Brutalize or Victimize?
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I’m not using the word victimize when talking about physical or sexual violence anymore.
I’ve decided I hate it.
I looked up the word brutalize today, ‘cuz I always want to put two Ls but I know that’s wrong, but ya gotta be sure and google’s quicker than spellcheck… anyway…. I looked it up, and the definitions according to Merriam-Webster are:
1 : to make brutal, unfeeling, or inhuman
2 : to treat brutally
How interesting, I thought, that the first definition is to make someone become brutal… How interesting that it applies both ways, right there in the definition. How often have we heard that those victimized often go on to victimize others — and all of that is neatly wrapped up in the word brutalize.
And here’s “victimize“:
1 : to make a victim of
2 : to subject to deception or fraud : cheat
And then I looked at victim:
1 : a living being sacrificed to a deity or in the performance of a religious rite
2 : one that is acted on and usually adversely affected by a force or agent as:
a (1) : one that is injured, destroyed, or sacrificed under any of various conditions
(2) : one that is subjected to oppression, hardship, or mistreatment
b : one that is tricked or duped
and brute:
1 : of or relating to beasts
2 : not endowed with life or spirit
3 : characteristic of an animal in quality, action, or instinct: as a : cruel, savage b : not working by reason
4 : purely physical
5 : unrelievedly harsh
So yeah. Take that, english language! I’m onto you!
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Toyota and Stalking and Stuff
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Have you heard of Amber Duick? Toyota has – she is suing them because she says she was traumatized by a marketing campaign for the Toyota Matrix.
Toyota, through their advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, ran a marketing campaign where they invited people to prank their “friends” by signing them up to be stalked. The idea was you sign up a friend, and then the friend would start getting strange messages from someone they didn’t know. I suppose the idea was that after receiving these strange messages the person would be so relieved that they weren’t actually at risk that they would go and buy a Toyota Matrix.
I get it. It’s the friggin’ matrix. Brill.
In Ms. Duick’s case, she says the first message was, “Amber mate! Coming 2 Los Angeles. Gonna lay low at your place for a bit till it all blows over,” from a man calling himself Sebastian Bowler.
A couple of interesting details from these messages: Amber was sent a fake bill from a hotel that Bowler had (not really) trashed. The stalker didn’t have her current address, and Amber went out of her way to call the people living at her old address and warn them of the man who said he was on his way (apparently whoever the “friend” was that signed her up didn’t even know her current address). The pretend stalker regaled Amber with tales of how the police were after him. And it’s alleged that the pretend stalker even has a myspace page.
Toyota says that Ms. Duick opted-in for this experience, but that makes no sense if, as they say, the entire point was to play a prank on someone.
Now, what I find most interesting is not actually about this Toyota business. It’s actually about the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and it’s CEO Kevin Roberts.
If the question is: Why do advertisers insists on being so rape & violence-happy all the time? If they aren’t purposely promoting rape and violence, then what’s the excuse for their ignorance? Well, then this might answer that question somewhat: Lovemarks.
“Lovemark” is an advertising concept (not to be confused with the term “lovemark” which has been used by abusers and victims to describe injuries resulting from domestic abuse). A Lovemark is a brand that has gone beyond being a “brand”…. this is an explanation, with bolding from me, from the Lovemarks site:
The Future Beyond Brands
Brands have run out of juice. More and more people in the world have grown to expect great performance from products, services and experiences. And most often, we get it. Cars start first time, fries are always crisp, dishes shine.
A few years ago, Saatchi & Saatchi looked closely at the question: What makes some brands inspirational, while others struggle?
And we came up with the answer: “Lovemarks: the future beyond brands”
How do I know a Lovemark?
Lovemarks transcend brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Like great brands, they sit on top of high levels of respect – but there the similarities end.
Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.
Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence. Lovemarks are a relationship, not a mere transaction. You don’t just buy Lovemarks, you embrace them passionately. That’s why you never want to let go.
Put simply, Lovemarks inspire “Loyalty Beyond Reason”
The Hallmarks of a Lovemark
At the core of every Lovemark is Respect. No Respect? It’s not a Lovemark. It’s as simple as that.
A Lovemark’s high Love is infused with these three intangible, yet very real, ingredients: Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy.
Mystery draws together stories, metaphors, dreams and symbols. It is where past, present and future become one. Mystery adds to the complexity of relationships and experiences because people are drawn to what they don’t know. After all, if we knew everything, there would be nothing left to learn or to wonder at.
Sensuality keeps the five senses on constant alert for new textures, intriguing scents and tastes, wonderful music. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. Our senses work together to alert us, lift us, transport us. When they are stimulated at the same time, the results are unforgettable. It is through the five senses we experience the world and create our memories.
Intimacy means empathy, commitment and passion. The close connections that win intense loyalty as well as the small perfect gesture. These are often remembered long after functions and benefits have faded away. Without Intimacy people cannot feel they own a brand, and without that conviction a brand can never become a Lovemark.
Ya know, I think what this Lovemark dude needs most is some Buddhism. It’s disturbing to read this language expressing uncontrollable desire to have, to keep, to possess… – whether it is for a brand of soap or another person it’s disturbingly rapey.
And please. Please, spare me the “but it’s JUST marketing” stuff. Yeah. I get it. I’m edumacated. I understand marketing. I also understand that the shit quoted above is OMG creepy. If you read that, and DON’T see the creepy I’m going to assume that you have your head stuck somewhere very quiet and dark. If you don’t see the creepy – well, please send me all of your contact information, give me a month, and I will learn you on exactly just how creepy that is. Because you know what, I don’t even know you, but I feel a connection. I’m not sure I can let you go. Ever.
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Is It Wrong?
Is it wrong that I think there is something missing from the Polanski discussions? Is there some reason that nobody talks about men who fuck 13 year old boys? Is there some reason that it’s ok to try to point out some kind of rape-double standard by citing women who rape boys but it’s not ok to talk about men who rape boys?
