Some American Feminists - A Documentary on the Women's Movement in the 70s

Filmed in New York in 1975 and 1976, this documentary on the Women's Liberation Movement includes a series of candid dialogues documented by historic footage featuring Ti-Grace Atkinson, Rita Mae Brown, Betty Friedan, Margo Jefferson, Lila Karp, and Kate Millett, focusing on the essence of the feminist movement, its meaning, its challenge, and its promise.

Documentary on Simone de Beauvoir

This presentation uses dramatization from fiction and readings from Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs to explore her views on the world and on the role of the intellectual.

 

Femen

FIRE OF REVOLUTION! by femen_org

"By demand of police FEMEN activists went to police station to be asked regarding FEMEN action against religious extremism infront of the Big Mosque in Paris. Tunisian FEMEN activist  Meriam with the help of French sextremists  burned a black salafists flag to protest all attacks of women's freedom in Arab world by Islamists, the reason for the action was the recent demand of one of Tunisian salafist to stone Amina, Tunisian supporter of FEMEN who posted the picture bare breast with slogan "Fuck your morals".

After the anti Islamist act of FEMEN the Big Mosque of Paris complained against activist so here was opened a criminal case by article 432-9 of Criminal Codecs of France. For now police is in the middle of the searching for the facts of crossing the low by FEMEN activists. Those who burned a flag and orgnizators of the action can get a penalty by spending 6 month in jail. FEMEN is noticing that complains and other ways to stop our activity are useless. FEMEN can not agree with the fact that we were acting against the low, we will follow our holy right for freedom of expression and not arrest or 6 month in jail can stop us. As long as they deny woman as a human being we will keep burning their flag and not only. Freedom for women! Freedom for FEMEN!"

"Tunisian FEMEN activist Meriam burned a salafists flag infron of the Mosque in Paris as a symbol of women's fight with wild religious extremism. Arab Sextremist gave a sign of womens standoff to those who kill and rape in the name of Allah. The recent call of Tunisian salafist to stone Tunisian activist AMINA was the last point before big women's riot. As bright as the fire of salafist flag was burning, the Women's revolution against wild traditions of Islamism will start. Maroko and women of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Emena and Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia, you will change the planet with your courage! The one who was Oppressed will become free, the one who was weak will become strong. Our bodies belong to us only! Islamism is strong infront of oppressed but islamism is weak infront of rebellion of our free bodies! Our breasts are more dangerous then their stones!"

Source: http://femen.org/en/news/id/335#post-content
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xyrofa_fire-of-revolution_news#from=embediframe

Living the Dream - Sonia Johnson

Lecture delivered at Humboldt State University April 1991 encouraging listeners to live life by the ideas they truly believe. Feminist Sonia Johnson chronicles the evolution of her belief that consistently envisioning the world as one wants it to be is more powerful than providing resistance to the system, and articulates her dream of the world and herself.

Interview with Simone de Beauvoir 1975 "Why I am A Feminist"

Remembering Simone de Beauvoir

Betty Friedan talks about meeting Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex. Kate Millet then speaks to us about de Beauvoir's autobiographies: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, Forces of Circumstance, and All Said and Done.

Going Farther Out of Our Minds - Sonia Johnson

Sonia explores how women can leave patriarchy behind and begin living in a new world right now. "Fairness" and "practicality" reasons for their passive resistance have been used for 5000 years and found lacking, so different methods should now be tried.

PART 1


PART 2

I am Tired of Competing with Other Women

By CHELSEA FAGAN

It’s exhausting. I wish there were a more complex way to phrase the sense of drained sadness that I feel about the biting competition that is palpable between women, a word that would perhaps do more nuanced justice to all of the social dynamics at play, but there isn’t. The truth is, being ground down daily by the claustrophobic feeling of intense, permanent, ugly competition with every woman around me leaves me feeling like I just want to lay down and stop acknowledging the world — like it isn’t worth my time or effort. More than almost anything else in my daily life, this competition fatigues my spirit and makes me long, in the face of bitter jealousy or judgment, to crumple up and give another woman a resigned hug of “It’s okay, we don’t have to fight.”

There is no secret about how tough women can be on one another. The viciousness we reserve for judgment about each other’s lifestyles, views, manner of dress, or mere existence is well-catalogued, echoed by every woman who ever proudly stated that she has “more guy friends, because they don’t start drama.” I think most women can safely say that, though they have likely experienced criticism or disdain from people of all gender presentations in their lives, it was usually another woman who let forth the most damaging venom. Speaking personally, while I have fielded nasty comments from a variety of people about my work (comments that often strangely tiptoe into a personal life about which they know nothing), there was a certain note of glee in many of my fellow women who seemed eager, almost giddy, to be taking me down. Women who, from across Twitter, or in my email, would call me things like “gross,” “ugly,” “a cunt,” or simply “#ewww.” Aside from the strict criticism of my writing, or my mere existence, there was a sense of placing me lower on some invisible ladder so as to push themselves farther up by comparison.

