Open Letter to Teenage Girls Who Don’t Always Wear a Bra | Jessica Gottlieb A Los Angeles Mom

-----------------------------------------------------

“The strong black woman is a complicated cultural myth. On one hand, she is a deeply empowering symbol of endurance and hope. Her unassailable spirit is uplifting. Her courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity emboldens black men and women when facing their own life challenges. But in her perfection, the strong black woman is also harmful. Her titanic strength does violence to the spirits of black women when it becomes an imperative for their daily lives. When seeking help means showing unacceptable weakness, actual black women, unlike their mythical counterpart, face depression, anxiety, and loneliness. The strong black woman is not meant to be Pollyanna. Rather, she is expected to show negative emotion, but that emotion is anger, not sadness. The neck-rolling, finger-snapping, tooth- sucking demands of an angry black woman are entirely consistent with the myth of strength. But this no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners woman offers no expectation that the black woman is supposed to be happy, content, or fulfilled. Her sometimes explosive anger is part of what distinguishes her from the ideal of white femininity. This right to own and express anger is among the more potentially powerful psychological and political elements of the construction of black women’s strength. That the black woman is not denied an angry voice within an authentic definition of her femininity makes her a powerful ally for both black men and white women in their political struggles.” — Melissa Harris-Perry, Sister Citizen

------------------------------------------------

fuckingrapeculture:

iradescent:

Can You Tell The Difference Between A Men’s Magazine And A Rapist?

stfueverything:

Well, this is upsetting. According to a new study, people can’t tell the difference between quotes from British “lad mags” and interviews with convicted rapists. And given the choice, men are actually more likely to agree with the rapists. There’s a picture of an FHM cover at the link so that may not be safe for work.

-----------------------------------

“When you are hurting, there will always be people who find a way to make it about themselves. If you break your wrist, they’ll complain about a sprained ankle. If you are sad, they’re sadder. If you’re asking for help, they’ll demand more attention. Here is a fact: I was in a hospital and sobbing into my palms when a woman approached me and asked why I was making so much noise and I managed to stutter that my best friend shot himself in the head and now he was 100% certified dead and she made this little grunt and had the nerve to tell me, “Well now you made me sad.”

When you get angry, there are going to be people who ask you to shut up and sit down, and they’re not going to do it nicely. Theirs are the faces that turn bright red before you have a chance to finish your sentence. They won’t ask you to explain yourself. They’ll be mad that you’re mad and that will be their whole reason alone.

Here is a fact: I was in an alleyway a few weeks ago, stroking my friend’s back as she vomited fourteen tequila shots. “I hate men,” she wheezed as her sides heaved, “I hate all of them.”

I braided her hair so it wouldn’t get caught in the mess. I didn’t correct her and reply that she does in fact love her father and her little brother too, that there are strangers she has yet to meet that will be better for her than any of her shitty ex-boyfriends, that half of our group of friends identifies as male - I could hear each of her bruises in those words and I didn’t ask her to soften the blow when she was trying to buff them out of her skin. She doesn’t hate all men. She never did.

She had the misfortune to be overheard by a drunk guy in an ill-fitting suit, a boy trying to look like a man and leering down my dress as he stormed towards us. “Fuck you, lady,” he said, “Fuck you. Not all men are evil, you know.”

“Thanks,” I told him dryly, pulling on her hand, trying to get her inside again, “See you.”

He followed us. Wouldn’t stop shouting. How dare she get mad. How dare she was hurting. “It’s hard for me too!” he yowled after us. “With fuckers like you, how’s a guy supposed to live?”

Here’s a fact: my father is Cuban and my genes repeat his. Once one of my teachers looked at my heritage and said, “Your skin doesn’t look dirty enough to be a Mexican.”

When my cheeks grew pink and my tongue dried up, someone else in the classroom stood up. “You can’t say that,” he said, “That’s fucking racist. We could report you for that.”

Our teacher turned vicious. “You wanna fail this class? Go ahead. Report me. I was joking. It’s my word against yours. I hate kids like you. You think you’ve got all the power - you don’t. I do.”

Later that kid and I became close friends and we skipped class to do anything else and the two of us were lying on our backs staring up at the sky and as we talked about that moment, he sighed, “I hate white people.” His girlfriend is white and so is his mom. I reached out until my fingers were resting in the warmth of his palm.

He spoke up each time our teacher said something shitty. He failed the class. I stayed silent. I got the A but I wish that I didn’t.

Here is a fact: I think gender is a social construct and people that want to tell others what defines it just haven’t done their homework. I personally happen to have the luck of the draw and am the same gender as my sex, which basically just means society leaves me alone about this one particular thing.

Until I met Alex, who said he hated cis people. My throat closed up. I’m not good at confrontation. I avoided him because I didn’t want to bother him.

One day I was going on a walk and I found him behind our school, bleeding out of the side of his mouth. The only thing I really know is how to patch people up. He winced when the antibacterial cream went across his new wounds. “I hate cis people,” he said weakly.

I looked at him and pushed his hair back from his head. “I understand why you do.”

Here is a fact: anger is a secondary emotion. Anger is how people stop themselves from hurting. Anger is how people stop themselves by empathizing.

It is easy for the drunken man to be mad at my friend. If he says “Hey, fuck you, lady,” he doesn’t have to worry about what’s so wrong about men.

It’s easy for my teacher to fail the kids who speak up. If we’re just smart-ass students, it’s not his fault we fuck up.

It’s easy for me to hate Alex for labeling me as dangerous when I’ve never hurt someone a day in my life. But I’m safe in my skin and his life is at risk just by going to the bathroom. I understand why he says things like that. I finally do.

There’s a difference between the spread of hatred and the frustration of people who are hurting. The thing is, when you are broken, there will always be someone who says “I’m worse, stop talking.” There will always be people who are mad you’re trying to steal the attention. There will always be people who get mad at the same time as you do - they hate being challenged. It changes the rules.

I say I hate all Mondays but my sister was born on one and she’s the greatest joy I have ever known. I say I hate brown but it’s really just the word and how it turns your mouth down - the colour is my hair and my eyes and my favorite sweater. I say I hate pineapple but I still try it again every Easter, just to see if it stings less this year. It’s okay to be sad when you hear someone generalize a group you’re in. But instead of assuming they’re evil and filled with hatred, maybe ask them why they think that way - who knows, you might just end up with a new and kind friend.” — By telling the oppressed that their anger is unjustified, you allow the oppression to continue. I know it’s hard to stay calm. I know it’s scary. But you’re coming from the safe place and they aren’t. Just please … Try to be more understanding. /// r.i.d (via inkskinned)

-------------------------------------

“What is interesting, is that the Frida Kahlo venerated by American feminists is a very different Frida Kahlo to the one people learn about in Mexico, in the Chicano community. In her country, she is recognized as an important artist and a key figure in revolutionary politics of early 20th century Mexico. Her communist affiliations are made very clear. Her relationship with Trotsky is underscored. All her political activities with Diego Rivera are constantly emphasized. The connection between her art and her politics is always made. When Chicana artists became interested in Frida Kahlo in the ‘70s and started organizing homages, they made the connection between her artistic project and theirs because they too were searching for an aesthetic compliment to a political view that was radical and emancipatory. But when the Euro-American feminists latch onto Frida Kahlo in the early ‘80s and when the American mainstream caught on to her, she was transformed into a figure of suffering. I am very critical of that form of appropriation.” — Coco Fusco (via plastickitten)

American feminists also rarely talk about her mode of dress as revolutionary in and of itself. It gets talked about as exotic and Mexican and unique, but in Mexico it’s always made very clear that she dressed the way she did as an expression of cultural pride that was not widely acceptable for her class and time. Her dress was revolutionary, anti-imperialist, and helped launch a resurgence of pride and awareness of Mexican culture that had been subjugated by centuries of imperialism.

(via pretended)

---------------------------------------

resized:

youre-bey0nd-beautiful:

angrymuslimah:

“Gulabi Gang” is a gang of women in India who track down and beat abusive husbands with brooms. That’s not all they do - they’ve got more information on their website.

What else they do that is awesome:

Stop child marriages Persuade families to educate girl-child Train women in self-defense Oppose corruption in administration Create awareness about the evils of dowry Register FIRs against sex-offenders and abusive husbands Publicly shame molesters Encourage women to become financially independent

-----------------------------------------

I'm Not Like Other Girls. andthatlittleblackdress:

“I’m not like other girls, you know?” she tilts her head back and smiles strangely at me like she’s inviting me in on a little secret she’s been waiting to tell me “I’m different.”

When I ask her exactly what does she mean by that she shrugs rolling her shoulders up and down nonchalantly “just that - I’m just not like the rest. I’m smart. I actually eat I don’t wear make up - I’m just not like them.”

So you’re saying every other girl is stupid and every other girl never eats and every other girl wears make up every other girl is a mile high billboard six feet tall with photoshopped skin and a waist roughly the size of your ankle.

You see one of these girls in the mall and you turn your nose up at them sneering – how silly they are how stereotypical they are I’m not like them I’m better than them.

But in reality other girls don’t actually exist other girls is something told to us from the day we first learned that pink was our color and make up was our thing and our boyfriends are supposed to hold our purses and wait for us outside.

‘Other girls’ much like Snow White and much like Cinderella is a bed time story told to you every single second of every single day; you grew up learning to hate every other girl you grew up on the idea that what has been assigned to your gender - by a society and a media that wants to make money off of you - is something to be sneered at you grew up on the notion that pretty and thin are synonymous with stupid and vapid

But isn’t that they want us to be? Isn’t that what they’ve been telling us to be? Because if we’re not pretty and thin then we’re not worth anyone’s time but then if we are pretty and thin we’re turned into a joke.

A joke – like a 23 year old woman who’s been producing and writing her own music since she was sixteen years old being reduced to nothing more than the sum of her boyfriends a joke – like a 22 year old man who’s been producing and writing his own music since he was sixteen years old who is applauded and respected and even that boils down to other girls - other girls date your favorite boy band member other girls are pretty and thin other girls are ‘sluts.’

Other girls are the enemy pretty girls are the enemy because we’ve been taught that pretty girls get every thing so much easier but this is only true in the sense that they get the burdens that we all must face handed to them on a silver platter instead of on a wooden plank and is it so much better after all?

What is it that you hate so much about your own gender that compels you to separate yourself and claim yourself as above them? Don’t you see that when you divide us into ranks we create an enemy on the inside while the real enemy gets stronger?

