Posts Tagged ‘ Misogyny ’

Why women can’t have nice things

Jun 27th, 2012 11:00 am | By

The gaming article linked to Helen Lewis in The New Statesman: Dear The Internet, This Is Why You Can’t Have Anything Nice.

A Californian blogger, Anita Sarkeesian, launched a Kickstarter project to make a web video series about “tropes vs women in videogames”. Following on from her similar series on films, it aimed to look at women as background decoration, Damsels in Distress, the Sexy Sidekick and so on.

What a good subject. Women in the media – it’s such a mess these days, there can’t be enough work done on this. Hooray for Anita Sarkeesian.

Except some kind of Bastard Klaxon went off somewhere in the dank, moist depths of the internet. An angry misogynist Bat Signal, if

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Enough to drive some of my friends from the game

Jun 27th, 2012 10:20 am | By

It’s not just the atheists and skeptics. It’s not just the US. It’s not just bloggers. It’s everywhere. It’s (notoriously) in gaming; it’s in Australia (gee, really?!).

I’d talk to fellow players who’d moved servers, convinced that Thaurissan (an Oceanic server, with a high volume of Australian players) was suffering from the same rot as Australian society in general. Alas, as it turned out, there was sexism in pretty much every server and realm, enough to drive some of my friends from the game.

Thus making it even more sexist, thus driving even more women from the game; repeat. Cf recent events. Women murmur about sexism; man rebukes women for murmuring about sexism; explosion of sexism takes place; women go … Read the rest

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Life after fingers

May 7th, 2012 10:09 am | By

Hawa Akther Jui, the Bangladeshi woman whose husband (allegedly) chopped off her fingers with a meat cleaver because she was getting an education…is doing better than she was right after her fingers were chopped off.

Ms Akther, 21, had lost all hopes of writing again after her fingers were cut off, allegedly by her husband because she started attending a college without his permission.

Doctors at the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) in Dhaka carried out a series of surgical operations on Ms Akther’s hand, which involved setting up a splint between her thumb and wrist so that she can hold a pencil or a pen.

“The fact that I can write again has given

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Throws like a girl, too

May 4th, 2012 11:21 am | By

Same old same old same old same old. Woman says things that people disagree with; people call her a slut a whore a bitch a cunt.

Louise Mensch is currently making news because she’s been the target of misogyny. After she journeyed to every TV studio in London to voice her ill-advised support for Rupert Murdoch, some unpleasant individuals took to Twitter to brand her a slut, a whore, a bitch and other unedifying terms. In response, Mensch meticulously documented all those inveighing against her, and took to Twitter (where else?) to denounce them using the hashtag #feminism.

She’s a Tory. I’m not a Tory, just as I’m not a Republican. I somehow manage to get along however without … Read the rest

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You gonna believe Mona Eltahawy or the grand mufti?

Apr 24th, 2012 12:53 pm | By

Nahed Eltantawy responds to Mona Eltahawy’s article on woman-hating in the Middle East. She hates it.

I felt deeply offended and insulted by Mona Eltahawy’s latest article in Foreign Policy, titled Why Do They Hate Us?   I follow Eltahawy’s columns quite regularly and I accept many of her arguments, even if I do not agree with her views on Islam and veiling. But for her to claim that “they” hate Arab women is in my view complete nonsense…Everything, from virginity tests, to sexual deprivation, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment and child marriage, is included in this article to produce a column that will surely be welcomed by many Western feminists and anti-Islamists, who for years have been telling us

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Poke the hatred in its eye

Apr 23rd, 2012 5:04 pm | By

Mona Eltahawy pulls no punches in her Foreign Policy article on the hatred of women in the Middle East. She’s pissed, man.

I could find you a host of crackpots sounding off on Woman the Insatiable Temptress, but I’m staying mainstream with  Qaradawi, who commands a huge audience on and off the satellite channels. Although he says female genital mutilation (which he calls “circumcision,” a common euphemism that tries to put the practice on a par with male circumcision) is not “obligatory,” you will also find this priceless observation in one of his books: “I personally support this under the current circumstances in the modern world. Anyone who thinks that circumcision is the best way to protect his daughters

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Jim Jefferies

Apr 15th, 2012 4:22 pm | By

A month ago Rorschach posted a Jim Jefferies video in anticipation (not eager anticipation, but rather the opposite) of his appearance at the Global Atheist Convention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNRHPr7Gabk

So far I’ve managed to watch only three minutes, because it’s a very unpleasant experience. Apparently what makes him so supremely funny is his loathing of women.

