Monday, February 29, 2016

Day 59: Disgusting Whore

"Airaksinen states that certain forms of sexual assault, such as unwanted kissing, should not be classified in such terms. She also argues that a broad definition of sexual assault deprives women of their agency."

Tweet: "The error you make in saying men would be interested in me if I wasn't a feminist is assuming I want to be at all near men who hate feminism."

A selfie of a woman. Someone put the text: "False advertising" overtop of her.

A friend tells me about how a man mansplained racial politics to her when she said she worries for her black son. 

9 Places (other than the oscars) it's good to be a straight white man:
At work
On Public transit
When Receiving Medical Care
In High School
On College Campuses
When Making Purchases - big or small
At Job Interviews
While Being Single
Basically any evening walking down the street


"Racy or beauty?" An article asks about breast feeding moms.

Adele takes a public stand in supporting Kesha

"But I will say this, despite American laws to the contrary, Biblically speaking, there is no such thing as “marital rape”. In the Scriptures, the only way rape occurs is if a man forces himself on a woman who is not his property (not his wife, or concubine). A man’s wives, his concubines (slave wives taken as captives of war or bought) could be made to have sex with him, no questions asked."

"Our society has a problem. No, we’re not talking about poverty, inequality, racism, a possible Trump presidency, or anything like that. According to Christian website Biblical Gender Roles, women just don’t know their place anymore. This website regularly gives Christians helpful information, like that marital rape doesn’t exist because it’s impossible to rape a woman, and a helpful guide on how to punish a woman if she refuses to submit sexually to her husband whenever he wishes. Now, the anonymous author of the popular Christian marital blog wants you to know “how to help women learn their place.”" 

"She sees her husband as her master and not her equal partner"

"She realizes that her greatest legacy is built by what she does in her home and not what she does outside her home"

"She looks to her father and later her husband for her provision
She embraces that fact that God has placed her in “the weaker vessel” and that she needs the protection of men
She looks to her father and later her husband for her spiritual guidance"


"She has a submissive spirit as opposed to a contentious spirit
She embraces patriarchy (male authority over women) in the home, the Church and in society"


"She dresses in a way that never places her femininity in doubt
She dresses appropriate to the occasion (modestly)
She cares for her beauty knowing that her husband desires it as God desires the beauty of his church"


"She protects her virginity for marriage and does not manipulate men with her sexuality
In marriage she ravishes her husband with her body and she never defrauds him"


"She shows compassion and empathy towards those in need around her
Second only to God, a woman’s greatest love and affection is reserved for her husband and her children"


"She is ambitious to be a wife, mother and homemaker
When she has a home she is ambitious toward the care of it and is never lazy or idle
When she has children she is ambitious to be joyful in her care of them"


"She is not loud or boisterous but instead she is quiet and meek
She is not a gossip but rather she is a trustworthy confident
She knows when and where to speak and when to hold her tongue
When she does speak she does so in a wise and kind manner"


An article on how to teach women their place.

"Feminism has been largely successful in eradicating the femininity that women once had. Churches have for the most part abandoned the practice of teaching Biblical gender roles that God has commanded for men and women."

"The “Swimsuit 2016 Rookies” in this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition will feature their first plus-size model, Ashley Graham. Joining her in the pages is another plus-size model, along with a woman in her 50s. This has some people questioning Sports Illustrated’s motives for including these women"

"During a discussion on how to prevent young boys from becoming future sexual assault offenders, Rose says that it is often young males who write degrading things to her on social media." They call her a disgusting whore.

How come I've seen multiple articles talking about how Clinton is a bad wife or is a bad example because of her husband, and multiple articles on how sexy Donald Trump's wife is (as well as her ethnicity and legal status), but I've yet to see anything about Bernie Sander's partner. 

Another woman tells her FB friends she's made a new FB account to hide from her ex that's stalking her. That if you're friends with her ex she will not add you.

Ubisoft releases an ad for playtesters. The picture is of a guy at a cubicle, with the silhouette of five other guys in cubicles behind him. He looks like a typical gamer. All the people in the image are male.

More white actresses have won oscars for playing Asian women than actual Asian actresses have won. 

