"

What men mean when they talk about their “crazy” ex-girlfriend is often that she was someone who cried a lot, or texted too often, or had an eating disorder, or wanted too much/too little sex, or generally felt anything beyond the realm of emotionally undemanding agreement. That does not make these women crazy. That makes those women human beings, who have flaws, and emotional weak spots. However, deciding that any behavior that he does not like must be insane– well, that does make a man a jerk.

And when men do this on a regular basis, remember that, if you are a woman, you are not the exception. You are not so cool and fabulous and levelheaded that they will totally get where you are coming from when you show emotions other than “pleasant agreement.”

When men say “most women are crazy, but not you, you’re so cool” the subtext is not, “I love you, be the mother to my children.” The subtext is “do not step out of line, here.” If you get close enough to the men who say things like this, eventually, you will do something that they do not find pleasant. They will decide you are crazy, because this is something they have already decided about women in general.

"

"Women are expected to be nice and sweet, to make other people feel comfortable. A woman who says ‘hey, I think there’s a problem here’ is being ‘negative.’ A woman who doesn’t smile while she’s being harassed is ‘humourless.’ A woman who prefers to stay focused on tasks is a ‘cold bitch.’ Significant gendering is involved here; women have an obligation to look and act a certain way and when they don’t, they need to be hassled until they do."

"People talk about sexual assault like it’s a bad habit that men have."

Fuck the GOP. Fuck the apologists who want to play nice. 

squintyoureyes:

karnythia:

polerin:

FUCK YOU GOP. Just FUCK YOU. Jesus fucking christ on a stick fuck you. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/us/politics/violence-against-women-act-divides-senate.html  Extending services to gay people is a waste?!  Saying undocumented women DESERVE to be abused?  I just … I cannot deal with the GOP today. I cannot deal with the hate, and the lack of concern for anyone that’s not a straight white dude. But no, it’s the fucking democrats that are playing politics with this? FUCK the gop today. Everyday, but totally today.

Politics isn’t a game. It’s not for fun, it’s not something you pay attention too if you can afford too. Politics is life and death.

How can you ask me to “play nice” and be bipartisan with someone who wants me dead?

I would love a real answer to this question. Won’t get it, but I would love it.

This is what I don’t understand about political moderates or political bipartisanship and I’m not even trying to be funny when I say that. You actually can’t cherrypick qualities from this party or that, this candidate or that one. You pick a candidate for one thing, you get all the shit that goes with that, in fact you are tacitly endorsing everything that goes with that. I can’t DEAL with republicans or anyone who’d vote republican and then try to tell me it’s for fiscal reasons or whatever, when they hate me and everyone I care about.

"

Now because the majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester, if you’re going to get an ultrasound image, as the Virginia law requires, the law states, basically, that any woman seeking to have a legal procedure known as an abortion, whether she wants to or not, first lay back in a chair, spread her legs, (put her) feet in stirrups, and have an eight- to ten-inch wand put inside her — even if the woman in question is pregnant as the result of a rape.

I don’t really have a joke here. I just thought I’d tell you.

"

Anonymous asked: nobody cares about your fucking uterus. get over it. Ron Paul is not taking away anyone’s right to reproductive freedom. This country is fucked in so many ways and you can’t look past a wedge issue like this that will NEVER effect anyone directly. 

diabolicalnerd:

cognitivedissonance

I care about my uterus and the uteruses (uteri?) of others. I also care about our rights to have a family (or not) when we so choose. This country is fucked in a lot of different ways. Why add to it by making safe, legal abortion no longer safe and no longer legal?

And yes, he would take away reproductive freedom. He’s written and co-sponsored bills to do just that - from defunding Planned Parenthood, to outright banning abortion. Of course, there’s other reasons why Ron Paul is ridiculous. Here’s a laundry list, complete with links. But reproductive rights? That’s something he should be entirely familiar with, considering his job as an OB/GYN. He should be familiar with the complications that can arise when reproductive rights are denied.

