Tag: Misogyny

  • Why women can’t have nice things

    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 you will. (It looks like those charming chaps at 4Chan might have had something to do it.)

    In Sarkeesian’s own words:

    The intimidation and harassment effort has included a torrent of misogyny and hate speech on my YouTube video, repeated vandalizing of the Wikipedia page about me, organized efforts to flag my YouTube videos as “terrorism”, as well as many threatening messages sent through Twitter, Facebook, Kickstarter, email and my own website.  These messages and comments have included everything from the typical sandwich and kitchen “jokes” to threats of violence, death, sexual assault and rape.  All that plus an organized attempt to report this project to Kickstarter and get it banned or defunded.

    Thank you. Thank you misogynists. Thank you for making it so unpleasant for us to do anything in public. Thank you for making us pay a huge price for saying things. Thank you for punishing us for the crime of being female and in possession of an opinion.

    Lewis takes a look at the Wikipedia page.

    There are also references to Sarkeesian being “of Jewish descent”, an “entitled nigger” and having a “masters degree in Whining” (because why stick to one prejudice, when you can have them all?) More than a dozen IP addresses contributed to this vandalism before the page was locked.

    Meanwhile, her YouTube video attracted more than 5,000 comments, the majority of them of a, shall we say, unsupportive nature. The c-word got a lot of exercise, as did comments about her personal appearance, and a liberal sprinkling of threats of violence.

    Check, check, and check.

    Sarkeesian decided to leave the comments on her video, as proof that such sexism exists. I think it’s important that she did, because too often the response to stories like this, “Come on, it can’t be that bad”. There are two reasons for this: first, that if you don’t experience this kind of abuse, it’s difficult to believe it exists (particularly if you’re a man and this just isn’t part of your daily experience). Secondly, because news reports don’t print the bad words. We’ve got into a weird situation where you have to get a TV channel controller to sign off a comedian using the word “cunt” after 9pm, but on the internet, people spray it round like confetti. We read almost-daily reports of “trolls” being cautioned or even jailed, but often have no idea what they’ve said.

    This story should be shared for several reasons. The first is that a horrible thing happened to Anita Sarkeesian. She did nothing to deserve the torrent of abuse, and the concerted attempts to wreck her online presence. It’s not the first time this happened: Bioware’s Jennifer Hepler was similarly hounded out of town for expressing some fairly innocuous statements about videogames. Every time this happens, more women get the message: speak up, and we will come for you. We’ll try to ruin your life, tear you apart, for having an opinion.

    Check.

  • Enough to drive some of my friends from the game

    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 elsewhere.

    This is how it works. Where there is rabid constant relentless sexism, women will be driven away because it isn’t fun, so the place where there is rabid constant relentless sexism gets even worse. That’s why it’s shortsighted and foolish to encourage the rabid constant relentless sexism, unless you actually like that kind of thing, which reasonable people don’t.

    I tell you this because it seems there is still a considerable slice of society that either believes that women don’t play video games, or that they do, but sexism in gaming isn’t that bad a problem.

    To which I can only really say: O RLY?

    A few weeks ago, cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian set up a Kickstarter campaign, seeking crowdfunding to produce her series about gender roles and sexism in gaming, Tropesvs. WomenInVideoGames.

    Sarkeesian’s campaign began to receive donation pledges, but then all hell broke loose: the bro dudes got wind of her campaign and set about doing all they could to burn it to the ground.

    Oh how familiar that sounds.

    I’m inclined to think that gaming, like its broader relative, “geekdom”, is one of those areas where the less reconstructed men of the world feel they still have a grip on the “old fashioned” way of doing things (i.e. objectifying women and slinging hate-speech around like confetti), and they’re not about to give it up without a fight. They still feel like they have a say when it comes to who gets to play in the treehouse.

    In many ways, it often feels as though women can’t win when it comes to fighting sexism within gaming (both itself and the community surrounding it): you’re either derided as a “girl gamer” who is only posing with a PS3 to be popular, or decried as a feminist bore because you dare to suggest that having a major female character suffer sexual assault is lazy character development.