A deaf woman was arrested and denied an interpreter

I brought home toys tonight from a friend to give to a woman who's in hiding from her ex who's stalking her and her kids.

A friend asks all her FB friends to make sure they have her ex blocked otherwise she can't be friends with them because he'll find her.

A man comments on Sienna Miller leaving a gig because of pay inequality: "Producer obviously doesn't think she's worth it. She has a right to quit, and the producer has every right to pay what he/she thinks is worth it. That's how the world works honey ... sulking just makes the producer look like he has a point." 

Sienna Miller talks about leaving a play because of pay inequality: "‘It was a play with just two of us on stage and I was offered less than half of what he was going to be paid,’ she said in an interview with Vogue magazine.
‘If it was two men, it wouldn’t probably happen. Sad, but I walked away’.

“The producer… wouldn’t pay me within a million miles of what the male actor was being paid,” she continued, “And women always have to do more publicity than the men. The only way is to make a stand. We are going to have to make sacrifices to make change. I want to turn up and feel dignified.”"

Sienna Miller quit a play she was hired for after she was offered half the wage her male costar was.

Today I recounted a tale of a man who's characters constantly tried to kill mine because they wouldn't date his characters. 

"Withholding basic health care from women is bigotry, plain and simple."

"I agree with what you're trying to do, but you should do it this way." Male allies.

"People would listen if you were nicer." 

Lady Gaga brings survivors onstage for the Oscar performance of Till It Happens To You

The 100 book "Day 21" treats the girls in the story as vapid, save Clarke. They make constant references to the teen girls only being concerned about clothing and 'mean girl' comments.

Another Grognak comic in Fallout 4. This one has a Shiva looking goddess with multiple arms and limitedly covered breasts.

A woman complains about how men continue to make jokes about women's bodies part comparing them to pieces of meat. Hamburger Pussy. Sagging Breasts. 

A friend talks about how she got her PhD field of study mansplained to her by a guy in a completely different field of study.


Witness: Fear turns to anger

"Fear is the path to the darkside. Fear turns to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

Sometimes there are just quotes that stick with you forever. And like any nerd, I've seen Star Wars enough times to know a good Yoda quote when it comes up.

According to Lucas and thus Yoda, Fear is the thing that leads us to the Dark Side. Fear is the driving force of evil, at its core, because of the path it leads us down.

This never used to bother me until I really began to understand the complexities of victimhood. Fear, as it turns out, isn't a path to the dark side. It's the path most people I know, whom aren't cisgendered white dudes, are forced to walk daily. We live in fear. We leave our house to go to work, or the library, or a friend's house, or a bar, or a restaurant, and we take a breath to steel ourselves against whatever harassment we're about to receive.

Not all harassment (in my experience) is scary. But enough of it is. I'm always nervous walking alone at night, regardless of where I am. I'm always slightly nervous when the streetcar or subway car is filled with only men and myself. I'm always nervous when a man sits beside me on public transit. I'm always nervous when I have a male client for the first time.

Where did this nervousness come from? Well, from trauma. From years of abuse at the hands and mouths of men.

And sometimes that aching fear that's inked into my bones does something else. It does something fascinating and miraculous. It becomes anger. I get pissed. Righteously pissed.

These are the moments when a victim of harassment gets angry at their harasser. They're the guy who's just hit the right button or been the fifteenth guy that day to hit the button. These are the moments when the victim looks at the harasser, eyes blazing, and gives him a piece of their mind.

These are where the Feminazi and bitch comments usually come from. Because yeah, we're angry. How dare these people think they can comment on my body? That they can harass me without consequence? How dare they treat me as less than a person?

And that anger comes again and again and again. It's as unrelenting as the harassment itself. If it's been a particularly patriarchy filled week, the threshold for invoking the anger instead of just the fear is pretty low. Or rather, the shit meter is so high that anger mode is about to be triggered at any moment.

That anger, leads to hate. The myth that feminists hate men is a big one. While I'd like to say I don't hate men, it's not entirely true. I don't hate men most of the time. There are days where I've read enough comments from victims about the men who raped them, and the stories of mansplaining and disbelief and having their thoughts called into question that I'm ready to smack someone. I never do. But I want to.

