Sociologists use the term “androcentrism” to refer to a new kind of sexism, one that replaces the favoring of men over women with the favoring of masculinity over femininity. According to the rules of androcentrism, men and women alike are rewarded, but only insofar as they are masculine (e.g., they play sports, drink whiskey, and are lawyers or surgeons w00t!). Meanwhile, men are punished for doing femininity and women… well, women are required to do femininity and simultaneously punished for it.

Androcentrism: It’s Okay to Be a Boy, but Being a Girl… » Sociological Images

I think the ‘women are required to do femininity and simultaneously punished for it’ bit sums up 90% of sexism in one sentence.

(via shashirosa)

nattycattynat:

[TW: Abuse and rape]

welcometothelauracone:

bowiecadmium:

feministblackboard:

A few weeks ago my mom stapled pages of a story in one of her women’s magazines together and handed it to me. She gave it to me pretty much with the tag lines “for your feminist blog” and “something new to consider.” Indeed it was; she knows me well.

The story is titled “I was forced to be pregnant.” With a title like that, reading it was actually not on the top of my to read list. I thought it was about women not exercising their right to choice. I was very, very wrong on that one.

Have you ever heard of Reproductive coercion? It is a term that was quite recently coined by the advocates against domestic violence to describe a certain type of abuse some women face. It occurs when a man pressures their partner to have kids and/or impregnates them against their will. Reproductive coercion comes in three different types:
1. Emotional pressure that turns into verbal and physical abuse.
2. Sabotaging birth control
3. Marital rape
Over 75% of women 19-49 who reported once experiencing domestic violence also endured some type of reproductive control by men. It’s all about control and domination over a woman’s body.

The first story in the magazine is about a woman who got married around 36 years of age. After a few months of dating her boyfriend talked excitedly about having children. After he proposed he began calling her “The Babymaker.” She then confided with him that one of her fallopian tubes was blocked. He in return insisted she see a fertility doctor. She recounts, “I had finally met a great guy who was eager to start a family with me. What woman wouldn’t fall for that?” Soon after her honeymoon he persisted on in an obsessive manner, but his efforts had to be temporarily halted as she had to get emergency back surgery. Alas, 6 months into recovery he was back to pressuring her again. She was in much pain at the time due to her back, but she agreed to In Vitro Fertilization. She then became pregnant, but soon miscarried. In response, her husband grabbed her by the neck, choking her. He apologized, blaming his outburst on his grief and had her sign up for another round of IVF. And then a third round. She tried to put him off with the excuse that she needed to weigh more before she could take treatments, her husband forced her to get on the scale often and filled the fridge with fattening foods. “It hurt that all I was good for was getting pregnant.” She recounts. At the end, he screamed at her, threatening to replace her with a maid if she couldn’t get pregnant and she told him she no longer wanted to have his child. He destroyed bedroom furniture, pushed her down the stairs and threatened her with a gun. She fled to a domestic violence shelter.

The second story was about a woman who faced marital rape. This woman was 40, had a then boyfriend and two children from a previous marriage. After telling her boyfriend she did not want any more children, her boyfriend refused to wear a condom and began to rape her.  She then became pregnant with her third child. Birth control was never an option for her because she couldn’t hide pills anywhere for he went through all of her belongings. Three months after giving birth, he raped her again, impregnating her with twins. She lost the twins in a physical fight with him, but soon became pregnant again. During her recovery she begged her obstetrician to remove her ovaries and devise a lie to tell him; that she had cancer. After a decade of sexual abuse and violence she was able to get a job that kept her out of the house and often times traveling.

One in four callers to the National Domestic Abuse hotline said that their partners had tried to force them to become pregnant. Why? As one woman stated, “Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”  Having a baby is the perfect tie that binds. These type of abusers want to create a circumstance in which their partner is dependent on him.

WHAT’S THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD?

Many voters never consider how defunding these clinics could hurt victims of domestic violence who turn to them for counseling as well as pregnancy prevention. Abused women will turn to health care providers long before they will turn to domestic abuse hotlines and organizations. Many women in abusive relationships rely on life saving, affordable care programs such as Title X. It is critical that such places are open and operation when women and children need them so desperately.

“Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”

“Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”

“Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”

“Its like he wants to own me from the inside out.”

read this. very powerful and important stuff.

(Source: feminist-blackboard)

Most likely the best, comprehensive argument for Marriage equality I’ve Ever Heard.

NYS Senator Diane Savino speaks on the Marriage Equality bill (by NYSenate)

DIANE SAVINO FOR PRESIDENT!

Wow, amazing…

I fucking applaud her. Thank you.

This is just great.

She’s so freaking awesome.

PREACH

that was great! perfect way to get the message across

amazing, truly amazing.