--------------------------------------------

the fact that breast feeding in public is up for discussion

the fact that the sexualization of breasts has gotten to the point where it get’s in the way of it’s sole fucking purpose

------------------------------------------------

“Yes, false rape accusations happen. Run the protocol anyway. I’ve heard that perhaps the military has the highest number of ‘em. True or not, RUN THE PROTOCOL ANYWAY. Because in 15 years of investigating rape accusations, I can count those that panned out as false on one hand. Meanwhile, the one time I almost skipped the protocol, the one time I almost didn’t believe a petty officer, because I was naive as an investigator and a young woman, because her commanding officer described her as “a party girl, always late, always out drinking, don’t bother with this one”, she turned out to be the victim of one of the most brutal assaults I’ve ever investigated. She shouldn’t have still been -alive-, let alone up and making the accusation. So let me repeat: five false accounts in fifteen years. And one time I almost failed a woman ‘cause of the bullshit way it’s normal to talk about us. Take your shipmates’ word, and then run the protocol. Every. Single. Time.”— JAG lawyer, speaking to my husband’s plant during Sexual Assault Prevention Month

----------------------------------------------------------

Women who served in Iraq were more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.

23-28% of women serving in the military will be sexually assaulted over the course of their service. And those numbers are rising.

--------------------------------------------------------

Too many young girls don’t know how to act when someone’s being inappropriate with them. They giggle or they try to brush it off. Don’t do that. Tell them to go fuck themselves - be a bitch. If someone’s being disrespectful to you, be disrespectful right back. Show them the same amount of respect that they show you.

---------------------------------------------------

“I raped that test in math cla–” No.

“I raped that game earli–” Stop.

“The other team totally raped us tod–” Shut the fuck up.

Do you see what you’re doing?

YOU ARE MAKING RAPE SOUND LIKE A POSITIVE ACTION.

YOU ARE EQUATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE WITH ACHIEVEMENT.

----------------------------

FOR DEFENSE OF RAPE JOKES:

To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.

I get it, you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.

And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?

So fine. If all those arguments aren’t going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and you don’t see the harm, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.

Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-

6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act.

6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.

But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

You. The rapist’s comrade.

And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore…

Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.

----------------------------------------------------------

“Imagine you’re at a party. A guy offers you a drink. You say no. He says “Come on, one drink!” You say “no thanks.” Later, he brings you a soda. “I know you said you didn’t want a drink, but I was getting one for myself and you looked thirsty.” For you to refuse at this point makes you the asshole. He’s just being nice, right? Predators use the social contract and our own good hearts and fear of being rude against us. If you drink the drink, you’re teaching him that it just takes a little persistence on his part to overcome your “no.” If you say “Really, I appreciate it, but no thanks” and put the drink down and walk away from it, you’re the one who looks rude in that moment. But the fact is, you didn’t ask for the drink and you don’t want the drink and you don’t have to drink it just to make some guy feel validated.”

Why can’t you take no for an answer?” is one of the most powerful questions you can use in a social situation: suddenly, it’s your harasser’s manners on trial, not yours.

-----------------------------------------

“Gentlemen. This is what rape culture is like:

Imagine you have a Rolex watch. Nice fancy Rolex, you bought it because you like the way it looks and you wanted to treat yourself. And then you get beaten and mugged and your Rolex is stolen. So you go to the police. Only, instead of investigating the crime, the police want to know why you were wearing a Rolex instead of a regular watch. Have you ever given a Rolex to anyone else? Is it possible you wanted to be mugged? Why didn’t you wear long sleeves to cover up the Rolex if you didn’t want to be mugged?

And then after that, everywhere you go, there are constant jokes about stealing your Rolex. People you don’t even know whistle at your Rolex and make jokes about cutting your hand off to get it. The media doesn’t help either; it portrays people who wear Rolexes as flamboyant assholes who secretly just want someone to come along and take that Rolex off their hands. When damn, all you wanted was to wear a nice watch without getting harassed for it. When you complain that you are starting to feel unsafe, people laugh you off and say that you are too uptight. Never mind you got violently attacked for the crime of wearing a friggin time piece.

Imagining all that? It sucks, doesn’t it.

Now imagine you could never take the Rolex off.” —

The Wretched of the Earth: [TW: rape] On Rape Culture

----------------------

“The trouble is that, for women, being “nice” often translates into putting up with things we should never put up with. How many times has some creep sat uncomfortably close to me on the bus and stared me down, yet I’m too afraid to just get up and move, lest I offend him?

We smile when we’re harassed on the street or hit on by jerks. We laugh at sexist jokes. We learn that when we have strong opinions, we’ll be called bitches and that if we get angry, we’ll be called hysterical. When we say what we want, we’re called pushy or aggressive.

Part of learning “ladylike” behavior is about learning to smile politely when someone is being crude. Femininity has long been attached to passivity and to being docile. Men fight, women giggle and fume silently.” —

Women And Girls Don’t Need To Be Told To Be Nicer | xoJane

------------------------------------

“Don’t be too loud, too demanding, too nagging. You’ll scare boys away” or the dreaded “If he messes with you, its his way of showing you”. We equate harassment with attraction.

So you essentially leave male sexual autonomy with them, but female bodily autonomy is also men’s. We create a world where sex in its whole form is a man’s playing field, where male desires supercede. Where men get to be aggressive and chavinistic and they’re just victims to their male tendencies and should be synpathized with because “boys will be boys”.

-----------------------

next time you read about a man committing an atrocity against a child, count the seconds before someone says:

"but where was the child’s mother?"

"why didn’t the mother prevent this from happening?"

"honestly I think the mother deserves most of the blame here"

---------------------

because it would make more sense to unload a gun than to wear a bulletproof vest, but patriarchy exists ---------- I wonder how many rape victims have been told “I know you want it” and worked towards recovery only to have their rapist’s words spat back out at them over the radio in the form of a “sexy” pop song --------------------- “people ask, “Why did she go over that late?” and not “Why did he invite her over that late?” It asks “why didn’t she fight back?” and not “Why didn’t he stop?” It asks “Why did she drink so much?”, and not “Why did he give her doubles all night?” It asks “What has she done with boys in the past?”, and not “Why did he pick her?” It asks “Why didn’t she call the roommates for help?”, and not “Why would she want them to walk in to see her naked and being raped?” It asks “Why did she do nothing?” and not “How scary that must have been, being raped by a friend?”.” —

Sexual Assault in Mormon Patriarch

-------------------------

“Feminists have always been accused of hating men because it is a very effective way of silencing a very threatening movement. In a society where women’s value is based on our ability to please men, and where men hold almost all the cards, the worst possible thing we can do is hate them. So when feminists point out and object to the oppression, abuse and discrimination perpetuated by men against women, this is framed as man hating in an attempt to silence us, in an attempt to ensure that we are vilified and ignored by the rest of society, so that male oppression of women and male privilege can continue unchecked.

No matter how we frame our arguments and no matter what kind of image we seek to project, as long as we highlight, object to and fight misogyny, feminists are going to be called man haters.

So I’m not going to waste my time trying to prove that I’m not.

— “Man haters?” by Laura on The F Word blog

-------------------

Why rape happens/why we have a rape culture:

1) The Myth of Fragile Masculinity.

From early boyhood, men are taught that their masculinity must be protected above all else, or else it will be lost. Men who have lost their masculinity are objects of contempt, derision and violent abuse, and have lost the right to be loved or respected by their fellow men and by their fathers.

Boys are also taught that masculinity is fragile and high-maintenance; you work to get it and to retain it, and the slightest slip can cause it to be altogether lost. You can slip instantly, with no transition, from the most popular boy in the room to the butt of everyone’s jokes: all it takes is a moment’s lapse in which you say or do anything that can be interpreted as feminine.

This is essential: Masculinity is fragile. The man who has lost his masculinity is, in the eyes of male culture, less than nothing, worse than dead. Therefore, force in defense of masculinity – like beating up a boy who accuses you of being a faggot – can feel to boys and men like a form of self-defense.

Masculinity is defined by what it is not. Being masculine means avoiding the feminine. Being feminine, even for an instant, means risking loss of masculinity. Empathy, in our culture’s warped conception, is feminine; thinking about other people’s emotions is feminine. Boys are taught to avoid empathy.

Masculinity is also defined by power-over. The man who is overpowered by others is less then a man; the man who has power over others is a man among men. Remember, masculinity is fragile: if you don’t have power-over someone, you’re in danger of losing your manhood.

Once boys become teens, masculinity is additionally defined by the absolutely crucial task of getting laid. Once again, masculinity is fragile: he who isn’t getting any isn’t a man.

Masculinity comes wrapped around a sense of entitlement. Men don’t feel grateful when the women in their life (mothers, wives, maids) prepare meals, make beds, or whatever: in our society’s warped view, the women are just doing what they’re supposed to, and men are just getting what they’re entitled to.

Statistically, environments which tend to have the most rape – middle and high school, frat houses, prisons – are also the environments which most emphasize masculinity, and where boys and men have the most reason to fear losing masculinity.

2) Low regard for women.

The fact is, women aren’t respected as equals, by and large. To some degree this is a self-perpetuating cycle: why aren’t women in more of public life’s highest-respected positions (Presidents, CEOs, Senators, etc.)? Because women aren’t seen as capable of holding society’s highest positions. Why aren’t women seen as being as capable? Well, just look around: there are almost no women are doing those things.

Women’s lower pay is both a cause of and a result of the low regard in which our culture holds women. That the huge amount of unpaid caretaking work our society requires to get by is overwhelmingly done by women, and accorded almost no respect (“stay at home moms just sit around watching TV all day, right?”), is both a cause of and a result of the low regard in which our culture holds women.

Women get paid less. Women get promoted less. Women get out of the house less. The work that women do is worth less.

Why do men rape women? It’s not because they hate women. Do hunters hunt because they hate animals? No, they hunt because hunting is fun, because they like the meat, and maybe because hunting is a way of male-bonding, They don’t hate the animal; they just consider empathy for the animal’s feelings irrelevant, less important than their desire for meat or fun.

This is why the “rape isn’t about sex, rape is about violence” analysis falls short. It’s not true and it denies the true horror of the situation. Rapists rape because they want sex; they don’t consider the woman’s feelings at all, because a woman’s feelings aren’t worth considering. They’re just women, after all.

3) Sexuality is something possessed by women, which is given to (or taken by) men.

That’s our society’s view of it. Look at the magazines on the racks – it’s pretty obvious why men’s magazines, wanting to sell copies with a sexy cover, usually use photos of mostly-undressed women. But why do women’s magazines do the exact same thing? Because to do a sexy magazine cover, you generally have to show a photo of a woman. Women are sexualized.

That’s also why women are taught to wait to be asked for a dance or a date, while men are taught to do the asking. Women have it; men ask for it.

This connects to the first point, too – the fragility of masculinity. Men who have lost their masculinity are, in our culture’s view, less than men, less even than women. They are the lowest of the low. One way to lose your masculinity is to be unable to “get” sex from a woman. This also breeds resentment of women (in much the same way that poverty can sometimes breed resentment of rich people): “how dare women not give something to me that I need so desperately? How dare women withhold from me the masculinity that I’m entitled to?”