And then I go to game and some dudebro says something to me and I'm done. I don't argue with him because I've been mad all day. I'm right onto hate. I hate men in that moment. I hate what they represent, the ephemeral and subtle patriarchy all around me, as invisible as oxygen but as noticeable as a lack of oxygen. I want to burn it all down. I want to light the world on fire. I want to hurt this man who just made me so ragefilled I can barely contain myself. I hate men in this moment. From my husband to my best friends to the nice guy I play games with, I would happily trade them all in for a breath of air that didn't reek of patriarchy.

The mood passes.

But how many of these hate filled moments can I healthily have?

I shouldn't have any of them. But I do. I've come home from meetings where I stand against a wall with my hands on the back of my neck just telling myself to breathe. My skin crawls with the dirty feeling of sexism and the silence I had to take in order to be seen as respectable and professional in the eyes of others. The shit I just had to swallow makes me want to vomit. Breathe, I tell myself. Just breathe.

There is no revenge. There is nothing that can make that better.

When you hurt and can't stop it, when you constantly endure hardship that seems unending, that's suffering.

My life is filled with suffering. Every person subjected to the whims of the patriarchy are suffering. It doesn't matter what gender you are, you're suffering. Some genders have it worst than others. But toxic masculinity is fucking hurtful and if you think you get out of the suffering circle because you're a dude, well, they've got some good wool over your eyes.

It sounds fucked up, right? Suffering. But if you think about the fear many of us live in, the constant hyper-vigilance, the anger and rage, the pain, the feeling of being dirty because of something a man said to us, or the feeling of shame from remaining silent when we didn't have the energy to fight back, or when we were afraid to, or worse, when societal pressures dictated we couldn't and keep our job, then that constant sphere of worry, anxiety, pain, and fear is suffering.

Some of us endure. Some of us break. Some of us suddenly understand why being a nun wasn't such a bad idea. Men? Who needs em.

And at some point, we may fight back. We may take a breath, ground ourselves in what we can do, and go forth and do it. To those people, you're my fucking heroes.

Final stage: Suffering leads to the Dark Side.

The Dark Side being where you take ownership of the mother fucking force gifts you have, reclaim your agency, stop feeling ashamed for your fear, and fight back?

Screw Yoda. I'll be a Sith Lord.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Day 58: I'm crazy, he'd say.

"We as women are trained to see ourselves as cheap imitations of fashion photographs, rather than seeing fashion photographs as cheap imitations of women." Naomi Wolf

"I love books! I'm a girl & I read unlike all those girls that party!"

Woman on FB talks about her boyfriend stealing the tv from her to play xbox on. Man replies on her fb feed: "Jeez, what a dick.Im really sorry. I would never do that too you. Id wait my turn until you were totally done. Id even give up my xbox time for you tongue emoticon."
She says "lol, Ill live"
He follows it up with: "Yup. Someone nice to you and you turn into a bitch, have fun with your dick of a bf. Typical. As a follow up Id never tread you bad, you probably got your shit attitude from him. Lost another good one. If you want to apologize im here, and listening. Well at least you know my GF will be treated right, im having a great time laughing over here how little he respects you."

Article on a female uber driver who was sexually assaulted by her passenger. "During our ride, I am their hostage."

The other day I got the friendzone mansplained to me.

"I'm such a nice guy to her and I always put up with her mood swings and let her cry to me and shit and I'm so in the friendzone she openly talks about fucking other guys." 

A woman talks about a man waking her up in a hostel to hit on her.

" During an interview of British Labour leadership contender Liz 
Kendall, a reporter asked her how much she weighed." 

"My stomach flipped and dropped. I felt sick. I could hear his laugh; smell his musk. It’s like he was standing in front of me. Memories flashed through my mind in a rush. Without being able to stop myself, I clicked through photos to get a sense of how long he’d been dating this one. Long enough. Long enough that his pattern must be starting by now.
I want to message her. To warn her. But I don’t. How crazy would I look, this ex-girlfriend of almost a decade, happily married to someone else, messaging his current girlfriend? That’s how he would spin it, too. I never could get over him, he’d say. I’m crazy, he’d say. That’s what he told the first girl that I tried to warn, the one he dated after me. It took a year, but she finally saw what I had already seen and reached out. After her was another girl. And now this one."

