If we talked about men the same way we talk about women. "He must have slept his way into that job." "His wife must be loaded." "He must have a rich mother." "Do you plan on having a family?"
"In the rare times that abortion shows up in films, the discussion of the procedure is often heavy-handed, angsty, and gory. More often than not, characters who get abortions are portrayed as sad and face their decision without support from loved ones—and wind up dead by the end of the movie an alarming amount of the time. These depictions reinforce abortion stigma, the idea that abortion is inherently a bad thing and that people choosing it aren’t deserving of compassion and support. Given that abortion is an experience over a million women in the United States share every year, there have to be more than just negative stories. Not every abortion is sad. Not every abortion is isolating. Sometimes these moments—where we might need a little more support—strengthen bonds and bring out the best in those around us. This list of movies includes coming-of-age stories, epic dance numbers, humor, romance, drama—and all include an abortion and examples of strong friendships."
"I like stories where women save themselves." Neil Gaiman
"A new study from the University of Michigan shows that having a husband creates an extra seven hours of extra housework a week for women. But a wife saves her husband from an hour of chores around the house each week.
"It's a well-known pattern. There's still a significant reallocation of labor that occurs at marriage -- men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor," said Frank Stafford, of the university's Institute for Social Research (ISR), who directed the study.
"And the situation gets worse for women when they have children," he added in a statement."
"What does it say about our culture when we are willing to buy into fictional narratives that position complex men as heroes, but unwilling to afford real women even a sliver of that same credulity? Ghomeshi’s defence strategy — just like so many before — relies entirely on the fact that if a woman’s reaction to trauma involves anything less than “perfect” behaviour, people will be more inclined to dismiss that reaction out of hand than to see it as understandable. The details that we’d find particularly humanizing in one kind of narrative become the things that undo our conception of humanity in another. Ghomeshi and his lawyers know what we have all been taught to know, deep down: that a complicated man is a human being, but a complicated woman is a liar."
"In feminist discourse, meanwhile, the term “rape culture” is often used as a shorthand to refer to the set of cultural expectations, practices and standards that seek to erase the realities of sexual violence through a certain kind of story — one that says if a woman is assaulted, it’s because of what she was wearing, drinking, doing or saying — not because of the person who assaulted her.
Watching the Ghomeshi trial unfold is an object lesson in the ways these two types of narratives converge in our culture, in our ideas about rape and assault and what makes someone seem “believable.” Ghomeshi lawyer Marie Henein’s defence strategy is as time-tested as it is effective: by pointing out all the seemingly contradictory and counterintuitive details in Ghomeshi’s accusers’ reactions to his alleged assaults, she brings their reliability into question. Between the emails, the letters, the photos and the jokes, it becomes easy to wonder: Why would they keep spending time with him if he assaulted them? How bad could it possibly have been?"
Watching the Ghomeshi trial unfold is an object lesson in the ways these two types of narratives converge in our culture, in our ideas about rape and assault and what makes someone seem “believable.” Ghomeshi lawyer Marie Henein’s defence strategy is as time-tested as it is effective: by pointing out all the seemingly contradictory and counterintuitive details in Ghomeshi’s accusers’ reactions to his alleged assaults, she brings their reliability into question. Between the emails, the letters, the photos and the jokes, it becomes easy to wonder: Why would they keep spending time with him if he assaulted them? How bad could it possibly have been?"
"We victims know something you usually don't. It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser, because the final step in the domestic violence pattern is 'kill her.' Over 70% of domestic violence murders happens after the victim has ended the relationship."
A woman talks about her experience: "I met my abuser at 15 left him at 20. He gave me black eyes, fat lips, stitches, bruises, fractured my cheek bone, choked me out, knocked me out, punched me so much in my head that I lost 70% of my hearing by 18 when I had our second child... For that, I am a survivor not a victim. I woke up one day told myself I've had enough, I'm allowing this and I'm not allowing it ever again, I was done. We lived in Mexico City, so I packed up the kids and I, and we flew home to Oregon. I haven't been in an abusive relationship since, and I haven't seen him since I left in 2003."
