Category Archives: 5. Rampant Sexism

Ignoring The Shy Nerdy Girls

From Male Nerds Think They’re Victims Because They Have No Clue What Female Nerds Go Through:

“Science is a way that shy, nerdy men pull themselves out of the horror of their teenage years. That is true. That is so. But shy, nerdy women have to try to pull themselves out of that same horror into a world that hates, fears and resents them because they are women, and to a certain otherwise very intelligent sub-set of nerdy men, the category “woman” is defined primarily as “person who might or might not deny me sex, love and affection.”

“(And you ask me, where were those girls when you were growing up? And I answer: we were terrified, just like you, and ashamed, just like you, and waiting for someone to take pity on our lonely abject pubescence, hungry to be touched. But you did not see us there. We were told repeatedly, we ugly, shy nerdy girls, that we were not even worthy of the category “woman.” It wasn’t just that we were too shy to approach anyone, although we were; it was that we knew if we did we’d be called crazy. And if we actually got the sex we craved? (because some boys who were too proud to be seen with us in public were happy to fuck us in private and brag about it later) … then we would be sluts, even more pitiable and abject. Aaronson was taught to fear being a creep and an objectifier if he asked; I was taught to fear being a whore or a loser if I answered, never mind asked myself. Sex isn’t an achievement for a young girl. It’s something we’re supposed to embody so other people can consume us, and if we fail at that, what are we even for?)”

Full article http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120653/nerd-entitlement-lets-men-ignore-racism-and-sexism

Quote referenced here.

 

Freely Available Contraception Will End Civilization

Republican Congress Member Steve King of Iowa on the new requirement for coverage of women’s birth control in health plans:

If you apply that preventative medicine universally, what you end up with is you’ve prevented a generation. Preventing babies from being born is not medicine. That’s not—that’s not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birth rate get down below the replacement rate, we’re a dying civilization.

Because the only reason to use birth control is because you hate children and women that are on the pill could never possibly want to have children at a later time when they have the relationships, support, income or resources to raise them in the best fashion. Just like every woman that terminates a pregnancy is a single skank that will never have children later on in life and certainly never a woman that has already had children and does not wish to strain herself, her family or her household with more children or simply doesn’t want to go through the health risks associated with pregnancy. All sex must have consequences.

Tea Party BFF, Congress Member Allen West of Florida:

We need you to come in and lock shields and strengthen up the men that will go into the fight for you, to let these other women know on the other side—these Planned Parenthood women, the CodePink women, and all of these women who have—that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness—to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient. That’s what we need you to do. Because if you don’t do it, then the debt will continue to grow.

via Democracy Now, Women Hurt Most by Debt Deal Cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Tuition.

Let’s Have Bake Sales for Women’s Health

BILL O’REILLY: Leslie, how are you feeling today? How are you feeling?

LESLIE MARSHALL: I’m feeling great.

BILL O’REILLY: OK.

LESLIE MARSHALL: But I’m not feeling great about these cuts—

BILL O’REILLY: No, no, Leslie. Just take it one at a time.

LESLIE MARSHALL: —with Planned Parenthood, though.

BILL O’REILLY: I’m a simple man with simple questions. You’re feeling great? Are you feeling great, Leslie?

LESLIE MARSHALL: I’m feeling great.

BILL O’REILLY: OK, good, because I was worried about you and Erica, because there is an all-out assault on women’s health. And I wonder if that has reached you, if your health is being impacted by the fiscal responsibility debate?

LESLIE MARSHALL: Mine isn’t, but I’m not one of—and I have been—the lower-income women that I feel that this attack has affected and clearly will affect.

BILL O’REILLY: What attack?

LESLIE MARSHALL: Remember, Bill, that—

BILL O’REILLY: What attack?

LESLIE MARSHALL: Well, the finances of Planned Parenthood, two-thirds of the federal money that Planned Parenthood has and uses is for preventative care, whether it’s screening for cancer in breasts, the ovaries, the cervix, the uterus—

BILL O’REILLY: That’s a very worthy—

LESLIE MARSHALL: —whether it’s prenatal care, infertility counseling.