    That too.

    Hipster misogyny is all over the place. Fighting it is probably hopeless, but one has to try.

    H/t Emily

  • Life after fingers

    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 me lots of hope and confidence. I have slowly started practising. I will continue my studies and achieve my aim of becoming a lawyer,” Ms Akther said while sitting in her parents’ one-bedroom house in the town of Narsingdi.

    Which is nice, but it would be even nicer if she had been allowed to keep all her fingers despite her presumptuous act in attending a college.

    The mutilation has definitely not dented her resolve to continue with her studies. She proves that by writing a few sentences using a pencil.

    “All those horrible things happened to me because I wanted to study. So, I will pursue my education. Doctors say I cannot write [in] my exam for three hours at a stretch. So, I need a writer for the exam. But I will continue practising with my right hand,” she said.

    …

    Women’s rights activists in Bangladesh point out that the brutal attack on Ms Akther is part of a growing trend of violence against educated women.

    In June last year, a university lecturer lost her eyesight in an attack allegedly carried out by her husband. She said it happened because he was jealous of her academic achievements.

    He denied the allegations, but was unable to face trial because he died in prison before the case went to court.

    The 2011 Human Rights Report by the Odhikar organisation points out that violence against women is on the rise in the country.

    It said that more than 300 women may have been killed in dowry-related violence last year. In addition to this, dozens of women were also killed in rape and acid attacks.

    “Domestic violence happens in all sections of the society and it is increasing. But very few women come forward to report these abuses because of the social stigma,” Odhikar spokeswoman Taskin Fahmina said.

    A growing trend; on the rise. Why? Because of the growing trend of fiercer Islamism? Because fiercer Islamism is almost entirely about repressing and punishing women?

  • Throws like a girl, too

    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 calling Michelle Bachmann a slut or a whore or a bitch or a cunt.

    Mensch is being accused of using the misogyny she’s encountered to claim some sort of victim status. Well I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that’s true. Whenever I have suffered misogyny as a result of an argument I have made, I’ve never thought, ‘oh good, here’s something I can use.’ I feel depressed, because yet again I’m not being listened to. Yet again I’m being judged simply for having an opinion – for not being the pure, submissive, obedient ideal I’m supposed to be. The idiots who call opinionated women whores and sluts aren’t giving those women ammunition to deflect valid criticism; they’re oppressing them using the same rotten tropes women are exposed to from the moment the doctor says ‘it’s a girl.’

    Anyone who casts doubt on Mensch’s insistence that she is sharing her experience because she refuses to feel ashamed simply doesn’t understand that shame is integral to misogyny. We women are often cast as the raw materials of body hair, madness, and sexual urges, which we must then wax, tame and abstain into social acceptance. Whenever we stray away from the ideal society has constructed for us, we’re judged as lapsing back into an unrefined natural state, like Lady Macbeth, Moll Flanders or the madwoman in the attic. When I’ve been called shrill or a slut, I often don’t tell people because I’m afraid that even the mere association with those terms might encourage others to think that maybe I am those things. And that will make me dirty and repellent.

    Plus stupid and a coward and a loser. I just went to Twitter to re-find the Mensch tweets, and before I could look I found a tweet from a Labour MP.

    Tom Harris‏@TomHarrisMP

    What a hero! Fearless protester chucks an egg at EdM and runs away. Like a girl. Throws like a girl too. #loser

    I’m tempted to move to Glasgow so that I can ostentatiously not vote for Tom Harris MP for Glasgow South.

    Now for some Mensch tweets.

    find yourself calling louise mensch every name under the sun during select comm press conference,cold faced cold hearted bitch

    Rupert Hitler bent on world  corp fascist domination is a fukn saint  Loise mensch is a typical soulless rich whore.

    Louise Mensch really is an absolutely Rancid cunt isn’t she?

    We asked some crusties if they’d have sex with Louise Mensch

    Asking the members of Occupy London, “Would You Have Sex With Louise Mensch?”

    Trenchant political analysis, innit.

  • You gonna believe Mona Eltahawy or the grand mufti?