"I worked in a team comprised mostly of men. The boss used to invite all of my younger, white, male coworkers over to his house for poker night almost every week. They would have late nights, and my male coworkers would drag their butts in late, obviously hung over with no reprimands — except for the occasional friendly ribbing — from the boss. No women were invited until the boss's boss once asked me if I went to the poker nights. I said 'no' and was immediately invited by my boss to attend that night. The worst part about the whole thing was that I liked my boss, but he didn't seem to realize how inviting only young, white men discriminated against the rest of us. And it was clear that those very same men were the ones given opportunities that the rest of us weren't."
"At one workplace, we compared salaries and across the board, the women made significantly less than the men in the same exact jobs. In some cases, the women even had more experience. It made me angry. And to this day, it makes me angry when people say, 'The wage gap doesn't really exist.' It does. I've lived it."
"When I was 24, I worked for a publisher of 'sexy' art books. I had a cookie with my lunch and my boss remarked, 'You better be careful. The boss doesn't like fat girls.'"
"A coworker at the office described the breasts of a prominent woman in our field while a group of coworkers laughed."
"In my last job as a waitress, my boss tried to control what me and my other female co-workers wore, and one time, he tried to kiss me. In my current job as a reporter for a local newspaper, a reader came into the newsroom and asked if I was the secretary and kept asking if there was someone else he could talk to."
"When I asked my current male editor if I could expense the $100 submission fee for [an awards program honoring women journalists], his very first response was not, 'Oh, good idea! I hope you get the award!' but 'Could you imagine if there was an awards society for male writers only and the backlash?' I was tempted to reply, 'You mean, the entire history of journalism?'"
"I was moved from the department that I launched and built for three years because a new General Manager felt that 'young men' or 'young bucks' would be more energetic. By the way, the performance of the department dropped."
"When I was an intern, a boss assigned all the celebrity gossip and fluff pieces to me and all the sports-related content to the male intern. I was in disbelief."
"A male colleague texted me 'shut up' while we were on a conference call with a client. I sent it to his boss. Then he and his white male boss had me 'laid off.' I should have done something. It was so blatant and wrong. But ... the whole place [was] white 50-year-old men, so I just moved on."
"My boss made a joke that I might miss a flight to 'f*ck a hockey team' on a business trip in front of a client and a male colleague. I found a single crunchy/stiff sock on my boss's chair that I had to move, and my male colleagues informed me that it was a 'c*m sock.'"
"As the only female in my office, I feel like I work in a frat house. I am constantly the butt of jokes, which for the most part I can take but sometimes it goes much too far. One day at lunch, I told them it felt as if I was constantly ganged up on and I'm tired of it. My boss responded, 'Why are girls always so emotional?!' And the VP said, 'Isn't that every woman's dream, to be ganged up on?' I stormed out of the office, and ever since then, they've gone to the other extreme and treated me like I'm fragile. If they drop the 'f; word, they apologize profusely (and mockingly). It's just so insulting as a woman to have to deal with this kind of treatment at the office. You can't win."
"My boss let me know he liked the spilt in my skirt. Believe me, it wasn't much of a slit since it was as part of a suit. I think it showed two to three inches above my knee when I sat down. To another woman in the office who was away for the weekend visiting her boyfriend in another state, he asked if she had gotten 'enough' over the weekend. After being begged to play in a co-ed office baseball team (they needed another 'girl'), I was not allowed to really play. I stood at second base, and the male shortstop made sure he played both positions, never giving me a chance to touch the ball and believing girls can't play baseball. A male co-worker found any excuse to find me in any tight space so he could 'brush' past me. I started my professional career in 1985. I was the token woman. All other women in the office were secretaries. Many of the men believed I was there only because they were forced to hire a woman. It took a long time to get most of them to recognize my intelligence and value."
"After sitting on an interview panel, I heard my 62-year-old female boss and her 70-year-old male boss call the various female candidates the following things: A 'femme fatale,' someone who 'smiled too much,' and 'cute, attractive, but didn't make much sense.'"
"Normally, if I was at a construction site, I would wear sturdy jeans and be totally covered, but one day, I just had to pick something up from the office trailer and didn't have to worry about getting messy, so I wore black jeans and a shirt with a very loose cut — it had a deep v-neck but didn't expose any cleavage, and it was shaped in a way that implied that I had a feminine body, but I would not call it sexy. I was working on something in the office trailer, and the construction manager in charge of the project said to me, 'You can't wear that here. You shouldn't be wearing that here.' And I said, 'Yes, I should because it's what I wore, so if I chose it to wear, then I should be wearing it, and what I wear has nothing to do with my job, so I should be wearing it because I'm good at my job and it doesn't affect it.' And there was another female inspector in the office trailer at that time and she said, 'Damn straight, you sexist pig.' He was dumbfounded."
