Cockblocking Rapists Is A Moral Obligation; or, How To Stop Rape Right Now. Throughout the now nearly five year history of this blog, I’ve written extensively about the dynamics of rape, who the rapists are, how they operate and what has to happen in the culture to make them stop.
Much of this is broad, and involves decades of change. In the words of an old Jewish saying imparted to me by Jaclyn Friedman, “it is not yours to complete the work; neither is it yours to desist from it.” But rape the social problem takes decades to solve, and the rapes that happen to us or our friends or the people we love don’t happen over decades, they happen all of a sudden. When people read things like my responses to Emily Yoffe, they want to know, “I don’t have decades. What do I do now?” The activist answer to this question, in the broadest terms, is really easy.
What To Do Today: Cockblocking Rapists Spot The Boundary Testing Look for the boundary testing. Not everyone who pushes boundaries is a rapist. What the rapists do is target selection. The missing stair. Have you ever been in a house that had something just egregiously wrong with it?
Something massively unsafe and uncomfortable and against code, but everyone in the house had been there a long time and was used to it? "Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you, there's a missing step on the unlit staircase with no railings. #322 & #323 “My friend group has a case of the Creepy Dude. How do we clear that up?” Here is Letter #322.
It and the other letter are below the jump because it’s fucking creepy in there. Pickup Artists are Essentially Vermin. We all know pickup artists are a major gross-out.
On its own, being able to win someone over and spend the night with them is pretty cool! But we all know that isn’t what pickup artists are about. Their techniques are aimed at overcoming the byzantine rules of social interaction and bypassing bullshit that women pull like “not being sure they want to sleep with this guy,” and “just wanting to get drinks with friends.” To them, sex is part of a power game, and rejection isn’t an option. The interaction only ends when the Artist says it does. Stop Saying "I Have a Boyfriend" To Deflect Unwanted Attention. I enjoy “going out.”
I like dancing, I like music, I like drinking, I like spending time with friends. And I like meeting new people, chatting with them and making friends. I also understand that many people (men and women) go to bars and clubs in hopes of meeting a romantic/sexual partner, and of course, there is nothing wrong with this, in theory. That’s why, if someone attempts conversation with me, I try not to immediately write them off as a “creep.” I welcome conversation and believe that the more people in my life with whom I can converse, the better off I’ll be. However (as most women know) there sometimes comes a point in a conversation with a man where it becomes necessary to draw the line and indicate that you are in no way, by any means, at all interested in pursuing anything further.
The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck. [Trigger warning.]
Despite feminists' reputation, and contra my own individual reputation cultivated over five years of public opinion-making, I am not a man-hater. If I played by misogynists' rules, specifically the one that dictates it only takes one woman doing one Mean or Duplicitous or Disrespectful or Unlawful or otherwise Bad Thing to justify hatred of all women, I would have plenty of justification for hating men, if I were inclined to do that sort of thing. Most of my threatening hate mail comes from men. The most unrelentingly trouble-making trolls have always been men. Sexism’s Puzzling Stamina. It’s gender — and all the recent reminders of how often women are still victimized, how potently they’re still resented and how tenaciously a musty male chauvinism endures.
On this front even more than the others, I somehow thought we’d be further along by now. I can’t get past that widely noted image from a week ago, of the Senate hearing into the epidemic of sexual assault in the military. It showed an initial panel of witnesses: 11 men, one woman. It also showed the backs of some of the senators listening to them: five men and one woman, from a Senate committee encompassing 19 men and seven women in all. Under discussion was the violation of women and how to stop it. Sex-linked lexical budgets. Sex-linked lexical budgets [Update 7/3/2007: a list of links to other relevant posts can be found here. ] This morning, I spent a fruitless hour trying to track down the source of Louann Brizendine's assertion that "A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000".
I found many similar assertions, with estimates of the male lexical allowance varying from 2,000 to 25,000, while assertions about the female daily word budget ranged from 7,000 to 50,000. But nowhere could I find any evidence that anyone has ever supported these assertions by actually counting words or measuring talking times. A Linguistic Comparison of Letters of Recommendation for Male and Female Chemistry and Biochemistry Job Applicants. 'Too Much Estrogen': The Golden Globes, Chris Christie and Men Who Don't Want to Share Culture. Brit Hume thinks Chris Christie is paying for a "feminized atmosphere," in which his naturally tough guy (read: male) behavior has been erroneously cast as bullying.
Meanwhile, the NY Post's film critic Kyle Smith's take on the Golden Globes was that there was just "too much estrogren. " These are just this weekend's examples of men having a hard time-sharing culture. Where The Bad Feminism At? — Human Parts. 454 W 23rd St New York, NY 10011—2157. Rebecca Solnit, The Archipelago of Arrogance. Miley Cyrus: Solidarity is for White Women, Sexual Awakening is for White Women. It’s been two days since the VMAs now, and this week has been buzzing with news of Miley’s latest sexual awakening, which seems to have happened in conjunction with her video, “We Can’t Stop,” and come to a disastrous head during her questionable performance this past Sunday.
Everyone was shocked and appalled as Miley ran up and down the stage pretending to masturbate and awkwardly grinding on Robin Thicke’s crotch while surrounded by stoned bears. The scene was like a fever dream where the only real evidence now is in hundreds of pictures where Miley has her tongue out. Are You Being TOO Sex Positive? It’s a big thing in mainstream feminism to be sex positive, and it’s not hard to see why. Women in particular have been getting a bad deal with sex essentially since time began.
Having “too much” or “too little” sex is still(!) Grounds for all kinds of abuse. The kinds of sex people like to have are under heavy scrutiny. Gender and Democracy in Computer-mediated Communication.