In the discussion of Saletan’s articles on Slate, everyone is talking about sexual maturity, consent etc. Saletan basically says: “13 year old girls are sexually mature enough to expect that 40 year olds will want to assfuck them, so if they agree to let a 40 yr old take pictures of them for their modeling career, then they should undertand the guy will be trying to get his dick in her orifices. Free Polanski.” Most commenters say, “wow that’s fucked up. you’re a douche, Saletan.” But there are a few apologetics who sound like they are members of NAMGLA (no idea if that’s a real thing) – whining about how it’s a double-standard cause all the lady teachers fucking boys go free (which is NOT true) so if ladies can be hot for boys, men can be hot for girls and nobody better complain. But they never ever ever talk about boys who are fucked by men. When it’s far more likely that a male 13 year old will be victimized by a MAN not a WOMAN.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s being a bad feminist to point out how boys and men are victimized. That’s not a ‘what about the menz’ arguments. It’s the most valid discussion of the costs of patriarchy that we can have. Ever.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
How can there be a productive discussion of sexual violence if we do not include sexual violence perpetrated against males? The goddamned catholic church. The bastion of boy-lovin’ perverts. Priests who have plied pubescent boys with promises of salvation and sips of wine for hundreds of years. If the goddamned catholic church is not a PATRIARCHY I don’t know what is. And if the goddamned catholic church has not churned out more male victims of sexual violence I don’t know who has. The goddamned catholic church, who somehow fucking manages to evade justice of any sort, and even protects the predators. If only the catholic church was a day care center….
Jesus Fucking Christ.
The modeling industry. Hollywood, Fame. Oh it used to be so unfair, girls were such victims back then…. when Polanski did what he did. What the fuck about this douche who raped dozens of aspiring models. Girls as young as 14. http://www.nypost.com/t/Anand_Jon He was on motherfucking America’s Next Top Model for fucks sake. Really, am I the only one who thinks Polanski did what he did to other girls too? Like this Anand douche?
I mean gee, what a fucking surprise that everyone is talking about how whether or not 13 year old girls are “mature” enough, and a bunch of apologetics jumped on the it’s not rape-rape bandwagon, in defense of a rapist who works in the fashion/film industry – that very same industry that spends an inordinate amount of time SEXUALIZING 13 YEAR OLD GIRLS!!!! No wonder these freaks think all 13 year olds are horny little minxes – because magazines and films have been portraying them that way for decades. Portraying them that way, through the pictures they take of them, which sometimes just happens to include a little bit of rape thrown in during the photography session. I wonder how many of the photos I’ve seen in magazines are of 15 year old girls who were raped after that photo session. Really, I wonder.
Jesus Fucking Christ. I wasn’t even really that pissed when I started writing this, but now I am. And I know this ended up somewhere different than where it started, but that’s just how fucked up the whole situation is. It’s not about men and women and sex, It’s about power and how predators use it to victimize those who are vulnerable.
Further Reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/07/sara-ziff-teen-modelling-fashion
http://jezebel.com/5130863/suicide-and-abuse-in-fashions-top-echelon
http://jezebel.com/397553/ruslana-korshunova-no-longer-anonymous
http://jezebel.com/5304706/modeling-and-the-tragedy-of-karen-mulder
http://jezebel.com/5119469/not-rape-epidemic-the-modeling-industry-is-anything-but-immune
Women – Enslaved or Liberated They Are Designed To Drive Men Crazy!
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Wow. Because I love being outraged!®, this is my new favorite thing ever:
And the dog is named Jezebel! And the bitch feminist is a Mommy! And the Nanny sabotages the little girl playing baseball! To protect tender boy egos! And women are peculiar, whether enslaved or liberated they are designed to drive men crazy! And the Professor is surrounded by such hot poontang how could he not be going crazy! Wow.
Oh that’s good stuff.
Oy. I dunno which is worse, this puke-inducing crap, or the episode of Beverly Hillbillies where Mr. Drysdale has the female tellers at the bank participate in a mock “slave girl auction” as part of their jobs, with arabian slave girl outfits and all…
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Charges Sought Against Arizona Mayor & Son In Altercation With Biker
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I love this story. Seems there was a bit of road rage between Apache Junction’s Vice Mayor and his son in a pick-up truck, and a biker and his wife on, yes, a motorcyle. Whatever took place culminated in the mayor, R.E. Eck, bumping into the back of the motorcycle at a stop sign. Seems it was done purposely as some sort of “lesson” to the biker, after the mayor smacked into the back of the bike, the mayor’s son exited the passenger side of the truck, armed with a pipe. The son approached the biker, who then disarmed the mayor’s son and punched him twice in the face, then walked back to the truck and punched the mayor in the face. The mayor then smacked into the back of the bike again, knocking it over and causing the biker’s wife to fall off and be injured. Charges against the mayor and his son for various forms of assault have been recommended by law enforcement officials.
I’m on team biker. What a prick the mayor and his son are. So sad, they were safe and sound in their sturdy pick-up truck, indignant over someone else’s behavior – so much so that they are gonna teach him a lesson using deadly force – and then they get dealt with. Accordingly. Wonder why the mayor didn’t just call the cops to report the allegedly bad driving of the biker? I guess that’s just not as much fun as vigilante rage.
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Shocking Coincidence
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It’s interesting how the discussion of why there are so few female wikipedia editors and why there are so few female philosophers are almost exactly the same.
The reasons considered for both include: men are condescending jerks, women consider it a waste of time, women are too busy even if it wasn’t a waste of time, women think differently.
The consensus here in the Bitter living room is that the fault lies with the condescending jerks. I know some folks condescending jerks out there in the world think that even if that is why, it’s still the fault of women for not being willing to put up with condescending jerks. Probably the same folks who think women need to stay out of bars if they want to avoid getting raped.
philosophypress piece on the survey of women in philosophy
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No, Violence Against Men Is Not OK
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“See, the feminists can’t get their panties in a twist if we have the woman throw the man out of the car – aren’t we clever!”
