The Pill: Destroying civilisation since 1957

Disclaimer: Since the piece I am responding to is very cissexist and holds up notions of 'uterus holder = mother, sperm-giver = father', I will address it in these terms. It's stupid and wrong though, like the rest of the piece.


I read a lot of people saying really, really daft things on the internet. But sometimes something is just so utterly bizarre that it surprises even me. Step forward Michael Brennan Dougherty and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, who have co-authored a piece titled Time To Admit It: The Church Has Always Been Right On Birth Control. I'm going to go through it with my trusty red pen, because you really have to see this in its entirety. While reading, please bear in mind that MBD is a politics editor and P-EG is a senior research analyst (i.e. in theory, very intelligent and not wild-eyed conspiracy-peddlers). So, here we go. From hereon, my words are in red, theirs are in black. No links or words have been changed.

Painting the Catholic Church as "out of touch" is like shooting fish in a barrel, what with the funny hats and gilded churches and systemic coverups of rape, child abuse and paedophilia. And nothing makes it easier than the Church's stance against contraception. And the other stuff.

Many people, (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn't just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it (actually a whopping 98%), and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or "out-dated." C'mon! It's the 21st century, they say! Don't they SEE that it's STUPID, they scream. PERHAPS BECAUSE IT IS STUPID?

Here's the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets (either they kept that damn quiet or it didn't happen. Given these guys' extremely tenuous grasp of history, my money is on the latter). It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It's given us some of the world's greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. ALL GREAT THINKERS EVER HAVE BEEN CATHOLIC. THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS THE ISLAMIC GOLDEN AGE. SOCRATES WAS A CATHOLIC. ARISTOTLE WAS A CATHOLIC. IN FACT, UNTIL CATHOLICISM EVERYONE LIVED IN CAVES AND SHAT WHEREVER THEY FELT LIKE. (NB, I'm not saying there haven't been great Catholic thinkers (or at least, great thinkers who lived in times and places where it was dangerous to not be a Catholic), but let's not pretend they're the only ones by a long stretch of the imagination, or that all Catholics are good - as far as I'm aware, Professor Steven Hawking is not a Catholic, but Robert Mugabe is. Just saying, y'know? Shades of grey and all that) When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Profit? Domination? More people in their club than in the other clubs? Everyone has a right to disagree, but it's not that they're a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages. Except when they are a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages. 

So, what's going on? The Church teaches that love, marriage, sex, and procreation are all things that belong together. That's it. But it's pretty important. I drew a diagram to illustrate my problems with these ideas. Here it is:

And though the Church has been teaching this for 2,000 years, it's probably never been as salient as today.
Today's injunctions against birth control were re-affirmed in a 1968 document by Pope Paul VI called Humanae Vitae.  He warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:

1. General lowering of moral standards
2. A rise in infidelity and illegitimacy
3. The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men
4. Government coercion in reproductive matters 

Does that sound familiar? Because it sure sounds like what's been happening for the past 40 years. As George Akerloff wrote in Slate over a decade ago, by making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father. Instead of two parents being responsible for the children they conceive, an expectation that was held up by social norms and by the law, we now take it for granted that neither parent is necessarily responsible for their children. Men are now considered to be fulfilling their duties merely by paying court-ordered child-support. That's a pretty dramatic lowering of standards for "fatherhood." Things that did not happen before these slutty women got their harlot-mitts on the pill: Sex outside of marriage. Children outside of marriage. Absent fathers. Absent mothers. Parents splitting up. What I find interesting about this though, is the quote they pick from Slate. Because what they are actually saying is that "if we DON'T give a woman a physical choice about whether or not she has a child, a man will have to stick around". They DON'T WANT WOMEN TO HAVE ANY PHYSICAL CHOICE IN WHETHER SHE HAS A CHILD. Excuse me while I go vomit my uterus out. 

How else are we doing since this great sexual revolution? Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted 72 days. I'm confused. A minute ago they were all about the hetero-marriage. Now divorce is caused by IUDs? PLEASE TELL ME HOW CONTRACEPTIVES SPLIT UP KIM KARDASHIAN'S MARRIAGE, HEAT MAGAZINE MIGHT SEND ME A T-SHIRT FOR A WORLD EXCLUSIVE. Illegitimacy: way up. In 1960, 5.3% of all births in America were to unmarried women. By 2010, it was 40.8% [PDF]. In 1960 married families made up almost three-quarters of all households; but by the census of 2010 they accounted for just 48 percent of them. Cohabitation has increased tenfold since 1960. Gosh dammit, these sluts are so slutty with their coils and their implants and their live-in partners that they're having children with. How absolutely dare they use contraception to be slutty and have illegitimate children all over the place with their (usually) monogamous partners. Doesn't it make you sick? And of course, we never had any illegitimate children before 1970, heavens no.

And if you don't think women are being reduced to objects to satisfy men, welcome to the internet, how long have you been here? Since the early 80s! Not me personally, of course, but... you know. Anyway, I'll add 'objectification of women' to my list of 'things which did not occur before 1970'. 

Government coercion: just look to China (or America, where a government rule on contraception coverage is the reason why we're talking about this right now). Contraception means that the government can coerce reproductive rights! Let's get the government to ban contraception in order to stop that happening! 

Is this all due to the Pill? Of course not. But the idea that widely-available contraception hasn't led to dramatic societal change, or that this change has been exclusively to the good, is a much sillier notion than anything the Catholic Church teaches. Dramatic societal change like not punishing women for having sex like the filthy beasts that they are. Nope, we've truly regressed now. We were so enlightened when we used to force women in to Magdalene asylums! By the way, the Catholic church teaches that the same stuff that makes Flying Saucer sweets turns into bits of human flesh once you say the right words over it and that all babies are evil when they're born because of talking snakes. Which I happen to think is a much sillier notion than "I think it is nice that people can partake in consensual sex without fear and I don't think that this has brought about society's downfall".

So is the notion that it's just OBVIOUSLY SILLY to get your moral cues from a venerable faith (as opposed to what? Britney Spears?). LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! Sorry, but what? I don't believe in Jesus so I'll just phone up Justin Beiber and ask his opinion on whether or not it's OK to steal, shall I? Then I'll email Jedward and ask what I should do if someone covets my ass. It's true, this is what atheists do ALL THE TIME. When I was growing up, instead of going to Sunday school to learn how to be a good person, I just read Smash Hits and watched MTV. And I grew up to know that it's wrong to rape people and abuse children. Britney Spears 1, Catholic Church 0. 

But let's turn to another aspect of this. The reason our editor thinks Catholics shouldn't be fruitful and multiply doesn't hold up, either. The world's population, he writes, is on an "unsustainable" growth path. The Population Bureau of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations sees (PDF, h/t Pax Dickinson) the rate of population growth slowing over the next decades and stabilizing around 9 billion in 2050…and holding there until 2300. (And note that the UN, which promotes birth control and abortions around the world, isn't exactly in the be-fruitful-and-multiply camp.) More broadly, the Malthusian view of population growth has been resilient despite having been proven wrong time and time again and causing lots of unnecessary human suffering. For example, China is headed for a demographic crunch and social dislocation due to its misguided one-child policy. I'm too lazy to take these figures apart (if anyone wants to in comments, please be my guest) but seriously. We have around 7bn people on Earth. This is up from 6bn in just over ten years. Millions of people are starving. There is no room. We are running out of natural resources. Even 2bn more people is a really, really bad idea.