    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 that Muslim women are weak, oppressed victims of misogyny and rigid Islamic rules that force them to hide behind their veils.

    Meaning what? We shouldn’t worry about women stoned to death, girls taken out of school and forced into marriage, girls who are held down while their genitals are sliced off, women whipped for not wearing a burqa? We should just say “that’s their culture, it’s none of our business” and go on our way rejoicing? We should be insular and selfish and indifferent?

    But for many Arab women (I say many based on the negative reaction Eltahawy’s column has already stirred), this column is offensive and is nothing but a combination of old cultural practices and undemocratic government actions that are described in a way to represent women as the Oriental Other, weak, helpless and submissive, oppressed by Islam and the Muslim male, this ugly, barbaric monster.

    Ah yes, naughty Orientalist Mona Eltahawy, representing Arab women as the Other. How does that work, exactly?

    …some of the evidence Eltahawy relies on, such as virginity tests, criminal codes, etc are problems of undemocratic governing and have nothing to do with hate of women. These are problems that also impact men. There are numerous accounts of police brutality in Egypt, where men have been beaten, sexually abused or beaten to death. Have we forgotten about Khaled Said, the young Alexandrian, whose brutal death sparked the Jan25 Revolution? Or how about Essam Atta, the young man who was tortured to death in prison? Why do we always have to focus on violence against women?

    “Virginity tests” in which cops shove fingers up women have nothing to do with hate of women? Really? As for that final question – words fail me.

    I find Eltahawy’s discussion of sexual harassment also problematic. Eltahawy, very candidly and on more than one occasion, has described in detail her ordeal with Egyptian riot police back in November 2011. She explained how she was groped everywhere by a number of police officers while in Cairo. Yet in this Foreign Policy column, she adds a new detail; she informs her audience that she was groped earlier that day by a fellow protester in Tahrir Square! But while Eltahawy details her groping ordeal, she fails to mention the heroic Egyptian women and men who are fighting this epidemic. There is no denial that sexual harassment is a disgusting and sick problem in Egypt that needs to be eradicated. Yet, there’s also no denial that there are gutsy women who are already engaged in a battle against this epidemic.

    Boy, that’s a devastating rejoinder. Yes, sexual harassment is a disgusting and sick problem in Egypt, but somehow Mona is naughty for saying so. Why?
    Meanwhile, in woman-loving Saudi Arabia, the grand mufti says girls are ready for marriage at age ten. Yes, ten.

    A girl is ready to marry at 10 or 12 years of age according to Islam, London-based Al Hayat reported Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh as saying, adding that Islamic law is not repressive to women.
    “Those who call for raising the age of marriage to 25 are absolutely mistaken,”Al Sheikh said in a lecture at the faculty of Imam Mohamed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.
    He added: “Our mothers and grandmothers got married when they were barely 12. Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age.”

    Oh yeah? Can good upbringing make her wide enough to bear children without getting a fistula? No, it can’t, so enormous numbers of women have ruined lives because they leak piss or shit or both and everybody shuns them.

    And then there’s the little matter of education, and being able to choose something to do with her life other than or in addition to domestic work. “Good upbringing” may make it possible for her to do all the housework at age ten, but it doesn’t make it desirable.
    And then there’s the fact that few ten-year-old girls want to have sex, especially with grown men.
    But the grand mufti’s indifference to the well-being and flourishing of girls and women has nothing to do with hatred – oh heavens no. It would be Orientalist to say that.

  • Poke the hatred in its eye

    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 should do it,” he wrote, adding, “The moderate opinion is in favor of practicing circumcision to reduce temptation.”

    Notice that it’s the man who gets to decide; notice that he gets to decide for his daughters; notice that the daughters have no say; notice that this reduction of “temptation” is the elimination of sexual arousal; ponder the apparent lack of need to reduce male “temptation” by a similar form of amputation.

    Just as regime-appointed clerics lull the poor across the region with promises of justice — and nubile virgins — in the next world rather than a reckoning with the corruption and nepotism of the dictator in this life, so women are silenced by a deadly combination of men who hate them while also claiming to have God firmly on their side.

