Thursday, February 18, 2016

Day 47: Stop being a little bitch

How society shames teen moms but not teen dads. 

"Teachers, friends, adults, boyfriends — individuals who were not as regulated as those in the highly scrutinized fashion world were more often the ones to make me feel uncomfortable or guilty about my developing sexuality ... I found the same people who faulted the modeling industry for being oppressive and sexist were frequently missing entirely their own missteps and faux pas. Their comments felt much more personal and thus landed that much harder." 

"Our family member sobbed to my mother and me at dinner after; she was worried for me, worried about the looks I got from men, because I was wearing what I was wearing. I needed to protect myself, she explained. The same year, my parents hosted a dinner party where I spoke freely, keeping up with the mature humor and storytelling, an only child comfortable sharing my conversation with adults. On my way to the bathroom, before dessert, an older family friend took me aside, separate from the rest of the party: 'You need to hide out, a girl like you, keep a low profile.'"

"Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, who recently faced sexist attacks for supporting Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, wrote a new piece in Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner's Lenny newsletter about what it was like to be sexualized and shamed for her body early in life."

About a woman being emotional: "Just tell her to bottle all of her emotions up inside"

An image of a person on a dock. "When you start to feel sad, always remember to stop being a little bitch and no one cares." 


“I don’t think justice — official, legal justice in our system — is possible for women who are poor, for women of colour, for women who are queer, who are overweight, any identity that doesn’t look like privilege or status quo is a deterrent from your ability to negotiate this process.”
“Without support, without family, without economic support, without social service support, without legal support … I would have been lost.”

“The first question I got asked was what medications I was on at the time of the assault” — even though the defence’s application to ask questions about O’Neill’s medical history had been denied.

A woman talks about her rape. “I knew something had happened. … But at that moment maybe a part of me said, ‘Maybe you don’t have to remember.'”

"For a sexual assault survivor, Jennifer O’Neill is lucky and she knows it.
Lucky that, in the car of a man she didn’t know, being driven she didn’t know where, brain made fuzzy by substances she still can’t identify, she somehow had the presence of mind to respond to a friend’s frantic text with one word: “Scared.”
It didn’t help much at the time but it was a piece of corroborating evidence years later, when O’Neill’s own sworn testimony might not have been enough."

My clothes do not determine my consent.

"By making this instance into a full-blown news item, it gives her opponents leverage to use "barks like a dog" as a euphemism for "bitch." Clinton haters get to make their point without saying the word — and in doing so make it harder to counter. Lots of people like to attack her that way, among them Glenn Beck and Ted Nugent. There's even a Facebook group called "Hillary The Bitch" with the slogan, "Life's A Bitch — Don't Elect One!""

"On Monday night, Hillary Clinton made headlines — no, not for being one of the most admired women of all time, nor for her policy proposals or her time spent as secretary of state or a senator from New York — but Hillary Clinton made headlines for barking. " 

A person comments on an article on how black women die in childbirth four times more often than white women. "Approximately 75% of black children in the USA are illegitimate, which is , beyond question, the result of personal decisions made by both mothers and fathers and influenced, I surmise, by the subcultures in which they exist. Maternal health conditions and pre- and post-natal care could be, I suggest, more significant factors than “inequity at the root of our social system”, however you apparently believe fairness bears on root causes." 

"Lack of access to healthcare — and more specifically, affordable healthcare — has been called out as part of the problem. Why do black women in particular have less access to affordable health care than the general population?"

"But no matter where women live, whether in Somalia or Seattle, maternal mortality starkly tracks income and privilege. In the United States, it also tracks along racial lines — so much so that in parts of the country, particularly in areas with high concentrations of black women, maternal mortality rates are comparable to sub-Saharan Africa."

"Black women in the United States die during pregnancy and childbirth at four times the rate of white women. This is not a new statistic, but it is important, disturbing, and telling."

"Women’s rights leader Victoria Woodhull, though not especially well known today, once attracted more media attention than just about any female in the United States. A jack-of-all-trades, Woodhull alternately tried her hand at stockbroking, newspaper publishing, lobbying, public speaking, clairvoyance and philanthropy, and even ran for president long before women won the right to vote." 

Ronda Rousey talks about losing her fight to Holly Holm. "I was literally sitting there and thinking about killing myself, and that exact second I’m like, “I’m nothing. What do I do anymore? And no one gives a shit about me anymore without this.”"

"On today’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show Ronda Rousey gave her first talk show interview since getting knocked out by Holly Holm, and things got extremely real. In the clip below, Rousey talks about how she was basically out on her feet after the very first exchange with Holm, and reveals that she felt suicidal immediately after the loss."

"Women have complete sovereignty over their bodies and are not to be advised concerning their conduct nor threatened with violence." A woman holds up this sign in protest.