Human progress is people. Everything that makes life better, from democracy to the economy to the internet to penicillin was either discovered and built by people (as opposed to those damn freeloading non-people). More people means more progress, more war, more famine, more disease, more every other bad thing too! The inventor of the cure for cancer might be someone's fourth child that they decided not to have. Or the baby someone didn't have because they were pregnant with another child. Or didn't have sex while they were ovulating. Or died from starvation as a child because there were too many humans to feed. Or were birthing more damn babies instead of in a laboratory. This game is fun!

So, just to sum up:

• It's a good idea for people to be fruitful and multiply; and

• Regardless of how you feel about the Church's stance on birth control, it's proven pretty prophetic. Sorry guys, but:  

So, there you have it. Before 1970 everyone got married as virgins, stayed married their whole lives and had lots of babies. Nothing bad ever came of this, and there were absolutely no deviations from this formula ever. Like, say, prostitutes in the Bible or anything like that. I'll finish with this:

A cut-out-and-keep guide to feminism for Louise Mensch

CHRISTMAS HAS COME EARLY AT FORTY SHADES OF GREY TOWERS!!!


Normally I would roll my eyes at this non-linear procession of time as it would mean I have to put up with more people blathering about fairy lights and bows and other things I generally make it a rule not to give the tiniest atom of a flying fuck about. I mean, I'd welcome the general proliferation of hot booze (an essential part of any balanced diet), but it would also have to be balanced against the chance of snow and ice and hearing a Mariah Carey song and seriously, fuck that shit. Anyway, I digress. There has, to my knowledge, been neither a forwards nor backwards temporal shift. But I have a present! 


Oh... it's the non-festive equivalent of a shit in a box hastily wrapped in the Daily Star - it's Louise Mensch writing about how she totes is a feminist no matter what the mean feminists say.


Now, I generally make it a rule to not posit myself as the Queen Of Feminism and dictate who may, or may not label themselves as what. I mean, there's plenty of feminists I disagree with and who I would quite like to give a quick whisper to in order to steer them in the right path. But in this case I am going to make an exception, channel my inner Inigo Montoya and say:


"Louise - I do not think that word means what you think it means."


I'm going to take out my trusty red pen now and fisk Mensch's article, in order to illustrate why I feel this to be the case.


Until further notice, text in black will be Mensch's piece, text in red mine. All links and wording in Mensch's piece as they appear. Continue at your peril.

Tory women bring feminism out of the ghetto

WOAH HOLD ON. The fucking ghetto?! I'm not sure if Mensch wrote this or if it was one of those pesky subs, but misappropriation of oppression much? This does not bode well.

The latest ICM poll is good news for the blues. David Cameron enjoys a five-point lead over Labour at a time when it should be miles ahead, opposing a coalition government that has to make drastic spending cuts and keep our heads above water as Europe threatens financial implosion. Faced with these conditions, Mr (red rosette) Potato Head ought to manage a substantial lead in mid-term polling. That's... lovely Louise. I'm really glad you got a party brag into this piece (although I suspect maaaany more to come from the woman who hailed the deposition of Colonel Gaddafi as a 'genuine triumph for David Cameron'). There's a part of me concerned about how she refuses to even name the Leader of the (Bloody Joke of an) Opposition - instead dehumanising him and making fun of his appearance. I would think that a self-styled superfeminist such as Mensch would realise that judging people based on their physical appearance is actually a really nasty thing to do and that patriarchal expectations of female beauty are one of the main things used to keep women down - just look at the way the BBC have gotten rid of talented female presenters because they are considered 'too old' and 'not attractive' enough to be taken seriously. NOT COOL MENSCH. WE DO NOT USE SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION TO SNEER AT OTHERS. IT JUST CONTINUES THEM BEING USED AGAINST US.

Details of the poll will be particularly concerning to the two Eds: Labour is nine points behind in the Midlands (good for me, in Corby). The Tories are also nine points clear with men and have a two-point lead among women. Translation: More women hate Tories than men do but it's not as bad as Labour so yah boo sucks! 

This last number is particularly cheering. For some time now the Labour party, led by Yvette Cooper, has made a sustained pitch to British women that the government is not on their side. They draw out selective research on the cuts and say it will particularly hurt women. They take Cameron's joking remark – "calm down dear", which ripped off a Michael Winner TV ad – and offer it as an example of sexism. They drop gender into every intervention and speech and have tried to claim feminism as their own, a thing of the left. This marks the first point where I lose my shit. Right. First up: the cuts FUCKING DO HURT WOMEN. Cutting corporation tax redistributes money from women to men. Cutting public sector jobs and freezing their pay hurts women. In-work conditionality hurts women. Stopping victims of intimate partner violence being eligible for legal aid hurts women. YOUR GOVERNMENT NOT JUST HURTS, BUT FUCKING KILLS WOMEN. Second up: patronising women and implying that they are too 'hysterical' to do their damn job is sexist. When I see Cameron smirking around men and making the same implications as he does to women, I will believe that he's actually just a giant scumfuck and not a giant misogynist scumfuck. Thirdly up: when you're oppressed in every part of society, you tend to see it in every part of society. Mainly because... well it's there. No, it might not be for Mensch, but it fucking is for the rest of us. If she had any idea what it was like to not be an over-privileged rich person, she might realise this, but no. She's toeing the party line as per usual and sticking her head, ostrich-like, in whatever stuff it is rich people would use instead of sand. Fourthly up: I'm not saying feminism is a thing of the left, solely, but I am saying there is no damn such thing as a feminism where you only help yourself - which is all Tory 'feminism' is.

Tory women aren't having it. A grassroots backbench movement of women MPs (with several sound male feminists who have our backs) determined that we would not give Labour the monopoly on women's issues. We sit behind a frontbench that we know to be relentlessly focused on social justice and women's issues. Who ARE these Tory grassroots backbench women? Who ARE these Tory male feminists? What do they DO? How is your front bench in ANY FUCKING WAY committed to social justice or women's issues? I mean REALLY. FUCK THIS. Look at the damn links above to see how damn committed this bunch are to 'women's issues'. Unless they actually think that what women are concerned about is "Oh, I just DON'T KNOW HOW I WILL GET BEATEN TO DEATH OR STARVE TODAY". I demand to see evidence of this 'movement'.

Tory feminism is holistic, not the ghetto feminism of the impact equalities assessment; it looks at women as a whole. Case in point: 80% of the lowest paid public sector workers exempt from the pay freeze are women. Changes to the state pension that will end penalties for women who take career breaks to care for their families are being put forward. Sustainable funding cycles for rape crisis centres and victim support have been proposed. Theresa May broke ground on flexible parental leave, thus helping to ensure that employers would no longer look askance at women of childbearing age (remember Labour peer Lord Sugar's remarks on pregnant employees?). The list goes on. Fucking 'ghetto feminism'? Does Mensch seriously think that we should be focusing less attention on women who are the most oppressed and more attention on women who are the least? Another thing - pointing out that 80% of the lowest paid public sector workers are women is a) admitting the need for feminism in the first damn place, b) admitting that there's a huge problem with women being underpaid, c) showing us which gender is seen as the more 'disposable' employee. Also, 'sustainable funding...for rape crisis centres'? Damn, if I wasn't so sure Mensch had private healthcare I'd ask for the number of her GP so I could get whatever she has. Because it ain't looking so damn rosy from where I'm sat. Also, when you read the part about women of childbearing age I'd like you to imagine the 'wrong answer' klaxon from Family Fortunes. It sounds like this. Because this became illegal way back in 1975 under the Labour government. Sorry Louise, you won't win the speedboat at this rate. (I will concede that Alan Sugar is a sexist arsehole, but would like to point out that he doesn't represent the whole party and even a clock as stopped as Mensch may be right once in a while. DAMMIT. This makes it sound like I'm defending Labour. Just to make it clear: I would never do that. I just dislike lies.)

