newsweek:

Just published on the web.

Ugh, Newsweek, you are annoying. “Aw, too bad you don’t get our clever reference” is the same as “why can’t you stupid minorities have a sense of humour”? Your cover headline is offensive; deal with it: it might’ve been different if you were GLAAD, but you are not GLAAD. You are a publication with a history of causing offence to the LGBT community; are you doing this shit on purpose?

ishmaeldreaming:

witchinthebackyard:

Caitlin Moran

Published at 3:39PM, March 17 2012

‘Women still die in childbirth. Not as many as used to
– but notably more than die while receiving other “gifts”, such as scented candles’

There’s something disturbing about the idea of someone pressing something unwanted – wholly unwanted – in your hands, saying, “It’s a gift! It’s a gift!”

And you demur, politely at first, saying, “How lovely, but no. I do not want this gun/modern sculpture too large for my house/sack of oysters – to which I am allergic – thank you. It is lovely that you thought of me, but no.”

But the insistence increases. “It’s a GIFT,” they insist, forcing it into your palm. “A PRESENT. YOU MUST HAVE THIS GIFT.”

And now your hands are bleeding, and you’re truly alarmed, and you try to back away.But you find that the law has changed overnight, and you are legally obliged to take this gift – even as you stand there with your hands torn, saying, “But surely a gift is something wanted? Something suitable?A stranger’s hand putting something into my pocket is the same as a stranger’s hand taking something out of my pocket. Really, there should be no hand there at all.”

And the gun goes off, and the sculpture is wedged in the doorway, immovable, and the oysters leak, slowly, onto the floor. Things that would have been wanted elsewhere cause chaos here. They do not fit, and they cause grief.And the stranger walks away. Having pressed his gift upon you, his work is done.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s comment that, if his daughter were raped and became pregnant, he would not want her to have an abortion – but think of the baby as a “gift” from God – has been one of the defining quotes of the year.

As contraception and abortion become, yet again, controversial – the UK facing the second proposal, in as many years, for pro-life organisations to counsel women wanting an abortion; in the US, Santorum and others speaking out against contraception, even for married couples – the idea of babies as a “gift” becomes a pivotal one.

“Gift” is a key concept. If all babies are a “gift”, then a pregnant woman seeking abortion becomes unforgivably “ungrateful”. Similarly, contraception is bad, because it is the rejection of yet more “gifts”.

Let us think of all the inferences of “gifts”. If I give you a gift, it is usually a surprise. It is probably something you would not have got for yourself. And after I have given it to you, I would not see it again. I leave you with the gift.Gift-giving leaves the person who receives the gift essentially powerless – not a problem if it’s a brightly coloured wristwatch, a great deal more so if it’s a human being you bear responsibility over for the rest of your life.

Babies being “given” to women as gifts makes the women sound powerless. Just something that a present was put into, like a cupboard or a shelf – rather than a reasoning adult who decided they were ready to be a mother.

Calling a baby a “gift” also sounds – let us be honest – like the phrasing of someone who has not spent much time bringing up children. It seems unfair to use visceral language to describe parenthood – but as anti-choice, anti-contraception campaigners are quite happy to use visceral language themselves (“slut”, “prostitute”), I have to presume they would be all right with it.

From the shop floor of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, here’s what that gift can entail: tearing, bleeding, weeping, exhaustion, hallucination, despair, rage, anaemia, stitches, incontinence, unemployment, depression, infection, loneliness. Death. Women still die in childbirth.Not as many as used to – but notably more than die while receiving any other “gifts”, such as scented candles, or minibreaks. Additionally, “gift” sounds hopelessly inadequate to describe your children, whom you inhale like oxygen, swoon over like lovers and would die for in a heartbeat. I have never done this over a foot spa, book token or vase.

The worry of the anti-abortion and anti-contraception campaigners is that women rejecting these “gifts” are rejecting the gifts of Nature, or God. But Nature, of course, turns to contraception and abortion all the time: the diseases that make you barren; the sperm counts that fall to zero. Blocked tubes, blown wombs and the thousand sorrows of the infertile. The one-in-three first pregnancies that end in miscarriage – miscarriage which is just like abortion, a potential life ended, except miscarriages are unwanted, and often dangerous, while abortions are safe, and wanted.

Nature also, clearly, believes in non-procreative sex: for 27 days a month, sex is non-procreative. Sex after the menopause is non-procreative. Statistically, most sex is non-procreative. Clearly, sex isn’t just for procreation: it’s also for the creation of happiness, or excitement, or contentment.