---------------------

‎’Slut’ is attacking women for their right to say yes. ‘Friend Zone’ is attacking women for their right to say no.”

And “bitch” is attacking women for their right to call you on it.

---------------------------------

I am extremely, EXTREMELY tired of “real men have beards”/“real women have curves” posts and any variant of them.

You know what “real” people ought to have? Respect for other people regardless of gender identity/presentation, body type, and grooming choices.

------------------------------------

fun fact: dead rapists can’t become repeat offenders

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Don’t shame the girls who sent pictures of themselves half-naked to their significant others as a way to express eroticism which is healthy and natural…give the people hell who think it’s okay to destroy someone’s trust and distribute those images simply for entertainment purposes.

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"big strong boy" vs "cute little girl"

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“If you’re a “nice guy” to a girl up until you realize she doesn’t want to date you, then go on about how she’s a cold shrew that friendzoned you and how no girls date nice guys, like, nah mate, girls do date nice guys. You just aren’t a nice guy. You’re a passive aggressive beta with internalized misogyny and a serious victim complex.”

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“Does your boyfriend or brother spend a lot of money on skin and hair care products? Does your dad spend much time at the hairdresser or beautician?

In your city’s daily paper do most of the political news items feature women? Are most of the stories in the business section written by and about women? Is there a special ‘Men’s Section’ filled with celebrity gossip, fashion and beauty tips?

When you watch a big sporting event on TV, are the athletes usually women? When you watch female sporting teams are there hot guys in tiny outfits cheering for them on the sidelines?

Do girls you know talk openly about getting off while watching porn? Do they boast about their sexual conquests?

When you’re at the food court, do your female friends happily gobble down a large burger and fries combo while your male friends pick at a salad and sip diet coke?

Do the majority of the fathers you know spend most of their time at home washing, cleaning, cooking and taking care of their kids? Do you often hear mothers refer to looking after their own kids as ‘babysitting’? Have you heard women talk about earning brownie points for cleaning their own house and washing their own clothes? Are you sick of men going on about how hard it is to balance work and parenthood?

Are your male friends afraid to walk on their own at night? Do they avoid drinking too much in case they get raped? Do they dress to protect themselves from attack and always carry their keys poking through their knuckles? When they complain about all this do your female friends shrug and tell them that’s just how the world is?

If the answer to all of these questions was yes, wouldn’t that mean something was wrong? Is that still true if the genders are reversed? Does it matter?”

— Opening from Emily Maguire’s ‘Your Skirt’s Too Short: Sex, Power, Choice’

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“Labeling women as “crazy” is a way of controlling them. It may not be something planned or pre-meditated, but the ease with which men call women “crazy” says a lot about them. Calling a woman “crazy” is quick and easy shut-down to any discussion. Once the “crazy” card has been pulled out, women are now put on the defensive: the onus is no longer on the man to address her concerns or her issue, it’s on her to justify her behavior, to prove that she is not, in fact, crazy or irrational. Men don’t even have to provide any sort of argument back – it’s a classic catch-22; “the fact that you don’t even see that you’re acting crazy is just proof that it’s crazy.””

On Labeling Women “Crazy” | Paging Dr. NerdLove - Part 2

See also: “You’re overreacting.”

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Nothing pisses me off more than a guy who has no respect for women but suddenly becomes the overprotective father or brother when they share the same last names. -

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“When women scream you wonder what’s wrong with them. When men yell you get afraid about what they’re going to do.”

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“…If your first concern on reading about hundreds of self-reported attempted and completed rapes is whether the research supports the proposition that most men are in the clear…you need to get your head screwed on straight. Women worrying that you might be a rapist is not a bigger problem than women getting raped.” —Lyndsay, in a comment on “

Meet the Predators

" ----------------------------------------------------- “

What if all women were bigger and stronger than you and thought they were smarter

What if women were the ones who started wars

What if too many of your friends had been raped by women wielding giant dildos and no K-Y Jelly

What if the state trooper who pulled you over on the New Jersey Turnpike was a woman and carried a gun

What if the ability to menstruate was the prerequisite for most high-paying jobs

What if your attractiveness to women depended on the size of your penis

What if every time women saw you they’d hoot and make jerking motions with their hands

What if women were always making jokes about how ugly penises are and how bad sperm tastes

What if you had to explain what’s wrong with your car to big sweaty women with greasy hands who stared at your crotch in a garage where you are surrounded by posters of naked men with hard-ons

What if men’s magazines featured cover photos of 14-year-old boys with socks tucked into the front of their jeans and articles like: “How to tell if your wife is unfaithful” or “What your doctor won’t tell you about your prostate” or “The truth about impotence”

What if the doctor who examined your prostate was a woman and called you “Honey”

What if you had to inhale your boss’s stale cigar breath as she insisted that sleeping with her was part of the job

What if you couldn’t get away because the company dress code required you wear shoes designed to keep you from running

And what if after all that women still wanted you to love them.

For the Men Who Still Don’t Get It, written 20 years ago by Carol Diehl. -------------------------------------------------

women are considered fragile but I’ve never seen anything as easily wounded as a man’s ego

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You know why women often say “nothing’s wrong” when something is definitely bothering them

It’s because men have been belittling, minimizing and mocking our emotions forever

And we are socialized to be as passive and undemanding and selfless as possible, and not to run any risk of bothering or angering a man lest he abandon or hurt us It’s not passive aggression, it is fear

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Some scary controlling people will tell you over and over how important consent is to them. They will tell you that they want to respect your boundaries, and that if anything makes you uncomfortable, they will stop. They will say this over and over, apparently sincerely.

Until you actually say no.

And then, suddenly, they create a reason that it wasn’t ok, after all, and that you’re going to do what they wanted anyway.

They will tell you that it *would* be ok to say no, and that of course they’d respect it, but you said it wrong. And that you have to understand that it hurts them when you say it that way. (And that you should make it better by doing what they wanted).

Or they will tell you that of course they don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, but you said yes before. And that this means that either it’s really ok with you, or that you don’t trust them anymore. And that you have to understand that it hurts when you withdraw trust like that (and that you should make it better by doing what they wanted.)

Or that they have a headache. Or that they just can’t deal with it right now. That maybe when they feel better or aren’t tired or grumpy or had a better day it will be ok to say no. (And that meanwhile, you should fix things by doing what they wanted).

Or that by saying no, you’re accusing them of being an awful person. And that they’d never do anything to hurt you, so why are you making accusations like that? (And, implicitly, that you should fix it by doing what they wanted.)

If this kind of thing happens every time you say no, things are really wrong.

No isn’t a theoretical construct. In mutually respectful relationships, people say no to each other often, and it’s not a big deal.

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See, what you need to understand is that “Not all guys like that” is never going to work. Because you’re answering an entirely different conversation than what women are actually saying.

You think women are saying “Every man is a predator and a danger to me.” And you’re replying, “But I’m not like that.”

But women aren’t saying that. They’re saying “There are too many situations where women have to worry about their safety,” and you’re saying “That’s not important.” They’re saying “Women are constantly told it’s their fault if something bad happens,” and you’re saying “Don’t worry about it.” They’re saying “Too often, women find their trust violated by men,” and you’re saying “But you should trust me!”

They’re saying “So many men have decided that what they want is more important than anything about a woman.” And you’re replying “I’m exactly like that.”

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“Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske took brain scans of heterosexual men while they looked at sexualised images of women wearing bikinis. She found that the part of their brains that became activated was pre-motor - areas that usually light up when people anticipate using tools. The men were reacting to the images as if the women were objects they were going to act on. Particularly shocking was the discovery that the participants who scored highest on tests of hostile sexism were those most likely to deactivate the part of the brain that considers other people’s intentions (the medial prefrontal cortex) while looking at the pictures. These men were responding to images of the women as if they were non-human.” — The Equality Illusion

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“As a Muslim feminist woman of color, I cannot relate to Slutwalks as it caters mostly to the definition of emancipation set by white women. Slutwalks deviate in terms of delivering the message against sexual assault. It turns a blind eye to women of cultures where flimsy clothes don’t necessarily lead to rapes. Muslim women get raped too. Nassim Elbardouh is right. “Do Not Rape” Walk sounds better. This isn’t to say that I don’t support Slutwalks. I simply can’t relate to a liberating movement that does not liberate nor acknowledge me. Western feminism, despite its undeniable achievements, still perpetuates the image of a white woman as the liberated one. If these feminists do claim to represent all women, they need to understand the dynamics of the cultures other women hail from. Don’t care if you’re wearing a thong or burka, no one has the right to rape you. Burka clad brown Muslim women get raped too. Represent us. I want a movement that represents me regardless of my color and creed. End victim blaming and rape culture by representing everyone.” —

Mehreen Kasana

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Why is it men always want to turn the extra room into a man-cave?

Screw you I’m turning that room into a lady cave. I’m going to go in there and read romance novels, crochet, preform witchcraft, scrap book, pet a cat, worship satan, and complain to my friends that you’re not satisfying me sexually. You can go fuck yourself.

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“Objectification is the opposite of empathy. While we talk about its effects on girls, the way it erodes their confidence, their self-awareness, their sense of security, we rarely actually discuss what the effects of sexually objectifying women are on boys and their psychological or sexual development. It’s not minor. It encourages them to think of girls and women as body parts for pleasure and use — literally, as “things” that don’t have autonomy or self-determination and whose permission is irrelevant. Things that are fungible and are violable. Things that should be silent.” — Soraya Chemaly,

Why naked pictures aren’t harmless

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The problem is not that our society has taught girls to not feel beautiful; the problem is that we’ve taught them that this means they’re not worth loving, not worth being, that they are somehow lesser because of it.

Let me tell you, despite what magazines and makeup companies and fashion moguls would have you believe, there is NO - I repeat - there is NO woman in the world whom everyone agrees is beautiful. Not a single one.

That would be impossible, not only because ‘beauty’ means different things to different cultures (did you know some cultures like their women fat as a general concept of beauty?), but because each PERSON is different. Women all like different things - tall, short, lanky, bulky, hairy, waxed… why do we assume males only go for one archetype? Because it’s been constructed for us as the ONE GOLDEN IMAGE OF BEAUTY to strive for (and even achieve, if we just buy ENOUGH of the RIGHT products - how convenient).

The reality is, no matter what you look like, *there will always be people who think you’re ugly* (ask Megan Fox, Angelina Jolie, etc.). So the issue is not that females in our society feel ugly - they ARE, to someone. I guarantee, no matter WHAT you look like, there will be people in the world who think you look like a cow. And - what’s more - no one ever made history just for being beautiful, no matter how good-looking they were (ok, Helen of Troy, but she was fictional, and she was also the daughter of a God, so good luck), so why are we so enthralled by the idea of being beautiful?

