Day 36: Sex Sells. Period.

That transphobia in the new X-Files.

"Because what men fear most about going to prison is what women fear most about walking down the street."

"As a victim and survivor of violence I can tell you that it can easily happen to anyone. I was at work when I was raped. People still asked what I was wearing."

Kingston explains that a defence technique known in legal slang as "whacking" is an approach used in sexual assault trials. The cross-examination involves "very personal questions that should have been outlawed by rape shield provisions that have come into the criminal code over the last generation."

Femininity is so devalued that women are taught to hide it if we expect to succeed.

"When it comes to showing emotion, women experience a catch-22: If we hold back, we're derided as ice queens, but if we express ourselves, we're written off as emotionally unstable or, even more offensively, told that we're PMS-ing. Men are automatically taken seriously, while women constantly have to walk a fine line between showing too little emotion and too much. If we tip too much in either direction, chances are high that whatever we have to say will be outright dismissed."

Super bowl ad encourages people to know the signs of abuse.

"I'm glad you got out alive. Keep telling your story. Some of us aren't ready."

Like many victims of domestic violence, Amanda was too afraid to leave.

"But I hated every second of it. It felt like an obligation that I didn’t ask for. It made me feel ashamed, like my body was somehow wrong or not good enough the way it was. Also, no matter what I tried, my legs were always itchy and irritated within two days of shaving."

Article on shaving: "Not shaving my legs never really seemed like it wasn’t an option, because it seemed like if you were a woman, at least in the United States, you just shaved your legs. So I did."

"Why focus on extreme cases? Because they are end-result manifestations of everyday misogyny. Because the danger of street harassment isn’t in a lunatic lashing out violently but the risk of a “regular guy” lashing out violently. This is not an indictment of all men, the vast majority of whom don’t engage in these behaviors. However, most aren’t considering others’ tolerance and behavior enables the men who do and way too many are too comfortable dismissing this reality."

“The (primarily) male street harassers believe they have the right to access girls’ and women’s bodies. They feel they can say and do whatever they want, and if women don’t comply, well, then they’re a bitch or ugly, and the men may feel justified in grabbing them, throwing trash at them, assaulting them or running them over.” 

"In 2014, a Detroit man murdered another mother in her 20s named Mary Spears for not giving him her phone number. A man from Queens, N.Y., slashed an unnamed woman‘s throat for refusing to go on a date with him. In 2013, a man in Eustis, Fla., choked and ran over a 14-year-old girl after she said no to having sex with him for money. A man in Othello, Wash., ran over a runner in California after she declined a ride from him. Three Georgia men tackled and sexually assaulted a woman who had ignored them when walking alone at night."

“Sex sells. Period. Please don’t act like this is something that we were not aware of, and please do not shoot the messenger for relaying the message. As I stated before; Be whoever you want… But, in certain markets around the world you need to fit a specific criteria.”

“if they wanted talented DJs, they would just hire men.”

Male DJ puts a call out for a female DJ: “I only work with attractive female DJs that know how to read a room and play.”

"Erin Pike stands onstage and apologizes for over a minute. At various moments a disembodied male voice describes her as mousy, elegant, attractive, a mess, and Pike struggles to embody each of them in quick succession. She runs up and down the stairs wearing heels. She stands in the spotlight and takes off most of her clothes. She immediately puts them back on. She takes them off again. An invisible hand pushes her to the floor. She picks herself up. She's pushed to the floor again.

These are a handful of actions Pike performs in That'swhatshesaid, a dramatic collage written by Courtney Meaker and directed by HATLO. To construct this piece, Meaker compiled lines from only the female characters in American Theater's list of the 11 most-produced plays of the 2014—2015 season. Only two of these plays were written by women. According to Meaker's script, these plays contain 74 total roles, 34 of which were written for women. Of those 34 roles, 28 were written by men."

Woman talks about an experience today: " So today he comes up to me and starts telling me that I need to stop being sensitive and that it's a choice and blah blah blahHe then asks me why I choose to be sensitive, after I have explained to him that it isn't something you choose. Well as if that wasn't bad enough, he goes on to say " Women were created from me and for me" (referring to men)"

GIF of a male peanuts character spanking the lucy peanuts character.

"An army of nuns is travelling the world posing as prostitutes on street corners and in brothels as they try to rescue women and children held prisoner by human traffickers." 

Another commenter on the tweet about teaching sons to respect women. "To tell someone to teach their sons seems out of context to me...should not be directed towards our sons because of one mans doing"

Comment by a man on a discussion of a woman shot for saying no to a man. "And how many Black boys are raised by Black men? Exactly. More like grow some brain cells and stop having fatherless sons. Mother of two getting propositioned at the club? It's called Darwinism."