Those things really are gifts, and are always wanted. Those things do not scare me, when pressed upon me.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article3348848.ece

(Bolding mine)

When I grow up, I want to be Caitlin Moran.

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH THE “IT’S NATURAL” ARGUMENT. CANCER IS THE MOST MOTHERFUCKING NATURAL THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO A MULTICELLULAR ORGANISM BUT NOBODY WANTS IT TO, DO THEY? NATURAL MEANS NATURAL; IT DOESN’T MEAN AWESOME OR WELCOME. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.

(Source: amongthearrowsandthefire, via drinkmasturbatecry)

I’m sick and tired of people acting like it’s no big deal that Chris Brown will be performing at the Grammys.

I’m frustrated that the mainstream media is covering this story like it’s any comeback story, like an exiled prince’s return to a former glory, like this is another political timeline — as though some rich and powerful old white men in the music business have not just issued an enormous ‘f**k you’ to every woman who has been, is or will be on the receiving end of domestic violence.

We should be furious.

Why aren’t we?

A Long, Long Time Ago, or Three Years Ago, But Who’s Counting?

For those of you who are currently listening to ‘Look at Me Now’ and wondering what the big deal is, a quick recap: The night before the Grammys in 2009, Chris Brown got angry at his girlfriend, Rihanna, and he took it out on her face. She went to the hospital and then to the LAPD, where this photo was taken and promptly leaked to TMZ. (The LAPD issued a stern statement on the leak, threatening penalties “up to and including termination”. TMZ reportedly paid $62,500 for the photo.)

Both Rihanna and Brown had been scheduled to perform at the Grammys the following evening. Neither did.

Instead, Chris Brown turned himself into the LAPD at 7 pm, was booked on suspicion of criminal threats and was released on $50,000 bail.

Then the Internet exploded.

I was a full-time entertainment writer at the time, so I had a front-row seat to the action. This is what I expected: I expected a string of celebrities to comment on how horrific this situation was, how sad and angry they were for Rihanna, how domestic violence is unacceptable in any context, how as a nation we need to condemn this and condemn it loudly.

Instead, Hollywood went silent and, when they did speak, they teetered on the brink of defending Chris Brown.

Carrie Underwood: “I don’t think anybody actually knows what happened. I have no advice.”

Lindsay Lohan: “I have no comment on that. That’s not my relationship. I think they’re both great people.”

Nia Long: “I know both of them well. They’re young, and all we can do is pray for them at this point.”

Mary J. Blige: “They’re both young and beautiful people, and that’s it.”

Jay-Z, one of Rihanna’s mentors, spoke up: “You have to have compassion for others. Just imagine it being your sister or mom and then think about how we should talk about that. I just think we should all support her.”

In a sane world, Jay-Z’s statement would sound insane. Why would he have to remind his fans to support Rihanna after what happened is that she got hit in the face?

Jay-Z issued that statement because the Internet was, in early February 2009, engaged in a very serious conversation about whether or not all of this was Rihanna’s fault. In fact, large segments of the Internet had devoted themselves to making Rihanna the scapegoat for any woman who ever had the gall to do something worth getting hit, and then the cloying self-esteem to go to the cops about it. Bloggers and their commentators flocked to Chris Brown’s defense in droves. It was a full-blown tearing-down of female self-worth, an assault on any progress women have made in this country in the past 200 years, and the mainstream media ignored it.

It horrified me. It still does.

Later in February, a photo of Brown riding a jet ski in Miami hit the Internet, and singer Usher was caught on video commenting on it: “I’m a little disappointed in this photo,” Usher says in the video. “After the other photo [of Rihanna’s bruised face]? C’mon, Chris. Have a little bit of remorse, man. The man’s on jet skis? Like, just relaxing in Miami?”

The backlash was so severe that Usher was later forced to publicly apologize.

“I apologize on behalf of myself and my friends if anyone was offended,” he said. “The intentions were not to pass judgment and we meant no harm. I respect and wish the best for all parties involved.”

The message we sent to young women was unmistakable: You are powerless. You are worthless. You will be a victim, and that will be okay with us.

The Fall-out, and the Lack Thereof

In August 2009, Brown was sentenced to five years probation and 180 hours of community service after pleading guilty to felony assault.