And I am far from innocent in this department. I know, if I am being honest with myself, that my harshest judgments and strictest standards are almost always reserved for other women, by reflex that I often cannot realize until I am mid-snark. Over the past year or so, I have made an active decision to be less critical of other women, and to never involve things like their physical appearance or manner of dress into analyses of their work or personality. But the removal of the knee-jerk “good woman/bad woman” is just that: an active un-learning every day of the kind of viciousness we are imbued with, this false idea that we are all competing for some kind of perfection of which we can only have a certain amount — that a woman doing better than us means we are inherently doing worse.

This idea that a woman is meant to represent all women to some degree, that another woman doing something I personally disagree with immediately means that the entire world now looks at me through the prism of her actions, is something that simply colors the world we live in. Few things make me cringe harder than a feminist article that goes in ruthlessly on another woman, seeming to take a hand-wringing kind of satisfaction in denigrating her in as public a forum as possible — all under the guise of “doing this for other women.” It’s the premise that, because she has somehow “betrayed” other women by doing or saying something that you don’t like, it is now your duty to “take her down” or “call her out,” making sure to deride not just her statements or actions, but her existence as a person daring to share the same world as you. Luckily, in the article I linked, many women in the comment section took issue with some of the more “middle-school bathroom” language used to put the subject of the article down, but reading the piece alone, one is left feeling as though Regina George herself might have left it on the cutting room floor of her Burn Book.

The feeling of competition — for jobs, for men, for good apartments, for a relative judgment of “success” by your peers — is one that invades every space we have, sometimes even ones that are meant to be “feminist.” It is clear that, because our opportunities are still somewhat limited in certain arenas, it is ingrained in us to feel as though we are gladiators in some kind of colosseum of young adulthood, fighting for the positions that are open to us. It is hard to break free of what we have been taught and begin to view success and happiness as something that we can expand in achieving it for ourselves. Instead, we are all perpetually fighting for the last slice of an invisible pie, ready to throw one another under the bus at a moment’s notice to move up a single space in the line.

Our physical appearances, and the premium placed on them by society, are surely an enormous part of this fight, too. We are taught since we can begin to comprehend the world around us that a huge part of our success and worth in life is based on how beautiful we are and — perhaps more importantly — how beautiful we are in comparison to other women. Although it is sad to consider, it’s relevant to note that since I have begun writing for public consumption, almost every single negative comment I have received about my looks have been from other women. One young woman even told me that I “needed to use moisturizer,” a comment I found strangely productive for an insult. (Though it was still hard to swallow, given the problems I’ve had with my skin since I was a little girl.) It seemed as though, because was now some kind of “fair game” based on an opinion or piece of work I had done, all of the vicious things that we women harbor against one another are free to come flowing out, no longer restrained under the guise of “being polite” or “supportive.” And I, too, have had to fight back judgments about other women’s appearances. I constantly struggle with the instinct to place a certain amount of their worth on how they present themselves physically. It’s a game that none of us are immune too, that only shows its full sting and absurdity when inflicted upon you.

I have hate-read women’s blogs before, I have felt deeply angry that a woman I didn’t feel was “talented” or “worthy” enough was getting success or recognition. Sure, there are male hacks who I think aren’t deserving of their achievements, but they don’t fundamentally bother me the way a woman doing the same thing might. I feel a wave of guilt after watching a show like The Real Housewives or Gallery Girls because so much of their interest is in finding a woman to hate, in putting their worst qualities under a magnifying glass, and exploiting their already-crippling pressure to feel in competition with each other in order to extract a juicy fight or venomous insult. These women — thin, wealthy, conventionally attractive — are reduced to animals in a cage when put in such direct comparison with one another, told they have to hate one another to be relevant, and plied with alcohol and cameras. There is a very clear taunting of the women on the programs, and yet I often feel that I can’t look away, that I cannot help but fall in line with whoever Andy Cohen clearly wants me to think is a “bitch” this week.

That caged feeling, the feeling that we’re all confined to a small space in which we have to fight for attention, for approval, for love, for recognition — it is that, more than anything, which is so exhausting. It is having to navigate a smaller world within the actual world, an entire universe filled with nothing but the barely-veneered bitterness women are almost required to hold against one another. It is as though the only real survival mechanism is creating a small circle of women with whom you are entirely comfortable, open, and yourself — a circle from within which you can view the rest of the world. Sure, we have our best girlfriends, but how many nights with them have been peppered with gossip or judgments about women who were not a part of that small circle? How many nasty things have we allowed ourselves to say, to think, to wish? And, more importantly, why? Why do we give into a system which we know is so unhealthy?

The only thing I can really think to say on the issue is that I’m sorry. I wish, sometimes, that I could take every other woman in the world and give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and tell her that she is beautiful, that she has nothing to prove to me. I have held women to standards that were unreasonable or unfair, and I have disliked them for failing to live up to them. But, in all honesty, nearly everything I’ve ever disliked in another woman is, to some degree, something I dislike in myself. And even if there is a fair criticism to make about another woman (and there are plenty, we are not perfect), the nails that dug in just perhaps a centimeter deeper than they would have on a man were petty, and bitter, and motivated only by that cage we are all somewhat stuck in. We all know what that cage looks like, and why we’re in it. If we could only start edging towards the door, where there is enough room for every woman to be her own person without impinging on another woman’s existence, we might never have to feel this exhausted again.