Last week, Ed Balls capitulated and accepted the need for Tory cuts. The Conservatives' growing lead on economic credibility resonates with women, too. As mortgage holders – 70% of all women work outside the home – they benefit from George Osborne's low interest rates. They relate to restraint on council tax, a regressive tax that hits pensioners and those on fixed incomes hardest. Well hot-damn, this is an interesting use of statistics. Now, I do not work outside 'the home'. This is mainly because I don't have a 'home', per se. Or a 'job', per se. I am one of those poor unfortunate ONE MILLION young people who are on the dole. Anyway, I used to work outside 'the home'. However, I did not have a mortgage. My sister works outside 'the home'. She does not have a mortgage. In fact, of all my friends who have jobs, I can count a teeny-tiny number (one, off the top of my head) who have mortgages. So that's not 70% of women benefitting. That's 70% of women have jobs and if they happen to have been in a fortunate position and single quite a few years ago now they might have a mortgage. Also, since when did only women benefit from cheap interest rates caused by the fact that everyone is fucking skint instituted by our beloved Gideon? And, if I must say this again I will damn well scream it from the rooftops: WOMEN SUFFER MORE WHEN SERVICES ARE CUT WHICH IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REDUCE THINGS LIKE COUNCIL TAX AND ONE WAY TO STOP THIS WOULD ACTUALLY BE TO TAX RICH PEOPLE MORE NOT FUCK POOR PEOPLE OVER. 

When speaking of the deficit, in magazines or on the airwaves, Tory feminists use the language of other women – the debt we pass on to our children, and our duty to lift that burden off their backs. The more we shift away from the bad old days of economic dependence on a wage-earning man, the more women notice the tax-and-spend policies that affect all wage earners. Well, not my language. I don't have children. In fact, around 20% of women choose to remain child-free - which is around 5.8 million women the Tories aren't speaking for. And, forgive my mistake, but surely having children isn't just something women spontaneously do? MEN ARE PARENTS TOO. See, this shit is Feminism 101 - PARENTHOOD IS NOT JUST FOR THE BEARER OF THE UTERUS. Also, I'm sure children would prefer to have an alive mother and more 'deficit' when they grow up rather than a mother who got beaten to death in front of them because she couldn't get a restraining order because she couldn't get legal aid. Just saying, like.

Most Conservatives would define feminism as supporting equal rights and opportunities for women. In that sense it is a movement of women, not of right or left. But I like to think that, somewhere at the margins of all this, the noisy reclamation of the feminist label from the left is having an impact. The problem is though, as I am nearly bashing my head against the keyboard while I am saying this a-fucking-gain - Tories do NOT support equal rights and opportunities for women. What they support is 'well us women are fine, I really don't know what the rest of you are fussing about!'. LOOK AT THE GODDAMN LINKS ABOVE. So, by her own definition, Mensch IS NOT a feminist.

Conservative women are having a moment: Gaby Hinsliff's wonderful Observer cover story was the culmination of months of Tory feminists advancing our case whenever a media opportunity arose. Last December, Jane Ellison launched an all-party parliamentary group on female genital mutilation. Claire Perry works on opt-in options for internet porn. Amber Rudd MP, who is pro-choice, looks at alternate ways to combat teenage pregnancy. I stood up on anonymity for rape suspects and wound up debating with a feminist hero of mine, Naomi Wolf, on Newsnight. I also debated Tory feminism with Labour's Stella Creasy MP on Radio 4's Woman's Hour – a chance to explode the myth that "Tory" and "feminist" are oxymoronic to millions of women. And I just chopped my own damn arm off, but it's totally cool because I have this sticking plaster I had to make myself out of reused gaffer tape and an old tissue BECAUSE OF TORY CUTS AFFECTING WOMEN SO BADLY.

As a Tory feminist, you want to play in front of Labour's goal, advancing the case for social justice, welfare reform and Iain Duncan Smith's universal credit (which should lift a million people and 350,000 children out of poverty). Yes, we anticipate the colourful comments under our articles, but that doesn't matter. Tory feminists are looking for your support, looking to convert you. I am an MP today only because in his very first speech as leader, David Cameron – the most feminist leader the Conservative party has ever had – made it his business to challenge dinosaur attitudes that led us to a 91% white male parliamentary party. His work in opposition continues in government. I'm actually bored of dissecting this horseshit now, so, here we go. 1. Party pointscoring. 2. Child poverty is predicted to increase under the universal credit scheme. 3. David Cameron is also the most 'likely to have grown up in the 70's' leader the Tories ever had. That does not make him John Travolta. 4. I couldn't give two glittery unicorn shits if the Tory party was 100% female, because it would mean 306 Louise Mensches and my poor laptop could not cope with the stress of debunking this tripe that many times.

While we all expect that this poll lead won't last, the fact that we have recovered our ground with women is immensely comforting this far out from a general election. After all, the Tories have never won without women – and never will. 

Fucking feminism, how does it work?

Back to me in black text now.

OH MY HOLY MOTHER OF AVIMIMUS, WHY DID I DO THAT TO MYSELF? 

I shouldn't be surprised, ever. I've spoken to Louise Mensch once or twice on Twitter, and every damn time she's insisted she absolutely is a feminist, but when challenged on what she actually does to stop women being oppressed, or told how her party is oppressing women, she clams up. Funny that. So now, for her benefit - as I'm sure she actually would like to be a feminist, she's just not sure of the first things about it, I am going to put my Queen Feminist crown on (it's red leopard-print and decorated with the bollocks of men I have emasculated) and write up a quick cut-out-and-keep one do and five don'ts of being a feminist.

DO

1. Commit to fostering equality for all women

   

DON'T

1. Insist that because you're not oppressed, no woman ever is
2. Think that all women are (or are even capable of being) mothers, and this is all they want/are good for
3. Shut down services essential to women's livelihood, safety, economic power or wellbeing
4. Insist that other women are too stupid to know what to do with their own bodies
5. Write facile articles that purport to be about feminism that are actually just party-political broadcasts, cheap jibes about the opposition and actually fuck-all to do with any feminism ever

I hope this helps.

Female Privilege Checklist-agogo!

Last night, a 'female privilege checklist' that was posted on Reddit/MensRights, (107 upvotes at time of publication) was doing the rounds on Twitter. Posted in a faux-concerned way (the OP just wants women to be aware of these things, you see), this list may as well be called 'Patriarchy hurts men too: A list', or possibly 'The MRA bingo card (what can we blame on eebil feminazis today?)'. Anyway, I took a bit of time to fisk it. I haven't included links (because most of these seemed pretty obvious, also I was working in a rush), but if you'd like me to explain my working or sources on anything, please just ask.

(DISCLAIMER: The list itself is heteronormative (to the point of homophobia) and completely cisnormative. It also only really applies to very western countries, and it helps to imagine that we're living in 1950. Also I got slightly bored towards the end.)