BILL O’REILLY: That’s a very worthy thing, is it not? Isn’t it very worthy?

LESLIE MARSHALL: It is very—it is very worthy.

BILL O’REILLY: Well, then why—

LESLIE MARSHALL: And Congressman Pence and others on the right want to cut it.

BILL O’REILLY: If it’s worthy—and I agree with you that, you know, any kind of advice we can give to make people’s lives better—why can’t you raise the money privately? I’m sure you could have a big party at your mansion and get all your liberal friends in L.A. to give a lot of money. You know, we raised for the Fisher House in two days a quarter of a million dollars—and I’m going to tell people about that later on—for the military families. Well, you could do that, and Erica could do that. You could raise all that money privately.

From Democracy Now, Women Hurt Most by Debt Deal Cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Tuition.

Dan Savage on Weiner

“And here’s the inevitable “professional help” question: Is he going to seek professional help. Because horniness is an illness. Wiener is being asked to apologize to Andrew Brietbart… and he does. Ugh. A reporter asks if Weiner was drinking or using drugs—if he has a problem—because only a man who has a drinking problem or a drug problem could get caught up in something like this. Do reporters know what men are like? (And lots of women too?) This desire to pathologize behavior that isn’t sick—that is, indeed, very common and human and completely and instantly understandable—is itself pathological. Weiner does not have a problem. He has a computer. The whole world has Weiner’s problem: same old horniness, brand new box. Weiner’s asked, again, if he has an “addiction.” … A reporter points out that some of the women Weiner interacted with were young enough to be his daughter. Oh, the horror. Newsflash: Straight men want to fuck women who are young enough to be their daughters. Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Larry King, Rush Limbaugh—all married to women who are “young enough” to be their daughters. How can reporters sit at a press conference and insist that no man—except one with an addiction to sex, drugs, or alcohol—could ever lust after, flirt with, fuck senseless, or marry a women who was more than 13 years his junior? Do they read their own papers?”

Dan Savage, Live Slogging Weiner’s Press Conference

Pretty Girl Syndrome

From a thread on Reddit:

“Pretty women are socialized differently from everyone else. They get people coming up to them and approaching them all the time. Because of this, they don’t experience as much pressure to push outside their comfort zone and learn to approach others.

But who are these people approaching the pretty girls?

Well, they are predominantly men – men who are drawn in by her beauty. So, these girls are picking their friends mostly from among the men that come up to her, and the result is that their circle of friends will be made up almost exclusively of men. Not only that, but the men she makes friends with are likely to be a lot more forgiving than the women.

Most friends expect you to call them just as much as they call you, or invite them out as often as they invite you. Most people will dump a friend who never initiates contact and always just waits for you to come to them first. The female friends of these girls with “pretty girl syndrome” are more likely to stop coming around if she isn’t carrying her weight in the friendship, but the men who are enamored with her beauty will likely keep calling and keep inviting her out no matter how rarely she returns the favor.

The thing is though, all of this is normal to a pretty girl. She’s never experienced anything different. She doesn’t realize that she’s receiving such vastly different treatment compared to men or less attractive women. All she knows is that somehow guys are easier to meet and easier to keep as friends, than girls are.

So, these are girls who are likely to say “Oh I get along with men so much better than women! Guys are just easier, you know? They’re more straightforward, they don’t play stupid games, they just say what they mean, but women gossip so much and play games and are too complicated! I have so much more in common with guys than I do with girls!” And they think that they are saying something positive about themselves for getting along better with guys – that they are more down to earth or something – when the reality is that they get along better with men simply because the men are treating them differently due to their beautiful looks.”

A rant from Reddit, Female misogynists, or Special Snowflake Syndrome

Image from the Barbie Dreamhouse website.