Instead of worrying about why we as a society make girls feel ugly, maybe we should worry about why our society thinks that being ugly MATTERS SO MUCH.

— @CallMeCalliope

--------------------------------------------------- “Girls and women of the world, could we stop apologizing for wanting and eating food? Because this is one of the most ridiculous things that we do collectively as lady-people, and not only does it annoy the shit out of me personally, but it is also INCREDIBLY SAD. Could we stop feeling “guilty” for wanting an effing brownie? Or a plate of fries? Could we stop actively seeking permission from our friends to go ahead and “be bad” and order the cheesecake? Could we all just go ahead and order whatever it is that we feel like eating, instead of saying, “Oh, I feel like a pig, you guys are just getting salads”?

Because—now I know this will come as a shock—WOMEN EAT. We get hungry. We get hungry for pizzas and Double Stuf Oreos and nachos and ice cream and giant French-toast breakfasts, and you know what? WE DON’T NEED TO FEEL BAD ABOUT THAT.

” — an excerpt from this beautiful article that everyone should read (x)

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History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.

History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.

But the forgetting part is vitally important. Most historians and other writers of what we now consider “primary sources” simply didn’t think about women and their contribution to society. They took it for granted, except when that contribution or its lack directly affected men.

This does not in any way mean that the female contribution to society was in fact less interesting or important, or complicated, simply that history—the process of writing down and preserving of the facts, not the facts/events themselves—was looking the other way.

” — Tansy Rayner Roberts

---------------------------------------------------- “Here’s the thing. Men in our culture have been socialized to believe that their opinions on women’s appearance matter a lot. Not all men buy into this, of course, but many do. Some seem incapable of entertaining the notion that not everything women do with their appearance is for men to look at. This is why men’s response to women discussing stifling beauty norms is so often something like “But I actually like small boobs!” and “But I actually like my women on the heavier side, if you know what I mean!” They don’t realize that their individual opinion on women’s appearance doesn’t matter in this context, and that while it might be reassuring for some women to know that there are indeed men who find them fuckable, that’s not the point of the discussion.

Women, too, have been socialized to believe that the ultimate arbiters of their appearance are men, that anything they do with their appearance is or should be “for men.” That’s why women’s magazines trip over themselves to offer up advice on “what he wants to see you wearing” and “what men think of these current fashion trends” and “wow him with these new hairstyles.” While women can and do judge each other’s appearance harshly, many of us grew up being told by mothers, sisters, and female strangers that we’ll never “get a man” or “keep a man” unless we do X or lose some fat from Y, unless we moisturize//trim/shave/push up/hide/show/”flatter”/paint/dye/exfoliate/pierce/surgically alter this or that.

That’s also why when a woman wears revealing clothes, it’s okay, in our society, to assume that she’s “looking for attention” or that she’s a slut and wants to sleep with a bunch of guys. Because why else would a woman wear revealing clothes if not for the benefit of men and to communicate her sexual availability to them, right? It can’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s hot out or it’s more comfortable or she likes how she looks in it or everything else is in the laundry or she wants to get a tan or maybe she likes women and wants attention from them, not from men?

The result of all this is that many men, even kind and well-meaning men, believe, however subconsciously, that women’s bodies are for them. They are for them to look at, for them to pass judgment on, for them to bless with a compliment if they deign to do so. They are not for women to enjoy, take pride in, love, accept, explore, show off, or hide as they please. They are for men and their pleasure.” —

Why You Shouldn’t Tell That Random Girl On The Street That She’s Hot » Brute Reason

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things girls are made to feel ashamed of-

having periods choosing what they want to wear on their body wanting to/not wanting to have sex putting boys in the ‘friendzone’ standing up against misogyny ruining a boy’s life by telling the police that he raped her i could go on ----------------------------------------------------- “I will teach my daughter not to wear her skin like a drunken apology. I will tell her ‘make a home out of your body, live in yourself, do not let people turn you into a regret, do not justify yourself. If you are a disaster it is not forever, if you are a disaster you are the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. Do not deconstruct from the inside out, you belong here, you belong here, not because you are lovely, but because you are more than that.’” — Azra T. “Your hands are threads, your body is a canvas” (via

thatkindofwoman

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Remember that intimate conversation you had with your son? The one where you said, “I love you and I need you to know that no matter how a woman dresses or acts, it is not an invitation to cat call, taunt, harass or assault her”?

Or when you told your son, “A woman’s virginity isn’t a prize and sleeping with a woman doesn’t earn you a point”?

How about the heart-to-heart where you lovingly conferred the legal knowledge that “a woman doesn’t have to be fighting you and you don’t have to be pinning her down for it to be RAPE. Intoxication means she can’t legally consent, NOT that she’s an easy score.”

Or maybe you recall sharing my personal favorite, “Your sexual experiences don’t dictate your worth just like a woman’s sexual experiences don’t dictate hers.”

Last but not least, do you remember calling your son out when you discovered he was using the word “slut” liberally? Or when you overheard him talking about some girl from school as if she were more of a conquest than a person?

I want you to consider these conversations and then ask yourself why you don’t remember them. The likely reason is because you didn’t have them. In fact, most parents haven’t had them.

” —The Conversation You Must Have With Your Sons | Carina Kolodny

-------------------------------------------------- “How is a woman supposed to win? If she primps, she’s capitulating to the patriarchy and not celebrating her true self. If she goes natural, she’s an ugly hag. If she sometimes wants to add a cool filter to her picture, she’s lying about how she looks and who she is: even though Instagram as a service was designed with the filters as its core, and they’re a huge part of how Instagram works and how the feeds are presented. This idea that women now need to exhibit perfection with a #nofilter tag is just as pointlessly oppressive as insisting that women get made up just to walk down the driveway to the mailbox.

Sharing photographs is supposed to be fun, not a constant battle with yourself and the people around you. When people have to stress out about the judgmental comments they’ll get on their selfies, it doesn’t really create an incentive for them to post them, and it definitely undermines their sense of worth and pride in themselves. Taking selfies can be incredibly empowering, but not when it’s emotionally fraught.” — Must Women Always Be Perfect? | this ain’t livin’

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the stereotype that women talk more than men is infinitely amusing to me because men are literally incapable of shutting the fuck up i hope this post gets popular enough that i hurt a man’s feelings

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“These girls. I remember them. They happened. They were there with me. They had red hair and bright red lipstick and they wore Boston Red Sox hoodies and they loved Russian literature and they had big, wily pet dogs and they spent the night.

I talked to them at parties or met them in the dorms freshman year or they were friends of friends who stroked my hair and said, “I just think everyone’s a little bit bisexual, don’t you?”

I loved them. They were real and they shared themselves with me and we spent time together at thrift shops and in classes and at bars and at friends’ dinner parties. We held hands while other couples passed around a joint. We buried our faces in each other’s soft necks under the covers. These were relationships. These were people I was with.

“I want us to be monogamous,” men say. “But you know, obviously girls don’t count.”” —Girls Don’t Count | Thought Catalog

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Characteristics of male power include the power of men:

1. to deny women [our own] sexuality

[by means of clitoridectomy and infibulation; chastity belts; punishment, including death, for female adultery; punishment, including death, for lesbian sexuality; psychoanalytic denial of the clitoris; strictures against masturbation; denial of material and postmenopausal sensuality; unnecessary hysterectomy; pseudolesbian images in media and literature; closing of archives and destruction of documents relating to lesbian existence];

2. or to force it [male sexuality] upon them

by means of rape (including marital rape) and wife beating; father-daughter, brother-sister incest; the socialization of women to feel that male sexual “drive” amounts to a right,(15) idealization of heterosexual romance in art, literature, media, advertising, and so forth; child marriage; arranged marriage; prostitution; the harem; psychoanalytic doctrines of frigidity and vaginal orgasm; pornographic depictions of women responding pleasurably to sexual violence and humiliation (a subliminal message being that sadistic heterosexuality is more “normal” than sensuality between women)];

3. to command or exploit their labor to control their produce

[by means of the institutions of marriage and motherhood as unpaid production; the horizontal segregation of women in paid employment; the decoy of the upwardly mobile token woman; male control of abortion, contraception, and childbirth; enforced sterilization; pimping, female infanticide, which robs mothers of daughters and contributes to generalized devaluation of women];

4. to control or rob them of their children

[by means of father-right and “legal kidnapping”;(16) enforced sterilization; systematized infanticide; seizure of children from lesbian mothers by the courts, the malpractice of male obstetrics; use of the mother as “token torturer”(17) in genital mutilation or in binding the daughter’s feet (or mind) to fit her for marriage];

5. to confine them physically and prevent their movement

[by means of rape as terrorism, keeping women off the streets; purdah, foot-binding; atrophying of women’s athletic capabilities; haute couture, “feminine” dress codes; the veil; sexual harassment on the streets, horizontal segregation of women in employment; prescriptions for “full-time” mothering; enforced economic dependence of wives];

6. to use them as objects in male transactions

[use of women as “gifts,” bride-price; pimping; arranged marriage; use of women as entertainers to facilitate male deals, for example, wife-hostess, cocktail waitress required to dress for male sexual titillation, call girls, “bunnies,” geisha, kisaeng prostitutes, secretaries];

7. to cramp their creativeness

[witch persecutions as campaigns against midwives and female healers and as pogrom against independent, “unassimilated” women;(18) definition of male pursuits as more valuable than female within any culture, so that cultural values become embodiment of male subjectivity, restriction of female self-fulfillment to marriage and motherhood, sexual exploitation of women by male artists and teachers; the social and economic disruption of women’s creative aspirations;(19) erasure of female tradition];(20) and

8. to withhold from them large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attainments

[by means of noneducation of females (60 percent of the world’s illiterates are women~; the “Great Silence” regarding women and particularly lesbian existence in history and culture;(21) sex-role stereotyping that deflects women from science, technology, and other “masculine” pursuits; male social/professional bonding that excludes women; discrimination against women in the professions]

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence Adrienne Rich

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Male journalists, who are undoubtedly in the majority when it comes to rock journalism, are quite simply sick to the back teeth with women banging on about something men really don’t prioritize. Effectively (in conjunction with the managing editors and publishers of the music press—most of whom are male) they control which topics are covered, which bands are featured and how a magazine’s overall journalistic style is determined. Most editorial positions are taken up by men, as are most freelance positions, and despite half-hearted claims by certain editors about redressing the balance on their papers and magazines, women continue to find themselves marginalized.

No doubt this is why male journalists feel they can afford to declare the gender issue dead and buried. For them, it isn’t really an issue. It merely challenges their authority in a world where they know what’s what and who’s calling the shots. Even in this supposedly enlightened, post-feminist age, men still feel profoundly threatened by women.