"And then one day, something triggers a memory. Maybe it’s his name in my inbox, which would indicate that he has broken up with whatever poor girl he most recently victimized. Maybe it’s a photo on Facebook . . ."

"Could the stereotype that women are less “handy” be accidentally designed into the very tools of the trade, extending bias to a functional level and creating a damaging feedback loop?" 

"If you work an office in the U.S., you’ve probably noticed that women often find that they’re too cold, while men report being perfectly comfortable.
This is because the algorithms that dictate temperature regulation in many office buildings were designed in the 1960s for a 154 pound male. "

“Most biomedical and clinical research has been based on the assumption that the male can serve as representative of the species. This has been in spite of increasing awareness … [that] women and men differ in their susceptibility to and risk for many medical conditions, and they respond differently to drugs and other interventions. The close of the previous decade saw 8 out of 10 prescription drugs withdrawn from the U.S. market because they cause statistically greater health risks for women .” 

"Female drivers are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash." Because of crash test dummies being male. 

"27 Design Firms
743 People
188 Women
555 Men
Only 24.4% of the staff at these design + engineering firms are female."

"Developed by San Francisco comedian Luna Malbroux, Equipay is an app that takes the guesswork out of bill-splitting by factoring in the invisible: the pay inequalities experienced by women and people of color. After all, if a black woman only makes 64 cents for the dollar made by a white man for the same work, isn’t there something just a little problematic about them both forking over the same $34 for this Mexican food?"

Pokemon Moon cartoon with a girl mooning (showing her naked butt).

Anime characters of Pokemon Sun and Moon. Sun is a woman with red hair and a star bra on where the stars cover her breasts.

A friend will no longer play RPGs with a male player because of abusive and isolating behaviour at a game. 

"Women have been getting pregnant since the beginning of time. I can definitely stand in a court room pregnant and kick ass."

Video: "How to prank a gold digger like a boss." Shows a man repeatedly asking a woman for a date. She says no, gives every excuse in the book. Then when a hot rich guy comes along she gives different answers.

A friend tells me a guy who knows she's engaged keeps hitting on her.

"Abby was seeing her male partner for only for a couple of weeks, then he became really strange and aggressive and kept insistently pursuing her. At the same time, Abby became really sick and began began cold sores for the first time. Not feeling at all good about this person, Abby pushed for a bit of information. Eventually, all he said was, "Well at least you'll remember me forever."" 

Man on the street wouldn't get out of my way and said "hi" to me as I walked by him. 

"Men don't have privilege, there are women only gyms!"

"Incidentally, I have never heard anyone ask a man they just met if and when he plans on having kids. And, while we’re on a related note, I’ve grown tired of the response that I will change my mind “once I meet the right guy.” In the past, more than once I tried to shape myself into a different version of me, a version that wanted children. And I did this because the guys I was interested in wanted families down the road. But then I stopped trying to force myself into someone I wasn’t and recognized that it is okay to not want children. It doesn’t make me a bad person or any less of a woman. It’s just part of what makes me a little bit different from the majority. (But then, I’ve never wanted to be in the majority, anyway.) After finally, wholly accepting this about myself, I knew my reply to “the right guy will change your mind” was “the right guy for me won’t want kids, either.”"

"The more I hear it, the more I think that we need to stop this cultural phenomenon of asking each woman we meet if they have or when they want children. For me, the choice not to have kids doesn’t come from any deep, dark secret or complex psychological issue. I simply don’t want them. I am more than happy to just be a kick-ass auntie. I have absolutely nothing against women being mothers – but I have no desire to become one myself. You want to have kids? Great! Let’s go pick out some cute onesies. You don’t want them? That’s cool, too. Let’s go spend our non-kid-related money on pizza and books."

In Canada, for every 2.7 hours of unpaid work a man does, a woman does 4.3 hours. 