"I've had women tell me that they will sit and listen to a man trying to talk to them, even though they are NOT interested, and will still give them their numbers because they were SCARED of what that man would do if she refused." A woman talks about her personal experiences of dating.

A woman talks about her writing. "I made this post after reading a story about a mother of 2 being shot outside a club because some asshat of a guy was upset she wouldn’t give him her number. 2 children are without a mother cuz someone felt he was entitled a woman’s LIFE since she didn’t give him her ATTENTION."

Tweet: "Teach your fucking sons that women don't owe them a fucking thing."

About the Washington State senate passing a law allowing genital checks for bathrooms. "It’s bad enough we can’t walk around at night without being worried about violence or sexual assault, now we can’t even use the bathroom. Come on, Washington state. You can do better than this."

"The Washington State Senate’s Law & Justice committee just passed Senate Bill 6548, which has to do with use of gender-segregated facilities. In other words: it’s a potty law, and its fourth point at the bottom of the bill is perhaps most pertinent to transgender people in that it allows private or public entities to bar trans people from using the bathroom matching their gender identity. This effectively forces trans people to use the bathroom that matches their genitalia (if they are pre-operative, non-operative, or otherwise)."

Annie Lennox plays up her White Feminism. "“Listen,” Lennox told Steve Inskeep, “Twerking is not feminism. Thats what I’m referring to. It’s not, it’s not liberating, it’s not empowering. It’s a sexual thing that you’re doing on a stage; it doesn’t empower you. That’s my feeling about it.” "

On a woman's husband hiring hitment to kill her. "“They ask me, ‘What did you do to this man? Why has this man asked us to kill you?’ And then I tell them, ‘Which man? Because I don’t have any problem with anybody.’ They say, ‘Your husband!’ I say, ‘My husband can’t kill me, you are lying!’ And then they slap me.

“After that the boss says, ‘You are very stupid, you are fool. Let me call who has paid us to kill you.’”"

Noela Rukundo is a ghost. Or at least that’s what her husband Balenga Kalala thought when she arrived at her own funeral after he’d been told that she was murdered by the Burundian hit men he had hired to kill her last February.

"I never independently sought out lingerie as something that interested me. A lot of people who enjoy wearing lingerie sought it out for their own personal enjoyment or empowerment, but I was definitely in the camp that only succumbed to it because of a perceived peer pressure. My college dorm mates were constantly comparing lingerie they'd bought on sale, and I was immediately branded as the "baby" of the group for not owning any myself. My college crush and eventual first boyfriend seemed to think of it as a staple, and was surprised by my blanket rejection of thongs and "sexy" underwear. 

Article on wearing lingerie. "When I was in high school, a friend of mine stared deliberately at my boobs and told me that they could "look so much better" if I "just got the right bra." "

“The men were dressed in their military uniforms and had their guns,” she said. “I walked by and suddenly one of them grabbed me by my arms and the other one ripped off my clothes.
“They pulled me into the tall grass and one held my arms while the other one pinned down my legs and raped me. The soldier holding my arms tried to hold my mouth, but I was still able to scream. Because of that they had to run away before the second soldier could rape me.”

“I didn’t want to have sex with them,” she said. “There were three of them on me. They said if I resisted they would kill me. They took me one-by-one.”

More on peacekeepers raping those they are meant to protect. "As shocking as that might sound, it is not a unique experience. Last year, an independent panel released a report on sexual exploitation and abuse by UN staff and peacekeepers that showed at times perpetrators committed the crimes while wearing the agency’s signature blue helmets.
Human Rights Watch says UN staff were implicated in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Sudan, among others.
Troops from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo were also accused."

"They were hired to protect vulnerable women and young girls. Instead, it is alleged, the protectors became predators.
That’s the story emerging from the Central African Republic this week where seven women and one 14-year-old girl say they were set upon by United Nations peacekeepers. Worse still, the UN staff are accused of using food as a trade piece in exchange for sex." Article on UN Peace keepers being accused of rape.

Said of Clinton on radio: "Hillary always wants to play the damsel in distress when it works for her. She’s the put upon wife at the beginning of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. She’s oh, it’s the vast right-wing conspiracy. “I know what it’s like to be knocked down,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be knocked down,” on the cover of Time magazine. So she now wants to portray herself as this poor, put upon damsel in distress. How does that sit with the feminists out there. No wonder these young women are flocking to Bernie Sanders. These young, liberal women see this, like wait a second, how the heck is that independent and feminist? You want to play with the big boys in the big boy sandbox, but then you’re upset when they throw a Tonka truck at you."

