Crowdfunding for INTERSECT

INTERSECT is a one-day conference taking place in Bristol on the 19th May 2012. It will feature speakers from several minority groups who are fighting for women's rights and give them a platform to present their organisations and aims and to inform attendees how they may get involved. 

This conference was borne from the idea that many members of the groups invited to take part feel that they are not included or catered for within what may be termed 'mainstream' feminism, and the conference aims to make some way towards solving this problem. The conference will hopefully conclude with an open debate titled "How do we create a more inclusive feminism?".

Invited groups include anti-FGM campaigners, trans* rights activists, disabled women's rights activists, female refugee/asylum seeker's rights activists, female prisoner's rights activists and groups involved with advocating the inclusion of women in foreign political systems. We are also in talks with a prominent feminist comedian to chair the event.

Website, Facebook and Twitter accounts will be live by 5/1/12. For more information before then contact @TheNatFantastic on Twitter or intersectconference@gmail.com

Right, here comes the begging part:

I could really do with some sponsorship for this event. It's as simple as that. All donations will go solely to the conference for things like securing a venue and helping pay speaker's expenses.

This plea would have hopefully gone on a crowdfunding site (and hopefully will when technology stops being horrible to me), but I've been trying with two for over an hour now and can only conclude that I am at the centre of some kind of conspiracy because they keep going wrong.

Anyway, here's some incentives to whet your appetite:

Every single donation will get you thanks given on the website when it goes live (and in person!).

Donations over £10 will receive a mention of them or their group in the event programme (as long as the group abides by the ideals of the conference - you will be offered a refund if the group you wish to mention is considered unsuitable).

Donations over £25 will receive a quarter-page advert in the event programme (if they wish and the group advertises abides by the ideals of the conference - you will be offered a refund if your advert is considered unsuitable).

On the top left of the blog is a Paypal button which can be used (until I can get a separate account sorted later tonight) to make donations to INTERSECT. If you'd like to give anything you can to help this conference go ahead, please, please do. (This is currently my personal Paypal account, the balance pre-publishing is £0.00, so as soon as I set up a new account I will immediately transfer all funds to it and create a separate button)

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.

 

Shocking News! Rapists live in the same society as we do!

This week, the internet has been abuzz with a press release from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey which posits the question "Are sex offenders and lads' mags using the same language?". The study seems to show that:

1. Lads' mags use the same way to describe women and female sexuality as convicted sex offenders do in interviews.
2. This is to the extent that participants in the study could not accurately tell where the quotes originated from.
3. A lot of men who took part identified with the statements expressed by the convicted sex offenders.

In other news, the sky is blue, grass is green and we live in a goddamn rape culture.

Jezebel got a list of some of the quotes used by the researchers - see if you can tell the difference (answers at the bottom):

1. There's a certain way you can tell that a girl wants to have sex . . . The way they dress, they flaunt themselves.

2. Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it?

3. A girl may like anal sex because it makes her feel incredibly naughty and she likes feeling like a dirty slut. If this is the case, you can try all sorts of humiliating acts to help live out her filthy fantasy.

4. Mascara running down the cheeks means they've just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out.

5. What burns me up sometimes about girls is dick-teasers. They lead a man on and then shut him off right there.

6. Filthy talk can be such a turn on for a girl . . . no one wants to be shagged by a mouse . . . A few compliments won't do any harm either . . . ‘I bet you want it from behind you dirty whore' . . .

7. You know girls in general are all right. But some of them are bitches . . . The bitches are the type that . . . need to have it stuffed to them hard and heavy.

8. Escorts . . . they know exactly how to turn a man on. I've given up on girlfriends. They don't know how to satisfy me, but escorts do.

9. You'll find most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and they'll do it willingly.

10. There's nothing quite like a woman standing in the dock accused of murder in a sex game gone wrong . . . The possibility of murder does bring a certain frisson to the bedroom.

11. Girls ask for it by wearing these mini-skirts and hotpants . . . they're just displaying their body . . . Whether they realise it or not they're saying, ‘Hey, I've got a beautiful body, and it's yours if you want it.'

12. You do not want to be caught red-handed . . . go and smash her on a park bench. That used to be my trick.

13. Some women are domineering, but I think it's more or less the man who should put his foot down. The man is supposed to be the man. If he acts the man, the woman won't be domineering.

14. I think if a law is passed, there should be a dress code . . . When girls dress in those short skirts and things like that, they're just asking for it.

15. Girls love being tied up . . . it gives them the chance to be the helpless victim.

16. I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.

Right, now that I have got the formalities out of the way, time for a small rant about bad science...

I have seen a number of people, including some prominent feminists telling us that this study 'proves' that lads' mags 'cause' rape. It does not. It shows us the depressing reality that we live in a society where talking like this about women and female sexuality is normal, and is used by some people to 'justify' rape. While it may lend credence to other arguments that rape jokes and victim blaming 'normalise' rape in some people's minds, this study doesn't 'prove' it.

We don't full know the methodology used yet, and we don't really know what the samples were like (although this very good article in the Guardian explores the research and the results in the most detail I could find). As I scream at the TV whenever a right-winger appears, correlation does not imply causation! As @SciencePunk said yesterday, 

"How can you possibly infer lads' mags normalise rape unless you show that how rapists talk about women is different from general discourse?... Couldn't I just as easily say "people couldn't differentiate pictures of schoolteachers from those of rapists ergo teachers = rapists"?"