Oh! It’s funny. I see. Because being violent towards the person you are breaking up with is funny. Or is it just the hyperbole that makes it high-larious? It crosses my mind that whoever came up with the concept for this spot knew that having a man shove a woman out of a car would result in feminist outrage, and so they decided to do the ol’ gender switch-a-roo to head that outrage off at the pass.
No. NO. What a monstrous FAIL. It’s NOT about the gender, It’s about the VIOLENCE!
What puzzles me is that advertisers, marketers etc. seem to understand that sexist ads provoke outrage, yet they don’t seem to bother finding out WHY it provokes outrage. It’s common these days to see sexistly offensive concepts but with the genders reversed – as if that’s all it takes to make something inoffensive to a discerning public audience. Perfect example:
“See, it’s not sexist because the Woman is doing something manly and the Men in the pit crew appear feminine. That means it’s a JOKE.” Jesus fucking christ. Ignorance such as this must be willful. A cursory googling and an afternoon’s worth of reading is all it takes to find out what ’sexism’ really is, and to find out what pisses people off about representations of gender in media. In this example, having women do traditionally masculine tasks while men do traditionally feminine tasks is STILL sexist because the sexism is in the ASSUMPTION of what is masculine or feminine. I won’t even go into how fucked up it is that ”feminine” in the Boost Mobile ad is defined strictly by items of appearance.
“Hey, wait a minute! If you say the genders are reversed in the Bud Light spot, aren’t you saying that violence is a masculine trait?” Not really. The violence in this ad is physical aggression. I do think that physical aggression is more common in males. I do think that physical aggression is exalted in our culture (see sports, movies, tv, music) and physical aggression is tacitly approved of in our society (see domestic violence, rape, assault conviction statistics) and that our society is patriarchal in construct, where man is seen as the authority. Ask any man who has been the victim of domestic violence if he was treated with respect and kindness and concern for his welfare or if he was laughed at, pitied, and derided for being less of a man for getting ”beat up by a woman”. The same society that tacitly approves of physical aggression from males considers physical aggression from females unrealistic, impossible, and if possible it’s just not all that important. As if a punch in the face from a 180 lb. woman hurts less than a punch in the face from a 180 lb. man. Physical aggression kills people no matter what amalgamation of fleshy bits is between the aggressor’s legs.
Really, isn’t the opposite of the overly-nice “too light!” more likely to be harsh yelling or detachment instead of pushing the soon-to-be ex out of the car? Grr. Anyone who wants to say “yeah but that’s the point - they had to show something that was ‘too heavy’ to contrast with the ‘too light’” needs to explain why having the driver PULL THE CAR OVER and demand that the passenger ”GET THE HELL OUT!” wouldn’t have sufficed. That should count as “too heavy” too, right?
Another problem with the gender-role-reversal-for-sake-of-hilarity theme is how it is used as a justification for gender normative sexism. Just because somebody made a commercial showing a woman pushing a man out of a moving car doesn’t make it less offensive to show men pushing women out of moving cars. Behavioral expectations of one gender being ascribed to the opposite gender as a method of parody is sexism because, as I said, the sexism is not in the gender of the players, it’s in the behavior being depicted by the players.
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Will Wright on Gaming
Yah, I still Sim. Sims 3 now. Haven’t done much meshing since my old
video card broke a year or so ago. Once I got a new card, I’d sort of
moved on to other things. I still build houses, er-well-buildings, and upload them to the
official Sims3 site:
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=588502
Also explains my name.
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Jack Chick Documentary
This video is way more fascinating than you think it’s going to be…
Close to the end, (when the time left reads 14:40) Dan Raeburn talks about what he considers the most disgusting – yet effective – Chick tract. I ♥ Dan Raeburn!
And at 5:30 (time left) – the text says that November 22 is “International Chick Tract Day” – yet I can find no evidence of that from anyone but the films producers, the jack chick museum guy (not affiliated with jack chick) - so maybe he proclaimed November 22 Chick tract day – who knows, but anyway, November 22nd of this year is the day that Kirk Cameron and his minions are going to be handing out copies of “Origin of Species” with a new anti-darwin introduction included. Coincidence?! or Conspiracy!? Either way, here are 3 suggested ways to celebrate:
1. Use some outdated expression in a fruitless effort to sound “hip.” Good examples include, “Far out”, “That’s heavy man”, or “This will blow your mind!”
2. Laugh really hard at something that isn’t particularly funny while pointing at it and guffawing, “Haw-haw-haw!”
3. Leave a Chick tract for someone who is least likely to have any interest in Christianity
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Here’s To Your Ex-Best Friend
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(I made the video portion using the Sims 3)
Here’s to the best words
In the right place
At the perfect time
Here’s to 3 hour dinners
And long conversations
To the philosophical ramifications
Of a beautiful day.
To the twelve-steppers
At the thirteenth step,
May they never forget
The first step.
To the increase, to the decrease
To the do, to the do
To the did to the did
To the do to the did
To the done done
To the lonely.
To the brokenhearted.
To the new, blue haiku.
Here’s to all or nothing at all.
Here’s to the sick, and the shut-in.
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in,
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
To the crazy
The lazy
The bored
The ignored
The beginners
The sinners
The losers
The winners.
To the smooth
And the cool
And even to the fools.
Here’s to your ex-best-friend.
To the rule-benders and the repeat offenders.
To the lovers and the troublers,
The engaging
The enraging
To the healers and the feelers
And the fixers and the tricksters,
To a star falling from a dream.
To a dream, when you know what it means.
To the bottom
To the root
To the base, uh, boom!
To the drum
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
Here’s to somebody within the sound of your voice this morning.