"Speaking of statistics, the evidence that workplace sexism has reached epidemic proportions throughout the United States and many other countries is not merely anecdotal. Deloitte's annual Millennial Survey found this year that half of women feel they're being overlooked for leadership positions; meanwhile, according to the Elephant In The Valley survey, 84 percent of women in the tech industry have been called too aggressive at work, and 60 percent have been sexually harassed by a coworker. Another survey by Cosmo found that across industries, one in three women has experienced workplace harassment."
A woman talks about a man coming to her house and kicking her dog off of him and into the tv stand. She told him to leave. When she posted this, people blamed her for that interaction, saying she should have warned him about the dog or stopped the dog from jumping up, etc. When she posted the same story but as a male, people agreed with the male persona that he should have kicked the woman out.
A woman talks about changing her name after her sexual assault. "I was drugged and raped in a college dorm room, and my name became almost painful to hear. My assailant took my body, and thus, the right to my own personhood and identity. As I healed and learned to live as a survivor, I found it burned my ears to have my birth name associated with me, especially in intimate and sexual situations. I fought so hard against the idea that the person I was before the rape was a different person, but it was true. It was as if the old me had died and someone new had taken her place. "
"Back in December, we told you that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his administration were prioritizing an inquiry into the mysterious and disproportionate deaths and disappearances of indigenous women. Now, in the wake of this year’s series of annual Valentine’s Day vigils for these women, Canada’s government is actively preparing to launch the investigation."
"While a 2014 study put the number of murdered or missing aboriginal women at around 1,200 between 1980 and 2012, the beginnings of this inquiry have given the Canadian government reason to think that the number is actually much higher. Perhaps even as high as 4,000."
A woman talks about her stalker. 'I had an ex stalking me, after he had physically assaulted me, and was arrested and I had a restraining order against him. Every time I reported something else he did (leaving notes by my car, sending messages online, etc) they would put it in the file and basically shrug at me."
"Gwyneth Paltrow and Mandy Moore are NOT signed on to co-star in a romantic comedy about a young special events baker who becomes friends with a 40-something divorcée after she’s hired to to make the wedding cake for the ex-husband’s upcoming nuptials (though—call me, Hollywood—they definitely could be), but they are both heavily featured in very real, very similar waking nightmares.
Earlier this afternoon, news broke that both Paltrow and Moore have separately lost legal battles against their alleged stalkers. In Moore’s case, the saga intensified last Friday when a man was arrested for screaming outside of her house and trying to leave a note. (He had done something similar once before.) Police were called and the man was arrested, but earlier today, a D.A. rejected the case for lack of evidence.
Paltrow’s case against her alleged stalker Dante Soiu went to trial, but today—despite harassing Paltrow for years and supposedly telling her that he was going “to cut out sin” from her body—Soiu was found not guilty on all charges."
" Killer Mike, rapper and Bernie Sanders mega-supporter, is fielding lots of criticism for quoting a feminist scholar who he says told him, “A uterus doesn’t qualify you to be president of the United States. You have to have policy that’s reflective of social justice.” "
"The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that they believe James Nichols and Luis Valenzuela, both 44, began sexually assaulting women they’d arrested soon after they became partners in December 2008, working as undercover officers in narcotics enforcement. They are accusing of sexually assaulting the women at “various locations, including in their police vehicle,” the statement said. The victims are aged 19, 24, 25 and 34. The abuse is said to have continued until March 2011."
"Two Los Angeles Police Department officers have been charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting four women while they were on duty. Prosecutors said all the women were arrested by the two officers for drug-related crimes. The case has been under investigation since 2013, with the officers on paid leave for at least part of that time."
A person comments on the Hozier video saying they don't like it because the woman should be empowered and just leave. Like they don't know that when women try to leave the chances of them dying increases by 75%.
A daughter talks about her mother's abuse. "My Mum stay in an abusive relationship for over 45 years, constant trips to the A & E with a broken this or that. Finally when I helped her to leave at the age of 65 she had 5 short years on her own free of threats and punches but I think due to the amount of beatings she took she died of Alzheimers. At least she had 5 years free of him. Dont stay for the kids as the kids wont thank you for seeing you beaten black and blue."