Nice work, GAC.… Read the rest

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Words

Mar 30th, 2012 10:26 am | By

I’m reading Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.

The core facts: a Mormon man [Dan Lafferty] converted to radical polygamist female-subservientist fundamentalist Mormonism and converted his five brothers. The oldest brother [Ron Lafferty] was divorced by his wife as a result. The wife [Brenda] of the youngest [Allen] resisted all of them. Ron and Dan killed her and the pair’s baby daughter.

Some particulars:

Although standing up to Allen meant standing up to the entire Lafferty clan, Brenda did not shy away from such confrontations…[S]he possessed an impressive command of LDS scripture that allowed her to more than hold her own when debating fundamentalist doctrine with Ron and Dan. They came to despise her for defying them and

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I get email

Mar 20th, 2012 1:36 pm | By

I got one today from someone who has commented here a few times as nmcc or NMcC, and who commented yesterday to tell me how wrong I am about the word “cunt” and to say “Sarah Palin is a cunt.” I deleted that comment and put him – his email address showed he’s a Nigel – in moderation. The message I got this morning expressed surprise at the deletion of the comment. (It started with “Hi” – this is more significant than you might think.) I replied, brusquely,

Really? You would have thought “Sarah Palin is a cunt” was well within my commenting policy? I’ve been very explicit about that. Other things not within my commenting policy: “Al Sharpton is

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A triumph for the Texas Taliban

Mar 15th, 2012 2:54 pm | By

So there’s this couple in Texas looking forward to their second baby, a brother for their 2-year-old daughter.

Yet now my doctor was looking grim and, with chair pulled close, was speaking of alarming things. “I’m worried about your baby’s head shape,” she said. “I want you to see a specialist—now.”

My husband looked angry, and maybe I did too, but it was astonishment more than anger. Ours was a profound disbelief that something so bad might happen to people who think themselves charmed. We already had one healthy child and had expected good fortune to give us two.

Instead, before I’d even known I was pregnant, a molecular flaw had determined that our son’s brain, spine and legs

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Not “a safe space” for women

Jan 26th, 2012 12:11 pm | By

How dare women be in Tahrir Square? Especially filthy foreign women?

According to Heather, an Arab-American living in the Egyptian capital, she and her Swedish and Spanish roommates took to Tahrir as thousands were converging there to mark one-year since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak.

“They started fighting over who was going to do what,” Heather told Bikyamasr.com in an exclusive interview. She came forward after seeing the report on a foreign woman who was stripped naked and assaulted only hours after her own incident.

“My roommates and I fell to the ground when they attacked us. The people pulled our pants off even as we yelled and tried to fight,” she continued.

She said that

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Misogyny? What misogyny?

Jan 11th, 2012 8:57 am | By

Reading Greta’s most recent post about…about friends and allies and misogyny and how to deal with it and talk about it. You know: what we’ve been talking about for months and months and months now. One thing that happened in the comments is that Justicar showed up to discuss the issues in a calm, reasoned, civil way…deceptively calm, reasoned, and civil. He’s not like that everywhere. He’s not like that at ERV and he’s not like it on his own blog.

Aerik pointed out one example that I don’t think I’d seen before (although who knows, maybe I did, I saw a lot last summer and no doubt I’ve forgotten most of it by now).

On top of attacking Watson

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Here’s what you learn

Jan 1st, 2012 11:17 am | By

Funny how sexism never goes out of style, isn’t it. I used to think it was out of style at least among people who occasionally use their heads for something other than putting food into, but I’ve been disabused of that starry-eyed notion lately. Certainly people who don’t go in for multi-purpose heads seem to think sexism is both funny and truthful. Like the tabloid press in the UK, Laurie Penny says.

We are used to seeing this sort of story about women in the tabloids, the familiar narrative of vapid idealisation, followed by shame and sexual humiliation. What we are not used to is seeing a real woman in a smart suit telling us how these stories affected

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Not a touch

Dec 27th, 2011 12:02 pm | By

Hmmm.