"In countries around the world, the ways in which men and women spend their time are unbalanced. Men spend more time working for money. Women do the bulk of the unpaid work — cooking, cleaning and child care.
This unpaid work is essential for households and societies to function. But it is also valued less than paid work, and when it is women’s responsibility, it prevents them from doing other things."

6 Signs your friends are slutshaming you. 

Of the 25 Greatest Moments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only about 3 include scenes with women (the new york fight with Black Widow, the opening fight of Age of Ultron also with Blackwidow, and the prison escape scene in Guardians of the Galaxy with Gamora). The rest are mostly fight scenes focusing on solo male characters. Jessica Jones didn't make the list. Nor did any of the women in SHIELD.

"Also, there was that terrible time in 2003 when her partner, the actor Billy Crudup, left her when she was seven months pregnant for the much younger Claire Danes. It’s shameful that even I, the laziest of fans, know that headline from her life story, but so it goes with famous actors: We applaud them for pretending to be other people, then gawk at their private lives behind their backs." In a review about Mary-Louise Parker's Hey, Mr You 

"Sheena Shirani posted Facebook messages and a recording of a phone conversation between her and her boss at Press TV, news director Hamid Reza Emadi, in which he allegedly begged her for sex saying he had “always supported her” at the channel." 

"The problem with dress codes is that when we tell our daughters that they must cover their shoulders, legs, and chests, we create shame around their bodies. We imply that they are off-limits and inappropriate. And we teach our sons and daughters that, if a girl bares these "bad" parts, she's no longer worthy of equal respect — heck, maybe she even deserves what she gets. And then we turn to our daughters, look them straight in the eye, and tell them that these dress codes are for their own good."

"Maybe it's not the clothes we wear that define our character, value, or worth. And maybe they don't even create a responsibility for how others view us, or treat us. Instead, perhaps our clothes are simply what we put on, to keep us warm or cool, or because they feel soft or make us feel beautiful. Maybe they are personal, and entirely our own decision." 

Jennifer Lawrence talks about the pay gap: "One of the most important things for this movement is to get out of this mindset that we're in a post-feminist era," said the actor. "I don't know who came up with that term, but it's the most damaging term that we have because it's just not true." 

A card in Cards Against Geeks: "Inappropriate Boothbabes advancing the cause of women's rights with latex and fake boobs." 

Day 57: Men are not victims. We are men.

"An 81-year-old attorney who was forced to move seats because an Orthodox Jewish man objected to sitting next to her is suing the Israeli airline El Al. Renee Rabinowitz, backed by an left-leaning religious advocacy group, is accusing the airline of illegal discrimination against her." ‪

Woman and man at a dinner table. "Just because you invited me over, made me dinner, expected me to stay doesn't mean I owe you."

Pale background, black text: "Proud member of the 'I don't draw in my eyebrows' club."

An article on the 160 examples of male privilege. 

Black and white image of a woman crying. "One in three reported rapes happens when the victim has been drinking."

Image of man and woman at a bar. "Just because you bought me a drink doesn't mean I owe you." 

"Women’s acceptance of benevolent sexism is linked with felt incompetence, a lack of desire for independent success, harsher attitudes toward victims of acquaintance rape and decreased support for societal policies promoting women’s workplace advancement." 

"'Hostile sexism' is defined by endorsing derogatory beliefs about women and the idea that 'women seek to gain power by getting control over men.' 'Benevolent sexism' is less obvious and seemingly more chivalrous, supporting the idea that 'women should be cherished and protected by men."

"A new study with a joint team of researchers out of the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the University of Illinois has found that women who have long-term relationships with sexist men become more sexist as the relationship progresses. Encouragingly, women who date feminist men experience less internalized misogyny as the relationship progresses, so there is hope."

"When he hurt them, he ignored their cries for him to stop. If they persisted in making a racket, he beat them. Badly."

"Australia’s worst paedophile priest, Father Gerald Ridsdale, once lived with a young clergyman who is now Cardinal George Pell. As the Cardinal prepares to give evidence to the child abuse royal commission, two women break decades of silence to tell Debi Marshall about their ordeal in Ridsdale’s care – and their disappointment with Pell." 