    Exactly. The religion makes it all ok, because after all, it’s religion – don’t look at me, it’s God who made the rules.

    What hope can there be for women in the new Egyptian parliament, dominated as it is by men stuck in the seventh century? A quarter of those parliamentary seats are now held by Salafis, who believe that mimicking the original ways of the Prophet Mohammed is an appropriate prescription for modern life. Last fall, when fielding female candidates, Egypt’s Salafi Nour Party ran a flower in place of each woman’s face. Women are not to be seen or heard — even their voices are a temptation — so there they are in the Egyptian parliament, covered from head to toe in black and never uttering a word.

    That I didn’t know. It’s…pathetic.

    SO WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

    First we stop pretending. Call out the hate for what it is. Resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips. You — the outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, or Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman. The Arab uprisings may have been sparked by an Arab man — Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in desperation — but they will be finished by Arab women.

    …

    We are more than our headscarves and our hymens. Listen to those of us fighting. Amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye. There was a time when being an Islamist was the most vulnerable political position in Egypt and Tunisia. Understand that now it very well might be Woman. As it always has been.

     

     

  • Jim Jefferies

    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.

  • Words

    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 for her influence over Allen, whom they considered “pussy-whipped.”

    When Ron’s father was dying of diabetes, Ron had called a family meeting…Allen brought Brenda to the meeting, which made Ron furious. He called her a bitch and worse, and berated her with such unrestrained spleen that Brenda finally left in tears. But she did not remain intimidated very long. [p 153]

    “A bitch and worse” – well we know what that means.

    Ron “received revelations” which he wrote down on a yellow legal pad. One went:

    Thus saith the Lord unto My servants the Prophets. It is My will and commandment that ye remove the following individuals in order that My work might go forward. For they have become obstacles in My path and I will not allow My work to be stopped. First thy brother’s wife Brenda and her baby… [p 163]

    Dan took it upon himself to inform his youngest brother, Allen, with whom he had always been especially close, that God had commanded the ritual murder of Brenda and their baby girl, Erica, and that Ron and Dan intended to see that the commandment was carried out.

    Allen expressed shock, then asked, “Why? Particularly why Erica, being an innocent child? Why would she be involved?”

    At which point Ron angrily cut in, “Because she would grow up to be a bitch, just like her mother!” [p 169]

    What’s that we keep being told about sexist epithets not being misogynist?

    One more. From an accomplice’s testimony at the trial:

    According to Carnes, Ron said that

    as soon as he went into the house, he punched [Brenda] as hard as he could, and she fell down again on the floor. And he said that he was calling her a bitch, and, you know, telling her what he thought about her. [p 280]

    And he kept beating her, and he choked her with an electrical cord, and then he cut her throat.

    What’s that we keep being told about sexist epithets not being misogynist?

  • I get email

    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 a nigger.” “Woody Allen is a kike.” “Salman Rushdie is a wog.”

    I hope that clears things up.

    ——– Ophelia Benson, Editor Butterflies and Wheels ———

    He replied. This is how he replied:

    Dear Ms Benson,
    Thank you for taking the time to reply to my email.
    I must say, I don’t expect much in the way of civility from the ‘new’ atheist type, but I confess I thought elementary good manners by way of an introductory salutation might not have been beyond you. Obviously not.
    In regard to my comment: This is simply a difference of opinion, though one that you have blown up into a difference of principle – or, rather, you have attempted to do so. In my opinion (I assume I’m allowed to have an opinion since we don’t live in a ‘new’ atheist world yet, and neither, thank Christ, are we ever likely to!), and as I said in my comment, the word cunt, like the word dick, and like the word asshole, are rarely, if ever, used to refer to a particular anatomical feature of a male or female. Words can take on a life of their own. Language evolves and grows and changes to the degree that words are unrecognisable from what they first meant, implied or described. The word gay, of course, is an obvious example.
    I use the word cunt all the time. So do a lot of people I know. I never use it with the slightest thought of it having any connection with the female genitalia. To my knowledge, neither does anyone else.
    So, in fact, you are quite simply wrong to ascribe any inference of misogyny to me or anyone I know. Indeed, your introducing the terms nigger, kike and wog,  simply shows how ludicrously – not to mention hysterically and self-righteously – wrong you are.  The simple fact is, there is NO comparison to be made with the words mentioned. All 3 of those words, as far as I’m aware, were specifically coined to refer to others in a racist and openly hateful and derogatory way. Those words refer to specific people and are used to degrade and denigrate those specific people. The word cunt is NOT used in any such way by the majority of people who use it. It most certainly is not used to denigrate or degrade women.
    You have a different opinion. Good for you. Keep advocating your point of view. Perhaps you’ll change my mind on the issue.
    I am unlikely to change your mind for the simple reason that you have got no qualms about DELETING my point of view, and would further, in the unlikely event of you ever being in a position to do so, have no problem in countenancing my being made to conform to your mistaken and ludicrous views through threats of censorship.
    I, on the other hand, am a democrat, and would not entertain for a second the idea of shutting anyone up, let alone you.
    Incidentally, have you any idea how pathetic you appear to me in your phoney concern for women’s interests?
    Are you not the person who is encouraging your fellow dopey ‘new’ atheists to attend a gig at an American military base? What was it you called those state-sponsored thugs and murderers? Oh yes, ‘good people’.
    Tell me, what’s worse: Using the word cunt completely bereft of any hateful connotations or intentions in regard to women, or sanctioning and applauding those who, at the behest of a religious nut, are responsible for wrecking their already impoverished lives through murdering and maiming their children and husbands?
    Go ahead, tell me. You hypocritical cunt.
    Yours sincerely,
    Nigel McCullough

     

  • A triumph for the Texas Taliban

    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 wouldn’t develop correctly. If he were to make it to term—something our doctor couldn’t guarantee—he’d need a lifetime of medical care. From the moment he was born, my doctor told us, our son would suffer greatly.

    And now you’re guessing the rest. You’re no fools; you didn’t miss the deadly “Texas” at the beginning.

    Their doctor couldn’t do the abortion, because the hospital she’s affiliated with is Catholic (as so many hospitals, and more all the time, are). They had to go to a clinic. They went straight there.

    My counselor said that the law required me to have another ultrasound that day, and that I was legally obligated to hear a doctor describe my baby. I’d then have to wait 24 hours before coming back for the procedure. She said that I could either see the sonogram or listen to the baby’s heartbeat, adding weakly that this choice was mine.

    “I don’t want to have to do this at all,” I told her. “I’m doing this to prevent my baby’s suffering. I don’t want another sonogram when I’ve already had two today. I don’t want to hear a description of the life I’m about to end. Please,” I said, “I can’t take any more pain.” I confess that I don’t know why I said that. I knew it was fait accompli. The counselor could no more change the government requirement than I could. Yet here was a superfluous layer of torment piled upon an already horrific day, and I wanted this woman to know it.

    But it couldn’t be helped.

    “I’m so sorry that I have to do this,” the doctor told us, “but if I don’t, I can lose my license.” Before he could even start to describe our baby, I began to sob until I could barely breathe. Somewhere, a nurse cranked up the volume on a radio, allowing the inane pronouncements of a DJ to dull the doctor’s voice. Still, despite the noise, I heard him. His unwelcome words echoed off sterile walls while I, trapped on a bed, my feet in stirrups, twisted away from his voice.

    “Here I see a well-developed diaphragm and here I see four healthy chambers of the heart…”

    I closed my eyes and waited for it to end, as one waits for the car to stop rolling at the end of a terrible accident.

    When the description was finally over, the doctor held up a script and said he was legally obliged to read me information provided by the state. It was about the health dangers of having an abortion, the risks of infection or hemorrhage, the potential for infertility and my increased chance of getting breast cancer.

    This is pure evil.

  • Not “a safe space” for women

    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 after the men pulled their pants off, they continued to grab and grobe the women’s bodies. “It is disgusting. They put fingers up my ass,” she revealed.

    …

    Later in the night, the issue of sexual violence toward women was sparked after an eyewitness reported on the micro-blogging site Twitter that a foreign woman was stripped, groped and assaulted by another mob of men in the square.

