rape is just not permissible. ever.

Wallace Chapman, you are a fuckwit for even daring to ask someone if women in short skirts could be "asking for it" (rape)
Paul Quinn, you are also a fuckwit, for answering that it's down to drunkenness and their behaviour.

It is not a woman's fault she gets raped. There are no excuses for rape.


Damn it, I've been having intense conversations with my male friends over the last couple of weeks that have left me stressed and on edge trying to explain to them what rape culture is and not to crack jokes that promote it. (Including, but not limited to "it's not rape if you say "surprise!"...)

Listening to one young man explain how he was accused of rape and then hearing the horrible details of what happened the next morning, and trying to find sympathy for both people. It ended up in front of the cops and neither of them got counselling.... Christ, sometimes it just isn't as black-and-white as you'd like it to be.

I've got one mate who insists that all rapists should be killed. I still don't know if he quite understands what that would mean. (Obviously, a helluva lot less men.)

I've explained that most of the time, women who are raped aren't out in a dark alley at 3am wearing a miniskirt and heels. That they're at their home or a friend's house, somewhere they felt safe, and were with a man they thought they could trust.

I've told them that when they call women sluts, skanks, whores, bitches, it pisses me off personally. (Especially "whore", because not one of them has had any experience of who prostitutes are and what they do.)

I've even told them the short form of Kate Harding's "that guy thought you were on his side". Yeah, that one shut them up.

Some of them seem to get it. I don't know if they're getting it because I'm there calling their crap, or if they actually have had their thoughts shaken up. But this is all down to the SlutWalk. Hearing about it, reading about it, and planning to be there.

belated blogswarm

So apparently there was a blogswarm on the 7th, which I missed. Regarding "abortion is a health issue not a crime"

Which, oddly enough, is exactly the wording I used to a friend of mine (a male) when he mentioned a friend of his (a female) had blogged about being pro-choice.


Random gleanings from today's conversations with the usual gang included a thought questioning why pregnancy is a sickness (you can get a "sickness benefit" if you're pregnant) and why, instead of being in the health area of the law, is abortion still a crime?

Anecdotally, I had a serious in-depth conversation with a friend regarding her current pregnancy and whether or not she should terminate. She's a grown woman, a mother, and she's feeling scared and alone because the people who should be supporting her CHOICE the most...aren't. They have made their choices before she's made hers. It's not right.

I felt torn up just hearing her story. It's so seldom black-and-white, got-raped-gonna-terminate.


And people dare to say that women would use it as their primary method of birth control. A scant few, perhaps, but why have an abortion when you can use contraception first...



Anyway, slutwalk, keen bean. :)

not so quietly pissed off

I've had my thoughts adjusted by transsexuals. Firstly, by a friend who I hang out with every day at uni, and secondly by a woman who I only know as V.

Yeah, ok, of the two I really only know and like my mate, but V has raised an important issue for me. It's about ignoring transsexuals. It's not right. It's like when society used to ignore homosexuals and their issues. And before that, women. Which is bullshit.


I've also had my thoughts adjusted by reading that when cisgender men and women choose to use the wrong personal pronoun, ask questions about their bits, claim they're not "really" a woman or a man, we're being transphobic.


It galls me that transgender women get beat up and killed in hate crimes. Case in point:
This woman

I don't know her real name. Nobody will know her real name, because the fucking media is calling her "Richard" and calling her a "him".


I see you.

Protest?

Goddamn it!

Goddamn John Key and his rotten National Party Cabinet Ministers are so keen on screwing over women, Maori and their children in this country it makes me fucking angry as hell!
Welfare "shake up" recommendations via Stuff.co.nz - warning for misogynist, idiotic comments...



We gotta protest. They ignored us when we protested against the employment law reforms, they ignored us when we protested against the Voluntary Student Membership bill, they cannot fucking sit back and ignore us again!

We got together to protest the exploitation of our land, we have got to get together and protest their plans to trample over our sick, our unemployed and our mothers.

I can't be the only person who feels this way. If anyone else out there hates what's happening to our people, hit me up.

Lifestyle choices

Oh Christ.

Just getting away from a blog post with open comments on Stuff about food parcels and John Key's moronic comment about beneficiaries' lifestyle choices.

The amount of misogyny in the comments just makes me SICK. From women as well as men!!

A stunner from someone named Claire - ranting about a woman with three children and collecting the DPB "her choice to have sex and get pregnant" well yeah we really hope it was her choice to have sex, and definitely her choice to have her children but that doesn't mean it's her fault that she can't afford everything she needs to provide for her children and herself.

Yes, of course, many women who get pregnant and consider the consequences think "well shit, if I have this kid now money is going to be really tight" but it doesn't mean that they don't want the child!

Me, personally, I would probably rather take my chances with pregnancy, parenthood (maybe by myself) and maybe having to sacrifice a bit than have an abortion. (unless I really didn't want the man's child, for whatever reason) But abortions just squick me out. The whole procedure makes me nauseous and scared. I don't just mean the tried and true D&C, the pills, the having to leave and come back again thing, the sedation, yeah, nah. Horrible. Not for me, if I can possibly avoid being raped (odds aren't that good, I'm a woman) or getting knocked up to a guy who really couldn't handle fatherhood.

Abortion law pisses me off too, I've read the section of the Crimes Act (CRIMES! Can you believe it?!) that contains NZ's current abortion laws and it's twisted and wrong. D:


This is totally turning into a rant, but FUCK OFF with the benefit cutting already. Hypocrites! Marginalising women and Maori while they buy themselves flash new cars. Paula Bennet... you are damned lucky I've spent today reading a book by the Dalai Lama. I am grateful to you for being my enemy, because you give me the opportunity to practice compassion.


Damned if I will, though!!!


EDIT: In hindsight, I should probably link to something that analyses some of the statistics regarding women, Maori and social welfare.
http://werewolf.co.nz/2011/02/ten-myths-about-welfare/

things I found today

Thank you, feminist blogosphere.
Thank you, Wellington Young Feminists' Collective.
Thank you, Peggy Orenstein.


The Destructive Culture of Pretty Pink Princesses

"What really floored me, both as a girl-advocate and as a parent, was the way that prematurely sexualising girls or play-acting at sexy for them from a young age disconnects them from healthy authentic sexual feeling. So that they learn that sexuality is something that you perform, instead of something that you feel."


Just...wow! I had to sit for a few minutes to digest that. I haven't even finished reading the article myself yet - I just had to share it!

from the horse's mouth

"From Stripper to Acting CEO

I clicked on this article in the hopes that it would be a woman making it to the top. But no.

It's a bloke, having done a one-night stint in a local production. "Very tastefully done".


Has anyone else been to a strip club featuring female dancers? Seen the way they accept tips from the patrons, bending over and giving a full view of their cunt a few scant inches from their faces?
Competition for getting tipped has done this to strippers - they used to be dancers, entertainers...burlesque. But now, the more skin they show and the ruder they dance, the more money they get. Taste has little to do with it.

Still, more power to ya if that's you. More power, more money.

But the man in the article says it himself: "I am probably one of the few CEOs, if not the only CEO, to have been a stripper for a paying audience."

That's like saying that no stripper could ever become a CEO of a company. That she's not worthy enough for the job. And that hacks me off!