"In the U.S., 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will experience intimate partner violence at some point in their lifetimes. Every day, three women are murdered by a current or former male partner in the U.S."
"Paired with Hozier's haunting chorus, the video is a powerful reminder of the dynamics that make it so difficult for a woman to simply walk out on her abuser. "The way she shows me I'm hers and she is mine," Hozier sings in the chorus. "Open hand or closed fist would be fine. The blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine." "
Hozier hits close to home again with Cherry Wine. A video about domestic abuse, a harsh reality women face every day.
"In 1991, when the young law professor, Anita Hill, testified that her former boss and then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her, the right wing threw ”virtually every derogatory and often contradictory allegation” in her direction. That’s according to David Brock, the man who later regretted his crusade to publicly portray Hill as ”a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.”"
“Women and men working together is better,” he added.
Varney, however, disagreed: “I think men have a sort of hunter-gatherer mentality. They go out and break things and kill people.”
A SEAL talks about being comfortable with women in the field. A FOX newscaster disagrees.
"One woman writes in the Academic Men Explain Things To Me Tumblr that her ex boyfriend tried to put scented hand lotion on her vagina, reassuring her even when it hurt and ultimately gave her an infection that he knew it was OK because he'd "had way more contact with vaginas." "Apparently, living my entire life with my vagina makes me less of an expert on my own body than him," she observes."
"A man once presented a rather bizarre theory to me. Women, he said, don't understand their sexuality as well as men do because "you don't pee with your clit" — as if there were no way to relate to my body other than doing what cis men do."
"Solnit writes that men often explain literature to her from their perspective as if it is the universal perspective. She uses Lolita as an example: Since literary criticism is often dominated by white men, mainstream interpretations of the book don't usually identify with Lolita. When she interprets the book from Lolita's perspective, she is told her interpretation is off."
A woman talks about mansplaining. " A former male coworker once explained to me that our visual perception is influenced by not just the eyes but also the brain (which really seems like common sense, because nobody could see without a brain, but OK). After I told him I had a degree in neuroscience and named the brain regions he was referring to, he continued on with his speech anyway. "
"In a conversation about Sweden's parental leave policy, I mentioned I was glad that the government required fathers to take at least three of the 16 months required for each family. A man then told me I was "confusing personal decisions with government decisions." In other words, I had an opinion that diverged from his because I was confused. Well, if I'm confused, then the whole Swedish government is confused. It's perfectly reasonable to disagree with someone's political views, but assuming someone disagrees with you because they are ignorant and you need to correct them is a unique feature of mansplaining and a symptom of arrogance."
One woman asks: "Why am I even alive today as someone who has chosen not to have kids?"
"In the perpetual struggle for women over 40 to maintain their relevance in the eyes of this hellish society, a trio of helpful researchers at a university in Liverpool have performed a study that asks: Why do women even biologically stay alive after menopause? Like, post-breeding age, why don’t we just kick rocks, my ladies?
As the Telegraph points out in a satisfyingly snarky piece, the researchers’s conclusion is that human women refrain from dropping dead as soon as their reproductive system goes dormant because we need to stay alive to fulfill our purpose of nurturing our children and grandchildren. Or, as the researchers put it, “late-life helping.”"
A man comments on a post about oppressed women. "Women live longer, are better educated, serve lower prison sentences for the same crime, don't do dangerous work that could kill them, can rape and not serve a day in prison for it, can put a man in prison by just saying he raped her, can commit murder and claim hormonal problems, can drown her kids and get free depression medication, get unlimited breast cancer funding, and make sports teams that they don't even watch dress up in pink for solidarity. Tell me what makes you oppressed? You are the VIPs of society."
A black woman looking up at the sky. Text: "When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition."
Daredevil's season two trailer continues to have no hope of well written female characters
Psylocke's boob window in the new x-men movie.
A man tells a group of new hires, including a woman, that the pipes are periodically repainted because they should look beautiful. Like a woman.
My friend talks about their new job. The men at the firm said HR is women's work.
"Your not a model. You're a white girl with a camera. Sit down."
"A gentleman knows when to call her sexy, and when to let her know she's beautiful."
I just got how to run a gaming room at a convention mansplained to me. Great way to start the day.
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