1. On average I will get much lighter punishment for the same crime. - No. There is no disparity in the guidelines issued by the Sentencing Guideline Council. Most defences are written from the 'male gaze' - i.e. Provocation requires a 'sudden or temporary loss of control'. Men and women usually (for various reasons, all of them societal) commit different 'types' of crimes - most women are in prison for drug and property-based crimes, more men for violent crimes. If women commit a 'male' crime, they are usually judged more harshly as they have transgressed the gender boundary as well as the criminal one.
2. PMS is usually considered an extenuating circumstance. (Example) - Only if it's so severe as to give the defendant the defence of Diminished Responsibility - at which point it usually takes on the characteristics of a mental illness. It's not just 'oh, I was on my period. Can't be blamed for anything'.
3. I am not expected to go to war or even drafted into the army. - One of the last countries to have a draft is Israel. Who draft both men and women. 40% of child soldiers are girls. Most countries now allow women to join the army. Women are more likely to suffer the consequences of war. Wars are usually started by men. Patriarchal pressures stop women serving on the front line.
4. It's always ladies first. Perhaps also children first, but always girls before boys. - There have been lots of times this wasn't the case. Also, If you give up rape culture, we'd be more than happy to give up leaving sinking boats first or being the first to go through a door. Honestly.
5. I have special protection from domestic violence and supposedly female-only issues, unlike my male counterparts. - Male domestic violence refuges and helplines exist. The way to get more of these is not to have fewer for women, as men's rights activists have campaigned to do in the past. Also, if women are so well protected, why do two of them die because of this a week in the UK alone?
6. In a sex-related crime (e.g. groping), and in the absence of conflicting evidence, my word will have more weight than a man's. - Nope, sorry. You saw what happened with Herman Cain, right? 
7. If I am raped I can safely report it and my report will be taken seriously because there is a legal provision for it. - Premise accepted, in cases of male victims v female victims but I do not accept that it's a privilege. This happens because women are more likely to be raped than men, so it is more common to deal with. In any case, there is still a shockingly low conviction rate, and lots of female victims are not taken 'seriously'.
8. I can look at children for more than three seconds with no fear of being labelled a pedophile. - If there wasn't the women = childrearers, men = sexual beings dichotomy, this wouldn't be the case.
9. Usually, cases of female adult on male children sexual abuse aren't even considered in court. - Yes they are. And seriously.
10. Other cases of abuse are not given the same priority. Child abuse is only sexual in nature. (More) - I'm not sure what they mean by this.
11. If I get a divorce, I will invariably get child custody. - Due to the idea of women = childrearers. Feminists would like to get rid of this too, and just have whichever parent is most suitable (if it must just be one) to raise the children, because it is another reason that women are harmed economically. 
12. If I get a divorce, chances are I will get alimony, even if there are no children. - Women more likely to give up work or opportunities for career progression when married, and do more work in the marriage. Alimony is a way of compensating this.
13. There is much more funding for breast cancer research than for prostate or testicle cancer research. - It's not a finite pot or a privilege. No one is stopping anyone raising money for research into these types of cancers. How about a male cancer equivalent of Race for Life?
14. If I marry a rich man so that I don't have to work, people will say I'm successful. - Or a 'golddigging whore'. Also, men are not pressured to give up work, whereas women are.
15. I am always protected from genital mutilation. Even in the few places where it is practised, genital mutilation is sometimes illegal, only for my gender though. - Although I do not agree with circumcision and consider it wrong, female genital mutilation is much, much more extreme and dangerous, and usually done at an older age. In countries where breast-ironing is done, it is usually done to make the woman less 'desirable' in order to lessen her chances of rape.
16. I have a longer life expectancy. - due to societal factors like drinking less, smoking less, eating less fatty food (hello body shaming!) etc.
17. There is a much lesser chance that I will be driven to suicide.- No, just a lower chance that women are successful in their attempts. Also to do with a culture in which men are seen as 'strong' and have to bottle emotions up.
18. Retirement age for me is lower than for my male counterparts in most places. - Not any more. Also due to men = strong, women = weak dichotomy.
19. The majority of the population in most of the western nations is the same gender as me. - We have a 1% majority and much fewer opportunities. No one is practicing gendercide on men in non-westernised countries though.
20. I can fight for my gender's issues with no fear of being labelled a whiny sexist or a chauvinist pig. - Really, men can do this too. They just so often do it while doing the other things too.
21. Everybody, from a very young age, is taught that they must not hit me. There is a Spanish saying, “a las damas no se las toca ni con el pétalo de una rosa”, which translates as “ladies cannot be touched, not even with a rose petal”. - that's not our fault, and very frequently a rule that's not adhered to. 
22. Due to accusations of sexism, many places now hire preferentially or exclusively women (and that's even ignoring the sex industry). Such discrimination is, in some places, law. - Really, I can't say anything other than, no it's not, please show your working.
23. I have a much lower chance of being injured or dying for work-related reasons. - Societal pressures making more dangerous industries apparently only suitable for 'men'. Also, could probably be solved by greater H&S legislation, but try telling Tories that.
24. I have no pressure to be physically strong or to do most of the physically demanding work. - But we ARE labelled as 'abnormal' if we do.
25. I have little pressure to be a breadwinner. - Except if you need to be (single mother). Also, men aren't pressured OUT of careers on marriage.
26. I can live with someone my own gender with no fear of being labelled a faggot. - Why is homosexuality seen as such a bad thing?
27. Even if I do like my own gender I'm at an advantage – lesbians are generally better treated than gay males. - No really, this is just not true. Gay men have a (comparatively) very strong economic position, are more widely accepted to be the 'definition' of homosexual and are more positively (and realistically) portrayed in the media.
28. When I go to a bar, I get to decide whether or not to have sex tonight. Men are competitors; I am the judge. - Unless the men decide it's their 'right' to have sex with me. If I am raped it is my fault for being out at a bar. Also, bars do not equal sex. 
29. I can get free entrances to bars and free drinks once I'm in. - Free entrance is to lure us into bars so men can try and sleep with us, free drinks usually the same reason. Again, not everyone goes out trying to get laid. 
30. Even if I don't, a male is usually expected to pay for me. - I dispute this, however, if it is true, it's because men = strong protective breadwinning provider, women = economically stunted, need looking after. Also, I'll give up all free drinks if you give up rape culture.
31. If there's a crime or some other wrong and I'm involved, chances are I will automatically considered a victim. - Good job courts work with what we like to call 'evidence' then, isn't it?
32. If I don't like one of my (male) co-workers, I can ruin their reputation with a sexual harassment accusation. - for fuck's sake. Just no.
33. If I am straight I have it easier when looking for a male. - How? Is this because women are supposed to be 'passive'? Have you seen how much effort women are supposed to put in to getting a man? They're supposed to change their whole damn appearance!
34. If I am straight I will never be friendzoned. - Yeah, you might. Also, 'friendzoning' only means that the person likes your company but doesn't want to fuck you. It's not a great crime committed by them.
35. If I get a promotion it's gender equality, even if I didn't deserve it. If a male does it's sexism and I can freely denounce it. - Unless you're accused of giving sexual favours to secure it or jumped all over by men who have decided they must be inherently better than you so you only got it because of affirmative action.
36. I can show skin almost without fear of being arrested. - Just raped, and the chance to be blamed for it if it happens. Also, men can go topless in summer!
37. Even in colleges where most of the students are male, chances are a larger fraction of female applications are accepted. - Only recently, and because women outperform men in most exams. In 35. they railed against affirmative action, now they want it. Baffling.
38. I have a higher pain threshold. - Even if this is true (and there's no reliable way to test it), it's probably because of childbirth. We can swap if you want.
39. Paradoxically I have much more protection from pain – I am never told to “woman up” or to “take it like a woman”. - Ha! We imply you're weak and sickly and this does not benefit us! STOP SAYING IT THEN.
40. Maternity leave is much more common and has more benefits than paternity leave. - Yep, and this is another way women are pressured into giving up a career in order to raise children.
41. I can freely show my emotions, including crying, with no fear of being labelled a pussy. - Patriarchy hurts men too, episode #83459 - Also another example of saying women (or normative female attributes) are weak and undesireable.
42. If I get to retire and am still single, nobody will question my sexual orientation. - no, just called a wizened old hag if we try have a relationship with a man our own age, laughed at as a 'cougar' if we dare try to have sex with a man younger than us and constantly patronised and told we should be distraught that we never married or had children, even if we didn't want to. Also, lots of elderly childfree single women ARE labelled lesbians, and why the homophobia?
43. Public restrooms for my gender are almost always spotless. - Oh god no, they're not. Also, you piss on the walls!
44. I have virtually no chance of finding a janitor of the opposite sex on the public restrooms for my gender. And even if I do, I can speak to the manager who will make sure it doesn't happen again. - Not true.
45. Chances are I will never have someone of the opposite sex searching me, and my searches will be less invasive. - Firstly, it's illegal in every opposite configuration. Secondly, you think vaginal cavity searches are not invasive?
46. I can find sexist overtones in every negative situation, even if there aren't, and most people will believe me. - Trust me, even when I point to clear and concrete evidence of, say, higher instances of rape, someone will be waiting in the wings to argue with me.
47. When it comes to sex, I'm not required to maintain an erection for a long time or have high levels of stamina; in fact, it is I who sets the bar and can humilliate men for underperforming. - And it is I who was told until 20 years ago that if I didn't want to have sex with my husband, he could just rape me, and still get told that men should be allowed to rape me if I have 'led them on' (usually by existing).
48. Most of the best parts in choral music are written for my voice, whatever it may be. Such parts for males (usually tenors only) exist, but are much rarer. - Oh noes! 1) The Three Tenors. 2) Most old soprano pieces were written for castrati, because they didn't want women in choirs. Again, something I'm willing to trade for, let's say… an end to rape culture.
49. I may verbally defuse or refuse to engage in physical altercation without it damaging my reputation or viability as a sex partner. (thanks Space_Pirate) - Most het women I know wouldn't want a partner who was a violent arsehole. Also, this is the men = strong, women = weak dichotomy AGAIN. Blame patriarchy!
50. I have the privilege of being unaware of (or feigning ignorance about) my female privilege. After all, everybody knows the world is biased against females. - YAWN.