Here’s to somebody who can’t be within the sound of your voice tonight.
To a low-cholesterol pig sandwich smothered in slime without the pork.
To a light buzz in your head
And a soundtrack in your mind
Going on and on and on and on and on like a good time.
Here’s to promises that break by themselves,
Here’s to the breaks with great promise.
Here’s to people who don’t wait in the car when you tell them to wait in the car.
Here’s to what you forgot and who you forgot.
Here’s to the unforgettable.
Here’s to the was you been to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
Here’s to the hip-hoppers
The don’t stoppers
Heads nodding in the digital glow
Of their beloved studios.
To the incredible indelible impressions made by the gaze as you gaze in the faces of strangers.
To yourself you ask: Could this be God?
Straight up!
Or is it a mask?
Here’s to the tribe of the hyper-cyber
Trippin’ at the virtualmost outpost at the edge on the tip
Believin’ that what they hear is the mothership
Drawing near.
Here’s to the was you been, to the is you in
To what’s deep and deep, to what’s down and down
To the lost, and the blind, and the almost found.
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Re-Reading The Canon and Wikipedia
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A recent survey showed that of self-selecting respondents, only 13% of wiki editors are female, and subsequently there has been much written about what that means, why it is, and what can be done about it.
Some folks think it’s a technical skills issue, that women aren’t as likely to have the skills needed to edit Wikipedia, others say it’s a time and money issue -that women are too busy, and spend their recreational time pursuing other interests, and some think it’s because of the culture of Wikipedia. I’m in the last group. But this post isn’t really about the why’s and what to do’s, it’s about what it means in a larger sense.
While reading the various discussions, I thought of the Re-Reading the Canon series, which published “Feminist Interpretations” of Philosophy. The preface to the series was published in each volume, telling readers the purpose of the series – which is probably why I recalled it so well – and I think it is also a great comment on why women are important for Wikipedia. Emphasis is mine:
Take into your hands any history of philosophy text. You will find compiled therein the “classics” of modern philosophy. … The student is to assume that she or he is about to explore the timeless wisdom of the greatest minds of Western philosophy. No one calls attention to the fact that the philosophers are all men.
Though women are omitted from the canons of philosophy, these texts inscribe the nature of woman. Sometimes the philosopher speaks directly about woman, delineating her proper role, her abilities and inabilities, her desires. Other times the message is indirect—a passing remark hinting at women’s emotionality, irrationality, unreliability.
This process of definition occurs in far more subtle ways when the central concepts of philosophy—reason and justice, those characteristics that are taken to define us as human—are associated with traits historically identified with masculinity. If the “man” of reason must learn to control or overcome traits identified as feminine—the body, the emotions, the passions—then the realm of rationality will be one reserved primarily for men, with grudging entrance to those few women who are capable of transcending their femininity.
Feminist philosophers have begun to look critically at the canonized texts of philosophy and have concluded that the discourses of philosophy are not gender-neutral. Philosophical narratives do not offer a universal perspective, but rather privilege some experiences and beliefs over others. These experiences and beliefs permeate all philosophical theories whether they be aesthetic or epistemological, moral or metaphysical. Yet this fact has often been neglected by those studying the traditions of philosophy. Given the history of canon formation in Western philosophy, the perspective most likely to be privileged is that of upper-class white males. Thus, to be fully aware of the impact of gender biases, it is imperative that we re-read the canon with attention to the ways in which philosophers’ assumptions concerning gender are embedded within their theories.
This series, Re-Reading the Canon, is designed to foster this process of re-evaluation. Each volume will offer feminist analyses of the theories of a selected philosopher. Since feminist philosophy is not monolithic in method or content, the essays are also selected to illustrate the variety of perspectives within feminist criticism and highlight some of the controversies within feminist scholarship.
In this series, feminist lenses will be focused on the canonical texts of Western philosophy, both those authors who have been part of the traditional canon, as well as those philosophers whose writings have more recently gained attention within the philosophical community. A glance at the list of volumes in the series will reveal an immediate gender bias of the canon: Arendt, Aristotle, de Beauvoir, Derrida, Descartes, Foucault, Hegel, Hume, Kant, Locke, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Plato, Rousseau, Wittgenstein, Wollstonecraft. There are all too few women included, and those few who do appear have been added only recently. In creating this series, it is not my intention to rectify the current canon of philosophical thought. What is and is not included within the canon during a particular historical period is a result of many factors. Although no canonization of texts will include all philosophers, no canonization of texts that excludes all but a few women can offer an accurate representation of the history of the discipline, as women have been philosophers since the ancient period.
I share with many feminist philosophers and other philosophers writing from the margins of philosophy the concern that the current canonization of philosophy be transformed. Although I do not accept the position that the current canon has been formed exclusively by power relations, I do believe that this canon represents only a selective history of the tradition. I share the view of Michael Bérubé that “canons are at once the location, the index, and the record of the struggle for cultural representation; like any other hegemonic formation, they must be continually reproduced anew and are continually contested.”
The process of canon transformation will require the recovery of “lost” texts and a careful examination of the reasons such voices have been silenced. Along with the process of uncovering women’s philosophical history, we must also begin to analyze the impact of gender ideologies upon the process of canonization. This process of recovery and examination must occur in conjunction with careful attention to the concept of a canon of authorized texts. Are we to dispense with the notion of a tradition of excellence embodied in a canon of authorized texts? Or, rather than abandon the whole idea of a canon, do we instead encourage a reconstruction of a canon of those texts that inform a common culture?
This series is designed to contribute to this process of canon transformation by offering a re-reading of the current philosophical canon. Such a re-reading shifts our attention to the ways in which woman and the role of the feminine is constructed within the texts of philosophy. A question we must keep in front of us during this process of re-reading is whether a philosopher’s socially inherited prejudices concerning woman’s nature and role are independent of her or his larger philosophical framework. In asking this question, attention must be paid to the ways in which the definitions of central philosophical concepts implicitly include or exclude gendered traits.