Read more at http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/i-am-tired-of-competing-with-other-women/#X8PuvOftkJObrlUs.99

The Privatization of Women

Andrea Dworkin has stated that we, in this society, DO NOT perceive a husband (the one who fucks) and a wife (the one who is fucked) as a SOCIAL unit.  It is, in fact, a private unit.  It is not a social part of life.  The relationship between a man and his wife is not interpreted as SOCIAL.  This is what church, state, and institutional laws are built around.  Men build goddamn walls around women, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, and then call it their home.  In this home, or prison, we are beaten, manipulated, raped, annihilated.  Women are most likely to be beaten, raped, and killed in their own home than anywhere else.  

On top of this, we, literally, are given a script for how to interpret that PRIVATE unit.  It’s in the media, our movies, our TV shows, our literature, our institutions.  It’s everywhere.  The romance of the woman (or, what should be more appropriately called the rape of the woman) is the script we are given.  Pornography demonstrates this clearly: women are beaten with a smile on their faces, and it is a ejaculatory event for both this man and this woman.

More than 50% of women report that they were ATTACKED in their own home, most commonly by their “intimate” partner.  The meaning of the word “intimate” is defined as “very private; closely personal”.  Women are captives with no political rights to defend off their attacker, their abuser, the man they were socially conditioned to love NO MATTER WHAT.  She is his property through and through.  She still cannot claim that she has been raped in a court of law without being laughed away.  She, throughout history through the eyes of men, has seemed to have cried wolf.  She cannot claim dignity nor respect nor any self.  According to Wikipedia, the definition of captive is “the state of being confined to a space from which it is difficult or impossible to escape”.  A place where one finds it difficult to escape?  This is the function of marriage.  It is a literal capture.  Women are unable to leave their male partners for economic reasons, for legal reasons, for every male class law and institution in place.

Women, who only got the vote 92 years ago, haven’t been able to participate in the construction of their society.  Their voices have been drowned out, ignored, silenced. 

To demonstrate to you how sub-human women are, in 1990 it was reported that there were 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States. There are 3,800 animal shelters.  How is this possible, when the evidence is so clear that women are beaten, tortured, killed on a daily basis?  This means there are 2.5 times more animal shelters than there are human shelters, which supposedly are supposed to function when someone is in a state of EMERGENCY.  Apparently, a man’s best friend is only his dog, not his wife.  A dog’s function is, after all, companionship, while the wife is still relegated to the function of producing the progeny of the male through contracted intercourse.

The husband is the human being in this “PRIVATE” relationship.  Not the women; it’s never the woman who is human in this gender classed world.  The woman is property, an object of possession, a fetishized sexual being that elevates the man’s prosperity.  The wife is his bling, like his car which functions to get him around.  She is, literally, a PART of him, like his pinky finger or his spleen.  (Eve, after all, is of Adam’s rib)  She is not human.  She is the one who breeds, who CARES for him.  During Colonial times, men literally BOUGHT women.  They were brought to the colonies as wives.  This is ONLY 200 years ago out of our 50,000 year history as humans.  This was how America began: bringing captives, white and black, as slaves to the WHITE MAN.  Both white women and blacks were sexual slaves.  The white woman bred the new generations of white men, while blacks were bred as slaves.  Black women were also used as the sexual property of the white man.  America was literally born through the system of concubinage.

Women are literally PRIVATE PROPERTY.  LITERALLY.  To this day, this is how the laws are set up.  It is "private matters".  It is "none of your business."  Literally, it is none of society’s BUSINESS.  It is personal, not to be discussed.  Law and State interprets it this way.  The church interprets it this way.  Our learned behavior has been conditioned this way… The relationship between a man and his wife is privatized.  Women are literally owned by the men they marry.  The laws make it so. She is owned inside out.  The slit between her legs is his property.  His sexual object, his possession, his fetishized obsession.  Remember, he signed a contract saying he is the owner of her slit.  That CONTRACT states that he has sexual access to her.  He can have sexual access to her whether she likes it or not, and he will get away with it.  Like the slaves, she is the white property of his estate, his castle.  He can intimidate her, insult her, degrade her, and get away with it.  He can beat her, hurt and rape her and get away with it, and on top of that she will be the one to blame.  It is her fault; she is crazy and has “personal issues”, the script says, society says.  I am here to say that her “personal” issues ARE NOT PERSONAL.  They ARE POLITICAL.  The only thing she is trying to do is keep herself alive, trying to keep her body, mind, and soul from being violated.  And the court says, “No, you are exaggerating, lying.”  And the psychologists say, “No, you are bipolar, crazy.”  And the intellectuals say, “No, you are not worth our time nor effort.”  And her family says, “No, you are his wife. Deal with it.”  He can kill her, like chattel, and get away with murder.  And she has died a trillion times throughout history.