Massimo Pigliucci did a skeptical post on Hitchens a couple of days ago, and Jerry Coyne defends Hitchens today. I mostly agree with the defense, but…hmmm.

Misogynyist? Does Pigluicci know what that means?  Let us check the Oxford English Dictionary. “Misogyny: Hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women.”  I don’t think Hitch hated, disliked, or was prejudiced against women. Sometimes he was mildly paternalistic, as when he claimed that his wife didn’t have to work, and sometimes he made boorish remarks verging on sexism, as in his famous critique of the Dixie Chicks. (But remember that he used equal invective against people like Jerry Falwell, and was not accused of being a man-hater.)

[Update: The last sentence quoted 

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Meanwhile, in Bangladesh

Dec 16th, 2011 12:06 pm | By

A woman pursued higher education without her husband’s permission. He (according to police) tied her up, taped her mouth, and cut off all five fingers on her right hand.

She is learning to write with her left hand.… Read the rest

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Lads

Dec 8th, 2011 10:42 am | By

I’m handicapped in thinking about this by the fact that I’ve never seen, let alone read, a lads’ mag. I’ve spent the past few minutes trying to figure out what they are, which has led to my finding out what “lad culture” is, which I’m not sure I wanted to know.

In an ironic, self-conscious fashion, “lads took up an anti-intellectual position, scorning sensitivity and caring in favour of drinking, violence, and a pre-feminist attitude to women as both sex objects and creatures from another species”.

Oh I hate that “ironic” thing. Pretentious jerks in the UK are always telling you they’re doing or saying whatever it is “ironically,” which just means don’t go thinking I’m a jerk merely … Read the rest

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An atmosphere where a slide towards violence against women is enabled

Nov 25th, 2011 4:37 pm | By

Kyle Sandilands says it’s free speech and also that it’s quite all right and reasonable and why not? He explains carefully.

I’ll attack any journalist that attacks me that I think’s unfair.

Well what he means is, if a journalist says something about his show that he doesn’t like, he will not respond with an explanation of why she is wrong or a criticism of her reasoning, but rather, he will call her a fat slag, a fat bitter thing with a nothing job, and a piece of shit, and then he will tell her to watch her mouth or he’ll hunt her down. In other words he’ll say the most degrading things he can think of and then … Read the rest

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Go all fucking Gandhi on their arses

Nov 11th, 2011 5:46 pm | By

Hipster guy tells Rebecca Watson what’s what. Really funny stuff that nobody’s thought of saying before, like hey you’re an adult and you’re all upset that some guy wanted to fuck you, grow up, people like to fuck, especially at 4 a.m. See what I mean? Witty.

Tim Minchin commented. Hmph. Rebecca has all the fun – well, except for being called a cunt 85 times a day. Anyway Tim Minchin commented.

No permalink – how tiresome. Use CTRL F.

I stay in a lot of hotels and travel in a lot of elevators. They are very helpful, what with their elevating properties and all. Sometimes, I am in an elevator with a woman. Just me and her. In

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After she was raped, she was charged with adultery

Nov 10th, 2011 2:13 pm | By

The EU commissioned a documentary film on women in Afghanistan who get shoved into prison for doing outrageous things like leaving abusive “husbands” they never wanted to marry in the first place. The documentary was duly made, at which point the EU got cold feet and said on second thought let’s put this documentary in a locked drawer and never think about it again.

The documentary told the story of a 19-year-old prisoner called Gulnaz.

After she was raped, she was charged with adultery. Her baby girl, born
following the rape, is serving her sentence with her.

“At first my sentence was two years,” Gulnaz said, as her baby coughed in her
arms. “When I appealed it became 12

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Not just making it up

Nov 9th, 2011 3:41 pm | By

Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber was on the trail of internet misogyny last week too.

Anyone who blogs regularly gets annoyed by commenters. We do our best to screen out the worst here at Crooked Timber, but inevitably some get through, and, just as inevitably, they can sometimes upset us. But though I’ve had my intelligence, good judgement and moral character questioned many times, I’ve never had to cope with the kind of abuse female bloggers sometimes get. And the women at CT have had that too, from behind the protective shield of anonymity (though I did work out who on one occasion and warned a fairly prominent academic about what would happen if he came back).

Many interesting comments. … Read the rest

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