Here's the thing. I KNOW I have privilege. I know that I have privilege over people of colour, over trans* people, over people who don't pass as straight, over queer people, over non-western people, over disabled people, over people who don't pass as neurotypical, and probably a whole host more people I haven't mentioned here because of my privilege causing me to be an idiot. But not over white, straight, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical western men. Sorry, but the fact that the privileges MRAs seek (not seek for everyone, just themselves) sometimes bite them on the arse doesn't mean that they're actually benefitting women to a greater extent. Really, the best thing to do would be for people to see where we're *all* being fucked over, and work together to change it, but somehow I can't see that happening...

On underage sex, bad science and pearl-clutching

Batten down the hatches folks, we're in for a good ol' fashioned moral panic!

This week the NHS published the results from their annual Health Survey for England, which is a study that looks at general health among the population. Usually this would pass by without much of a fuss, other than the predictable sneering from some sectors of the media about rising obesity levels, but this year they decided to take a break from that and focus on the fact that teenagers are having sex.

I know, right? Unbelievable, isn't it? Teenagers. Having sex. With each other. Someone best pop over to the grave of Mary Whitehouse with some chalk and a silver dagger because this is some big shit.

What the survey actually found is that 22% of men and 27% of women aged 16-24 were aged under 16 when they first had sex. Cue the media exploding, both left and right, to use these statistics to promote their personal agendas.

The survey seems to have some problems with it (the methods used for gathering data may be seen here). Firstly, this is a self-report study. This means that the researchers have no idea whether someone is telling the truth or not. The obvious problem with this is that when people answer questions about their sex life, they might give what are known as socially desirable answers - for an example of this, see the fact that men in the study reported a mean of 9.3 sexual partners and women only 4.7 - who are all the men fucking?

A second, linked problem with this study is that there is no satisfactory definition of sex. I mean, yes, there's the very heteronormative idea that sex occurs when a man puts his winkie in a lady's vajayjay - but I can think of several lesbians I know who would be both insulted and confused by the insinuation that they'd never actually had sex, contrary to what they thought they'd been doing. Sex really isn't that simple - last night on Twitter, @interarma linked to this great flowchart from Autostraddle:

Other problems I have with this survey directly relate to the under-16s figures, and they are that the report doesn't tell us how much sex these teens are having - they might have had four partners but only slept with each one once, or they might have had one partner but spent the best part of a year holed up fucking away like demons. Also, the survey didn't ask these teenagers their reasons for having sex - which is why newspapers have been able to sell us their pet peeves as explanations. 

So, first into the dock is the Guardian, who use an article titled "Quarter of UK women had underage sex, report finds" to blame their bête du jour - the 'pornification' of society for these statistics. Here's a fun fact: if you search for 'pornification' on the Graun's site, you get 42 results. It's not even a real fucking word. 

Right, so here's my problems with the Guardian story:

1. The focus on underage female sexuality only. If I told you that 27% of 15 year old women and 22% of 15 year old men had eaten chocolate cake, would your response be to say "those greedy bitches!"? 
2. That no emphasis is put on the fact that in the same survey 26% of women and 32% of men aged 16-24 said that they'd NEVER had sex.
3. It doesn't mention that the reason for the disparity between the male and female results may (if it exists, which there is reason to doubt) be explained by the fact that in heterosexual relationships, it is seen as normal for the man to be older than the woman, and aberrant for the woman to be older than the man. So a 15 year old girl may be sleeping with a 17 year old boy, but it is unlikely for the reverse to occur.
4. That bloody 'pornification' explanation, which I am now going to prattle on about at length. 

Diane Abbott MP is quoted as saying:

"The underlying cause must be the 'pornification' of the culture and the increasing sexualisation of pre-adolescent girls. Too many young girls are absorbing from the popular culture around them that they only have value as sex objects. Inevitably, they act this notion out."

May I be the first to say: Bullshit. Get a damn history book. I hate this 'female sexuality is always weak and passive' narrative. It's just another side of your bog-standard misogynist 'women don't have a sex drive and only fuck men to get things' drivel. Seriously - broadband and access to high-speed internet porn has been around for what, about ten years now? Yeah, and teenage pregnancies only started happening a decade ago too. Oh wait except they didn't, because they always have done, regardless of the availability of porn. Get this - teenage girls usually have sex because it feels nice. I mean, goddamn. I went to an all-girl high school which was essentially a holding-pen for hormones. We were very interested in the whole 'fucking' malarkey. Has Diane Abbott really not realised the correlation between the discovery that playing with your bits can be fun, that other people playing with your bits can be even more fun and teenage sex? Or does she seriously think that all teenage girls would be nuns if it weren't for this damned pornography?

As I have said before, I do not like mainstream pornography*. Really not a fan. But not because I think that it encourages people who aren't ready for sex to have sex, but because it a) gives people who are not having sex an unrealistic idea of sex and of women's bodies and b) because it doesn't teach how to have good sex. (*Before anyone starts a flame-war about how awesome homemade queer porn is and how I'm a total prude blah blah blah please bear in mind I'm talking about Flynt-esque 'Busty Babez 4' types of porn.)