In December 2009, he released his third studio album. It sold over 100,000 copies in its first week and debuted at #7 on the Billboard charts.

On June 8, 2010, Brown was forced to cancel his tour dates in the UK when the British Home Office refused to grant him a work visa on the grounds of “being guilty of a serious criminal offence”. Less than three weeks later, he performed ‘Man in the Mirror’ at the BET Awards’ tribute to Michael Jackson.

His fourth studio album, released in March of last year, debuted at #1.

In December 2011, Billboard crowned him their artist of the year.

And, this week, Grammy producers confirmed that Chris Brown will be performing on Sunday’s show.

“We’re glad to have him back,” said executive producer Ken Ehrlich. “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you’ll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.”

Read that quote again. Think hard about what is being said. Here is what this quote says to any woman who’s ever been abused:

• By blacklisting Chris Brown from the Grammys for a “few” years (actually, a grand total of TWO Grammy Awards), the Grammys have gone above and beyond expectations for the social exile of an adult man who hit his girlfriend so hard she went to the hospital, and honestly it was really, really hard for them to show even that much support for victims of domestic violence worldwide.
• It was rather thoughtless of Rihanna to go and get herself hit in the face by her boyfriend, because it’s put such a burden on the Grammys. Maybe if she hadn’t made such a big fuss out of it, things could have been easier for everyone.
• The Grammys think that they were the victim of Chris Brown hitting Rihanna in the face.
• The Grammys. Think. That they. Were the victim. Of Chris Brown. Hitting. Rihanna. In the face.

Hitting People Is Wrong, Y’All

I agree that people deserve a second chance. It’s great that we live in a country with a justice system that allows offenders to reclaim themselves and their lives after their sentence. I’m happy about that, and I hope Brown is a changed man at the end of his sentence. (The US justice system has Chris Brown on probation through 2014. It was nice of the Grammys to let him off a couple years early for high record sales good behavior.)

And my suspicion is that Rihanna has no interest in being a poster child for victims of domestic violence. She probably wishes this would all disappear, and I don’t blame her for a minute. She didn’t ask for this – for any of it – and she’s under no obligation to speak out about it.

But someone has to. Because what is happening here is unmistakable. It is, in my eyes, so unmistakable that I wonder if I’m wrong, if I’m missing something huge, because I cannot believe more voices aren’t railing against this.

We – the grown-up influencers in this country, the people with platforms and with educations and with power — are allowing a clear message to be sent to women: We will easily forgive a person who victimizes you. We are able to look beyond the fact that you were treated as less than human, that a bigger, stronger person decided to resolve a conflict with you through violence. We know it happened, but it’s just not that big of a deal to us.

We were so mad when the Komen Foundation pulled its funding for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. “This is not fair,” we shouted. “This is not fair to women, and this is not fair to the women who don’t have a voice, and we will not allow it.” We shouted it so loudly that Komen reversed its decision in three days. We forced the resignation of one of their top executives.

Planned Parenthood, no doubt, has a well-funded and fine-tuned PR machine, adept at galvanizing a population against a perceived injustice. They outmaneuvered Komen easily.

Does domestic violence have a less sophisticated PR machine than Chris Brown does?

Because to me, this situation isn’t all that different. Accepting that Chris Brown gets to perform at the Grammys because some people bought his album is no different from accepting that women without health insurance don’t get to be screened for breast cancer because some VP at Komen is anti-abortion. It may happen, but that doesn’t mean we should tacitly accept it. What if Chris Brown had hit your sister that night? Or your daughter? (What if Chris Brown had hit Taylor Swift that night?)

We’re accepting the message that women just aren’t that important, that their health and their safety and their self-respect is only important until it stops being convenient for everyone. We should be angry about this, and we should be angry publicly about this.

So I want to say this to anyone who is listening: This is not okay with me. A man hitting a woman in anger is unacceptable and is not easily forgotten or forgiven. A man who hits a woman in anger deserves to be reported to the authorities and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of who might be inconvenienced in the process. A man who hits a woman in anger may eventually be permitted to go on with his own life, but he is not permitted back in my life, even if it’s been three whole years.

(via tengorazones)

feminismisprettycool:

angryfuckingliberal:

Of course they do. Fuck the Tea Party, man. Fuck them so hard.

How do these people even exist? I have always been so sure that your average human being cannot survive being literally filled with horseshit.