This is why the statement, “The Personal is Political” is so important.  I’m glad a close professor has emphasized this phrase so much to me.  Women have been privatized.  This is why the personal lives of women are so important to listen to, not to be trivialized, not to be swept under the carpet.  Yet, this is what’s going on.  Women are being ignored; to take her seriously would cause great anger, great violence, great political conflict.  The Suffragettes knew it.  In their personal conversations with each other, they strategized NOT to talk about the personal lives they inhabited with men.  These women knew it would anger men to the point of losing the vote.  They strategized not to talk about it in order to get the vote.  This must end.  Our silence must END NOW.  We are no longer living under the same state of tyranny of the 1920s… that is to say, not as much... not much, after all, has changed.  The state has reconfigured and women have done that.  Now we must act in new ways; we must have the courage to not be afraid of what men will do to us when we speak up and institute new laws.  We must end the privatization of women, the privatization of marriage, and the privatization of masculine identity.  We must end our silence on issues of “private matters”.

Feminism’s war against their oppressors has always been about ridding the masculine identity from the face of the earth.  Women have done this through changing laws, obtaining the vote, creating women shelters and rape centers, through using their words. They have done this with their mutilated bodies up for grabs, putting their lives up for the violent backlash which pounds back 10 times harder. Feminism, I will tell you, have not raised up in arms as a collective force.  They have used merely their words, marching, protesting. 

But this is a war no matter how men try to define war; it is a war which violates the bodies of women.  Men use their propaganda, pornography, which is now so proliferate that even “women’s magazines” are filled with it, showing the bodies of hot young fuckable girls with a look of sexual seduction on their faces in stiletto heels.  Women, now more than ever, have internalized this masochistic language as the pornographic imagination has extended out past farther than even anyone imagined: into the public sphere of commercials, television, the media, the internet.

This war is no different from nations violating the human rights of other nations.  War is defined as a state of emergency, and so is the condition of women as they stand now, in 4 inch high heels.  Women are in a state of emergency, yet, when we speak up, go to the authorities, talk with our closest friends and family, we are trivialized and told we deserve it, need it.  Women need to fight back against the all holy masculine identity dependent on pillage and rape.  A precondition for joy for men is putting women in their place.  This is the function of marriage, of the dating system.  It is to put a woman in her place: as a sexual object to be bred and used for physical labor.  This must change.  Men need to find a way to break the systematic sadistic joy and literal erection they get from beating, raping, and ejaculating on women.  If they do not, we, women, will force them to; they will be forced to change, and if they do not, they will perish from this world because we will make this world into something they cannot thrive in.

I'd like to leave you with a speech given by Andrea Dworkin, who highly influenced this piece.

http://andreadworkin.com/audio/montrealdworkin.mp3

Patriarchy

Do our fathers, husbands, boyfriends, and sons 

know women can be more than two sexually 

dichotomized categories

of 

"pure of heart virgin"

&

"slut and bitch"?




STOP SELLING US:

A Radical Profeminist: Women, Men, Love, and Hate: A Radical Profeminist ...

Just.... wow....

Very, very strong message.  Here is part of a blog post taken from the blog, A Radical Profeminist: Women, Men, Love, and Hate: A Radical Profeminist by Julian Real

"When most men read writings by women men perceive to be hateful, they will take GREAT offence, become histerical, and see such writing as evidence that women hating on men is a global problem that must be snuffed out by any means necessary.

When many women read writings by men they experience as hateful, they will often often respond with a kind of reasoned resignation, as if to say "Yeah, what else is new? Same story, different day."

Online anti-feminist men are apparently convinced there's something 'out there' called misandry--not committed by MEN, but committed by WOMEN. These delusional people will cling to Andrea Dworkin's writings as "proof" because men love to believe women hate them, ridicule them, don't respect them, and find them generally distasteful. And how many countries did Andrea Dworkin rule? How many courts did she oversee? How many juries did she advise? How many institutions or industries did she control? How much profit did she make from selling rape of women as entertainment for men? How rich was she? How much money did she earn from her dozen or so books? (The answer is shockingly low. You have to write books about boys as courageous, about men as heroes, to make any money at all, if you're a woman.)

Can you count on one hand, two hands, twenty hands, the number of men who rule countries that don't respect women as full human beings? Please make sure you put "the United States" on the first hand. Please add "Canada" too. And "England". And "Australia". And "Japan". And most any nation-state you know of. Even the few Scandinavian countries which are trying to end the procurement and rape of women. Because the procurement and the rape hasn't ended anywhere yet. So women are free nowhere. Even in societies in which women are generally regarded as human, there will always be white men to arrive and remind them what white men think women, globally, are for. Class-privileged white het men in Japan do this a whole lot, for example. And they do it a whole lot in Australia. And England. And Canada. And the United States too. Everywhere white het men go, they carry with them a belief in their absolute right to have sexual access to women and girls. But they don't call this protection of a right wrong as "hate".