The only thing this study reliably shows (and is bloody useful to point to, please don't think I'm knocking it) is that rapists talk the same way about women and female sexuality in the same way that most other people talk about women and female sexuality. It shows us that rapists are not the slavering beasts of myth who grab virgins in broad daylight and drag them down dark alleys, and any other rapist isn't really a rapist because those sluts knew what they were doing. It shows us that there's no point in telling women not to walk alone after dark to escape the clutches of a rapey-bogeyman when most victims of sexual violence know their attacker. It shows us that we live in a world where 'non-rape-rape' (i.e. fair maiden dragged off by hairy-knuckled dribbling stereotype) is so bloody prevalent that women in the US military are more likely to be raped by their 'brothers in arms' than killed by enemy fire. It shows us that a startling number of people believe the same victim-blaming, rape-justifying excuses of convicted sex offenders - as the infamous Amnesty International survey of 2005 showed us all too clearly. It shows us rapists don't have a big fucking neon sign above their head saying 'Watch out! Rapist about!', but instead look and act like most other people. 


To reiterate: this is a bloody useful tool to make people remember that the public's attitude to victims of rape totally fucking sucks, and that 'othering' rapists is pointless and futile.


But it does not "show us that lad's mags cause rape". So please don't say it does. Misusing science in this way just leads to getting bogged down in arguments about what a study 'might' show rather than giving us the fuel to tackle what it does show.






Answers. 1. Rapist, 2. Rapist, 3. Lad mag, 4. Lad mag, 5. Rapist, 6. Lad mag, 7. Rapist, 8. Lad mag, 9. Rapist, 10. Lad mag, 11. Rapist, 12. Lad mag, 13. Rapist, 14. Rapist, 15. Lad mag, 16. Lad mag

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!'

Telling Channel 4 To Do One

This is a guest post by my younger sister


Channel 4 have decided that the new year should bring a new programme titled 'Make Bradford British'. It will be a Big Brother style TV show where contestants from different ethnic minorities are forced to live together for a 'radical social experiment'. 

Apart from stating that they chose Bradford because it is one of the most 'racially segregated cities in Europe' (massive overexagerration), it has also chosen some of its contestants from the group of people who did not pass the standard criteria test (ratings!).

All I can see this doing is stirring up tension where we need it least. This programme is playing straight into the hands of racists.

Many people, myself included, feel that Bradford has moved on from times of the riots, and yes we do have areas of a certain minority here, but what city doesn't? Chinatown in London? Chapeltown in Leeds?

Oh wait, those cities don't have a very volatile recent past do they? That's what brings the money in, I forgot!

This show has been chosen to air by some ninny down south, who doesn't know what its like living here, who thinks they can decide how people feel, and as soon as it all goes tits up and the racist views re-surface, can just scarper back down there.

I've emailed the show telling them what I think, and I'm asking you all to do the same. It takes 5 minutes, and you get a reply too. 

What happened to seeing if social minorities can live together by LEAVING THEM TO IT?
So please, lets try stop this rancid show being aired just to cause trouble.

Channel 4, DO ONE.

On Romance, Proposals and Pressure

Today I had the grave misfortune of witnessing something no one should ever have to see. Just to observe it made me feel so unclean that I wanted to peel my skin off and soak it in bleach. I'm talking about this: 

(apologies for me being shit at HTML and not being able to embed it at the correct size)

If you can't watch it, I don't blame you. This was my face when I saw it:

The story goes like this - some poor, innocent woman is on her way home on a London Overground train. She is minding her own business, and then some twat starts singing. He is joined by several more twats. OH NOES! IT'S A FLASHCHOIR, HOW EMBARRASSING. Poor, innocent woman carries on sitting around in a bemused fashion while they do their little piece. The relief in the carriage is palpable when they look like they're about to stop... surprisingly no one has pulled the emergency brake and done a barrel roll out of the nearest window... THEY'VE STOPPED! Finally! Oh wait, what's this? Oh god... oh... no. NO. It's poor innocent woman's boyfriend, wielding a ring. He proposes, she cries, a nation vomits.

It's things like this that make me certain that there's no god. Any benevolent deity would have smited this bloke into next week before the idea had even crossed his mind.

I understand that this couple are happy, in their own special little way, and that's great for them. I'm genuinely pleased that two people who like that atrocious song have found each other and have decided to publicly declare that they don't want to knob other people. Honestly, I am. But it worries me.

The thing about proposals of this ilk, is that apart from being so toe-curlingly mortifying that kittens spontaneously combust whenever they are mentioned, they are pretty fucking creepy and demeaning.

This schmaltzy crap annoys the fuck out of me. All I can think when I watch it is "but what if she wanted to say no?"

The pressure faced by people who are subject to this kind of overblown public gesture is immense, and worrying. Check out this video, where the woman says no:



Even from a few seconds in, strangers are shouting at her to "SAY YES!". When she eventually runs away, everyone starts calling her 'brutal'. Which, you know, I consider a bit fucking harsh. The suggested videos all tell the same story too, with titles such as "Poor guy gets rejected".

It's like people want these women to just say yes just to please them. The woman has no decision - the man she ostensibly loves has gone to all this effort and spent all this money to make a big, ridiculous, over-the-top gesture. Who is she to say no after that?

I don't even believe that it is done for the benefit of the proposee. It's done, as with other big romantic gestures, so the guy looks like a hero. Look how much work he did! Isn't he awesome?!


Romance shouldn't be about one flash gimmick designed to make people who don't know you think you're cool. It shouldn't cost the earth and require all your efforts. It shouldn't be a cliche from a film, it should be something personal between the people involved. One of the nicest things my boyfriend has ever done for me was to get a pizza delivered to my house when I was too hungover to move. That, my friends, is real love.

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