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 is a video game and women, like money and status, are just part of the reward we get for doing well.

That. The failure to realize that women really are protagonists of their own stories, and the failure to give a shit even if you do realize it.

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

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

More.

(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 you won’t accept it.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

He was out and gay. He was elected a San Francisco Supervisor (their word for city council). He was murdered by a homophobic ex-cop who was also a supe.

How is any of that a reason to pitch a fit about his face on a stamp?

(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 a failure as a man. I now realise that most of my friends wouldn’t care about my man status anyway, despite the lad banter, but this was what was going on in my head at the time. The feelings of the girls in question were irrelevant; to me girls were property that I had to cling on to and control. And if they dumped me, they deserved to be shamed in every way possible.

Disturbing, isn’t it.

When I inevitably got dumped, I’d tell my friends horror stories about how she’d said my depression was just a form of emotional blackmail, and make up lies to try to turn her friends against her. Being dumped, especially if we hadn’t had sex, was the worst thing that could happen. I wanted sex, and only women had the power to give or take it away, and in my mind this made them more powerful than anything else. Being dumped would push the anger button, because I ultimately couldn’t face the truth of looking at who I was and what I was doing.

And then it gets even more disturbing.

I remember when I first heard the word misogynist. I was talking to a friend about a girl who’d dumped me, and my feelings about feminists creating a society where nice men couldn’t get girlfriends, and he described me as “quite a misogynist”. I asked him what he meant, and he said “it’s simply hatred of women.” I instantly loved the term. I didn’t consider myself a sexist – I thought of Benny Hill as sexist – sexism was just silly but this was serious.

I very seriously thought women were irrational, mad, over-emotional and pseudo-intellectual creatures who would do anything, via new feminism, to crush weak men who suffered from depression, and I hated them. These days, I see a lot of people saying “I’m not a misogynist, but…”, because they don’t want to be called a misogynist, but not me. It was the term I’d been looking for, and I was proud to call myself a misogynist.

This was before the age of social media, but I know what I’d be doing if it was available at the time. I’d be following feminists and strong women on Twitter, combing their tweets for any kind of slip-up that I could use to ‘expose’ them. If I saw a blog or comment by a feminist that challenged my world view, my anger button would be pressed and, rather than responding rationally, I’d lash out with gendered insults, all while completely failing to empathise with them.

I’d be angrily commenting on blogs and YouTube videos about feminism, sticking up for the men who just want to get girlfriends and sex, but can’t because of this repellent radical feminism. And I would probably never change, because the large scale of social media has effectively provided a veritable support group of people who feel the same way, with the same irrational anger that prevents them from assessing their views.

Ok now I’m depressed.

There’s a lot more. Read it. It’s good.

(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 it was making me feel bad I was forcing myself to laugh at the parts that were clearly meant to be funny. About ten minutes in, he stopped the movie, and he asked me, “This is reminding you of your ex husband, isn’t it?” And I really had to consider it for a moment before I realized that yes, that was precisely why I was so unhappy. I didn’t want to watch Entitlement: The Movie because I had lived it. This friend realized why the movie was problematic, and as far as I know he’s stopped watching those types of movies. He told me the experience ruined it for him, in a good way, and that he didn’t know he’d have ever become aware of the problems in those films if he hadn’t watched me watch that movie.

(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 husband of Farzana Parveen, who was beaten to death by 20 male relatives on Tuesday, said he strangled his first wife in order to marry Parveen.

He avoided a prison sentence after his family used Islamic provisions of Pakistan’s legal system to forgive him, precisely those he has insisted should not be available to his wife’s killers.

“I was in love with Farzana and killed my first wife because of this love,” he told Agence France-Presse.

Police confirmed that the killing had happened six years ago and that he was released after a “compromise” with his family.

But none of this is anything to do with misogyny. It’s just weather, or gravity, or natural selection, or entropy. Nobody mention misogyny.

(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 had a permit, and he wasn’t arrested – even though he dropped his gun in a popular discount store; even though the gun fired and injured a woman; even though the woman injured had a newborn baby with her. All fine, because he had a permit.

Something not quite right here.

(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 rationalization, a culturally imposed lack of self-confidence, the need for community, a lack of basic life skills and/or education and a longing for purity that also involves disdain for the body.

…

Missing from the discussion was the idea that other women have positive experiences with religion and/or have grappled with similar challenges and come to different conclusions.

Only Jones said it is important to draw a distinction between fundamentalism and more moderate and progressive traditions. She finds the same battles over ideological purity in the secular community that she found in fundamentalism, she said.

“I worry that we’re trying to single religion out as the scapegoat,” said Jones.

Of course one person’s “battles over ideological purity” may be someone else’s efforts not to lose the plot altogether.

In an email after the conference, Jones said it takes a great deal of work for her to admit that religion can be a force for good because she was “treated shamefully so many times by so many people who justified their actions by claiming that they were just following the Bible.”

“I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me angry. It still makes me angry. I’m still in the process of recovering from that pain, and I have no idea how long that process will take,” said Jones.

Nonetheless, she sees parallels between hardline atheism (the perspective that the world would better if we were all atheists) and fundamentalist Christianity (the view that the world would be better if we were all fundamentalist Christians).

“Both are very rigid perspectives. And the world isn’t a rigid place,” said Jones. “There’s abuse in organized atheism — the church doesn’t have a monopoly on that.”

Because Jones had mentioned her involvement in interfaith work, I wondered if that work might inform her perspective. It taught her that there can be more than one philosophical justification for the same human rights principle, she said.

“I don’t care if someone supports gender equality, for example, because they believe it’s a religious tenet. I care that they support gender equality,” said Jones.

I on the other hand do care. Of course it’s better to have a religious believer who supports gender equality than to have one who doesn’t, but the religious believer remains vulnerable to being told by a religious authority that gender equality is not pleasing to god, and believing it. It’s an extra vulnerability in the commitment. That’s not an abstraction: most people have decidedly believed exactly that throughout recorded history.

As a storyteller, I understand that dramatic narratives can be the most compelling, but far too much public discourse about religion is driven by arguments with fundamentalism.

Really? Surely a great deal more public discourse about religion is driven by the assumption that religion is the source of goodness.

(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 think their holy book makes it ok.

According to reports, some 20 members of Ms. Parveen’s family, including her father and two brothers, attacked her and her husband when they were on their way to the Lahore High Court, where they were due to contest her father’s allegations that she had been kidnapped by her husband and that their marriage was invalid.

“Every year, hundreds of women are killed in Pakistan as a punishment for marrying a man their families have not chosen or for refusing an arranged marriage,” Ms. Pillay said.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 869 women were murdered in so-called ‘honour killings’ in the country last year, but the real figure could be much higher, with many such killings believed to be disguised as accidents, or not reported at all.

“The Pakistani Government must take urgent and strong measures to put an end to the continuous stream of so-called ‘honour killings’ and other forms of violence against women,” said Ms. Pillay.

“They must also make a much greater effort to protect women like Farzana Parveen. The fact that she was killed on her way to court, shows a serious failure by the State to provide security for someone who – given how common such killings are in Pakistan – was obviously at risk.”

Will the Pakistani Government pay any attention? It seems very unlikely.

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