These privileged men also will not see women who love women, sexually, romantically, socially, and politically, for what it is: being loving. The also won't see women's critiques of male atrocities for what they are: loving.

To whatever extent actual negative portraits of men exist, socially, they will not ever be regarded by men as a class as a crucial aspect of women gaining some sense of freedom from the imposition on will, on being, and on life, of the primary patriarchal commandment: THOU SHALT NOT DO ANYTHING TO INSULT, DEGRADE, OR DEMONISE ME(N), who are to be revered as gods. This follows the commandment, a very Conservative Corporate Christian one: THOU SHALT DO EVERYTHING IN ONE'S POWER AS A MAN, INDIVIDUALLY AND COLLECTIVELY, TO INSULT, DEGRADE, AND DEMONISE WOMEN.

There is a sexual politic to hate. Here is how it works: men are allowed to hate women, or not. Men can show contempt, callousness, or cruelty and always claim "It's because I love ya, baby!! Why don't you SEE that?? Why don't you KNOW that?!"

Women are not allowed to do anything at all that might possibly be perceived by one man or many men as being contemptuous, callous, or cruel to one man or to men in general. If a man takes offence to what a woman does, no amount of pleading for him to understand it as not-hate will stop him from beating the shit out of her, castigating her publicly, or killing her.

A group of college students was segregated for an exercise, by sex. The exercise went more or less as follows.

Female teacher asked a classroom full of male students: "What do you fear most about women?"

The most common answer from individual males was, "She will make fun of me."

Same female teacher asked a classroom full of female students: "What do you fear most about men?"

The most common answer from individual females was, "He will kill me."

This gets to the bloody heart of the matter, doesn't it? Men realities with women are radically different, globally, than women's with men. Women, by media and by men, are incessantly assaulted. Men, by women, are made to accommodate males, to accept males, to appreciate males, to approve of males, to find men endlessly fascinating even when men are boring as hay.

This post, just as it is, noting the most obvious things about men's hatred of women being an institutional and interpersonal problem, that comes up against little to no resistance within patriarchal societies, will be seen as some kind of "threat" to men. As if words on blogs threaten men. As if words on blogs can have any significant impact on stemming the tide of men's misogyny, which floods women's lives at least twice daily.

What men cannot see and cannot accept is that men hating on women is a social problem and men dominating and subordinating women is an ever larger problem. What men cannot see is that women hating on men, however much it happens, has no institutional backing or media support. Even corporate pimps portray it as a kind of fetish of men's: something some men "are into" which has no grounding in cross-cultural social reality. What corporate pimps know, however, is that portraying all women as if they want to be raped has grounding in a very lethal reality: men do wish to rape women and accomplish this, with almost no men ever being charged with a crime, or otherwise suffering any negative consequence, other than more of their heart and soul chipping off and falling away.

We might just as well do away with the term "hate" and find out what's really going on, because "hate" is not really the issue. Men can and do feel all kinds of things for women, and call them all "what is in women's best interests". If men despise women, it's because women deserve it and need it. If men love women, well, men get to behave atrociously and still cling to the claim that it's an expression of love. And, worse yet, they are believed!

When women do disdain or disrespect one man or men in general, she cannot claim that "It's really love, baby--why can't you see that??"

Meanwhile, men do systematically and endemically rape women, singularly and in gangs, at home and in motel rooms and in wars and in "peacetime". Women do not systematically or endemically rape men anywhere.

Father-against-daughter incest, or father-figure or adult male family member against daughter-figure or girl child, is the most common form of child sexual abuse on Earth. Yet the patriarchal media are far more likely to report on boys being abused by men. This is because girls being abused by men is so common a practice that it we would have to add hours to the day to report on all the cases.

I saw a program not too long ago in which the woman host remarked with great sadness, "One in six males will be sexually abused in their childhoods". Is that horrible? Of course it is. It's a criminal shame. And we cannot forget for one moment that over 90% of the perpetrators will be men. "Good" men. "Trusted" men. "Holy" men. Socially adored and respected men.

Let's break down what that means relative to the experience of girls. Twice as many girls as boys will be sexually assaulted--predominantly by men--by the time they reach adulthood, if they reach adulthood.

The sadness felt for boys assaulted in their youth, by men, is felt culturally. It resonates in the bodies of those who hear this news as "Awful. Truly awful." Because it is awful. But the sexual assault of girls is registered in the bodies of the masses as "inevitable", or "unfortunate", or "Why didn't the mother do anything to stop her husband or boyfriend, huh?" As if women have ever been able to regulate men's sexually predatory behaviour. Get this, reader:

If a woman DOES catch her predatorary male partner raping her/their daughter, and she is also being battered by him, and she leaves him, this is what typically occurs:

She is charged with the crime of stealing HIS children from HIM. She is charged with being abusive to the children. Her claims that she was beaten are seen as evidence that she is an evil woman who will do anything she can to selfishly hold onto her children while demonising the prick. The pricks get expensive attorneys who make these arguments to pro-patriarchal judges and juries, who award him full custody and call her a criminal. She's a criminal for leaving the prick; he's not a criminal for beating and raping his wife and children. Now, tell me: where's the social love for women and girls in that?

