Yes this is what it is.

From Arthur Chu’s Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds at the Daily Beast.

(It’s about nerd sitcoms and the trope in which the “awkward but lovable [male] nerd has huge unreciprocated crush on hot non-nerdy popular girl.”)

He discusses some problems with that but then dives to the heart of it.

…the overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.” That if we try hard enough and persist long enough, we’ll get the girl in the end. Like life

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Pliny the in-between’s take on the issue:

More.… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

How completely disgusting.

The American Family Association. Daily Kos reports:

The American Family Association (a designatedhate group that still attracts genuflecting Republican politicians for some reason) is very,very angry that the United States Post Office saw fit to print a stamp honoring the late Harvey Milk, and they’re not going to take it anymore. To the crazymobile!

What you can do…1. Refuse to accept the Harvey Milk stamp if offered by your local post office. Instead, ask for a stamp of the United States flag.

2. Refuse to accept mail at your home or business if it is postmarked with the Harvey Milk stamp. Simply write ‘Return to Sender” on the envelope and tell your postman

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Noodlemaz published a guest post in February 2013, Confessions Of A Former Misogynist. I find in it confirmations of what we’ve been saying in the wake of the Elliot Rodger murders. For instance, what really made him angry was

firstly, feminists challenging my point of view and, secondly, the fact that I found it really hard to get a girlfriend and, when I did, it usually ended abruptly with drama.

Getting and keeping a girlfriend was my ultimate goal, not because I genuinely loved any of the girls in question, but because I saw having a girlfriend as a status symbol. I could tell my friends that I had a girlfriend, was getting sex and that I wasn’t

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment on Not all directors of frat-boy movies

It seems like they, Apatow and Rogen, want some kind of special sticker that says that they are the exception to the rule that states that culture influences media which in turn further establishes cultural norms. But that is a silly exception to want if they expect their films to keep selling. The thing that keeps people going to see their stories is that they are culturally relevant.

On a slightly related personal note, I was watching Knocked Up with a good guy friend (a guy who actually IS a “nice guy”) who noticed I was becoming uncomfortable during the film. I hadn’t said anything, and even though I knew … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Misogyny? What misogyny?

BBC News reports:

Two teenage girls found hanging from a tree in a village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh had been gang raped, police say.

A man has been held over the murders of the girls, who police said were 14 and 16.

Three policemen have been removed from duty for not registering cases when the girls were reported missing.

Violence and discrimination against women in India remains deeply entrenched.

Meanwhile, Farzana Parveen, the pregnant woman who was stoned to death in front of the court house for marrying a man her family hadn’t chosen? That man she married murdered his first wife in order to marry Farzana Parveen.

Muhummad Iqbal, the 45-year-old

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Extra excitement at the Columbus, Indiana Wal-Mart last Saturday.

Police say a gunshot wounded a woman inside a central Indiana Wal-Mart store after a man’s handgun fell from his pants and fired.

Columbus police Lt. Matt Myers says the 26-year-old woman was treated for an upper arm wound by medics at the store but declined to go to a hospital.

…

Myers says a 56-year-old man told officers that his handgun was in a holster when it fell from his waistband. One bullet hit the woman who was pushing a shopping cart with her newborn son inside.

Myers says officers confirmed the man had a handgun permit and he wasn’t arrested.

And that’s the end of the story.

The guy … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Christine Scheller reports at the Huffington Post’s Religion section on Women in Secularism…from the pov of someone not very keen on secularism.

When women leave moderate forms of religion, are their stories less interesting or was it a coincidence that all but one of the deconversion narratives I heard at the Women in Secularism III conference May 17 in Alexandria, Virginia, involved women leaving fundamentalist versions of faith? Because I’m a Christian, and I would leave those too.

So, she’s hinting, there should have been more about “moderate” forms of religion.

The question arose in light of these stories as to what keeps women in religion when it is so often hostile to us? Among the answers suggested were

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Navi Pillay, the UN human rights High Commissioner, commented today on the murder of Farzana Parveen.

“I am deeply shocked by the death of Farzana Parveen, who, as in the case of so many other women in Pakistan, was brutally murdered by members of her own family simply because she married a man of her own choice,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.

“I do not even wish to use the phrase ‘honour killing’: there is not the faintest vestige of honour in killing a woman in this way,” she added in a news release, which also noted that Pakistan has one of the highest rates of violence against women globally.

And why is that? Because they … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh goody, Soraya Chemaly and David Futrelle were on an NPR talk show – On Point – today to talk about Rodger and misogyny. Before I listen, how about a quick look at the comments…

…uh oh.

Coastghost • 16 hours ago

Perhaps Americans have grown too unaccustomed to reading various plays by Aristophanes or certain epigrams by Martial or certain satires by Juvenal, or certain poems by Villon or certain stories by Machiavelli, or certain aphorisms by Schopenhauer or certain stories by Maupassant . . . . perhaps if we had not become so keen to shield our eyes from what vexes or discomfits, we would today be well-equipped to consider familiar themes upon their recurrence.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hard to believe but apparently not a hoax – “Joe the Plumber” says your dead kids don’t trump my rights.

Adam Weinstein at Gawker has the details.

Continuing his tradition of providing answers to questions no one fucking asked him, Joe decided to post an open letter to the families of victims killed in Elliot Rodger’s murder-suicide rampage over the weekend. Just the victims who were shot, though; not the ones who were stabbed.

His message of hope and love: Stay the fuck away from my guns.

I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now. But:

As

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)