” —Girls Will Be Boys: Women Report on Rock, Liz Evans

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“Women are sick of being typecast, stereotyped, and pigeonholed. They are not sick of being women.” —Girls Will Be Boys: Women Report on Rock, Liz Evans

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You are not a bad person for getting abortion, it doesn’t matter if:

you were assaulted your birth control failed you weren’t on birth control at all there is a medical issue you don’t want children you already have children and can’t handle another you aren’t ready you don’t want to be pregnant You are never a bad person for needing an abortion. There is nothing wrong with you. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

You are not alone.

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kaninchenzero:

"he deserves the presumption of innocence"

fuck that. this is not court, social opprobrium is not equivalent to the armed might of the state.

the only way to ensure every person accused of sexual violence is presumed to be innocent in every circumstance is to assume that every victim is always lying.

presuming the accused to be innocent is setting the standard for prosecution in criminal courts. the people deciding the case must begin by assuming the accused is innocent.

ONLY THE PEOPLE DECIDING THE OUTCOME OF THE CRIMINAL CASE MUST PRESUME THE ACCUSED IS INNOCENT BEFORE TRIAL BEGINS.

no one else.

we cannot apply the rules of criminal courts to every human interaction. they are designed to have artificially high standards because the state has an enormous amount of power over nearly everyone.

a victim of sexual violence does not have that kind of power over their assailant. victims of sexual violence only very rarely can invoke the armed might of the state on their behalf and risk further violence and humiliation if they do.

to move towards any kind of justice we — those of us who are not involved in criminal proceedings — must presume an assault has taken place and the victim can reliably identify their assailant.

otherwise we maintain the status quo where perpetrators of sexual violence can act in the near certainty they will never be even mildly inconvenienced for their sins. ------------------------------------------------------------ “

Does your boyfriend or brother spend a lot of money on skin and hair care products? Does your dad spend much time at the hairdresser or beautician?

When you watch a big sporting event on TV, are the athletes usually women? When you watch female sporting teams are there hot guys in tiny outfits cheering for them on the sidelines?

Do girls you know talk openly about getting off while watching porn? Do they boast about their sexual conquests?

When you’re at the food court, do your female friends happily gobble down a large burger and fries combo while your male friends pick at a salad and sip diet coke?

If the answer to all of these questions was yes, wouldn’t that mean something was wrong? Is that still true if the genders are reversed? Does it matter?

” — Opening from Emily Maguire’s ‘Your Skirt’s Too Short: Sex, Power, Choice’

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“Don’t marry a man unless you would be proud to have a son exactly like him.”

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Reminder: You are under no obligation to look pretty.

fandomsandfeminism:

Not when you are laying around the house, not when you go to the grocery store, not when you sit in a classroom, not when you go to the gym. You are never obligated to get dressed up just so you are pretty for others.

Pretty is not the rent you pay to exist in the world as a woman. ----------------------------------------------------------

“The reason women are turning you down for casual sex seems to be that, for one thing, a lot of you are calling them sluts afterward. Also, a lot of you aren’t bothering to try to be good in bed.” — Terri Conley, professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan (link

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Why is it not helpful to say “not all men are like that”? For lots of reasons. For one, women know this. They already know not every man is a rapist, or a murderer, or violent. They don’t need you to tell them.

Second, it’s defensive. When people are defensive, they aren’t listening to the other person; they’re busy thinking of ways to defend themselves. I watched this happen on Twitter, over and again.

Third, the people saying it aren’t furthering the conversation, they’re sidetracking it. The discussion isn’t about the men who aren’t a problem. (Though, I’ll note, it can be. I’ll get back to that.) Instead of being defensive and distracting from the topic at hand, try staying quiet for a while and actually listening to what the thousands upon thousands of women discussing this are saying.

Fourth—and this is important, so listen carefully—when a woman is walking down the street, or on a blind date, or, yes, in an elevator alone, she doesn’t know which group you’re in. You might be the potential best guy ever in the history of history, but there’s no way for her to know that. A fraction of men out there are most definitely not in that group. Which are you? Inside your head you know, but outside your head it’s impossible to.

This is the reality women deal with all the time.

” — #NotAllMen: How Not to Derail Discussions of Women’s Issues

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“You think I’m not a goddess?

Try me.

This is a torch song.

Touch me and you’ll burn.” — Margaret Atwood, from “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing”

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“Once discovered he sought to justify and minimise the situation by one-sided arguments that ranged from - “it’s just guys’ stuff, a bit of fun, all guys look at porn, hey, get real - it’s the way the world is now.” The implication being that I was a prude, over-reacting and out of date. “It was just ‘fantasy’”, he said, and therefore not related to the real sex that we shared. My reply: “it’s obvious fakery for the women - you can see that” was met with “no, no, you have that wrong, they are genuinely enjoying it.” He knew. So it wasn’t fantasy then? I was supposed to believe it was just a mild diversion, when for the women it had to be real. Any suggestion though of the reality that women were coerced or treated badly was dismissed. They were fine, they were well paid. Self-delusional and ambiguous arguments ran amok. He seemed to have gone to a different place; to comment about the women in porn and me in a cold and detached way, to say things about women’s bodies, about sexual acts which came out of his mouth with swingeing bluntness. A layer of empathy had been ground away.” — Caroline (pseudonym) 2012 “The Impact of Pornography on my Life” in Bray, A. and Tankard Reist, M. (eds)

Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Porn Industry

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“So, I ask to the women who are still not sure about rape culture, patriarchy, or male supremacy, if you see the problem behind a culture in which “no” is punishable, but where failure to say “no” makes any violation of your personhood your own fault. When you sit back for a moment and think to yourself that surely you can say no to men, and that I am blowing things way out of proportion, then at least do this test within your own life: Start saying No more often when No is what you really want to say. Establish firm boundaries with men and do not let up. See if the male you are saying no to immediately stops and respects your boundary, or if his automatic response, reflexive—as though he’s been learning how to do this since he was a boy, as though he sees no other response more logical than this—is to attempt to do what you have just asked him not to do to you. Notice how you feel when telling a man “no” as well. Do you feel butterflies in your stomach? Do you feel guilty (denying him his right of access to you)? Do you feel mean? Do you feel unsure at all as to whether or not you have the right to tell him no? It is very easy to feel that men are not so bad when you are still making sure to give them what they want.” — Looking Male Supremacists Dead in Their Dead Eyes (The Boner Busters Takedown)

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“This is hard to explain. Girls … " He trailed off, frowning in thought and rubbing at the bridge of his nose, then started over. "Boys insult each other by calling each other ‘nancy’ or ‘queer’ or ‘poofter’, and those things are insulting because they suggest you want to be a girl — and being a girl is bad, right? That’s the implication. If someone loses or gets tricked, they’re ‘fucked’. Girls get fucked, and boys do the fucking. Boys come out on top, and being on the bottom is weak. Bad. Girly. It says something rather awful about what we really think of girls, doesn’t it? God forbid any boy should give up his boy-ness to be a girl.” — Excerpt From: Minisinoo. “Aorist Subjunctive 04 - Past Present.” [x] (via hoodiecap)

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toebesity asked: I've asked before and maybe you didn't see it, or if you think this is repetitive/a stupid question, please tell me so I won't add to your inbox. I understand that marriage is a patriarchal institution and partaking in hetero marriage especially is not a feminist act, but is it an anti-feminist act? Also, do you have any suggestions for further reading about feminist perspectives of heterosexuality? I can't find many myself (maybe I'm just not looking in the right places?). Thank you!

evilfeminist answered: The following was written by feminist Michele Braa-Heidner.:

If heterosexuality was expressed in a non patriarchal, male dominated scenario, heterosexuality may have merit, but as it stands, existing within the confines of patriarchy, we must question it completely. Why do women want to be with men knowing what we know about men? Knowing that all men disrespect and hate women most of the time? Seeing the devastating results of male violence against women historically and currently? Seeing men dominate, oppress, violate and murder women? We must ask ourselves is our heterosexuality healthy or is it an adapted survival behavior in response to male violence against females? Since we don’t have any frame of reference for healthy heterosexuality where women and men are both respected free and equal human beings, we cannot say with any conviction that patriarchal heterosexuality is normal, healthy or natural. Since we don’t have any frame of reference of a type of heterosexuality that exists without the component of male violence against women, we cannot come to the conclusion that patriarchal heterosexuality is normal, healthy or natural.

When women against all logic and evidence, continue to have relationships with men, regardless of how they treat us, we must conclude that there is another mechanism in play here. When we begin to question heterosexuality, I mean really question it and dismantle it within the patriarchal confines, we expose the insanity of women “choosing” to be with men on male merit alone because the hard truth of the matter is that men don’t deserve women on merit alone. Consequently, this insane need for women to be with men begins to reveal itself as a symptom or reaction to the conditions of female enslavement and victimization. A means for surviving male violence. This becomes even more evident when you read the symptoms of oppressive/dominant relationships and how the behaviors of subservience are exactly the same behaviors as femininity. That even men display “feminine” behaviors when they are being dominated. What if women have adapted to male domination and violence by “sleeping with the enemy”? By getting close to their captors in an effort to be able to control their environment or to curtail male violence? We need to start asking ourselves these questions so that we can begin to analyze our relationships with men if we ever want to have healthy ones or further, decide not to.

If we do this, analyze our desire to be with men, we may find that there is no good reason. That our relationships are not based on reciprocal respect, but instead based on our own terror. Our individual man could be to us, a life preserver amongst a sea of potential male predators. We may find that on the surface we kid ourselves into believing that we need them or want them but underneath this surface level, we see that this is just a band-aide covering up our terror from the inherent memory, cell memory, of our violent enslavement at the hands of men. There is ample evidence that connects feminine behaviors especially in our relationships with men that mimic the behaviors of victims of Stockholm’s Syndrome.

Another factor involved here is that most male violence against women including rape is done by the men that women know or have relationships with, not by strangers. The nuclear family is the playground for male violence due to the isolation of women under the roof and control of individual men. We are constantly inundated with threats of violence from male strangers, but the truth is this compared to non stranger male violence is rare. I believe the reason for this that patriarchy has a stake in keeping women terrified of the strange man out there, outside our safe homes, because this terror keeps women in their place, within the confines of the nuclear family, the individual man and of patriarchy on a societal level. Women then cling to their “men” in an effort to stay safe from the strange violent males–out there. Women stay in abusive relationships because they have Stockholm’s syndrome, not because they are stupid or because they like it. She is merely trying to survive violence in the best way she knows how.

Women learn to see themselves as inferior and men superior because they must put themselves in their captors shoes to be able to feel safer to be able to figure out when an if he will be violent and try to curtail his violence. This is why women tend to dislike themselves and other women because they are seeing themselves through the dominant male eyes. Women then see themselves and other women as weak, stupid, petty and deserving of male punishment, yet another reason why women tend to like men over women. And this is also why women tend to compete with other women when it comes to male attention. Patriarchy teaches women this lie, that men are important and women are not; therefore, to be important, women must be with men thereby getting attention or importance through osmosis. All of these factors play into what we know as “heterosexuality” and all of these factors also play into the reasons for why we think heterosexuality is necessary. If we take these factors and or reasons out of the equation, would we be heterosexual? Would women want to be with men?