"For now, without official diagnosis, my monthly pain is something of a mystery. But once I started talking about period pain, I learned I’m not the only who puts up with this discomfort and confusion. Around half a dozen friends told me that they’d had similarly frustrating experiences—that they’d been shoved on birth control indefinitely, been prescribed Prozac to deal with their monthly bouts of depression, suffered through migraines and even vomiting whenever they had their period. The symptoms were diverse, but these stories all had one key thing in common: No one seemed able to get clear answers from their doctors."

"That’s right—agony. Not aches or discomfort or grumpiness, but very serious pain. Dysmenorrhea, the clinical term for painful menstruation, interferes with the daily life of around one in five women, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. And yet there’s remarkably little research into the condition, say experts, and too many doctors are dismissive when presented with the symptoms.
Frank Tu, director of gynecological pain at NorthShore University HealthSystem, tells Quartz some physicians are taught that ibuprofen “should be good enough.” Clearly, this is not an adequate response to such severe pain. How severe? John Guillebaud, professor of reproductive health at University College London, tells Quartz the cramping can be as “bad as having a heart attack.”"

"Single women don't need to be "fixed," whether they want to be in a relationship or not." 

"On television this trope makes for tidy 30 minute conflicts between single ladiez before someone is "chosen" (or not chosen at all) by the love interest, but in real life, mature, self-assured single women know that that their singlehood has nothing to do with another woman's, and their happiness is not dependent on anyone else's situation but their own."

"If a guy stays single for a long time, he's living that bachelor life and nobody bats an eye. If a woman stays single, it's because her "standards are too high," she's "too picky," or she's a snob. "

"The entire plot of the movie He's Just Not That Into You and an infinity number of rom coms featuring single ladies all hinge on this one undermining trope: that women are not single by choice, and their one desperate objective in life is snagging someone."

African American women earn 64 cents and Latina women earn 56 cents for every dollar earned by a Caucasian man.

"Even worse than being called unreasonable, though, is being called a liar. This is where we run into the trope of not believing the rape victim. In our society, a person who accuses a man of sexual assault must be 100 percent innocent. They must be flawless in their reports to the police and their family and friends."

"If you're a grown-ass woman you've probably been called a psycho at one point by some passing jerk. It happens a lot, way more than it should, and people usually say it right when you're doing something worthy, like standing up for yourself or stating a strong opinion."

"We may not be able to articulate this in the heat of the moment, but there is certainly a nagging feeling in the back of our minds that it's not kosher if we shout no, not when we gave our consent only a few minutes before. "

"Writer Sofia Lyons recently wrote a piece on this issue for the Huffington Post called "How 'What Do You Mean' Promotes Rape Culture." She dissects the lyrics to one of Justin Bieber's latest songs, highlighting a "sexual gray area of sorts," in which men become frustrated with a woman who can't definitively make up her mind." 

"We're constantly surrounded by the kind of media that convinces us that rough sex is desirable, that it's attractive when a man can pull off the gruff kind of intercourse. 50 Shades of Grey, which some studies show promotes sexual abuse between couples, is just one of many examples. There are countless music videos, TV shows (hello, Game of Thrones), and comedy skits that subtly teach girls and women everywhere that we're supposed to love it when a guy takes control of the situation in a semi-violent way."

"Laura opened her personal account by telling us about how adamant her partner was about reaching climax. He told her he would finish soon enough, and he sounded irritated, like she was disrupting his orgasm by displaying her discomfort. There are probably a lot of other women out there who have been in similar situations, and they have either kept silent, or softly whispered a form of protest, because it's been drilled into our heads that it's ill-mannered to rob a dude of his climax.
Think of it this way. On average, a woman needs about 20 minutes to reach orgasm, while a man tends to come in less than five. And what's the average amount of time in which couples engage in sexual intercourse? Around seven minutes. That, in and of itself, speaks to just how male-centered sex generally is."

"In the comment thread on Facebook about Gianino's article, one woman had this to say: "If I don't want a dude in me I'll push him off and say no." It's not always that simple, though. Even if you've entered a consensual sexual situation that starts off normally, that doesn't mean you will necessarily feel safe until the very end. Intentions might shift in the heat of things; important cues may be tossed to the side. In these cases, it could feel too dangerous to openly say no to your partner because there's a chance they respond aggressively." 

An article on the responses to the "I didn't say no--but it was still rape" essay. "What came shortly after the publication of this article was a flow of support — but mostly hatred — in the form of comments on Bustle's Facebook page. Numerous people blamed her for what had happened, accused her of misusing the word "rape," and berated her for diminishing the experiences of "actual victims of real rape.""

When a male abuser goes "I only was hurtful because you made me do it."

The derailing tactic used by men to silence women. The one where they go "but men get abused too!"

"Men often take more feminist stances when they have daughters, perhaps because they become more personally invested in issues affecting women. You shouldn't need to be a father to understand why women deserve better treatment than the world currently offers."