"Clinton has been enduring this kind of nonsense since the ’70s, when she was pressured to change her name from “Rodham” to “Clinton” to appease more traditional voters in Arkansas, where her husband was governor. (She gave in to pressure in 1982, to help him win his second bid to be governor there.) She can and has, in a sense, written a book on how to keep on keeping on despite all these sexist haters trying to drag you down."

"Portraying your hostility to women in power as a universal opinion, instead of evidence of your own sexism."

"When Hillary Clinton raises her voice, she loses."

"Fox News knows the value of putting the most offensively sexist remarks in women’s mouths, so it was unsurprising that Heather Nauert was the one to go there. ” I wonder how her remark about, oh, I’m certainly not an establishment candidate, I’m the first woman running for president,” Nauert said on “Fox & Friends.” “I wonder how that bra-burning is going to play this year. Maybe that was something that people liked four years ago, or previously, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going over too well.”" Article on Clinton running.

"Despite the relentless drumbeat of faux scandals and ginned-up controversies around Hillary Clinton, such as Benghazi and with-this-much-smoke-why-can’t-we-find-fire email story, the former secretary of state is still a formidable presidential candidate. And so it’s back to the basics: Reminding people that she’s a woman, and suggesting that it’s scary letting that sort have access to the kinds of power previously reserved for men."

"It’s a standard part of the political discussion to tear into Clinton’s voice and tone where you’d never, short of the Dean scream, mention a man in that way. MSNBC’s Morning Joe did a whole segment on it the other morning, and by “on it,” I don’t mean criticizing the inherent sexism, I mean Bob Woodward saying she should “get off this screaming stuff.” And the one other national level politician for whom a raised voice is as risky a proposition is Barack Obama. That should tell you something about power and the right to show anger.

Think what you want about Hillary Clinton. But until women in politics are allowed to display the same range of emotion and tone as men in politics, without journalists piling on about how unnatural and angry and unpleasant they’re being, we have a serious problem. "

"Women in View and the Directors Guild of Canada have announced plans to launch an initiative to double the number of women directing scripted TV in Canada within two years."

"I’ve taught plenty of men who thought it was totally OK to make every scene a rape scene or an excuse to touch women in ways they shouldn’t. I was in [a drop-in] a few months ago where a guy started every scene with ‘I have a dead hooker in my trunk.’ Every. Single. One. I was the only woman in the drop-in. "

" I was on an incubator Harold team with all guys, who proceeded to make me into a prostitute or touch me inappropriately every time we were on stage together. The coach didn’t care, and when I complained he would say something along the lines of ‘committing to being endowed.’"

"Years ago I did a trust exercise where we had to take turns being lifted into the air by the entire class; kind of a ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ thing. When it was my turn, I felt a male classmate grab my ass while saying ‘Wow, you really are curvy.’ I quickly asked to be put down and was disgusted. The instructor (also the Artistic Director) saw the entire thing and did nothing, nor mentioned it even after another male classmate (and friend) told the guy off."

Article on common mansplaining: "We’ve had some high-profile cases of “mansplaining” in the last year, perhaps most notably in a September episode of Project Greenlight, when Matt Damon “explained” diversity to a black female film producer, Effie Brown."

The company that laid off my client tells her they would've paid her more if she had pushed for a higher salary during the interview.

A client today talks about how men keep telling her to negotiate in her interviews, and only men ever tell her this because they always get better salaries and more bonuses. ‪

Tweet: "Company: We made this product pink! So that girls know they can use it.

Me: Oh thank god, as A Girl, I don't know anything, this is helpful."

The poster for Schitt's Creek. The hick is smiling and wearing normal hick clothes. The dad is wearing a suit and sitting down looking annoyed. The brother is wearing a fuzzy sweater and looking confused or disgusted. The mom is wearing a blazer, skirt, tights, and weird heeled shoes she looks like she's going "huh? wha???" And the daughter is perched on top of the truck, her exposed, tanned, shiny legs stretched out before her, heeled sandaled feet resting on bails of hay, while she wears a white dress with a thin black belt, her torso rotated towards the front, the dress uncovering one shoulder, blonde hair over the shoulder, a serious model face on.

I complain that everything's awful (in terms of media like movies).

Male friend goes "Well, not everything."

The poster for DC Legends has two women. One who's markedly wearing less than everyone else. And one who's spine is twisted in a way to allow you to see both butt and cleavage, with one arm thrown way behind her so you can get a better shot at the cleavage. The men are all covered completely.‪

"We’ve had some high-profile cases of “mansplaining” in the last year, perhaps most notably in a September episode of Project Greenlight, when Matt Damon “explained” diversity to a black female film producer, Effie Brown."