Anyway, the longer the Guardian and Diane Abbott pursue this pearl-clutching 'all young women are victims' shite, the worse things will be, since as we can also see in the results, 12% of all women and 9% of all men have been diagnosed with an STI. Which to me suggests that just suggesting to women that they don't have sex doesn't work and we need some fucking better sex education in schools. We don't need to tell people not to fuck, we need to tell them to only fuck if they are totally sure they want to, how to make sure the other person is totally sure they want to fuck, and how to use (and make sure their partner uses) a barrier method to prevent STIs. As I mentioned quite forcefully above, sex feels good. Once people realise this, telling them not to have sex is not going to stop them having sex. (I know that most of this polemic has ignored asexual people. I believe firmly that it is also important to teach teenagers both about the existence of asexual people and to make sure that asexual teenagers are able to actualise their feelings in the best way possible for them without stupid societal pressures.)



Next, the Daily Mail tried to stoke the fires of ignorance with a charming piece titled "Promiscuous Britain: one in four young women admit they had underage sex - more than twice as many as their mothers' generation" (direct link). As well as the recreation of all the Guardian's mistakes, here's the problems with this article:

1. It doesn't mention men and their rates of underage sex until the ninth paragraph. 
2. It sensationally claims that "nearly 60% of women 'don't always' use contraception", then says "40% of men said they always used contraception". In other words, about the same bloody levels. But y'know, women are all harpies and sluts or something.
3. It quotes critics who "say that the rise in promiscuity over the generations is linked to increased sex education in schools that has 'broken down the natural inhibitions of children with regard to sexual conduct'". I'm just going to come out and say that the guy who said this is really fucking stupid. Have you ever seen a kid in a jacuzzi? I don't want to spell this out graphically but they're really big fans of sitting right over where the bubbles come out. (I'll come back onto the sex education part of the quote in a bit)
   
4. The box that looks at sex education 'throughout the ages' seems to conflate 5 year olds knowing the names for the parts of their body they wee out of with actual 'this is how you have sex' education. It also claims lessons were 'explicit'. Now, I fall into the 16-24 bracket and first had penetrative sex under the age of 16 (yeah, fuck you Daily Mail), but I don't ever recall my teachers getting us to make a big 'FUCKING IS FUN' banner to hang up on the wall next to our drawings of bugs. In fact, I went to a Catholic school where they taught us the biological stuff under duress then stressed our likelihood of going to hell if we ever practically utilised the information. WE STILL HAD SEX BECAUSE IT FELT GOOD AND WE WANTED TO.
5. They claim that 'one in seven women aged 16-24 who lost their virginity underage had contracted an STI'. You may note above that I point out that the survey showed that 12% of all women had had an STI. My maths is pretty dodgy, but isn't one in seven only around 14%? Also, people aged 16-24 are more likely to take the responsible measure of having themselves tested, which is how diagnoses occur.
6. They refuse to EVEN ENTERTAIN THE NOTION that the reason that self reported incidents of underage sex from women seem higher could possibly be because female sexuality is no longer viewed as an abhorrence, which would seem likely given that TEENAGE PREGNANCY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A THING.
7. They concede that teenage pregnancy rates went down by 7.5% between 2008-2009 (despite the horrific and borderline abusive sex education that is taught nowadays), but still manage to have a big fit and moan about underage abortion rates (which haven't changed, so the number of teenagers getting pregnant really is dropping) and our 'increasingly sexualised society'. While 20 out of 34 stories on their sidebar involve gratuitous perving at 'clingy' and 'revealing' clothing.

However, none of that could compare with the most stupid part of all, which I am now going to go on a very sweary rant about in order to draw together and reinforce all the other points that I've been making.

*clears throat*

The same dude quoted at (3), Norman Wells from the Family Education Trust (who sent out a fire and brimstone pamphlet to all secondary schools last year warning teenagers that premarital sex led to a 'lifetime of regret and misery'), is further quoted as saying: 

‘Over recent years we have witnessed the systematic removal of every restraint which in previous generations served as a disincentive to underage sexual activity. 

‘Sex education in many schools has had the effect of breaking down the natural inhibitions of children with regard to sexual conduct, and the age of consent is rarely enforced, so young people no longer have any fear of legal proceedings.

‘On top of that, the ready availability of contraception means that a girl’s fear of pregnancy is no longer considered a good enough reason for rejecting her boyfriend’s advances, and confidentiality policies mean that a girl need not worry about what her parents would think about her being sexually active, obtaining contraception, being treated for a sexually transmitted infection or even having an abortion, because they don’t have to be told.’

This is where I nearly put my head through the wall. As I said before, this guy is fucking stupid. He's just another hypocritical, evidence-denying misogynist bastard with a chip on his shoulder about those nasty dirty women doing their dirty dirty sex. Aside from what he said before, he should know that it's always been the case that if two 15 year olds fuck each other it won't be prosecuted because you'd have to prosecute them both for the same crime against each other, and how is it actually in the public interest to spend money going through the court system to punish two people for a consensual activity which, as long as they used an appropriate barrier method will have no further consequence than a vague feeling of disappointment? But oh no, he doesn't want them to be taught about barrier methods or contraception because nasty nasty dirty sex ew. Going further, he actually considers pregnancy an adequate 'punishment' for teenage harlots. And despite all the evidence showing that abstinence-based sex education DOESN'T WORK, this moron wants to stick his fingers in his ears and pretend like teenagers would never get those damn funny feelings in their groin if they never heard the word sex. Because, as I have said before, nasty filthy dirty biological urges yuck.

I am now going to reiterate the main point of this post in big letters:

TEENAGERS ALWAYS HAVE AND ALWAYS WILL FUCK EACH OTHER. THE BEST THING TO DO IS TO TEACH THEM WAYS TO STAY SAFE, HAPPY AND HEALTHY. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY TEENAGERS HAVE SEX, ASK THEM. DON'T JUST APPLY YOUR PARTICULAR BRAND OF MORALITY TO AN ISOLATED STATISTIC AND IGNORE HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL EVIDENCE, AND REMEMBER THAT *SOMEONE* IS FUCKING ALL THESE TEENAGE GIRLS, SO AT LEAST BE CONSISTENT IN YOUR CONDEMNATION.

 

In Defence of "SCUM Having Fun"...

(Note: No, I can't bloody believe I'm doing this either)


In Sweden, a group of female theatre students are putting on a production based on Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto. In order to advertise this, they have released a short video on Youtube. The video shows a young woman giggling and shooting a dozing man. Her friends then run over and the group start dancing. A screen appears saying 'Do your part', then another with details of the production. Finally, the camera returns to the women who are laughing and licking blood from the man's head wounds. The whole thing is little more than a minute long.



So, the extremist hypocrite misogynist shitheels in the MRA movement have decided to offer $1000 bounties for the personal information about the women in this video, a la Redwatch. They want their names, addresses, phone numbers, places of work etc. Several have also made personal threats to the women, saying that they would like to hunt them down. David Furtrelle has covered this disgusting saga over at Manboobz.

If you have never encountered it, the SCUM Manifesto is a pamphlet written by Valerie Solanas in 1967, which argues that

"men have fouled up the world, are no longer necessary (even biologically), and should be completely destroyed, preferably by criminal means such as sabotage and murder .... [t]he quicker, the better" (Robert Marmorstein)

The SCUM Manifesto can be read in full here. It begins:

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex."

In short, it's not exactly cosy suppertime reading for your committed MRA gyno-supremacist conspiracy theorist, who seem to believe that every feminist ever takes it as gospel. However, in the Manboobz article, I also noticed Furtrelle and the commenters all trying to distance themselves from it - Furtrelle even refused to embed the video in the post. He says:

"Every feminist I know who has seen the video has been appalled by it. I’m appalled by it. It’s hateful, and it’s wrong."