    The woman, whose identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.

    “I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.

    What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”

    There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands.

    …

    Throughout the day, sexual harassment towards women has been increasing and more and more reports of women being grabbed and groped began being reported.

    I find this so depressing I can’t think of anything else to say about it.

  • Misogyny? What misogyny?

    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 in a most misogynist manner, he does it to ophelia benson, too!  Screams in his title “HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, ORWELLPHIA SUCKS COCKS! ”  Also calls her “wicked bitch of the west.”

    Oh yes? So I looked it up, and found this.

    That’s Justicar.

  • Here’s what you learn

    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 her life. Now a collection of liberal feminist groups has come forward to say what everyone knew already: that any investigation into media ethics would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that the British tabloid press is oozing with the very worst sort of malicious, heavy-breathing misogyny.

    Sexism is so consistent a feature of the culture of media in Britain that it has become easy to overlook, like the whine of an alarm that has sounded for so long you’ve learned to ignore it. Until a few years ago, it was the modern “problem with no name”. However much it hurt to have to see slut-shaming, rape-apologism, victim-blaming and sexual objectification in the press every day over our cornflakes, women just had to ignore it, because challenging media misogyny in any way was next to impossible. It was just “the way things were”.

    How familiar that is. (Atheists hear a lot of that, too – most people are religious, and that’s just how it is.) It may be next to impossible (or it may not), but that’s not actually a reason to submit to it.

    But back to the tabloids.

    Here’s what you learn, if you’re a woman and you grow up with British tabloid newspapers in the house: if you get raped or murdered, it’s your fault; if you are old, overweight or just having a bad hair day, you are disgusting. You must work to appear as sexually attractive and submissive as possible, at which point you will be called a slag, a disgrace and a “loose-knickered lady lout”, in the words of Quentin Letts. Women who have careers are miserable and pathetic. You were born to be a wife and mother, and succeeding at these things is the only thing that will fulfil you. Having a baby is the most valuable thing you can possibly do, unless you’re poor, or unmarried, in which case you’re society’s scum. If you complain about discrimination or sexual violence, you’re a shrill, jealous harpy.

    Familiar?

  • Not a touch

    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 above has now been altered, but I quoted it as it was at the time.]

    Not verging on sexism; sexism, and not a million miles from misogyny. Disagreeing with women by calling them fucking fat slags is sexism and it does at least hint at the presence of misogyny. Men who don’t hate women as a category tend not to call them names of that kind.

    So often these days, especially on atheist websites, a touch of sexism or boorishness, or even a criticism of a woman, is instantly condemned as “misognyny.”

    Hmmmmmmmmmm.

    If by “a touch of sexism or boorishness” he means calling a woman a cunt, a bitch, a twat, a slag, a smelly snatch, not once but over and over and over again – then I call bullshit. That’s not “a touch of sexism or boorishness.” If atheist blogs are calling it what it is, then well done atheist blogs.

  • Meanwhile, in Bangladesh

    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.

    Hawa Akther Jui recovering from the attack

    She is learning to write with her left hand.

  • Lads

    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 because I’m acting or talking like one.

    That get out of jail free card probably is why we get treated to so much misogynist name-calling, though – it’s “ironic” or “self-conscious” or “rebellion against stifling political correctness” or all of those. Having it both ways – all the fun of vomiting hatred and contempt onto women and feeling hip and witty and “ironic” at the same time.

    So, a study by a couple of psychologists finds that rapists and lads’ mags use the same language.

    Psychologists from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey found that when presented with descriptions of women taken from lads’ mags, and comments about women made by convicted rapists, most people who took part in the study could not distinguish the source of the quotes.

    The research due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology also revealed that most men who took part in the study identified themselves more with the language expressed by the convicted rapists.

    Psychologists presented men between the ages of 18 and 46 with a range of statements taken from magazines and from convicted rapists in the study, and gave the men different information about the source of the quotes. Men identified more with the comments made by rapists more   than the quotes made in lads’ mags, but men identified more with quotes said to have been drawn from lads’ mags more than those said to have been comments by convicted rapists.