Roseanne Barr on the Lack of Change in the TV Industry

“The line was a ridiculously sexist interpretation of what a feminist thinks—something to the effect of “You’re my equal in bed, but that’s it.” … Matt, who was watching from his office, yelled over the loudspeaker, “Say the line as written!” I said, “No, I don’t like the line. I find it repulsive, and my character would not say it.” Matt said, “Yes, she would say it. She’s hot to trot and to get her husband in bed with her, and give it to her like she wants it.” I replied that this was not what she would say or do: “It’s a castrating line that only an idiot would think to write for a real live woman who loves her husband, you cocksucker.” ABC’s lawyers were called in. They stood around the bed while the cameras filmed me saying, very politely, over and over, “Line change, please.”

…

I made a chart of names and hung them on my dressing-room door; it listed every person who worked on the show, and I put a check next to those I intended to fire when Roseanne became No. 1, which I knew it would.

…

When the show went to No. 1 in December 1988, ABC sent a chocolate “1” to congratulate me. Guess they figured that would keep the fat lady happy—or maybe they thought I hadn’t heard (along with the world) that male stars with No. 1 shows were given Bentleys and Porsches. So me and George Clooney  took my chocolate prize outside, where I snapped a picture of him hitting it with a baseball bat. I sent that to ABC.

…

If I could do it all over, I’d sue ABC and Carsey-­Werner under those provisions. Hollywood hates labor, and hates shows about labor worse than any other thing. And that’s why you won’t be seeing another Roseanne anytime soon. Instead, all over the tube, you will find enterprising, overmedicated, painted-up, capitalist whores claiming to be housewives. But I’m not bitter.”

Roseanne Barr on the Lack of Change in the TV Industry, New York Magazine

Idaho Rejects Rape Exception In Abortion Bill Because ‘The Hand Of The Almighty’ Was At Work

Whittle, whittle:

Marching in step with the GOP’s nationwide war on a woman’s right to choose, the Idaho legislature gave final approval to a bill that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks…. But this year during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, state Republican lawmakers found plenty of reasons to advocate for it. State Rep. Shannon McMillan (R) argued that women who were impregnated under “violent circumstances” should have no choice because it’s not the fetus’s fault. State Rep. Brent Crane, the bill’s sponsor, took it a step further. Believing that “tragic, horrific” acts of rape or incest are the “hand of the Almighty,” Crane said women should trust God to turn the consequences of their sexual assault into “wonderful examples”.

Corrupt Politics (Idaho Rejects Rape Exception In Abortion Bill Because ‘The Hand Of The Almighty’ Was At Work).

Inside Planned Parenthood

Via Metafilter:

I get feedback from our patients, and the common thread that people are surprised at the respect with which we treat them. Over and over, I hear how impressed people are that we’re friendly, we’re clean, we don’t make them feel like bad people for accessing (STI services, birth control, abortion services). I was surprised, when I started talking to folks, at how “you treated me like a real person” was such a huge theme, but this latest governmental insult really does provide some context. We (I say we, because like almost all of my co-workers and the vast majority of my patients, I’m a young woman) are pretty much screwed by our culture, with no protection at all. We brave the expense, judgment, health risks, variable efficacy, and endless hormonal experimentation of birth control OR we run the risk of pregnancy. If we become pregnant, we’re called murderers if we terminate that pregnancy or lazy welfare queens if we continue with that pregnancy and can’t afford the expense of raising a child all by our damn selves (some of us have the help of family or a partner, but if there’s anything I’m learning it’s that most of us are eventually on our own when push comes to shove). We can’t win. We’re demonized no matter what we do, and by our very existence as sexual beings we’re a social problem in some people’s eyes no matter what we do. So when the patients I talk to express their shock at being treated with respect by the staff I work with, I’m slowly learning not to be surprised. Because it really is a shock to go to a place where your decisions about your own body and your own choices are not some political punching bag or subject to a moral referendum. It really is refreshing to go to a place that’s friendly, and open, and treats your sexuality as the natural, healthy part of life that it should be. I feel incredibly lucky to be a part of that, and I work every day to make sure that our space is safe for all women to have control over their lives in a culture that wants nothing more than to take that control away.

XOXO to Title X