This type of reading strategy is not limited to the canon, but can be applied to all texts. It is my desire that this series reveal the importance of this type of critical reading. Paying attention to the workings of gender within the texts of philosophy will make visible the complexities of the inscription of gender ideologies.
Everybody knows it’s “history not herstory”, but considering that the very definition of Being, Existing and Knowing has been defined by men, and seeing how institutions of knowledge and learning have been operating from a male-centric perspective of what “Knowledge” is, you get a real appreciation for how big the problem is.
Think about Sotomayor and the war on Empathy sparked by her nomination. There is a concerted effort to erase emotion from government policy when it’s there at all, we can see it at every health care reform town hall protest, and in every vote against gay marriage. We’re told over and over that “feelings” don’t matter. Why don’t they matter? Well, it’s “I think, therefore I am.” not “I FEEL, therefore I am”.
But no, it’s not about running the world according to people’s feelings, it’s about the marginalization of the feminine perspective from the culture which compiles every canon of knowledge, and the way that knowledge shapes the world. Do not get emotional. Because emotion has no part in academia, or business, or politics, or warfare or science, or philosophy, or teaching, or medicine, or justice. Are you fucking kidding me?
“We will not change the system to make it ‘easier’ for women, they must prove themselves worthy of this system constructed around knowledge of human nature as developed over the years by the great philosophers. Who all happen to be men.”
What it boils down to for Wikipedia is this:
Stop letting the fundamental and evangelical christians edit the feminism, gender, and gay rights pages. Because they are ideological pricks. I don’t care that the ‘tradition’ is to assume good faith. I have NO good faith that fundamentalists are going to offer an unbiased view of feminism and the rights of women. You can’t seriously believe that women are going to want to participate in a project when the very pages that are dedicated to the study of female experience and history are allowed to be infected by those morally opposed to the entire feminist movement. Anyone who says that it’s tolerated to insure a fair representation of opinion is either a shill or a fool.
No. It Doesn’t mean every woman only wants to contribute to articles about feminism. It means that if you tell feminists to assume good faith of woman-haters you make it obvious that women’s contributions don’t mean shit to you, no matter what field their expertise is in.
For me, and for many of the women I know, we investigate stuff before opening our yaps. We lurk in forums, we read past threads – we like to know what we’re dealing with. On Wikipedia, we read the talk pages, and we peruse the article history and if you think we don’t notice the sexism you are kidding yourselves.
Need More Proof that Wikipedia doesn’t actually want female contributors? Wikimedia has their “Strategic Planning Process” with calls for proposals on how to improve the project, discussions of proposals, breakdowns of where they’ve been and where they want to go. There are already hundreds of proposals and the discussion pages that go with them.
Google results for a search on strategy.wikimedia.org for the terms “women OR female OR females OR girls” turned up exactly 9 results. Of those 9, 1 is from a page history, a section which has since been moved to its own page (in essence counted twice) – 1 is a proposal to “make a country song about Wikipedia” where it’s mentioned that maybe the singer could be a woman, and 1 is a proposal that’s actually spam for “pornowiki”.
AGF? Yeah, right.
Feminist Philosophers entry on Re-Reading the Canon
A Douchebag Says:
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“Maybe a majority of women are sex-positive feminists, and perhaps most sex-workers are too, but I am skeptical that their views count for very much in ideological and intellectual terms.“
- ADM, ChurchDouche, while “contributing” to the Feminist Views on Sex Work wiki page. Douche emphasis is mine.
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Fellow Feminists, What’s Wrong With This Page?
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Was it Highlights that had the “how many things are wrong with this picture” thing in them? I can’t remember. But here’s something quite similar: The Mary Wollstonecraft wikipedia page. The discussion pages and the article history are interesting as well. There’s a lot wrong with that article, and I’m not talking about the “facts”. Are there any male philosophers or writers or revolutionaries whose lives are outlined according to which women they were fucking at the time? Not that I’ve seen. Are we supposed to give femi-points because the section titles include the geographic location? Well anyway, there is just too much for me to list right now. Maybe I’ll take an angrier whack at it later and compile a list of proper Outrages.
Oh yeah, here’s a short biography of Wellstonecraft from the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society and here is her husband/biographer William Godwin’s wiki page , just for sake of comparison.
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Ha! It’s not often that I’m topical and timely! Also, a user at the Feministing community wrote up a great tip sheet for wiki editing here.
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Help On The Way For Unhappy Women
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Not long ago blogs were all a-twitter over a study saying women have become less happy over the last 40 years. The title of the study was “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness”. The Paradox, we were told, was that since women had gained so many rights and made so many gains, it didn’t make sense that they were LESS happy today. After all, women wanted rights – they got rights, so why weren’t women happy?
The overwhelming majority of feminist bloggers were fairly vocal about the flaws they saw in the premise of the paper – the premise that women had actually made enough gains to be happy about them. The ERA wasn’t passed, women are still a small minority in government, workplaces are as rigid as ever – with no childcare options and no adjustments made for women who are nursing or need to pump milk, and whitecollar workplace schedules still adhering to a 9 to 5 model, or more recently an 8 to 6 model – domestic violence is still rampant, with funding for shelters, counseling, and education pretty much non-existant, abortion rights are constantly under attack – protesters are given the right to harass any woman walking into a Planned Parenthood clinic, yelling vile accusations and epithets at them. No, aware women saw the flaw in the belief that women had gained enough because their men are doing more housework or because now women are able to hold a job that used to belong to men.
It’s not even as simple as ‘we haven’t come far enough’ – it’s the hurt that came from having to fight tooth and nail every goddamned step of the way, and having to settle for what the men in charge decided to give us. Now they say it’s a Paradox. Why aren’t women happy with what they were given?