Now, at the risk of exposing myself to the festering arse-pustule of the internet that is the ardent MRA trolls, I have to ask why this is being said?

These people are doing a theatre production based on the SCUM Manifesto.  Having them not include killing men would be a bit like asking Quentin Tarantino to only depict the Basterds having a nice cup of tea and a chat with the Nazis. (Did I just Godwin myself? I don't think so, but it is probably always safest to check...)

Yes, it's fairly distasteful, but it's done as part of a theatre production. I'm pretty sure they're not actually advocating it. Like I'm fairly sure Tom Six doesn't advocate kidnapping people and stitching them arse-to-mouth. Nor do I believe Gyorgy Palfi advocates practicing taxidermy on oneself, or shooting fire out of one's penis... well, you get the picture. Basically, what I'm saying is that MRAs are hypocritical fuckheads who only have a problem with violence in films where it's women being violent to men, and people should point this out instead of pandering to the faux-offended little lambs. Call them out on this. For all they whinge about women somehow 'running the world', and feminism being 'a hate movement', as far as I'm aware, no feminist ever tried to hunt down the actors from Deadgirl, and that film sucked.

As for the SCUM Manifesto itself... well, there's several theories about that.  The most common of these is what I like to term the Occam's razor approach - that it literally advocates the violent abolition of men. However, it can also be read as satire or parody of the Freudian approach - especially when Solanas talks about 'pussy envy'. Many of the arguments she espouses against men have either actually been used by men against women, or represent similar arguments. Further arguments state that for Solanas

"the plan for creating a women's world was largely nonviolent, being based on women's nonparticipation in the current economy and having nothing to do with any men, thereby overwhelming police and military forces, and, if solidarity among women was insufficient, under the plan some women could take jobs and "'unwork'", causing systemic collapse.

 Oh, and just to stop anyone trying to argue this - SCUM is not a bloody acronym.

Whatever your opinion on the pamphlet as either a literary device or as a violent call to arms, the fact remains that it's been forty-four years now, and men are still here. I guess the stupid fucks at 'A Voice for Men' can sleep easy, although I wish they wouldn't. I wish them only a bed full of crumbs and nightmares about vagina dentata. Not because they're men, but because they're hateful, hypocritical arseholes who wouldn't recognise a logical argument even if it were dressed in a sexy robocutie suit and holding up a sign saying 'no fallacies here!'

On Free Speech and THAT NS Article

As you may or may not know, I recently contributed to this article in the New Statesman, titled '"You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online', where I and several other female bloggers discussed the abuse we suffer for being that most disgusting of creatures - Women With Opinions On The Internet.

There was... somewhat of a mixed reaction in the comments (109 of them at the time of writing). These mainly fall into four categories:

1. Women agreeing and sympathising with what we'd written and sharing their stories.
2. Men sympathising with us and saying they hadn't even been aware how bad the problem was for women.
3. Men telling us it was our own fault and we shouldn't be so whiny, threatening to rape someone to death isn't even gendered abuse anyway! Are you bitches crazy or something? You are WAAAAY too sensitive, you must be PMSing or something. I mean, this is the internet! Whatever happened to free speech anyway? You stupid whores just want the moon on a stick. Given to you by a man.
4. You cannot be fucking serious.

I'm going to address category 4 first, because fuck me, they are funny. First up, we have 'Hermaphrodite', who ventures that:

For all we know many of these rape threats were made by misandristic feminists trying to portray men in a bad light - there's no way of knowing with the internet

SHIT. They're on to us. In Hermaphrodite's world, there is no financial crisis brought on by the world's banks, the poor did it to make the innocent bankers look bad. There is no prejudice against travellers, just lying gyppos. Dogs never attack anyone, it's just cats in disguise. Personally, I love this argument. Next time I fuck up, I'm going to pick a minority group and blame it on them trying to make me look like a shit because CONSPIRACY THEORY, YO.

What Hermaphrodite fails to realise is that none of the women involved have ever experienced any kind of abuse, ever. In reality, we have hordes of Man-Slaves who bring us bonbons while we scratch out our hateful misandrist missives. We only claim to get rape and death threats because, frankly, it's HILARIOUS.

Next up, we have a man calling himself 'Me'. He has written two comments, one of which is easily over 1500 words of sheer 'what-the-fuck?-ery'. I feel like this guy should be thrown a parade by the protagonists of manboobz. In his comment, he manages to assert that:

• Saying that we receive misogynist abuse is unfairly labelling misogynist abusers and, as such, we are awful bullies
• All women ever do is get fat and ugly and then harass men for leaving them
• Men are now no longer allowed to swear ever because if they do, women will have them shunned by all society
• Workplaces should be separate so men can prosper and women can fail because they're shit and maybe then they'd know their place
• No one should ever discuss problematic issues, they should get out there and DO SOMETHING (apart from him, apparently)
• Threatening to rape someone is basically like telling them that they're shit, but a bit more extreme

My favourite part, however, is this little gem:

Can you not understand that the phrase I want to rape you might mean something quite different depending on who said it and where they come from? That it might not mean what you think it does? Did you consider that?

That loud noise you just heard was your head exploding.

I get it! It's all so simple now! I should have seen it all along - women have all the power ever (along with all other 'minorities'), and we use it just to oppress straight white cis men because... well, just BECAUSE.

 Someone call the WWF, I just found a new endangered species.

Anyway, that's enough of them. I want to move on to category 3. 

There seems to be a hell of a lot of bro-dudes in this thread shrieking "BUT FREE SPEECH!!!!!". Now guys, before I do anything, I'm going to post a picture of a kitten for you to look at if what follows below gets a bit to much for your AWESOME MANLITUDE to have to cope with.

Kitteh says: "THE STUPID! IT BURNS!"

There now follows a small rant about free speech:

Free speech is great, but you are arseholes. In much the same way food is great, but mushrooms are shit. I DO NOT HAVE TO EAT YOUR MUSHROOMS. You have the whole goddamn INTERNET to be  a wanker in, asking you to not be a wanker to me is not endangering your free speech in any way. I will not come to your house and gaffer tape your mouth shut so you can't sit there spluttering your inane froth. To borrow a phrase, "this is not about free speech, this is about being a goddamn decent human being".

I mean sweet unicycling baby jesus, what the shit is wrong with you people?! Is it REALLY that hard to see a website written by a woman and not go storming in, waving your dick about and shouting abuse? So much so that to ask you not to do it is actively harming you? GET HELP.

And for all you smart fucks that are like "Well, you know, this is just how the internet is. If you're too much of a pussy to deal with it, GO BACK TO THE KITCHEN LOLOLOL". Now, in telling me to shut the fuck up and not have opinions so that you can make your rape threats in peace, guess who is stifling who's free speech? OH YEAH. 

To conclude:

YOUR RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH DOES NOT TRUMP MY RIGHT TO CALL YOU OUT ON BEING A MASSIVE PIECE OF ROTTING CROTCHFILTH.

/rant

Occupations, Safe Spaces and The Privilege Denying Left

TRIGGER WARNING: The nature of this post means that it will contain very triggering language for all minority groups.

A Story on Occupations

I spent last Saturday at Occupy Bristol, a camp set up on College Green as part of the wider occupation movement that has spread across the globe. I don't think that this camp will change the world, but what I did find to be an extremely positive part of the occupation was that many people from different strands of the left were able to get together and discuss thoughts, issues and ideas, and to share their knowledge. I became part of a group comprised of myself, an old-guard radical feminist and two male socialists who talked about everything under the sun for about six hours. It was wonderful, people would join and leave the discussion, contributing their own experiences and opinions and it was a very nice place to be.