""Unless things change, girls today will spend hundreds of thousands more hours than boys doing unpaid work simply because society assumes it’s their responsibility," Bill and Melinda wrote in the letter."

"We tend to overlook the critical work that needs getting done in any society in order for life to move onward, like caring for children or preparing meals. Around the world, this unpaid work is, more often than not, done by women. "

"Even as India modernizes, witchcraft accusations are common, leading to the murders of over 2,000 people, mostly women, in the last 15 years. "

Black background, white text: "Taylor Swift has 500 songs about guys leaving her and 0 songs about blowjobs. See where I'm going with this?"

Olay regenerist.

Kelly Clarkson apologizes for having emotions. “I’m pregnant and it’s nostalgic and I can’t believe it’s the last season—yeah, really sorry I just bawled,” Kelly Clarkson said after her last performance on American Idol.

"Women are at highest risk for violence when they leave a relationship, which of course is when PFAs are generally sought. Abusers may also threaten, injure or kill children, extended family, colleagues or pets as a way of hurting the victim."

"Cartrett told WGXA, “So we made the decision to not do a D&C and to get a medicine. So he said I’m going to give you this medicine, you’ll take it, and it will help you to pass naturally so that you don’t have to go the more invasive route.”
When the doctor’s office called the Georgia Walmart to fill the prescription, they were told no and were not given a reason.
Cartrett added, “So we found another place to fill it but I still had to go up there to get another prescription. So when I went up there, she asked if I had any questions about this prescription I said no, I don’t, but I do have a question about the other one. And she looks at my name and she says oh, well . . . I couldn’t think of a valid reason why you would need this prescription.”
Wal-Mart pharmacist Sandip Patel said he is aware of the situation, and he also said that pharmacists have the ability to turn down prescriptions at their own discretion – a law that has been in place for about 15 years.
Brian Nick at Walmart’s corporate office told WGXA, “Our pharmacists fill prescriptions on a case by case basis every day in our stores throughout the country, and we encourage them to exercise their professional judgment in doing so.”"

"This is a feminist propaganda article. Did you expect any other than the normalization of a white female being vulgar. Accept your new master."

A man says this about domestic violence and sexism killing women: "Yes, but not in western countries. This happens in war torn countries and predominately Muslim countries." 

"We die because of Mysogyny"
97% of combat deaths. Men.
80% of suicides. Men.
93% of workplace deaths. Men.
76% of homicide victims. Men.
Despite these statistics I'm not going to hate women for them. Or claim it's "MISANDRY". Because I'm not interested in gender baiting. Men are NOT victims. We are MEN."

Image in black and white of a woman whom is a "real life Barbie doll". The text reads: "just want to inform you girls this is not what we guys are looking for."

Trump has a conversation about how he trusts his wife so much he doesn't need to pull out. He trusts her to take a pill. 

After purchasing the Miss USA pageant in 1997, Trump said he would make the “bathing suits to be smaller and the heels to be higher.” In 2005, when promoting the pageant on Stern’s show, Trump said, “If you’re looking for a rocket scientist, don’t tune in tonight, but if you’re looking for a really beautiful woman, you should watch.” 

Comments on Clinton: "She would make a terrific president but 69 years old is old. She looks so tired now and the job of president is exhausting."

"We beg Clinton to run, and then accuse her of feeling “entitled” to win. Several feminist writers have analyzed the Clinton yo-yo. Melissa McEwan sees a deliberate pattern of humiliation, which involves “building [Clinton] up and pressuring her to take on increasingly prominent public challenges, only to immediately turn on her and unleash breathtaking misogyny against her when she steps up to the plate.”"

"How can we reconcile the “unlikable” Democratic presidential candidate of today with the adored politician of recent history? It’s simple: Public opinion of Clinton has followed a fixed pattern throughout her career. Her public approval plummets whenever she applies for a new position. Then it soars when she gets the job. The wild difference between the way we talk about Clinton when she campaigns and the way we talk about her when she’s in office can’t be explained as ordinary political mud-slinging. Rather, the predictable swings of public opinion reveal Americans’ continued prejudice against women caught in the act of asking for power."