And it will never affect anyone directly? How about me? I want to avoid pregnancy, and yet still enjoy sex within my heterosexual, monogamous marriage. (You know, the kind the GOP supposedly likes, and encourges.) So Catholic roulette? That method (rhythm method) has a high rate of failure when a person’s menstrual cycle can’t be tracked well.

So let’s pretend I’ve become pregnant. Oopsies! Well, there goes the likelihood of law school. But whatever, it’s not like I should be educated anyhow, right? And then, in about the fifth month of pregnancy, I begin bleeding uncontrollably. And that doctor looks at me and says, “Sorry, I’m going to let you bleed because I don’t do abortions.” Typically, he’s supposed to call someone - but that doesn’t always happen. And under President Ron Paul, the conscience clause states he doesn’t have to save my life. Because his own reasons. 

Don’t believe me? This already happened. Not to me, but to another woman who barely survived. A historical overview of abortion is here.

Your attitude of “nobody cares” leads to headlines like this:

• 13-year-old Self-Aborts Using Pencil
• Abortion Beating: Aaron Harrison Sentenced for Trying to Cause Miscarriage with Fists
• DA: Young mother botched abortion with ulcer medication
• The Back Alley Revisited: Sepsis after Attempted Self-Induced Abortion
• Self Abortion: Woman took Tylenol, Motrin
• After Fetus Is Found in Trash, a Rare Charge of Self-Abortion
• Mexican Immigrant May Face Two Years in Prison for Self-Induced Abortion Under South Carolina Law
• Trying To Make Becky Bell’s Death Count — Parents Fight Parental Consent Law

Read Mrs. Jones’ story here. Or Susannah Lattin’s story. Or look at the picture of Geraldine Santoro face-down and bloody after dying on the floor of a hotel after an illegal abortion. (Warning: The photo is graphic).

Or let’s go global. Did you know abortion is more common in countries where it is banned? From Time magazine:

About 47,000 women died from unsafe abortions in 2008, and another 8.5 million women had serious medical complications. Almost all unsafe abortions were in developing countries, where family planning and contraceptive programs have mostly levelled off.

But who cares? They’re just women. We’re all just a bunch of whiny bitches who don’t understand the genius of Ron Paul, right? These are not wedge issues. You want to talk about personal liberty? How about liberty to choose when to raise a family? How about the rights of people to keep government out from between our legs? Come out from behind your gray box and defend your heartlessness.

In summary, fuck your “nobody cares” sentiment and fuck Ron Paul.

Why the friendzone is bullshit and self-proclaimed “nice guys” are misogynists 

lucy-vanpelt:

angels-and-angles:

Wow, accidentally deleted my original post. Reblogging so I can keep it in my archives.

——

As defined by urban dictionary, the friendzone is…

“When you are expected to support a girl you really like while she searches for a smarter, richer, and more handsome boyfriend. There is little you can do without feeling like a dick. All in all, one of the meanest things a girl can do, whether they mean it or not.”

and ”The perennial location of nice guys everywhere.”

Although this hypothetical situation could work both ways, friendzone is almost always applied to a man who is rejected by a woman. Therefore, there is something inherently unequal, something inherently sexist about the term “friendzone”. But what and why?

From my experience, this is what friend zone is. A “nice guy” pursues a woman, but isn’t forward with his intentions from the get-go like, say, a “jerk”. The woman is pleased to see a man who is interested in her not as a sexual object but as a human being and wishes for things to stay that way. The man is not satisfied with seeing the woman as a human being because being “expected to support a girl” is a bad deal if she’s not putting out.

Before I delve into the sociological aspects of this, I just want to point out that ”friendzone” is no more pleasant for a woman than it is a man. First, that is to say unrequited love works both ways, but the person who doesn’t return affections is considered mean only when she’s a woman. And second, what option does the woman have in a traditional “friendzone” situation? Just stop talking to a close friend to avoid “leading him on”? In high school, I found out my best friend of 2 years liked me. Having to tell him I didn’t feel the same way and being immediately ex-communicated via Facebook status (“Thanks for wasting my time”) was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. Were our two years of friendship invalid because I didn’t want anything more? Was all our time together really wasted because there was no hypothetical pay off?