    The writing is very muddled in that last para, but if you watch the video it becomes clear: when the test subjects thought the comments came from lads’ mags, they identified with the comments, whereas they didn’t when they thought the comments came from rapists. They also thought the comments they thought were from lads’ mags were “normal” (while the ones they thought were from rapists they considered extreme). That last one, though it’s not even a little bit surprising, is blood-chilling. Yes of course they fucking do – just as all these teeming shits think it’s “normal” to call women bitches and twats and cunts day in and day out. Misogyny has been normalized. That’s what we’re saying; that’s the problem.

    Dr Miranda Horvath and Dr Peter Hegarty argue that the findings are consistent with the possibility that lads’ mags normalise hostile sexism, by making it seem more acceptable when its source is a popular magazine.

    Exactly. I knew hostile sexism had been normalized, to put it mildly; I just wasn’t very aware of lads’ mags. Lads’ mags are joined by lads’ tv shows, lads’ websites, lads’ facebook pages, no doubt lads’ apps, and so on.

    Dr Horvath, lead researcher from Middlesex University, said: “We were surprised that participants identified more with the rapists’ quotes, and we are concerned that the legitimisation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated.”

    …

    “These magazines support the legitimisation of sexist attitudes and behaviours and need to be more responsible about their portrayal of women, both in words and images. They give the appearance that sexism is acceptable and normal – when really it should be rejected and challenged. Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on, or want sex even when they say no, and there is clearly something wrong when people feel the sort of language used in a lads’ mag could have come from a convicted rapist.”

    Dr Peter Hegarty, of the University of Surrey’s Psychology Department, added: “There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects. We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people.  But are teenage boys and young men best prepared for fulfilling love and sex when they normalise views about women that are disturbingly close to those mirrored in the language of sexual offenders?”

    …

    Anna van Heeswijk, Campaigns Manager for OBJECT, a human rights campaign group which campaigns against the objectification of women, said: “This crucial and chilling piece of research lays bare the hateful messages which seep out of lads’ mags and indoctrinate young men’s attitudes towards women and girls. When the content of magazines aimed at teenage boys mirrors the attitudes of convicted rapists, alarm bells must ring.

    “If we are serious about wanting an end to discrimination and violence against women and girls, we must tackle the associated attitudes and behaviours. This means tackling the publications which peddle them. The Leveson Inquiry is currently looking into the culture and ethics of the press. These disturbing findings unequivocally demonstrate the need for the portrayal of women to be included in the remit of this inquiry. Now is the time for action.”

    Men call us things.

  • An atmosphere where a slide towards violence against women is enabled

    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 he’ll threaten her.

    That’s not what free speech is for. That’s not what’s meant by “free speech.” A large man shouting insults and threats at a woman over the radio is not “free speech” except in the barest minimal sense that it is not quite against the law (although the threat quite possibly is). Some kinds of bullying are not illegal but they are or should be socially shunned.

    John Birmingham of the SMH gets this.

    …if blame lies anywhere for the faint, continuing stench on the airwaves wherever  this man opens his opens his mouth, it is not with him, but with the corporations that continue to support and employ him. Sandilands is not a  political orator, whose freedom to put forth odious opinions we must tolerate for the greater good. He is merely a bully employed in the service of profit by Austereo and occasionally by the TV networks. That is why it was so pleasing to see Holden pull their support for his show yesterday.

    That’s exactly it: he’s a bully employed in the service of profit, because somehow it has been decided that bullying is edgy and hip and funny.

    By seeking an audience for Sandilands, Austereo and the TV networks who very  occasionally call on his … er … talents, endorse the deeper message and dangerous stupidity of his public performances. What are these underlying attitudes?

    Well, they seem to be based on a Hobbesian belief that the natural human condition is short, nasty and brutish, and that success comes not from being led  by the better angels of our nature, but from embracing as fully as possible a crude ugliness appealing to as large and degraded a mass audience as possible.