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I care about the problems of men. I care that the patriarchy tells men that they have to be stoic beasts incapable of emotion. I care that the patriarchy tells men that they are lust-filled monsters incapable of controlling their own libidos. I care that the patriarchy tells men that they cannot be raped or assaulted because the patriarchy believes women are too weak and inferior to be dangerous.

Feminists did not do this to you, other men did.

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“Stop apologizing to men for not wanting to sit with them, drink with them, dance with them, go home with them. You have not been put on this earth for their pleasure, their entertainment, to help them feel a little less lonely at night. If you do not want someone, are not interested in someone, don’t apologize. You do not have to be forgiven for the sake of someone else’s feelings. All you have to worry about is your own.

If you’re dating someone and they cheat on you with the girl sitting across them from the bar, or anyone for that matter, do not ask their name, why they did it, and if it was worth it. Just leave. Do not swear your revenge, or that you find the one who broke your relationship because the person who broke your trust is sitting right in front of you. The person who ruined what you had is the one who promised that they never would. Do not fixate yourself on what you should have or could have done, but what you will do, which is leave. You gave them a chance and now they can see it walk out the door.

You’re going to make mistakes and that’s inevitable, but what isn’t is making those same mistakes twice. You are supposed to learn from the pain, supposed to take it into your hands, hang it on your wall to remind yourself that you will never let it happen again. It’s hard stopping others from repeating their tragedies, but when it comes to your own, you are in control.

Love as many as you want. Kiss as many as you want. Fuck as many as you want. But when you do these things do it with all of you. Do it because you know it will show you something, help you with something, make sense of things. Never do a task that was assigned by someone else if you are not interested, not comfortable, unwilling. You can do anything you want to do as long as you know that there is only understanding and truth behind it. Never settle, never give in and never do anything that you don’t want to just because you feel bad.

Learn to say no. Learn to fight. Learn the difference between love and lust and learn to love yourself. If you love yourself, when you’re alone, you won’t need the presence of another just to make you feel at ease. You’ll have the power of healing in your very own body. You’re beautiful, remember that, write it down, scream it out loud and never forget. You have the entire world inside of your hands and the only thing you truly need to know to push through these trying times is that you can do anything. Now do it.” — "Tips for girls who are still growing up" Colleen Brown

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imreallybad:

i wish men understood that when women are talking about feminism and rape culture and shit, it’s not just a political conversation. it’s not about being a “social justice warrior” or whatever. it’s about our actual lives being shaped by misogyny since childhood, and the daily reality of living in fear of violence. this isn’t a fucking game or philosophical debate. this is our fucking lives.

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“When 12-year-old girls are watching something like the CW’s long-running campy drama One Tree Hill (which aired from 2003-2012), in which actors like 25-year-old Hilarie Burton played 17-year-old cheerleader Peyton Sawyer, they’re not seeing an accurate portrayal of their future on screen. They’re seeing a glamorized vision of some executive’s idealized version of high school instead. When a real 16-year-old cheerleader flips on the CW and sees fellow pompom shakers who look like Burton or costar Sophia Bush, also well beyond her high school years, they’re looking at themselves at wondering why they don’t look like that in their uniform. Here’s the secret: they didn’t when they were 16, either.” — Samantha Wilson, Why Teenagers Need to Play Teenagers On Screen (via thunderboltandlightning)

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“Before you say yes, get him angry. See him scared, see him wanting, see him sick. Stress changes a person. Find out if he drinks and if he does, get him drunk - you’ll learn more about his sober thoughts. Discover his addictions. See if he puts you in front of them. You can’t change people, baby girl. If they are made one way, it doesn’t just wear off. If you hate how he acts when he’s out of it now, you’re going to hate it much worse eight years down the road. You might love him to bits but it doesn’t change that some people just don’t fit.” — inkskinned, “My father’s recipe for the man I should marry” (via seaglassnserendipity)

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“Before I am your daughter, your sister, your aunt, niece, or cousin, I am my own person, and I will not set fire to myself to keep you warm.” — 1/? Things To Remember (via egracely)

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“Being born a woman is an awful tragedy. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.” — Sylvia Plath

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unclefather:

why does my dad have to give me away at my wedding? my dad doesn’t own me. that’s funny because one time when i was 13 my dad wouldn’t take me to get italian ice so i hit him in the back of the head with my flip flop and he took me. so technically, i own my dad and i should give him away at his wedding.

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“there’s a special place in hell for men who convince women their intuition is insecurity to protect their duplicity.” — dream hampton (via locsnlyrics)

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“i don’t imagine my princesses in the same way others do, either kissing their husband and in marital perfection or the cynical version where they are drunk in the kitchen, living out their happily ever afters in a haze of poor decisions, no, i think cinderella becomes a fashion designer, i think she stops smoking and takes back her name and ends up making money and being a spokesperson for abuse victims, i think right now if ella was alive she’d be laughing over a pumpkin-spice latte and her empire is the most body-inclusive in fashion

i think snow-white becomes an activist, i think she studies genetics and i think she will allow no person with a disability to go homeless, i think whenever someone makes a joke about seven small men, she whips around and asks them what exactly their problem is because there is nothing wrong with any of her friends

i think aurora is a sleep disorder doctor and a psychologist, she uses hypnosis to help people who can’t quite escape the thicket inside of their brains and i think she’s working on developing a pill for people with chronic insomnia even though everyone still teases her about that one bout of narcolepsy and one day she admits she actually was awake for most of it and just studying

i think ariel has shut down marine life poaching in as many parts of her country as she can, i think that she’s got teams working to clean up oil spills and she’s building windmills in her backyard because she’d rather have the “eyesore” than know someone is drilling in her home, i think she has degrees in environmental science and marine biology, i think she’s got a side project for scuba divers and oceanography and is devising a way for mermaids to visit her land without giving up their tails

i think belle is a veterinarian and runs her practice out of her father’s house where his inventions have saved the lives of at least ninety dogs and i think that she is a teacher in her free time and has raised gaston’s eight kids to be nothing short of polite and well-mannered and i think that she takes frequent trips outside of her little quiet town but always comes home again

i think jasmine is a feminist in every aspect, i believe she works with shelters and soup kitchens and makes sure nobody starves in her city ever again, i think she sets up homes for homeless women, i think she marches in rallies and has a school specifically for gifted girls that were almost married off to strange men

see, i think when we cast these women as only a prize to be won and that their life stops as soon as the credits roll, i think when we joke about how everything went south right after it all, we’re telling girls, “you will regret that you ever fell in love or believed in magic when you were small,” see you can believe in happy endings, but believe too in the princesses themselves, believe that marriage isn’t the only goal a girl can set for herself,

believe that if these girls fought to stay alive when an evil queen was chasing them, if they fought to give up their nature for the chance of more adventure, if they fought the sultan himself and society’s expectations: something tells me that their happily ever after isn’t resting on their laurels, something tells me they’d seek just a little more, something tells me that they’d keep fighting until there is a happy ending for every single little girl

believe in yourself, princess, and know that even if you want a career and husband and twelve happy children, you are not deluding yourself of anything. it is completely possible to actually have everything

it is okay for you to want a job and a home and a family and a kingdom. you are strong enough. you would handle it.

please don’t let anyone tell you different.” — sit tall today, my love. your dreams are valid and you are always good enough. // r.i.d (via inkskinned)

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“Think about the first name you were ever called, and then think how long it took until you got called a pussy or a slut, or a bitch, or a whore, all of which are words that fall too close to ‘girl.’ Think about the first time you got called a ‘girl’ and they said it with a sneer. Like it was a bad thing.

For a boy, it is the lowest degradation to get called a girl. For a girl, it is the lowest degradation to get called a girl.

Remember, black widow spiders and female praying mantises eat their partners after intercourse. Remember, it’s the lionesses who hunt. They come back with bloody muzzles, dragging bloated carcasses as the alpha lion strides around with his mane puffing out. Remember, it’s only the female mosquitoes who drink blood. We’re the ones who do the necessary work, dirty our hands, fuck or fight or both. We’re often the smaller sex, which makes us a harder target as we slink close and sink our teeth in.

Remember: we’re deadly.

You should be proud to be called a girl.” — 'Most Female Killers use Poison,' theappleppielifestyle. (via birthdaybaby)

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“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.” — bell hooks (via memoriasconsazon)

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“Thirteen? And it’s even worse because Bill Cosby has the fucking smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom. Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, brings you down a couple notches. I don’t curse on stage. Well, yeah, you’re a rapist, so, I’ll take you sayin’ lots of motherfuckers on Bill Cosby: Himself if you weren’t a rapist. …I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. …I’ve done this bit on stage, and people don’t believe. People think I’m making it up. …That shit is upsetting. If you didn’t know about it, trust me. You leave here and google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’ It’s not funny. That shit has more results than Hannibal Buress.” — Hannibal Buress, calling the shit out of bill cosby [x] (via bluemoonofkentucky)

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“When I was a freshman, my sister was in eighth grade. There was a boy in two of her periods who would ask her out every single day. (Third and seventh period, if I remember correctly.) All day during third and seventh she would repeatedly tell him no. She didn’t beat around the bush, she didn’t lie and say she was taken—she just said no. One day, in third period, after being rejected several times, he said; “I have a gun in my locker. If you don’t say yes, I am going to shoot you in seventh.”

She refused again, but right after class she went to the principal’s office and told them what happened. They searched his locker and there was a gun in his backpack.

When he was arrested, some of my sister’s friends (some female, even) told her that she was selfish for saying no so many times. That because of her, the entire school was in jeopardy. That it wouldn’t have killed her to say yes and give it a try, but because she was so mean to him, he lost his temper. Many of her male friends said it was “girls like her” that made all women seem like cockteases.

Wouldn’t have killed her to say yes? If a man is willing to shoot someone for saying no, what happens to the poor soul who says yes? What happens the first time they disagree? What happens the first time she says she doesn’t want to have sex? That she isn’t in the mood? When they break up?

Years later, when I was a senior, I was the only girl in my Criminal Justice class. The teacher, who used to be a sergeant in the police force, told us a story of something that had happened to a girl he knew when she was in high school. There was a guy who obviously had a crush on her and he made her uncomfortable. One day he finally gathered up the courage to ask her out, and she said no.

The next day, during an assembly, he pulled a gun on her in front of everyone and threatened to kill her if she didn’t date him.