(Source: gillionaire, via drinkmasturbatecry)

Fuck you. If a woman wants to end her pregnancy, that’s her choice. Her reason, no matter how reprehensible it may seem from a moral high horse, is none of anyone’s business. That’s it.

Withholding information from a woman to prevent her from having an abortion is an attempt to control what she does with her body and is therefore antithetical to pro-choice.

Some women abort girls in favour of boys not because they’re horrible immoral nasty wicked people, but because they live in or come from societies that hate girls. If these societies stopped hating girls, women wouldn’t want to abort them just for being girls.

feminismisprettycool:

stfuconfederates:

bajo-el-mar:

• Mr “Welcome to the real world”. Sexism happens. Always has, always will. Might as well suck it up and deal with it. Try to change society? What are you, mad? I don’t like it either, sunshine, but just be good and don’t make a fuss.
• Mr “Oh my god calm down it was a joke”. Everyone knows if you tack “lol” onto the end of a sentence, no one can get mad at you because you were being hilarious, and if anyone gets offended they’re being an uptight prick. You truly are the George Carlin of our time.
• Miss Validator. “I’m a girl, and I think this is HILARIOUS. Calm down feminists!” Watch as everyone in the thread uses her as yet another reason why you are stupid and oversensitive and they are hilarious and right. May also “apologise for her gender” in a cosmic blast of internalised misogyny.
• Mr “I refuse to believe this happens”. He would never cat call or rape and isn’t sexist at all and thinks gender roles are outmoded. Therefore, he thinks, everyone else thinks just like me too. Can’t line up women’s experiences of sexism with his own worldview, so dismisses everything they say, demanding “proof”. Sees no irony in this.
• Mr “actually you’ve got this the wrong way round”. Silly you! This is looks, feels, smells and tastes like misogyny but is actually misandry. Don’t worry, easy mistake to make, anyone could have done it. Just don’t say I’m wrong or I’ll link you to pages explaining why you have female privilege and call you an ignorant bitch. 
• Mr EvoPsych! Has never studied this but has skimmed some articles and therefore can explain every facet of how human behaviour works. And why it’s just best and most natural for everyone to stick to their traditional gender roles. Because that’s how we did it in 10000bc. Women and men are just different, that’s why you’re not as smart as him.
• Mr *totally unrelated point*. Seriously dude, how did you even get here. Seems to be having a totally different discussion than the one you’re having, then whines that you aren’t addressing his points.
• Mr “I’m so not the problem here. Hello ladies.” Ugh, photoshopping is TERRIBLE, fashion is STUPID and I tell my girlfriend not to wear makeup because makeup is GROSS. I like small boobs - take that societal norms! You don’t have to have plastic surgery anymore, girls, because I like’em small. Stop dieting! I like a woman with meat on her bones. Read Proust! I like a lady who’s well-read. I don’t understand why you would want an item of clothing that cost more than £50 - you don’t need that to attract me, madam. What do you mean, you like wearing eyeliner and don’t dress yourself solely for my benefit? I told you I don’t like high heels! STOP DOING THINGS I DON’T LIKE!

Accurate.gif

“May also “apologise for her gender” in a cosmic blast of internalised misogyny.”

COSMIC BLAST OF INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY. let the brilliance of that phrase sink in for a second. Mmmhm. 

Accurate.

(Source: spitfireinspace, via drinkmasturbatecry)

pectus-pectoris:

HOW TO: open a new text post and type letters a-z into the tags and take your favorite tag it suggests and post it out of context. this only works if you use tags as obsessive conversational add-ons like me, and if your computer saves the tags you’ve used before.

WHAT YOU COME UP WITH SHOULD BE SOME SORT OF REFLECTION OF YOUR CHARACTER. ENJOY.

[snip]

A - all your base
B - braaaaaaaaaaaains
C - cunning plan
D - do not want
E - EVERYTHING IS BLEACH AND NOTHING HURTS
F - foresight fail
G - ginception
H - hearts in my eyes
I - i hate everything
J - jesus wept
K - kagura
L - ladies
M - My Neighbour Pedoro
N - neo armstrong cyclone jet armstrong cannon
O - om nom nom
P - Persecution Complex
Q - Queer as Folk
R - rebecca black
S - seriously fuck you
T - tl;dr
U - Urahara Kisuke
V - voldypants
W - who cares
X - XIII. kerület
Y - you bastards
Z - zurako

STUPIDEST ARTICLE YOU WILL EVER READ IN YOUR LIFE. GUARANTEED.