Is not the act of incestuous molestation or assault or rape a father or father-figure stealing something from a girl? Is this theft not a crime against humanity? Ought not such a man be forbidden by society to ever have access to the child again?

And what of men who desire girls sexually and publicly? What of men who, collectively, socially lust after girls? Who want to fuck girls? Who want to see girls depicted as "sexxx-things for men to get aroused by"? For men to fantasize about, to use as fuel to bring firm up their determination as they make their way into the bedrooms of their daughters?

Is both the desire and the depictions "love" of girls? That's what men say. The term for this condition in men, after all, is "paedophilia", isn't it? "Love of children". Not misopedia: hatred of children. Men who desire to fuck girls and who do rape girls are called "lovers of children". Now, how fucked up is that? If this doesn't show that men don't know the difference between love and hate, what does?

Women, especially over the last forty-three years, have gotten very clear about what men's hatred of women looks like, feels like, and is. And women over the last forty-three years, especially, have realised that men not only hate women, but men don't regard women as human enough to see as full human beings. Some men don't hate women because to hate them one might have to recognise them as human. So some men just hold women in a kind of callous disregard, and in this frame men feel quite comfortable wiping their dicks on girls and women, as if that's what girls and women are for. Men traffic girls and women, as fuck-objects, as objects, as possesions, and as slaves. Men beat women and girls without mercy. Men terrorise girls and women without ever calling it terrorism. Men, collectively, never call this TERRORISM.

I am demanding that men stop terrorising women and girls; that men stop trafficking women and girls; that men stop raping women and girls; that men stop beating up women and girls; that men stop using images of women and girls as their fuel to invade the bedrooms of their spouses or children; that men stop incesting their daughters or other girls in the family; that men stop thinking of women and girls as existing to serve men, to submit to men, to be subordinate to men. I am demanding that men get off women's backs and fronts. That men stop all the hating and love that feels like hate.

And to any man reading this who thinks it is hateful of men, I have only this to say: go fuck yourself. And do it exactly the way you see men in pornography do it to women. And then you might know what hate truly feels like.

I call on humanity to institutionalise male respect, regard, empathy, compassion, and dignity for all women and all girls. To make it mandatory. To make it compulsory. To make it a social requirement for admission into the social and intimate world of women and girls. I won't call on men to "love" women, because I know that for too many men, that word has no spiritual meaning at all. It is, rather, men's excuse for doing to women what anyone with a beating heart would call hatred if women expressed it the same way to men.

I hope women, internationally, rise up against men's domination, men's humiliations, men's indignities, men's assaults, men's insults, men's tyranny, men's terrorism, men's anti-democratic ways of being against individual women and against women as a class of human beings regarded by men as existing for men. And I hope patriarchies everywhere are unplugged soon. Very soon. Perhaps within the next few years. If not sooner. I hope patriarchal societies fall like Dominoes. And that when they fall they crack into pieces too tiny to put back together. I hope for this so that girls and women can know life without men's exploitation, without incest, without rape, without economic servitude, without sexual slavery, and life without men's social and personal terrorism and tyranny. With love in my heart for womankind, I hope for this.Not with hate for manunkind. I will hold out faith that you, dear reader, after taking in the realities described in this post, will intellectually and viscerally know the difference.

The reason I love women of all colors is because women are human beings who show a form courage I've yet to see in white men. Women are collectively enduring a globalised system of male domination, too often in isolation, feeling alone, trapped. These individual women who are experiencing what millions of other women have experienced and are experiencing on this day, will all too often blame themselves for conditions well beyond women's collective control, let alone individual control. At the same time, the most enslaved women are creative, finding ways to survive, get through another day. There is resistance going on, even when it looks like appeasement. I know millions of women worldwide are waiting for the right moment to rise up, collectively, not individually, to get out from under him and his ritually abusive rules, to move out of reach of his grip and to cast off his grim view of what "woman" is for. I refuse to see women as existing for men. I see women as existing for themselves, for Life, for Being. I see women as existing beyond any definitions of "woman" that men entertain and enforce.

The reason I don't hate men is because it is a waste of my energy and it clouds my capacity to see what's going on. Men are human, every one, no matter how monstrously they behave. And there are, after all, some very dear men in the world: Derrick Jensen, Noam Chomsky, and Nelson Mandela. A problem--one of many--is that almost no men on Earth will focus on the oppression of women by men as a central atrocity faced by humanity. Not the only atrocity. But a central one. One worth fighting to end, with all of one's being behind the effort."

My First Period - Spoken Word of Staceyann Chin

This is amazing.


Start at 10:10 for a shorter version that's more intense.