He was tackled to the ground and the gun was taken from him. When my teacher asked the class who was at fault for the crime, I was the only person who said the boy was. All the other kids in the class (who were all boys) said that the girl was, that if she had said yes he would’ve never lost it and brought a gun and tried to kill her. When my teacher said that they were wrong and that this is what is wrong with society, that whenever a white boy commits a crime it’s someone else’s fault (music, television, video games, the victim) one boy raised his hand and literally said; “But if someone were to punch me and I punched him back, who is at fault for the fight? He is, not me. It’s self-defence. She started it, so anything that happens to her is in reaction to her actions .It’s simple cause and effect.”

Even though he spent the rest of the calss period ripping into the boys and saying that you are always responsible for your own actions, and that women are allowed to say no and do not have to date them, they left class laughing about how idiotic he was and that he clearly had no idea how much it hurt to be rejected.

So now we have a new school shooting, based solely on the fact some guy couldn’t get laid, and I see men, boys, applaudin him, or if they’re not applauding him, they’re laying blame on women as a whole. Just like my sister’s friends did. Just like the boys in my Criminal Justice class did.

This isn’t something that’s rare. This isn’t something that never happens, or that a select group of men feel as if they are so entitled to women that saying no is not only the worst possible thing a woman can do, but is considered a form of “defence” when they commit a crime upon them (whether it be rape or murder-as-a-reaction-towards-rejection).

Girls are being killed for saying no to prom invites. Girls are being killed for saying no to men. They are creating an atmosphere where women are too scared to say no, and the worst part is? They are doing it intentionally. They want society to be that way, they want women to say yes entirely out of fear. Even the boys and men who aren’t showing up to schools with guns are saying; “Well, you know, I wouldn’t do that, but you have to admit that if she had just said yes …”

If you are a man and you defend this guys’ actions or try to find an excuse for it, or you denounce what really happened, or in any way lay blame on women, every girl you know, every woman you love, has just now thought to themselves that you might lose your shit and kill them someday for saying no. You have just lost their trust. And you know what? You deserve to lose it.”

—cry laugh feel love peace panic:

“Wouldn’t have killed her to say yes? If a man is willing to shoot someone for saying no, what happens to the poor soul who says yes? What happens the first time they disagree? What happens the first time she says she doesn’t want to have sex? That she isn’t in the mood? When they break up?" -vampmissedith.tumblr.com

THIS IS MANDATORY READING!

(via feminist-space)

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“Why for example, does a twenty-two-year-old man pursue a sixteen-year-old adolescent? Because he is stimulated by her? Obviously not. They are at completely different developmental points in life with a dramatic imbalance in their levels of knowledge and experience. He is attracted to power and seeks a partner who will look up to him with awe and allow him to lead her. Of course, he usually tells her the opposite, insisting that he wants to be with her because of how unusually mature and sophisticated she is for her age. He may even compliment her on her sexual prowess and say how much power she has over him, setting up the young victim so that she won’t recognize what is happening to her. Even without a chronological age difference, some abusive men are drawn to women who have less life experience, knowledge, or self-confidence, and who will look up to the man as a teacher or mentor.” — Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft (via tszarina)

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barber-butt asked: Would is possible to give your views on the harassment video, more importantly the post you re-blogged about the people saying hello. I've always been a fan of your views and respected your ability to speak out on things.. personally i think the ones saying hello are perfectly fine when done in a respectful way.. even telling a woman they look nice, providing its done correctly.. i think the video was great and it called out cat calling, and rude ways to approach or comment on people

chescaleigh answered: Not sure what else I can add, as I think locksandglasses summed it up perfectly. No, saying “hello” isn’t automatically harassment, but in my experience, men aren’t randomly saying hello to other men on the street. It’s behavior that’s specifically geared towards women, and more often than not it’s used as a way to strike up a conversation in hopes of it turning into something more.

Here’s the thing. When a guy says hello to me on the street and I say hello back, they almost always take it as an invitation to follow me and try to continue a conversation or get my number. If I don’t respond, I’m an “ugly nappy headed bitch”. This has happened to me with guys of all ages and all backgrounds. Even the old guy who looks like somebody’s grandfather has called me a “rude bitch” because I felt uncomfortable when he said hello to me late at night as I was walking home from the train. So it’s damed if you do, damned if you don’t.

But as mentioned in the previous reblog, when your entire day is filled with guys trying to talk to you, it’s hard not to perceive every interaction as threatening or uncomfortable. A woman in NY recently had her throat slashed by a guy because she didn’t want to talk to him. Over the summer another woman was beaten to death because she wouldn’t give a guy her number. Now on the surface, asking for someone’s number doesn’t sound like harassment right? Ignoring someone shouldn’t provoke anyone to violence right? But for these guys, our mere existence is meant to validate them. So saying no or saying nothing at all is somehow a threat. But what was even more terrifying were the scores of men on social media insisting the victim should’ve just given the guy her number, or that women don’t know what it’s like to be ignored. Most men don’t realize what it’s like to be afraid to walk a few blocks to your own home because you have to walk past a group of guys and you don’t know if you should speak or ignore them.

I’ve been threatened numerous times (once had to call the police) and even had a guy try to run my car off the road because I wasn’t receptive to “hey girl” and “you look nice today”. Once a guy told me to smile and when I ignored him he said, “careful bitch or I’ll make it so you can’t smile”. I have no doubt those men thought they were being “respectful” because they didn’t hiss or make lewd comments about my body. I don’t want to push for a world where we can’t say hello or give compliments to strangers, but I think people need to respect the fact that this kind of harassment is a constant issue and as a result, many of us aren’t trying to be rude, we’re just trying to protect ourselves and get through the day alive.

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flash-thunder:

Women make up 45% of the gaming community and 0% of the protagonists of the 25 biggest games of the year.

"Yes, but that’s still a minority! If more women played video games, there would be more reason to have female protagonists!"

Men make up 35% of the cinema audience and 84% of the protagonists of the 25 biggest movies of the year.

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some boy:stop generalizing all men some boy:as a guy, i have to say, this is just how guys are, this is what the bros are like, im just saying whats on every guys mind, if your man says differently he's lying, real men don't ____, im a piece of shit

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“I’m meeting boys who like Charles Bukowski and they all want to do brutal things to my body. They tell me they buy a bottle of whiskey whenever they get one of his books and don’t stop reading till they’ve gone through a pack of cigarettes. They blow smoke in my face and say, “He was the outcast king of L.A. Did you know that, huh?” “Yeah, yeah, I know.” I say. “He’s great.” A boy gives me a worn copy of On the Road and thinks he’s being original. “We should explore the road together. Would you like that, baby?” I take a sip of my water and look away. Yes, I’d like that, I think. But he’s drunk and imagining himself sixty years earlier, in the back of a bar, sweating to the sound of live bop. Still, I prefer him to the hungry boy that devoured my shirt and said, “You have a tattoo? What’s it say?” ‘mad to live?’ What, are you angry about living? Aw, I’m just kidding, come here, let me take off that bra.” The next boy I kiss doesn’t read. I ask him to come to a bookstore with me and he stays outside, sighing. He has no interest in words. He has no interest in me. I am thankful for him. For a few weeks, I am able to shed my habit of thinking obsessively and become a duller, rougher version of myself. I dump him when my fingers start turning imaginary pages in my sleep.

I go on a date with a boy who knows I like to write. He calls himself a fan of mine and swears he’s read every word I’ve put down. “You’ve got this voice that’s very modern, but also so classic.” I choke on my water as he says, “I read you to fall asleep.” I listen to him pant metaphors and compare my mouth to the sea. One day, he stumbles across my journal, and finds nothing about himself in it. “You don’t really love me, do you?” I shake my head. There is no use pretending anymore. He has read my poems about the boys I want to drown in me. His goodbye leaves my hands covers in ink. He wanted me so badly to be the sea, when all I am is a girl who writes poetry. I try my best to become poetry. I take a bath and stain the water with black ink. I cut my hair in a motel sink. I cry for people I have never met. I start smoking cigarettes. I use words like “presumptuously” and talk about “post-modernist new wave.” I walk the streets at 4 a.m. and smile at people coming home from a rave. I wear sunglasses indoors. I carry a 500 page volume of poems wherever I go. I drink coffee instead of water. I talk about the “advantages of using film and listening to records.” But no matter how hard I try, I am not the sea. I am a sunken ship that has drowned in everyone who touched me.” — Lora Mathis, “I Am Not the Sea” (via flythevinyl)

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“Black women wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and see Black women. White women wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and see women. White men wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and see human beings.” — Michelle Haimoff, on privilege (via purityhole)

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tarsussfour asked: Yo, I don't mean to disrespect your views or change your mind. Just pointing out that hating the opposite gender is what brought along sexism in the first place.

womxxn answered: If you aren’t trying to change my mind then why are you even talking to me about this? Stop lying about your motives both to yourself and to me.

My hatred is reactionary, my anger is reactionary, my grief for my female sisters is reactionary. I am reacting to thousands of years of abuse and subjugation.

My hatred and my anger will not stop until men stop raping, murdering, and abusing us. My hatred will stop when there is no longer a widespread need for crisis centers for women because our boyfriends, fathers, husbands, and even strangers feel like our body is their property to rape or knock around. My anger will stop when little girls aren’t being groomed for motherhood and for dating men before we are old enough to tie our own shoes. My hatred will stop when teenage girls no longer have to fend off the gaze and touch of middle aged men. My anger will stop when women are no longer forced to sell their bodies for food, their sense of selves for a place to sleep. My hatred will stop when men stop trying to force their way into our spaces, when men recognize that they have been enforcing and maintaining a system that knocks women to their knees so that they can feel tall.

My hatred, my anger, it is reactionary. Male hatred, that is unfounded.

Spend your time telling them to not “fight fire with fire” or telling them that “hate breeds hate”.

I am fighting fire with the only thing available to me, go tell men to stop fucking lighting the fires, then we can talk.

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anonymous asked: if you and your partner enjoy kinks that do not harm either of you AND do not involve anyone else what's wrong with that? i can see how non consensually it's oppressive and harmful, but when you trust someone in a relationship you should be able to have sex however you want. comparing a couple with sadist kinks to an abusive person in a relationship is a really serious accusation.

luaren answered: there is absolutely no good reason for participating in sex acts that mimic the trauma of others

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“The fact of the matter is that a comment like ‘nice ass’ feels crude and unpleasant and threatening, because extended from ‘nice ass’ is something slimy and threatening and gross, something sinister. Something claiming that ass as public property. It’s hard to articulate how this feels to someone who doesn’t get it on a visceral level — someone who hasn’t, say, walked down a dark alley in San Francisco on a quick shortcut, only to hear a low, rough voice saying something about your breasts, or your body, or your ass, or some other part of you. That voice isn’t complimentary. It’s asserting ownership, reminding you that you are vulnerable, reminding you that as someone with a body like yours, you are considered to be an object belonging to the public commons.” — ‘Why can’t you just deal with it?’ ‘It’s a compliment!’ | this ain’t livin’ (via brutereason)

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“In San Francisco last year, a man stabbed a woman in the face and arm after she didn’t respond positively to his sexually harassing her on the street.