    Part of this routine is an apparently shameless misogyny where any women who do not fawn and flutter at Sandilands’ approach, who dare to question or cross  him, are belittled and subject to thinly-veiled coercion – whether credible or  not. It would be interesting to ask him exactly what he meant when he threated to “hunt down” News Limited’s entertainment reporter Alison Stephenson.

    More interesting, though, would be to seek from Austereo a figure for the income Sandilands generates for them with his noxious productions and what responsibility, if any, the radio network feels it should accept for the poisoning of the public mind it enables by giving him such an amplified voice. Because while Sandilands himself is a blowhard whose sins are entirely rhetorical, the continued exposure and promotion of those sins in the name of entertainment, and the service of profit, is a much greater wrongdoing. It creates an atmosphere where a slide towards violence against women, at least by some, is enabled.

    QFT.

  • Go all fucking Gandhi on their arses

    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 this little, quiet, rumbly box. Actually, this happened this evening here in New York, just a couple of hours ago.

    And I thought to myself, “What would it be like right now if I asked this woman for a coffee”? I’ve pondered this many times in the months since Rebecca’s video managed to unlock the secret door into the mysterious fuck-head chamber of the personalities of a thousand commenters, and the answer is always: fucking weird.

    It would be really pretty fucking weird. No, not “deserving-of-arrest, definitely-a-rapist, just-as-bad-as-female-circumcision” kind of weird. But just about weird enough to justify, say… a comment. Y’know, the sort of comment you might make if you were, say, a video blogger who talks about life and skepticism from a woman’s perspective.

    I have been substantially depressed by the scale and tone of the subsequent brouhaha.

    Some advice, if you’ll forgive me, from someone who has, in the past, been rude to people on the internet, and also has been the subject of plenty of abuse:

    Just don’t be cruel to ANYONE, ever. On the internet, or in your life.

    Just imagine, as you sharpen your pen, that every man is your uncle or your brother, and that every woman is your mother or your sister. Just don’t spread vitriol. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it doesn’t improve anything, it fails to educate, elucidate or encourage debate. It’s lazy. It’d be boring if it wasn’t so awful.

    Just stop. Breathe. Don’t be defensive. Think hard about what you think. Clarify your point of view in your head. Try to find a way to articulate it – if you still feel you must articulate it – in a manner that assumes the person you are addressing is an actual human.

    Preferably make it rhyme. Rhyming your anger seems to help, in my experience.

    Go on, I dare ya – go all fucking Gandhi on their arses. Even if you hate them. It’s a good feeling. Little glasses, sandals, chilling out and drinking chai. Trying not to have sex with your great niece. Lovely.

    You can experiment on me, if this post ignites your ire.

    It’s too chilly for sandals right now, let alone the loin cloth, but apart from that – Gandhi R us.

    Jamila Bey was asking Rebecca earlier why this stuff happens and why it doesn’t get called out. I don’t know why it happens, although I have some ideas, but – it does get called out now. We’re all over the calling out.

  • After she was raped, she was charged with adultery

    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 years. I didn’t do anything. Why should I be sentenced for so long?”

    Or, for that matter, at all? Why not, rather, sentence the rapist? Now there’s a novel idea!

    But don’t worry: there’s a happy ending for Gulnaz.

    Gulnaz’s pardon may be in the works because she has agreed – after 18 months
    of resisting – to marry her rapist.

    “I need my daughter to have a father,” she said.

    Nothing to add.

  • Not just making it up

    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. This one from Henry Farrell (of Crooked Timber) for instance:

    …you folks are only seeing the comments that make it through. There is a steady-ish (it is a little slacker at the moment) trickle of nasty stuff which doesn’t. Most of it, but not all, is drive-by. And the really vicious stuff is aimed at our women posters. The shit that we guys get is mostly laughably generic – communist, socialist, idiot-professors etc. The comments that the women posters get are more intense, vicious and personalized.

    And John Quiggin, also of CT:

    My experience here and elsewhere is entirely in line with Chris’ post. Even when being deliberately provocative, I don’t get anything like the abuse directed at women bloggers even on posts that would seem unlikely to offend anybody.

    It’s not our imagination.