Guys who do this and claim to be “nice guys” are the worst misogynists because of their sense of entitlement toward a woman. They make investments in property and expect their dividends. They are fake friends. They are selfish. And they will jump at the chance to vilify you and victimize themselves when their attempts at manipulation don’t work. Clearly, “friendzone” is the remnant of a phenomenon that has plagued women since the beginning of time: women are not independent creatures. Our love lives exist only in the context of a man’s desire. When we make independent decisions, we are subject to a host of derogatory terms. “Slut” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “yes”. “Friendzone” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “no”

its not long enough to be a manifesto, but it should be: taking down “come out culture” once and for all  

navigatethestream:

To me, the whole notion of Malcolm X being a coward for not coming out when he was alive and well points to a larger problem, come out culture in general. 

I’m not talking about coming out as a personal process, but a larger LGBT culture which perpetuates multiple falsehoods about the motivations and realities for coming out of the closet. 

A larger culture which has created a dichotomy of coming out the closet as being associated with

• bravery- because while yes, coming out is brave, there is no bravery in merely attempting to survive environments that are hostile to LGBT existence and bodies {sarcasm}
• progressive- your act is a sign of the changing times, of how things have “gotten better” and the more people who come out, the more society will have to accept LGBT people for who and what they are {we all know dis a damn lie}
• martyrdom- you are using your identity as a platform for teaching bigots and the otherwise politically neutral about how LGBT people are just as “normal” as straight people. you are becoming a warrior in the out and proud rainbow army which is gunning for the homophobia of the larger straight world. You’re in the army now! and that’s a damn noble cause if i do say so myself {epic sarcasm!} 

Anybody who doesn’t come out is usually indited as a coward single handedly holding progress back by refusing to make their identity a political platform. They are ticking the clock hands of progress in reverse because, and often-times they are unfairly compared to those choosing to live out lifestyles without critical understanding of what motivates the decision to come out versus the decision to keep sexual identity to onesself. 

Come out culture in and of itself is loaded with privilege denial and reeks of privilege.

It ignores the circumstance of the individual over the perceived collective need of the group, often blaming them for things beyond their control, such as financial/stability dependence on a loved one who espouses anti-LGBT beliefs both verbally or violently. 

It ignores the ways in which sexuality plays a role in certain community dynamics with respect to class, race. and religion. Instead it chooses to focus on those who have come out in those respective communities and have prospered, making them an all too high standard to live up to. 

It ignores the harsh realities members of communities may face in coming out, painting this overly rosey picture of coming out as either being a relatively consequence free endeavour or one with adversity that can easily be overcome with time. Instead it chooses to vilify those communities for not making a safe space for its LGBT members to come out in, often speaking over existing in-group conversations around issues of sexuality, gender identity, and gender presentation. 

It ignores the homelessness which plagues LGBT people, the violence of street living as a result of homelessness or simply being coded walking down the street as too flamboyant, too masculine, too binary breaking, too androgynous, too south of straight and heteronormative. The lack of legal protections for housing, marriage rights, employment, medical treatments/services, violence against LGBT people with respect to law enforcement outside of the federal level. 

The scathing irony of all this: come out culture is a fairly white-washed aspect of the LGBT movement which has been adopted by LGBT people of color attempting to fit into a larger movement which barely includes them in the first place. We kick ourselves for not having Harvey Milks or Judy Shepards or more contemporary out and proud brown figures who are living the good life since coming out the closet. We villify those living on the down lo instead of first asking what about our respective cultures makes those people feel unsafe, or what about the construction of brown masculinity or brown femininity and the underlying gender roles makes a person feel as though their identity must be kept a secret.   

We attempt to adopt this haphazard rhetoric and apply it to our communities not realizing that much like condoms, its not always one size fits all. We adopt this rhetoric when our priorities should be figuring out whether having a come out culture is even significant to us. Is coming out as an LGBT brown person signficant to the advancement of LGBT brown people, or can we mobilize and advance without people putting themselves in harm’s way.