Yesterday, I clicked over to the Huffington post, and Arianna wrote a piece to tell us about a new column dedicated to helping women figure out why they are unhappy and giving them tips on how to be happier. Whew. Good, I could use a little cheering up, I thought. But I was a tad perplexed when I learned the column was written by a man, but I considered that maybe he is a feminist scholar of some sort and can offer some insight. After all, it would be sexist to assume that he couldn’t understand simply because he’s a man. He’s not necessarily another Douthat, right?
But my perplexed-ness turned to I-shoulda-knowned-it-ness rather quickly as I read through the first paragraphs of Marcus Buckingham’s first-in-a-series column. It may be worth mentioning that the columns seem to be a forum for him to publicize his new book on the same theme of unhappy women, so there, it’s mentioned. And emphasis is mine:
1969 was an intense, rousing time for women in America. Betty Friedan had published The Feminine Mystique a few years earlier, and had founded the National Organization for Women in 1966. And Gloria Steinem had just published the essay in New York Magazine that clearly separated the modern Women’s Movement from other oppressed groups, “After Black Power: Women’s Liberation,” in which she called for meaningful work, equal pay, and the goal for all women to be freed from the role of only “servicing men and their children.”
Fast forward 40 years: no matter how optimistic the guesses of our “woman-on-a-Detroit-street,” I bet they wouldn’t have outstripped what’s actually happened.
Women rising
I doubt she would have guessed that by the early twenty-first century, women would be running the governments of countries as powerful and widespread as Germany and Ireland, Bangladesh and New Zealand, Chile, Mozambique, and Jamaica. Or that the wife of one U.S. president would spend months in 2008 as the national favorite to become president herself and, barely failing in that quest, would become an outspoken Secretary of State, or that the Speaker of the House would be a woman, or that John McCain would choose a moose-hunting, helicopter-riding, crowd-pleasing mother of five as his running mate because she’d stared down oil companies as governor of the tough state of Alaska.
And work? Again, she would probably have bet that, in the future, more women would be working, but would she have guessed that October will be the first month in which women outnumber men in the workforce, that women would be holding more management and supervisory positions than men, by a margin of 37 percent to 31 percent, that in like-for-like work women and men with the same amount of work experience would be earning the same, and that women’s pay would actually be increasing faster than men’s? I doubt it.
How about education? I’m sure she would have forecast that more women would be completing high school and attending college, but do you think she’d have predicted that during the 2008 school year, 59 percent of all the bachelor’s degrees and 61 percent of all the master’s degrees would be earned by women, not by men? Or that by 2009, four out of the eight Ivy League universities–Harvard, Brown, Penn and Princeton–would have female presidents?
Yet the biggest surprise would have come if you had asked her just one more question. Given all the evidence of women running corporations and universities, hospitals, media empires, branches of government, army divisions, and countries do you think women in the future will be happier? Of course they will be happier, she would have said. With all these opportunities and achievements, how could they not be?
Well, as it turns out, too easily.
I wonder, does Marcus Buckingham consider the fact that if he listed off the countries who haven’t had a woman leader he’d run out of room? I wonder, does he always define women by their husbands as he did Hillary Clinton as being a President’s Wife? Does he consider that even though the speaker is female, only 17% of congress is female – and that’s the record, it was set just this year. Does he consider that women sometimes oppress other women and Sarah Palin is not a feminist hero, that in fact Palin thinks a woman’s place is in the home. Except for herself of course.
I wonder if Buckingham knows anything about rape statistics on college campuses, and how women are pressured to keep the investigations internal, and how those investigations are botched or corrupted to protect male students. I wonder if Buckingham is happy that his daughter may be at risk when she goes to college, even at a campus with a female president. I wonder if Buckingham even knows that feminists are still fighting to force colleges to publish rape statistics to give parents a true idea of the risk their children face.
Does Buckingham understand that women will outnumber men in the work force in October because the economy was ruined and men are being laid off first because they earn more money and more often carry an entire family – including his still working wife – on his insurance policies? Does he really think his readers don’t realize this? Does he not understand that women earn still earn less, even though their pay is increasing faster? It’s increasing in an effort to catch up… men’s pay is still increasing, just not AS FAST. Oh wow. What a feminist triumph!
Only 15 companies of the Fortune 500 are run by women. The highest ranked is number 27. Less than a quarter of Universities are headed by women , Female CEOs of Hospitals have said they see a need for a complete overhauling of “hospital culture” – if women are so powerful in the hospital industry – why hasn’t this overhaul happened?
Women run “media empires”? – Well, I guess that depends on how you define “media” and “empire”.
You may be able to tell that I’m not impressed with this guy, to put it mildly. His company is called “The Marcus Buckingham Company” (wowegowow)… and his HuffPo blurb says:
Marcus Buckingham is the bestselling author of five books, with more than 3.7 million copies in print, and the world’s leading expert in personal strengths. An internationally renowned consultant and the founder of TMBC, a management consulting company, he has been hailed as a visionary by corporations such as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Disney. Buckingham has been featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Larry King Live,” “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” and “The View,” and profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review.
But who knows, I could be ALL wrong about him. He ends the HuffPo piece with:
My own analysis leads me to a specific explanation and accompanying prescription–which I’ll share next week and which I’ve written about in Find Your Strongest Life.
So, I’ll have to wait until next week to find out what his own analysis lead him to. I’m sure it’s more valid than any woman’s analysis. Though he does say that Oprah viewers liked what he had to say. Unfortunately I hate a lot of what Oprah says, she’s a big time patriarchy upholder if you ask me.