In Bradenton, Fla., a man shot a high school senior to death after she and her friends refused to perform oral sex at his request.

In Chicago, a scared 15-year-old was hit by a car and died after she tried escaping from harassers on a bus.

Again, in Chicago, a man grabbed a 19-year-old walking on a public thoroughfare, pulled her onto a gangway and assaulted her.

In Savannah, Georgia, a woman was walking alone at night and three men approached her. She ignored them, but they pushed her to the ground and sexually assaulted her.

In Manhattan, a 29-year-old pregnant woman was killed when men catcalling from a van drove onto the sidewalk and hit her and her friend.

Last week, a runner in California — a woman — was stopped and asked, by a strange man in a car, if she wanted a ride. When she declined he ran her over twice.

FUCK YOU if you think that street harassment is a “compliment” or “no big deal” or that it’s “irrational” of us to be afraid because “what’s actually gonna happen.” Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you some more.” — Street Harassment: Is a Man Running Over a 14-Year Old Girl for Refusing Sex Serious Enough? | Soraya Chemaly (via qek)

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liesthepatriarchytoldme:

courtneyrael:

archmasterjazzy:

realjusticewesteros:

nietzschesghost:

liesthepatriarchytoldme:

The patriarchy told me that male rape victims are just as important as female ones.

(submitted by anonymous)

Editors note: Male rape victims aren’t less important than female ones? However,… Male victims (of both rape and domestic abuse) are often laughed at by authority. No one believes them, and if they do believe them, they don’t care because “they’re a man”. People expect men to want sex under any condition, and to be impervious to violence, neither of which are true. Now, imagine knowing that telling authorities about your abuse would result in being laughed at and dismissed. A lot of male victims choose to handle their abuse on their own because no one takes them seriously. Maybe if we took it seriously, we could all see that it is much more common than we think. Maybe rather than separating male and female victims of rape (and domestic violence) we should focus on the larger problem, of abuse in general, regardless of sex/gender of the abused and abuser. You want to talk about being laughed at and dismissed? Let’s go.

Female rape victims are often laughed at by authority, too, and more often, because men are much larger perpetrators of rape and rape culture than women. Meaning more women are raped. You think only men don’t report rape for fear of mockery but women don’t? Puh-lease. If the female victim is overweight they’re told at least they “got some,” if they’re thin they’re told, “you wanted it anyway,” if they’re wearing revealing clothing they’re told, “you were asking for it,” or better, “you deserved it.” This happens CONSTANTLY AND CONSISTENTLY. And not just by the police. By their friends, by doctors, professionals, teachers, etc.

There are literally millions, MILLIONS, of rape kits sitting in police stations across America (and perhaps other countries) that will never even be reviewed by authorities because rape isn’t taken seriously by the US Justice System.

And like this user stated in a reblog about this ask, “Abolishing rape culture, which is primarily focused on women, will also reduce and/or eliminate male (and other gendered) rape.”

You focus on the MAIN issue, it lessens the smaller issues, and once that is solved, you focus on the smaller cases (which are lesser because you’ve focused on the main one…ahduh). It’s common sense.

And let’s be clear, we’re not focusing on “abuse,“we’re focusing on rape.Ya know, what this post is about. Makes me wonder if you even bothered reading the full post before barging in with your very wrong and uneducated male-centric MRA-style opinion.

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“When we discover that women are the objects of oppression and appropriation, at the very moment that we become able to perceive this, we become subjects in the sense of cognitive subjects, through an operation of abstraction. Consciousness of oppression is not only a reaction to (fight against) oppression. It is also the whole conceptual reevaluation of the social world, its whole reorganization with new concepts, from the point of view of oppression. It is what I would call the science of oppression created by the oppressed. This operation of understanding reality has to be undertaken by every one of us: call it a subjective, cognitive practice. The movement back and forth between the levels of reality (the conceptual reality and the material reality of oppression, which are both social realities) is accomplished through language.” — Monique Witti, One Is Not Born A Woman (via seebster)

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“There is no great stigma attached to being a rapist. Of course, it’s not a word anyone wishes to see applied to themselves. We’d all hate to be called rapists, just as we’d hate anyone close to us to be accused of rape. But when it comes to committing rape - actually having sex with someone who is not consenting? It seems a lot of us are totally cool with that. Go ahead, rape away, just make sure no one calls it by that name.

A 2010 survey reported by Sky News revealed 46 per cent of men aged 18 to 25 do not consider it rape if a man continues to penetrate a woman after she has changed her mind. Last week a survey conducted by Rape Crisis and Reveal magazine showed a third of women do not believe a rape to have taken place if an alleged victim did not fight back. It’s only eight years since a poll by Amnesty International suggested 8 per cent people believe a woman to be totally - that’s totally - responsible for rape if she’s had many sexual partners. The truth is, an alarming number of people are very comfortable indeed with the idea of rape in certain circumstances. Like George Galloway, they merely see it as “bad sexual etiquette.” Rape doesn’t horrify them, not a bit; rape accusations do.” — There is no great stigma attached to being a rapist (via evilfeminist)

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“It’s the Belle Knox brand of feminism. It says that if an individual woman consents to — or even enjoys — performing in pornography, it must be ok. It says that if an individual woman likes pornography, it must be ok. And not just ok, but potentially empowering. I have no idea why we would assume that only men’s sexualities can be shaped by porn or why, simply because a woman’s fantasies have been shaped by porn that means those fantasies and that pornography is necessarily feminist. I don’t give a shit how many people like porn. I don’t give a shit if you say you like performing in porn (most women don’t, for the record, but there are exceptions to every rule that you’re sure to find if you look). That changes absolutely nothing about what porn is and how it impacts our lives and society as a whole.” — Feminism is the new misogyny: On ‘Belle Knox feminism’ and the new backlash

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“So why do I overreact more egregiously to criticism from women, when all of my childhood bullies were boys? The answer, I think, has less to do with the boys who bullied me, and more to do with the well-intentioned adults who tried to “help” me through that bullying: When I was a nerdy kid, adults regularly assured me that the abuse I suffered was acceptable because one day I would be entitled to constant positive sexual attention from women.

If you were a computer-loving male child who took a lot of shit from your peers, I suspect you heard something similar from the adults in your life. Maybe it was “Sure, things are bad now, but when you’re a little bit older, women will LOVE guys like you!” Or maybe it was “That kid who makes fun of you now will be working at a gas station when you run a big fancy computer company and marry a supermodel!” If you were once young, nerdy and male, it is not unlikely that your future sense of self-worth was funded with a non-consensual IOU from the world’s women.” — Matt LeMay, What (Else) Can Men Do? Grow the Fuck Up. (via sparkamovement)

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“Male survivors charge that feminists see rape as a “man vs. woman” issue… The distinction is that while many women, and some men, are victimized by rape, all women are oppressed by it, and any victimization of women occurs in a context of oppression most men simply do not understand. For myself, I don’t need for rape to be gender neutral to feel validated as a male survivor. And I certainly don’t need to denigrate women, or to attack feminists, to explain why I was abused by the (male) police, ridiculed by my (male) friends, and marginalized by the (male dominated) society around me. It is precisely because we have been “reduced” to the status of women that other men find us so difficult to deal with. It was obvious to me at the police station that I was held in contempt because I was a victim- feminine, hence perceived as less masculine. Had I been an accused criminal, even a rapist, chances are I would have been treated with more respect, because I would have been seen as more of a man. To cross that line, to become victims of the violence which works to circumscribe the lives of women, marks us somehow as traitors to our gender. Being a male rape survivor means I no longer fit our culture’s neat but spacious definition of masculinity, as one empowered, one always in control. Rather than continue to deny our experience, male survivors need to challenge that definition.” — Fred Pelka, “A Male Survivor Breaks His Silence”

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ptrslbrmn:

instead of proclaiming that every girl in the world is sexy no matter what why don’t we start talking about how it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re sexy because sex appeal is irrelevant and is used as a tool for male dominance

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“who taught you that the value of a woman is the ratio of her waist to her hips and the circumference of her buttocks and the volume of her lips? Your math is dangerously wrong her value is nothing less than infinite.” — ‘Greater than’ by Della Hicks-Wilson (via bighappybeauty)

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“After all, if you’re going to call yourself a feminist, you should be willing to back that belief up with facts, right?

And if you’ve got all the facts, it should be easy enough to convince him, shouldn’t it?

And after all, how is he supposed to understand anything if you won’t educate him?

He just wants so badly to understand.

If you don’t mind, could you start by providing him with some kind empirical data that women continue to suffer from systematic oppression? He doesn’t care about the past, and doesn’t want a history lesson. He wants to talk about the here and now. And from what he can see in the here and now, women are doing pretty well. After all, look at you! Smart, well-educated, pretty. What about your gender could you possibly imagine has ever held you back? If anything, it’s probably done you a few favours!” — “Why Won’t You Educate Me About Feminism?” | The Belle Jar

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“I discovered that TED and TEDWomen have never featured a talk on abortion. …When I asked around, the consensus was that the omission was simply an oversight. But it turns out TED is deliberately keeping abortion off the agenda. When asked for comment, TED content director and TEDWomen co-host Kelly Stoetzel said that abortion did not fit into their focus on “wider issues of justice, inequality and human rights.”

“Abortion is more of a topical issue we wouldn’t take a position on, any more than we’d take a position on a state tax bill,” Stoetzel explained. She pointed me to a few talks on women’s health and birth control, but this made the refusal to discuss abortion only more glaring. In the last three years, the United States has seen more abortion restrictions enacted than in the entire previous decade; the United Nations has classified the lack of access to abortion as torture; and Savita Halappanavar died in Ireland because a Catholic hospital refused to end her doomed pregnancy. Just how is abortion not an issue of “justice, inequality and human rights”?” — The Empowerment Elite Claims Feminism, my latest at The Nation (via jessicavalenti)

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“What if the cure for cancer is trapped inside the mind of the baby you’re considering aborting?” what if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a kid born in poverty, who now lacks access to things like good nutrition, good education, a safe environment in their neightborhood, good medical care, and other things that help a child’s mind really grow to be everything it could be? What if it’s in the mind of a child who is denied all of those things but also has to face racial prejudice?

alternately, what if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a 16-year-old girl who, due to a lack of support services and/or access to contraception and abortion, is now stuck working two fast-food jobs to support her and her kid instead of continuing in school?

(what if the cure for cancer would have eventually developed inside the mind of a teenage girl who made a mistake and was forced to drop out of school and never receive an education in order to raise a child she did not want?)

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