"The report, which is the result of a three-year investigation, identified 72 victims of Savile (eight of whom were raped, including an eight-year-old) and 21 victims of Hall, and attributed the gross misconduct to a BBC culture of deference to celebrities.
Employees had known about Savile’s behavior, the investigation found, but were too afraid to report him to senior management."

"Trump then implied she should “keep her mouth shut”, she alleged. "

"The woman alleged in a federal lawsuit in 1997 that Trump violated her “physical and mental integrity” when he touched her intimately without consent after her boyfriend went into business with him, leaving her “emotionally devastated [and] distraught”."


Friday, February 26, 2016

Day 56: I can tell you're wild

How a new proposed bill by the GOP will impact single mothers: "In short, if a single mother will not name the father of her child, and another family member doesn’t step forwards to offer financial assistance, then no birth certificate will be issued and the family will not be eligible for state financial aid."

A woman tells me how when she tried to escape a domestic abuse situation, shelters asked her to prove with police documentation that she was abused or else they wouldn't take her. 

Spent my lunch trying to raise money to get a woman and her children to a safe place away for her stalker ex.

Just got yelled at by a man for ignoring him. 

T-shirt of Velma in a sexy pose. 

When you're waiting for a streetcar and then one comes and the bros step forward ahead of you because they're dudes. 

Image of evidence sitting around. "There are over 800,000 untested rape kits in the USA going back decades. Drugs are tested the first week an arrest is made."

"There is no money to be made in rape cases..drugs are what makes the cops $$$ sad truth" Comment on the rape kits picture. 

A man argues that rape kits remain untested because women change their minds.

Paul Bernardo's DNA was taken after he was suspected of being the Scarborough Rapist. 14 rapes and two murders later, they got around to testing it. 

Tweet: "Schrodinger's douchebag: A guy who says offensive things & decides whether he was joking upon the reaction of the people around him."

"schrodinger's sjw: a social justice warrior who decides if someone racist/sexist based on whether or not the person is white/male."

A woman talks about wearing a bikini in public and what people said online: "The truth is that even in this extremely crowded venue, no one really had anything to say about our swimwear. I didn't notice any more staring than usual. And we had bigger issues trying to find an inner-tube to use on the lazy river than we did with wearing bikinis in public.
Online, this photo quickly became my most-liked Instagram picture ever, garnering 1,100+ likes and 44 comments. One comment read, "It's great to see more women loving their bodies and being confident," while others wrote, "They rocking them suits." The comments, even the ones I had to plug into Google translate, were mostly all positive. Save for ones that makes me cringe, like, "Wow... looking so sexy my style." I immediately blocked this person, but for the sake of this experiment, left the comment even though reading it still makes me feel uncomfortable."

"I was following walking directions on my phone when a club promoter stopped me on the street. He asked if I was going to the party that was being put on by the trade show I had attended, and I replied that I was still thinking about it.
He got pushier and in my face, so I started to walk away. Then he grabbed my arm and said, "If you don't want to party, you shouldn't get naked." I immediately went into survival mode and started walking as fast as possible. As someone who has been a victim of sexual assault, I'm easily triggered by comments like this and I don't feel safe.
He yelled after me, "I can tell you're wild." I walked faster. Of course, I had put the wrong address into my GPS and I ended up having to walk by my harasser again. Thankfully, I had met up with my friend, so I wasn't alone. I warned her about what he had said and she told me that he had said something to her as well. This time he told us, "You're making the biggest mistake of your life not talking to me," and my friend and I walked by as quickly as we could."

"With rental prices going up in major cities across the globe, a sizeable percentage of women report being in an unwanted sexual relationship to avoid homelessness." 

"A spokesperson from the National Domestic Violence Hotline characterizes this dynamic as "economic or financial abuse." Examples of this can include giving a person an allowance and closely watching how they spend it or demanding receipts for their purchases, or placing your paycheck in their bank account and denying you access to it."

"Of 2,040 people polled, 28 percent of surveyed participants currently in a relationship admitted that financial security was a key factor keeping them with their current partner."

"Kaylin, 23, suffered horrendous physical injuries at the hands of her controlling boyfriend, who she became emotionally and financially dependent on after losing her job."