I dunno, I’m out of steam, so I’ll close with the comments I left on the HuffPo article :
1) I blame the patriarchy. The further we come, the more the patriarchy fights back. The older we get, the more we see it. The wiser we get, the more we realize how sick society is. Maybe it’s because intuition and empathy are qualities which are ridiculed and reviled by a patriarchal society, just look at the reaction to Sotomayor. Maybe it’s because men are the ones who think they are able to figure out why women are unhappy, and they’ll actually try to tell us. For our own good? Maybe it’s because Hillary Clinton is still considered merely a President’s Wife. What was she, pray tell, before she was a president’s wife? Nobody? Nothing? Maybe it’s because only 17% percent of congress here in the US is women, and that’s a record high, which is supposed to make us HAPPY? Really? Yes, we’ve sure come a long way. Babies. Maybe it’s because over the last 40 years the religious right has been chipping away at women’s gains. We aren’t supposed to notice? Or maybe it’s because of ignorant people, some of whom have commented here, saying women are unhappy because they realize they get unsexy. Are you kidding me? Maybe it’s because men, as they get older, lose their virility? Older men are just too limp. Maybe it’s because we’re tired of coddling the rest of you. Yeah, we’re mad as hell, go ahead and keep guessing as to why.
2) The author says that if we’d asked a woman during the birth of the women’s lib movement what the future would be like, that she would never imagine that we’ve done so much and come so far.
” no matter how optimistic the guesses of our “woman-on-a-Detroit-street,” I bet they wouldn’t have outstripped what’s actually happened. “
Are you serious? This entire premise is wrong. There are women today who actually were young bank tellers in 1969, go ask one how far they thought we’d be. There is no need to guess. Early feminists are SHOCKED at how NOT FAR we’ve come. If you told an early feminist in 1969 that the ERA didn’t pass, that women are still a minority in government, that there’s no workplace childcare support, that Sodini’s and Garrido’s happen with regularity, that domestic violence shelters are severely underfunded, that MRAs actively fight against their gains, no I don’t think a woman in 1969 would be at all happy about how far we’ve come. That you even think they would be pleasantly surprised shows how little you know about feminism as a whole, and what it’s hopes were, and how the hopes have been dashed and vilified for years.
It’s really so simple. Feminism has opened our eyes. It’s been opening women’s eyes everyday for decades. We aren’t happy with what we see. I’m sure many people would rather we just put the blinders back on, or burqas for that matter.
elsewhere:
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New Music from Ani Difranco
Just a quickie. These are just concert clips of 5 new songs from Ani Difranco that I culled off of youtube. You can also hear them (along with older songs) in better quality if you listen to the concert recording in my little vodpod player thingy over there —–>
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Latest: Single Female Blogger Has Cats
Since I’m 38, single, and female, you might be surprised to learn that I have cats. 3 of them. I know it’s shocking, and goes against all the stereotypes about cat owners that you’ve heard, but it’s totally true.
Meeper is the oldest cat, I’ve had him for about 15 years, and up until 3 years ago he lived in a house where he was allowed outside anytime he wanted. Now, though, we live in an apartment next to a busy road, so he’s stuck inside and for a while he just seemed so bored. So, I decided to get another cat as a buddy for him. Big mistake. Meeper was too old, and didn’t have enough energy to tolerate the younger kitty, who I named Frazzle.
So, a few months go by and I had the opportunity to get yet another cat, named this one Issues, which turned out to be a decent idea because now the 2 younger kitties have lots of fun together, and the older Cat can join in to play when he wants to.
I swear I researched this crap before I got Frazzle, and whether or not it was a good idea, whether I should get a kitten or an older cat, but somehow, I didn’t come across the right information. After I got Frazzle, all of a sudden, everywhere I looked there were articles saying, “get 2 kitties at a time” and “get an older cat for an older cat” …. friggin’ google was against me, obviously.
I know I’ve totally screwed myself though, I’ve had animals forever, dogs and cats, I mean… and they were dying off one by one, and I had only 1 kitty to go and I was going to be free of cat food flung hither and yon, and done with litter boxes and the joy they bring… but no, now I’m signed up for another 15 to 20 years of this crap. It’s a damn good thing that these cats are sooooooooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuute!!!!!!!!!!!
meeper, frazzle, issues
Independent Women’s Forum Has New Fear Mongering Campaign
I saw this commercial today, it’s from “The Independent Women’s Forum“. Some folks are running around saying that “the librul TV bosses don’t want you to see it” but, ummm, I saw it, on librul TV!
This commercial tells us that women here in the good ol’ US of A have a better chance of surviving breast cancer. On their website there is a page with the “story behind the commercial” – which is a bunch of statistics supposedly proving that the doctors in Europe are a bunch of breast-cancer lovers who don’t bother trying to help anyone. As usual, the basic premise is – “I got mine! Screw Everybody Else!”
And how’s this for a kick in the teeth~ IWF lets us know that:
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In a 2008 study, the Lancet Oncology, a prominent health care trade journal, demonstrated that the five-year survival rate from breast cancer in the United States is 83.9%; the five-year survival rate in the United Kingdom is 69.8%. The supporters of a government takeover of health care dismiss these differing survival rates as abstract numbers, but we know they are about real lives – lives that can, and should, be saved.
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Yes, the emphasis is mine. IWF reminds us that there are REAL PEOPLE suffering, REAL AMERICANS, with REAL INSURANCE and with REAL MARRIAGES, and with REAL WHITE SKIN, and with REAL FAMILIES, and ya know what? I’m willing to bet that they worship a REAL GOD and go to a REAL CHURCH too.
The uninsured? We’re not REAL PEOPLE, we don’t have REAL LIVES, we don’t even come into the question for people like this woman, she has the gall to ask how we’ll fare if the Government offers Health Care, she doesn’t care, she is only worried about herself and her own access to her own doctors.
The survivor in the commercial tells us that if it weren’t for the charitable kindness of the insurance industry 300,000 women might have died. Might have died. She asks us “What are your odds if the Government takes over health care?