Ptahhotep, The Ancient Egyptian's Wisdom of Grace

I thought ya'll would enjoy the following quotes.  I fell in love and now they are hanging on my fridge so I will start to memorize them by heart.

• "Great is the Law (Maat)." (p. 24)
• "All conduct should be so straight that you can measure it with a plumb-line." (p. 27)
• "Injustice exists in abundance, but evil can never succeed in the long run." (p. 32)
• "Punish with principle, teach meaningfully. The act of stopping evil leads to the lasting establishment of virtue." (p. 32)
• "The human race never accomplishes anything. It's what God commands that gets done." (p. 41)
• "Those whom God guides do not go wrong. Those whose boat He takes away cannot cross." (p. 43)
• "Follow your heart all your life, do not commit excess with respect to what has been ordained." (p. 66)
• "If you work hard, and if growth takes place as it should in the fields, it is because God has placed abundance in your hands." (p. 74)
• "Do not gossip in your neighbourhood, because people respect the silent." (p. 74)
• "Listening benefits the listener." (p. 74)
• "If he who listens, listens fully, then he who listens becomes he who understands." (p. 76)
• "He who listens becomes the master of what is profitable." (p. 76)
• "To listen is better than anything, thus is born perfect love." (p. 76)
• "God loves he who listens. He hates those who do not listen." (p. 76)
• "As for the ignorant man who does not listen, he accomplishes nothing. He equates knowledge with ignorance, the useless with the harmful. He does everything which is detestable, so people get angry with him each day." (p. 77)
• "A perfect word is hidden more deeply than precious stones. It is to be found near the servants working at the mill-stone." (p. 78)
• "Only speak when you have something worth saying." (p. 79)
• "As for you, teach your disciple the words of tradition. May he act as a model for the children of the great, that they may find in him the understanding and justice of every heart that speaks to him, since man is not born wise." (p. 85)
• "A woman with happy heart brings equilibrium." (p. 107)
• "Love your wife with passion." (p. 107)
• "As for those who end up continually lusting after women, none of their plans will succeed." (p. 108)
• "How wonderful is a son who obeys his father!" (p. 112)
• "How happy he is of whom it is said: 'A son is kind-natured when he knows how to listen.'" (p. 112)
• "Do not blame those who are childless, do not criticise them for not having any, and do not boast about having them yourself." (p. 113)
• "May your heart never be vain because of what you know. Take counsel from the ignorant as well as the wise..." (p. 119)
• "So do not place any confidence in your heart in the accumulation of riches, since everything that you have is a gift from God." (p. 126)
• "Think of living in peace with what you possess, and whatever the Gods choose to give will come of its own accord." (p. 127)
• "Do not repeat a slanderous rumour, do not listen to it." (p. 139)
• "He who has a great heart has a gift from God. He who obeys his stomach obeys the enemy." (p. 140)
• "Those who[m] the Gods guide cannot get lost. Those they forbid passage will not be able to cross the river of life." (p. 143)

Here's the link to the source.

Phah hotep's Advice to Son about How to treat Women

Well this is interesting. I just got done talking to an Egyptian (He's literally FROM Egypt) Mythologist, and man is he SMART!  He told me about Ra (the sun god) who was all alone and lonely.  So, what did he do? He masturbated.  He masturbated, and then from his cum, he created 4 children: Geb (Earth), Nut (Sky), Shy? (air), and Tefnut (humidity). lol! What a crazy world, and the things we come up with. = )

Here are some original notes from him (the blue is his original handwriting, mine is the black/gray).
Click image or here to enlarge.

Also interesting, ptah hotep, who wrote wisdom literature, advised his son on how to treat his wife and mother.

Here is a little info from wiki about his work, The Instruction of Ptah Hotep.

In the introduction, the author explains the reason for writing the instruction, namely his having reached old age and wanting to pass on the wisdom of his ancestors who had, in his words, listened to the gods. The Maxims are conformist precepts extolling such civil virtues as truthfulness, self-control and kindness towards one's fellow beings. Learning by listening to everybody and knowing that human knowledge is never perfect are a leitmotif. Avoiding open conflict wherever possible should not be considered weakness. Justice should be pursued and in the end it will be a god's command that prevails. Some of the maxims refer to one's behaviour when in the presence of the great, how to choose the right master and how to serve him. Others teach the correct way to lead through openness and kindness. Greed is the base of all evil and should be guarded against, while generosity towards family and friends is praiseworthy. Rise in the social order should be accepted as a gift from an Egyptian god and could be preserved by accepting the precedence of one's superior.

Not Ever

This Scottish 30 second ad campaign, "Not Ever, addresses women-blaming attitudes towards rape such as claims that dressing provocatively, being drunk or flirting with men are contributory factors. Its hard-hitting approach is intended to make people stop in their tracks, and to shake out and challenge ingrained prejudices many people have towards women who have been raped."



Here is the site for Rape Crisis Scotland and NotEver if you're interested.

If Men Could Menstruate by Gloria Steinem

Here is one hilarious poem by Gloria Steinem.  The title is pretty self-explanatory.  Enjoy!