"While sexism leaves men susceptible to toxic masculinity and stereotypes, it disadvantages women more. Women get paid less than men, get perceived as less intelligent, and face sexual assault and harassment more often. And in many countries, it is considered acceptable for men to abuse women. How could anybody not be angry about that, regardless of their gender? It makes sense that men would be feminists to support the women they know and even those they don't know as they face these injustices."

"Feminist in the street, misogynist in the sheets." 

"The men-use-feminism-to-get-laid stereotype was recently used against Redditor br10n, who is a feminist because, you know, he cares about women. After he stood up to a guy who was tweeting about how feminists can't find husbands, the writer of the tweet told him he was "standing up for feminism so that women would want to have sex with me.""

"The unworthiness of “half” of what women experience reveals the silencing of their stories both on screen and in real life. Does it count as a “story” when a strange man comments “I want to fuck your face” on Rachel’s Instagram of a frittata? Diana being followed all the way home is an anecdote worth sharing with Dev, but what about all the other times horror music played in her head and amounted to nothing? There’s a disturbing takeaway embedded in the lack of representation: that a woman feeling the threat of rape is so typical, it usually gets ignored by the culture at large. Maybe “Hey, I walked home last night and worried the entire time I might be raped,” doesn’t (usually) have quite enough of an arc to be deemed worthy of an episode of television or even basic conversation—but the reality is, it happens all the time."

"To be clear, rape culture doesn’t always manifest itself in pure horror. There’s a spectrum ranging from annoying to gruesome. But even the trivial things do their part to enforce the broader threat, and it’s unfortunate that they’re only given air time in the realm of comedy. Maybe we don’t see those lesser instances reflected back in drama, because they don’t have enough pull. In comedy, things are set up, explained, and broken down so that they can be effectively mocked. There’s far more room to explicitly investigate the intricacies of interiority when it’s studied through the art of joke-making. Meanwhile, there’s not enough dramatic tension in a woman feeling uneasy during her walk home, unless it mounts to the equivalent of a Law & Order plotline.

That inexpressibility is part of what is so frustrating, not only in the lack of artistic depiction, but in real-life iterations of the experience. Later on in “Ladies And Gentlemen,” the episode tackles what makes the unspeakable so hard to talk about. When Dev hears what happened to Diana, he’s shocked. For the women in his life, it’s just another incident to add to an ever-growing set of examples. “If you’re born with a vagina, everybody knows, creepy dudes are part of the deal,” his friend Denise explains. “Yeah, there are a million things that guys have no clue about that are so annoying,” his girlfriend Rachel adds. “I don’t tell anyone about half of it.”"

"Walking alone at night can be terrifying if you’re a woman. You can slip your keys through your fingers like a makeshift Wolverine claw or grip a can of pepper spray, ready to pull the trigger, but you’re never safe, not really. You can be physically overpowered at any moment. Any unsolicited advances or suggestions that “you should smile” are only an extension of that. Sexual harassment masquerading as “compliments” are a nagging reminder that you exist for male consumption, and there’s little preventing you from being consumed.
The possibility of sexual assault is an automatic extension of being a woman, and yet we see little of that female experience reflected back to us on screen."

Woman talks about being in law school: "I even got what we call “book awards” for having the highest grade in both of our writing classes, and I was still mansplained to every time we had a study group." 

"Female students gave other female students a recognition “boost” equivalent to a GPA bump of 0.04 — too tiny to indicate any gender preference, Grunspan said. Male students, however, awarded fellow male students a recognition boost equivalent to a GPA increase of 0.76."

"After surveying roughly 1,700 students across three biology courses, they found young men consistently gave each other more credit than they awarded to their just-as-savvy female classmates.
Men over-ranked their peers by three-quarters of a GPA point, according to the study, published this month in the journal PLOS ONE. In other words, if Johnny and Susie both had A’s, they’d receive equal applause from female students — but Susie would register as a B student in the eyes of her male peers, and Johnny would look like a rock star.
“Something under the conscious is going on,” Grunspan said. “For 18 years, these [young men] have been socialized to have this bias.”
Being male, he added, “is some kind of boost.” At least in the eyes of other men."

"it appears that male students default to the belief that their fellow male students are the highest-achieving and most knowledgeable people in their classes—even if, as happens more than occasionally, this is not at all the case."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough women on the Supreme Court? And I say 'When there are nine.' People are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."

A man tells me to "watch my tone" while playing a board game.

A woman talks about her work. "Today I was told that I will never make as much money as the very men I supervise because they have "real world experience". This BTW, flies in the fucking face of my everyday experience managing these idiots. Oh and it doesn't matter anyways, because although I work as head of hr, h&s, a&r and procurement, all outside of my more than full time position as a project manager, those aren't " real" departments."

"Sometimes, when my current partner and I have sex, it's painful. Sometimes I tell him to stop, but sometimes I don't because I don't want him to get discouraged. Because I'm constantly worried about his comfort over mine, his feelings over mine. He hasn't done anything to encourage this, but I still feel like if we stop having sex and he feels hurt or disappointed, it will be my fault. So I go with it."


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