She’s got hers. You might want to hope that she never loses her current insurance, and if she does you might hope that she doesn’t have a recurrence or any other health problems later in life, and you might hope that if that happens that she is rich enough to pay for her treatment now that she has a pre-existing condition. You can hope for her, I’m not going to, I don’t give a crusty fuck what happens to her. I don’t have to be concerned, you see, because she’s got hers.
I don’t understand why she can’t seem to grasp the concept that she can keep her special insurance anyway. Her care is under NO THREAT. AT ALL.
Hopefully, if DECENT Reform isn’t passed, she and all those greedy fucks like her, will rightfully, deservedly get theirs.
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Whore Haters – Thoughts On Patriarchy Paganism & Prostitution
Restricting the right to have sex in exchange for tangible offerings is The Number 1 Tool of Patriarchy. It’s the very basis of it, the foundation on which it rests. The restriction of sex in exchange for offerings was how the very earliest Patriarchal Religions stamped out paganistic, woman centered, religions. Take a moment to imagine a world where paganistic, woman centered nature-honoring ‘religions’ still rule….
Sadly, many honorable feminists, who have no personal experience with free agent sex work, have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the same ancient divisionary tack that worked millenia ago. That tack was telling women that demanding an offering for sexual favor degrades them and wounds others of their gender and results in oppression by men. That tack was telling women that the primary power they had in pagan cultures was actually the symptom of a lack of power. Pagan priestesses who accepted offerings in exchange for sexual favors were systematically targeted and stripped of power and eventually their religious ministry was outlawed, and even the legends of the Goddesses worshipped were reframed through the eyes of patriarchy.
It’s not in the history books, because those are the books of patriarchal history. The most you’ll learn about are the earliest efforts to demolish laws oppressing women, they don’t tell you how the oppression came to be. You know the bible was involved, but saying in a general way, that “Patriarchy comes from the Bible” does nothing to tell you how that “bible-endorsed” patriarchal rule took over a world where so many religions worshipped Goddesses and Womanhood. Matriarchal Womanhood, that is, – Pagan religions did not worship the familiar patriarchal ideals of womanhood, they worshiped matriarchal ideals of womanhood. Matriarchal womanhood is a totally different animal.
Feminists know that when they read about the founding of their respective nations, or read about certain civil rights movements, that the women in those periods are rarely mentioned, and when you talk about patriarchal historical perspectives, that is what they think of, they think patriarchal history is why the women throughout history and their stories haven’t been noted or given due consideration. But it’s far more insidious and ancient than that. If you read about the history paganistic religions, and how they were conquered, that’s where it is, baby, clear as a cloudless day. The vilification of the Sacred Whore was the first step to patriarchy conquering the world, and the Sacred Whore still one of the most misunderstood and demonized concepts around.
You only need to read the reactions to any article about ’sugar-daddies’ and ‘gold-diggers’ or Ashley Dupre or even Diablo Cody, who has the nerve to call herself a feminist even though she worked as a stripper for a while, … you see conservatives, Christians, progressive d00ds, atheists, and a maddening number of self-identified feminists yelling out “Whore!” in the vilest way. The belief that whore = bad is ingrained in so many people it downright overwhelms me at times. Even many feminists have adapted this to: proud whore = bad, to avoid demonizing victims of sex-slavery and coerced prostitution.
It surrounds us. MRAs and the Bible Beaters hate us, Nice Guys hate us, Not-Quite-Feminists hate us, and a whole bunch of bona fide Feminists hate us.
1st, if you have sex for shoes or rent, or have a sugar-daddy, you are reminded that no matter how you try to gussy it up, you are still : A Whore.
2nd, if you are an “escort” you are reminded that you are still : A Whore.
3rd, if you are proud of your whoredom, you are told you are going to hell, you’re stealing good women’s husbands, or you are a tool and a fool and an enabler of the patriarchy, depending on who’s doing the telling. You are torn limb from metaphorical limb. It’s disheartening to say the least. And then, when you have the falls* to speak out, one of the first things you are asked to do is sacrifice yourself to the enraged masses and allow yourself to be savaged; “If you’re so proud,” they ask “why don’t you use your real name? Why are you hiding?” and they have the nerve to be all self-satisfied about it, as if refusing to be a martyr somehow proves their argument… more than a few times I’ve seen the request to ’stop hiding’ followed by something like: … you won’t though, because you know you are just : A Whore.
It’s saddest though, that some of the smartest and strongest feminists out there hate proud whores more than any of the other whore-haters. You are accused of hurting other women, of working for the patriarchy, you are accused of being ignorant or unconcerned about the situations of women who are not free agents and who have been forced into the sex trade. You are mocked and ridiculed with twisted taunts like “yes we know, you think being a whore is empowerful, but you’re a whore so what do you know? Obviously you’re just too stupid and/or brainwashed to see that you are being used.”
Your experience in its entirety is devalued and discarded with that one bit of twisted snark “That’s great you ‘chose your choice!’ don’t you care that millions of women are victimized by prostitution? YOU are part of the problem” No. No, Whore-Hater. You are part of the problem. You are the biggest part of the problem. Most amazing is that a free agent whore’s personal history and experience is scoffed at and made invalid by citing statistics from research conducted from within the patriarchal construct of society, and usually it’s not even research on free-agents but focuses on coerced participants. They’ll tell you that most whores have been abused, they will tell you that most whores have been damaged by society, by abuse, drug addiction, economic hardship, they tell you that only damaged goods end up as whores. If that’s not vilification I don’t know what is.
It’s fucking mindblowing.
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Congratulations girls! The sexual revolution delivered to you the ability to have sex for pleasure. No longer are you constrained to having sex only for the purpose of procreation. But that’s it though. Those two reasons. Well, ok, there are actually three acceptable reasons for having sex:
Personal Pleasure or Babies or Pleasing Your Assigned Man.
That’s it, just those three reasons. Happy now? What else could you want?
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http://prostitution.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=000117