A white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior - even though the only thing it really does is make the more subject to ultraviolet rays and to wrinkles. Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis envy is "natural" to women - though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb envy at least as logical.

In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless - and logic has nothing to do with it.

What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

The answer is clear - menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.

Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp out monthly discomforts.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. (Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of commercial brands such as John Wayne Tampons, Muhammad Ali's Rope-a-dope Pads, Joe Namath Jock Shields - "For Those Light Bachelor Days," and Robert "Baretta" Blake Maxi-Pads.)

Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation ("men-struation") as proof that only men could serve in the Army ("you have to give blood to take blood"), occupy political office ("can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?"), be priest and ministers ("how could a woman give her blood for our sins?") or rabbis ("without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean").

Male radicals, left-wing politicians, mystics, however, would insist that women are equal, just different, and that any woman could enter their ranks if she were willing to self-inflict a major wound every month ("you MUST give blood for the revolution"), recognize the preeminence of menstrual issues, or subordinate her selfness to all men in their Cycle of Enlightenment. Street guys would brag ("I'm a three pad man") or answer praise from a buddy ("Man, you lookin' good!") by giving fives and saying, "Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!" TV shows would treat the subject at length. ("Happy Days": Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still "The Fonz," though he has missed two periods in a row.) So would newspapers. (SHARK SCARE THREATENS MENSTRUATING MEN. JUDGE CITES MONTHLY STRESS IN PARDONING RAPIST.) And movies. (Newman and Redford in "Blood Brothers"!)

Men would convince women that intercourse was more pleasurable at "that time of the month." Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself - though probably only because they needed a good menstruating man.

Of course, male intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. How could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics, or measurement, for instance, without that in-built gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets - and thus for measuring anything at all? In the rarefied fields of philosophy and religion, could women compensate for missing the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death-and-resurrection every month?

Liberal males in every field would try to be kind: the fact that "these people" have no gift for measuring life or connecting to the universe, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.

And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine traditional women agreeing to all arguments with a staunch and smiling masochism. ("The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month": Phyllis Schlafly. "Your husband's blood is as sacred as that of Jesus - and so sexy, too!": Marabel Morgan.) Reformers and Queen Bees would try to imitate men, and pretend to have a monthly cycle. All feminists would explain endlessly that men, too, needed to be liberated from the false idea of Martian aggressiveness, just as women needed to escape the bonds of menses envy. Radical feminist would add that the oppression of the nonmenstrual was the pattern for all other oppressions ("Vampires were our first freedom fighters!") Cultural feminists would develop a bloodless imagery in art and literature. Socialist feminists would insist that only under capitalism would men be able to monopolize menstrual blood....

In fact, if men could menstruate, the power justifications could probably go on forever.

If we let them.

Couric, Steinem, Greene Weigh In On “The End of Men”

Ms. founder Gloria Steinem and Women’s Media Center President Jehmu Greene talk with Katie Couric on her web show to refute The Atlantic article, “The End of Men: How women are taking control–of everything.” (Here's a link to that article).  Even if you don't read the article, it's an absolutely great discussion covering women in the workplace, today's feminism, and shifting dynamics in American families.

Ani DiFranco

Ani DiFranco is a musician and a feminist whose songs center around politics, feminism, religion, racism, sexism, etc.  I highly recommend checking her out.  Her music is so diverse lyrically it's almost unbelievable.  She's really talented.

Songs I recommend:
Not a Pretty Girl
Blood in the Boardroom
Shameless
Talk to Me Now
Origami
Adam and Eve
Manhole
As Is

Both Hands
Untouchable Face
Dilate
'Tis of Thee
Serpentine
Fuel

 Also I recommend a song by Rilo Kiley called Silver Lining and No Man's Woman by Sinead O'Connor

Iron Jawed Angels

If you haven't seen this movie and if you consider yourself a feminist, you must see this film.  I was so impressed with this movie that it deserves a mention here.  I was very inspired and shocked as I hadn't realized what these suffragists did to cause America, specifically President Wilson bowing to political pressure, to give women the right to vote.  I searched a bit online after watching the film, and it is pretty accurate to what actually happened.  I do know that two of the characters are fictional including: Emily Leighton, the senator's wife, and Patrick Dempsey's character, Ben Weissman who was Alice's love interest.

 Here is the film on youtube in 12 parts:


Here is a short synopsis of the film:

Iron Jawed Angels, inspired by a pivotal chapter in American history. Hilary Swank plays Alice Paul, an American feminist who risked her life to fight for women's citizenship and the right to vote. She founded the separatist National Woman's Party and wrote the first equal rights amendment to be presented before Congress. Together with social reformer Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor), Paul struggled against conservative forces in order to pass the 19th amendment to the Constitution of the United States. One of their first actions was a parade on President Woodrow Wilson's (Bob Gunton) inauguration day. The suffragists also encountered opposition from the old guard of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston). The activists get arrested and go on a well-publicized hunger strike, where their refusal to eat earns them the title of the iron-jawed angels.