And if we do feel as though having a come out culture is worth it, then our priorities should be actualizing the ways in which brown come out culture looks to us and feels to us and makes our brown queer bodies feel safe and stable, not attempting to compete with a white narrative which makes coming out seem like winning or loosing a game of cards, and often overlooks and misrepresents the harsh realities facing white LGBT people who lack financial independence or stability enough to come out and brave the ramifications of their own communities. 

So honestly, as a queer woman who has been out since she was 14 and is now 21, as somebody who is working on coming out as an African American muslim woman who chose Jewish Studies as a major long before coming into her own religious identity. as somebody who is not out to my Jewish studies colleagues on a lot of levels, sexuality included, because i chose to build my relationships not based on my identities but my ability to master the material and my interest. fuck come out culture. 

Your identity is not there to teach people right from wrong, just from unjust, or martyr from coward. You are no less a queer person for not jumping out of the closet with a pogo stick and your contributions are not undermined simply because you choose not to live your life on the front lines for everyone to praise and condemn. 

You don’t owe queer people the strength in your number if it comes at a great expense to your life, your safety, your stability, or even your mental health.  

You are here to exist for you and only you. To breathe, to survive, to make your dreams come true, to actualize yourself in a way which means the wheels keep on turnin and don’t stop. 

"Men have called me a man-hater, a feminazi, frigid, a bitch… but in my mind it always translates to, “you don’t need me to validate your existence, and that scares me."

"

When we consider the myriad school shootings that have occurred between 1992 and 2002 (there have been twenty-eight cases), several constants stand out. All twenty-eight cases were committed by boys. All but one was committed by a white boy in a suburban or rural school. We speak of teen violence, youth violence, violence in the schools. but no one in the media ever seems to call it suburban white boy violence, although that is exactly what it is. Try a little thought experiment: Imagine that all the killers in the more famous shootings in the 1990s - Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas, were black girls from poor families who lived instead in New Haven, Boston, Chicago, Newark. Wouldn’t we now be having a national debate about inner-city black girls? Would not the media focus entirely on race, class, and gender?

Of course it would: We’d hear about the culture of poverty; about how life in the city breeds crime and violence; about some putative natural tendency among blacks towards violence. Someone would probably even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in vain imitation of boys. Yet the obvious fact that these school killers were all middle-class white boys seems to have escaped the media’s notice, in part because race, class, and gender are only visible when speaking of those who are not privileged by race, class and gender but invisible when speaking of those who are privileged by them.

"

janedoe225:

I walked in the door far less relaxed than I had been when I set out. In fact, I was furious. Why is it, I wondered, that as a woman jogging alone at night, it is my responsibility to bring my phone and my dog, check over my shoulder regularly, and plan my route based on street lamps, and yet, these young men feel no responsibility for not harassing me or behaving civilly?

If something had happened to me during my run – if I had been attacked – and the incident made the paper, do you think most people reading the story would have first thought, “Why do those men behave that way?” Or would their first thought have been, “Why was that woman running alone at night?”

Personal Responsibility

leatherpumpkin:

As an obnoxious lover of female villains it is actually appalling to me how quickly shade is thrown at them when so many of the favorite male characters of out time are… villains. 

Like, if a woman to be perceived as “evil” she tends to be hated by both men and other ladies alike but when a man is called the same it somehow becomes appealing?

I don’t know I just find it fucking crazy that a female character gets so much shade thrown at her for being overly nice and then again if she is thought of as a “bad” person while a male character is supposed to be cherished for being a “nice guy” and loved for being all around evil. 

That is… fucked up man. 

"Ask ten adults to define a slut and you’ll hear things like: a woman who has sex with lots of men; a women who sleeps around; a woman who has casual sex; a woman who flaunts her body. They’ll probably also use words like loose, easy, trashy, cheap and desperate. Someone might say: a woman who has the sexual appetites of a man. No one will say: a mythical creature dreamt up by people who are jealous of or threatened by female sexual expression."

"The reason “It Gets Better” caught on with politicians and celebrities is because it’s great PR and it requires absolutely NOTHING from them in the way of real action."