"It came to a head that July, when she left him for good. The confrontation was violent and the blows Kaylin suffered gave her a concussion. With no place to go, Kaylin went to a library and they helped her get to the hospital. "He smashed my head against doors, floors, and walls. I had a bong smashed over my head. I had severe soft tissue damage done to my right hand from protecting myself, and had a bruise on the left side of my hip and the side of my right knee," she says. "Then I called my mom and she was there straight away." Kaylin is now a care assistant and campaigns for domestic violence victims with the charity Refuge." 

"A middle-aged woman, her face not shown, her hands painted with henna, is talking about “haraam ki boti,” Hindi for “an amorous lump of flesh.” She is referring to the clitoris in female genitalia that a number of cultures around the world believe must be cut to control or tame sexual desire in women. “Many sins are eliminated from the society if a wife is satisfied with her husband,” another woman says in the award-winning Indian documentary in which both women appear, called “A Pinch of Skin.”" 

"Over the years, many have come to Garden State's defense in this regard, stating, correctly, that it was far from the first movie to introduce such a trope (that'd be 1938's Bringing Up Baby), and certainly not the last. Yet just as many have blamed the movie for starting the widespread trend of introducing a rather unbelievably formed female character solely as a prop for the far more complex male lead. Even Portman herself has weighed in on the debate, saying at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival that the MPDG is a "troubling trope" that she recognizes existing in Garden State. When I ask Braff his thoughts on the matter, he's defensive, saying that he gets the criticism but quickly adding that the choice made sense at the time; he's willing to admit that the trope exists, but, understandably, denies that it was a mistake to include it in the first place."

A woman comments on the new CBC documentary "Girls night out": "Young women aren’t drinking more. They’re actually drinking less. Significantly less, if you believe Statistics Canada. According to the most recent numbers from Statscan, the number of women aged 12 to 19 who reported having four or more drinks at one sitting at least once a month in the past year (the fantastically stringent guidelines for what Health Canada classifies as “heavy drinking”) dropped nearly 16 per cent from 2010 to 2012.
There were similar though slightly less precipitous drops in heavy drinking among women under 35 as well. The age groups for whom drinking actually did rise, according to Statscan, were 35- to 44-year-olds and over-65s – the onset of middle age and old age being the presumed reasons to take to the bottle.
And that’s not to mention that, on average, men drank far more than women in every age group, and middle aged men were the most committed boozers of all."

"Vaguely based on the book Drink: The Deadly Relationship Between Women and Alcohol by Ann Dowsett Johnston, the documentary takes a complex and multilayered topic and reduces it to an episode of Girls Gone Wild narrated by church ladies. Girls’ Night Out is a patronizing, fact-averse travesty, the broadcast equivalent of TMZ’s never-ending gallery of D-list actresses staggering out of nightclubs, lipstick and bra straps askew.
This sort of sexist voyeurism cloaked in the guise of moral shock is nothing new to the celebrity tabloid press, but the producers manage to take it one wobbly, retch-inducing step further into outright misogyny. The deeper thesis of Girls’ Night Out comes in the form of old-fashioned victim-blaming – a disturbing message coming from the CBC, particularly in the wake of the Jian Ghomeshi trial." On Girl's Night Out, the new documentary from CBC.

"Former three-time Sports Illustrated cover girl Cheryl Tiegs, who is not a doctor, says that body activist and current Sports Illustrated plus-size cover girl Ashley Graham is "unhealthy.""

"For nearly 17 years, K.T. has been living with a secret. In 1999, during the conflict in Kosovo, she was gang raped by Serbian forces.
When her son found out, she says, he had a question for her: “Why didn’t you ask them to kill you instead?”
If that was the reaction of her own family, what would the neighbors say? Fearing the humiliation, she suffered in silence. She says she tried to commit suicide. When she talks about that day, she still sometimes says it would have been better if she had been killed." 

"It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for." - Amy Poehler 

"While security cameras were rolling inside a police station, three officers appeared to take advantage of a young, intoxicated woman.
The officers are seen groping the woman while taking lewd photos with their cell phones. At one point, the woman’s skirt is even lifted by one of the officers."