But something else happened that night. The occupiers had discussed whether or not it would be appropriate to have a fire. Obviously, people wanted to be warm, and people wanted to have a nice atmosphere, but the land we were camped on is owned by the cathedral. They had told us they were happy to have us, and supported the movement - asking only that we not make a mess, ruin the grass or play music on the sound-system during services. So, the majority voted against a fire. 

At this point, a group of people who I can only describe as being the protest equivalent of "up the punx" decided that, fuck us, they were going to have a fire and a party and that was that. So the group split (I know, I know), with them taking it upon themselves to move about twenty feet away from the main group and start a fire. 

I got very pissed off at this show, and went over to tell them that their refusal to listen in consensus-based discussions (they had been heckling people telling their personal stories earlier in the day too) was risking jeopardising the whole camp, and that I thought they were being very selfish. They responded by calling me a "bitch" and a "cunt" and shouting me down.

Later that night, I regaled this tale to two men I was talking to, using it to illustrate my point about intersectionality in left movements, and how men will use gendered slurs to silence women. They asked me if I had possibly been over-aggressive with them (gaslighting, much?) and to consider that they were probably just on the defensive. I pointed out that telling everyone in the camp to go fuck themselves, declaring themselves more 'radical' than any of us and then starting a fire was a teeny bit aggressive in itself. I also said that even if they were on the defensive, it does not excuse insulting me as a woman to shut me up. The chaps then told me that they "don't believe" in politically-correct language, and that if a minority group is offended by an insult based on their disadvantaged position in society, that is "their choice to be offended". 

                                            

This is my 'are you fucking serious?!' face. I have to use it a lot.

I was a bit gobsmacked at this, and it was left to one of the other blokes I'd been talking to to try and explain to this white, cis, straight, well-educated, healthy young man why what he'd said was so daft that my head was about to explode and cover him in chunks of brain which would then remember what he had said and explode into smaller chunks, which would then continue to explode into smaller and smaller chunks until they were just atoms and that could potentially cause the end of the universe.

I left at that point.

So What?

It is not the first time I have seen attitudes like this, and sadly, I doubt it will be the last. Now, I expect privilege-denying rubbish like this from the right wing because, well, they're the right wing. But I like to think that the left is a bit nicer. So I ask you now: If we have a movement that excludes and alienates certain minority groups that are also being fucked over because we cannot acknowledge our privileges, then what is the fucking point of having a movement at all?

IF A MOVEMENT IS NOT A SAFE SPACE, YOU ARE FUCKING PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AS WELL OFF AS YOU AND THAT IS NOT BLOODY ON.

So, let me count the ways in which I am privileged. I am a white, western, cisgendered, healthy person. I pass as straight, and I have an education to university level. This makes me lucky. However, I am also working-class, unable to continue my studies above undergraduate level, unemployed and a woman with mild mental health issues. This is what is known as relative privilege, and we all experience it to some degree. 

Being privileged does not make you a bad person. No one can help how they were born, their upbringing or their opportunities. Refusing to acknowledge your privilege is the problem. Let's talk about some privileges, and how the privilege-denyers on the left have been busy alienating the groups without those privileges.

So, You're White: Recently, the Slutwalk movement has been shrouded by infighting after a white woman turned up at the NYC Slutwalk holding a placard saying "Woman is the nigger of the world". Now, instead of listening to the women of colour who were rightly very offended by this, some slutwalkers have been excusing it and telling them that they shouldn't be offended. Which, in itself is VERY BLOODY OFFENSIVE, as Flavia Dzodan points out very well in "MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT". 

So, You're A Man: This weekend, Occupy LSX invited Julian Assange to speak. You know, the man who's own lawyers admit is a rapist. This has made women who want to be part of the occupations very uncomfortable, and has led them to question whether there is a place for us in the movement. 

So, You're Cisgendered: What better way to celebrate LGBT Pride than by abusing trans* people?  Or, if you're cisgendered alleged super-feminist Caitlin Moran, why not make jokes about 'trannies' on Twitter then block anyone who tries to tell you it's an offensive term? As Ray Filar points out, You Can't Smash Patriarchy With Transphobia. (By the way, white trans* people, you have some privileges too, and don't forget it.)

So, You're Straight: If I hear you describing something you don't like as 'gay' one more time, I will set you on fire. Consider that a warning.

So, You're Relatively Wealthy: The fastest way to alienate less economically privileged people from your group is by staging demonstrations that only people with certain amounts of disposable income will be able to attend, or feel wanted at. I am looking at you, Fawcett Society. Sady Doyle has written about the left and the class issue here.

So, You've Had A Good Education (aka So You Read Some Books): If someone does not know about Montesquieu's theory of Separation Of Powers, this does not mean that they oppose it, or that I am any better than them because I do know about it. Likewise, sneering at people who have not read the obscure Hungarian anarcho-syndicalist philosopher who wrote about macro-economic models in prehistoric Somalia that you have achieves the precise sum of fuck all. They might believe the exact same things as you, but just not know the academic terms for their beliefs. Try explaining, instead of patronising.

So, You're Able-Bodied: How many of you ever think to make sure the place you want to hold your demo is accessible to those using wheelchairs before someone asks you to? Just saying on your press release that the venue has two stairs or that a ramp can be made available can make the world of difference and let people know that they are wanted at your event.

So, You Have No Mental Health Issues: You know what's hilarious? Calling Melanie Philips 'Mad Mel'! It's funny because she doesn't believe the same things as us and she tortures logic to make a point, so she must be fucking crazy! Yes, bloody hilarious to those of us who actually are crazy. See also: nutter, mentalist, headcase, etc.

So, You Don't Have Learning Difficulties: My late Aunt, Maureen, had Down's Syndrome. She was not 'Down's'. She did not 'suffer from', nor was she a 'victim of' Down's Syndrome. She most absolutely emphatically was not a mong, a mongol, a retard, a spastic, a spacker, a window-licker or any other horrible word like that. She was a person. Here is a guide to language specifically relating to Down's Syndrome. Making jokes using words like that is in such incredibly poor taste that it makes me want to punch a hamster in the face, because even that would be better.

So, You're Thin: While I can offer no links to back this up, I have been told by more than one person that several fat-phobic jokes were made by the comedians at UKUncut's 'Block The Bridge' action. So you can guess how welcome some people felt.

This is obviously just a list of some privileges and some ways I have witnessed people with those privileges alienating those who do not have them.

I Am Not Asking For The Moon On A Stick

All I ask is that people are aware of their privilege and try to make sure that their actions do not harm others. Consider other people. Think before you open your mouth. And seriously, if someone from a minority group tells you that your actions have personally harmed or offended them because they are a member of that group, do not tell them that they should not be offended and that you know better.

COMMENTS POLICY: In exploring this issue, I hope to raise awareness of some sections of the left alienating others. If you do not do these things, then great! I'm not addressing my points to you! So don't leave me comments saying "Oh Ehm Gee! I can't believe you said all anarchists hate blind people!", because I didn't, and your comment will be deleted. Do not derail, for your comment will be deleted. Do not use triggering language without warning, or your comment will be deleted. Do not use insulting language, or your comment will be deleted. And I swear to Mary Wollstonecraft, if you dare to try and deny that any of these issues exist, not only will your comment be deleted, but I will also come to your house and wee on your carpets.