<3

[trigger warning: rape culture]

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

Db0 (Feminists don’t think all men are rapists. Rapists do.)

this is why calling people out on rape jokes is so fucking important.

(via slutkissgrrl)

This is fascinating, I had no idea.

(via nightbreezes)

I think I already reblogged this, but just in case I didn’t….

(via stfuhypocrisy)

I also like the following from the same post:

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

You. The rapist’s comrade.

Because feminists think most men are NOT rapists, actually. Feminists think most men are appalled by rape and would never do it, and therefore would want to do anything they can do to help end it. Including stopping making awful jokes, because it’s such a tiny thing to give up, in the broad scheme of things, to demonstrate that you are not that guy’s comrade. (If only this logic worked in real life.)

Ew ew ew. Stop making rape jokes, pleeeease.

(via nessfraser)

And this ladies and gentlemen, was why I got so pissed.

(via princehamlette)

(Source: gabrielleabelle)

A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. If our concern is about suffering in this universe, it is rather obvious that we should be more concerned about killing flies than about killing three-day-old human embryos… Many people will argue that the difference between a fly and a three-day-old human embryo is that a three-day-old human embryo is a potential human being. Every cell in your body, given the right manipulations, every cell with a nucleus is now a potential human being. Every time you scratch your nose, you’ve committed a holocaust of potential human beings… Let’s say we grant it that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. First of all, embryos at this stage can split into identical twins. Is this a case of one soul splitting into two souls? Embryos at this stage can fuse into a chimera. What has happened to the extra human soul in such a case? This is intellectually indefensible, but it’s morally indefensible given that these notions really are prolonging scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings, and because of the respect we accord religious faith, we can’t have this dialogue in the way that we should. I submit to you that if you think the interests of a three-day-old blastocyst trump the interests of a little girl with spinal cord injuries or a person with full-body burns, your moral intuitions have been obscured by religious metaphysics.

— Sam Harris, on stem cell research.

Re-blogged for scientific accuracy and for reason.

(via nefariousnewt)

Always reblog this.

(via nattycattynat)

(Source: bostonwalkforchoice)

So I was reading through an article on dating violence for that summer health class I’m taking, and came across this little bit:

Sexual abuse
The most obvious form of sexual abuse involves forcing someone to have sex. More subtle forms include:

• pressuring someone to have sex or to engage in sexual activities
• manipulating someone into having sex, through false promises, emotional pleas or alcohol and other drugs
• not allowing the victim to use birth control or protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections
• forcing a woman to have an abortion — or not allowing her to have an abortion
• forcing someone to watch pornography
• forcing someone to act out pornography

“forcing a woman to have an abortion — or not allowing her to have an abortion”

“not allowing her to have an abortion”

I realize this article is about domestic violence and abuse, but I think that rule leads to imply that any case of not allowing a person to have an abortion is BAD.

I think that could have been worded better to include people that aren’t women that can get pregnant, though.

(Source: brown.edu)

A Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures

nattycattynat:

On nearly every continent, and for all of recorded history, thriving cultures have recognized, revered, and integrated more than two genders. Terms such as transgender and gay are strictly new constructs that assume three things: that there are only two sexes (male/female), as many as two sexualities (gay/straight), and only two genders (man/woman).

Yet hundreds of distinct societies around the globe have their own long-established traditions for third, fourth, fifth, or more genders. Fred Martinez, for example, was not a boy who wanted to be a girl, but both a boy and a girl — an identity his Navajo culture recognized and revered as nádleehí. Most Western societies have no direct correlation for this Native “two-spirit” tradition, nor for the many other communities without strict either/or conceptions of sex, sexuality, and gender. Worldwide, the sheer variety of gender expression is almost limitless. Take a tour and learn how other cultures see gender diversity.

I love this map! This was actually a subject touched upon in my Anthropology course last fall. Pretty damn interesting. Definitely check this map out.

(Source: so-treu)

[Picture: Background: 8 piece pie style color split with red and teal alternating. Foreground: White guy with glasses and light shadow wearing a sweat shirt over a button down and short black hair. Has a smug, arrogant facial expression and crossed arms. 
Top text: “ Dictionaries are good resources for finding out” Bottom text: “ the correct definition of any word, and determining if it’s really a slur. ”]

Said to me as part of an argument that “crazy” and “retarded” weren’t slurs because ~the dictionary~ doesn’t say they are. (source that is full of ableism)

Dictionaries are meant to show how words are used by the majority of people. The privileged majority of people. That’s why, if you look up “racist” in the dictionary, it will say that a person of color can be “racist” against white people, despite that this is impossible if you’re using the word like sociologists or antiracist activists do (racial privilege plus racial prejudice). Dictionaries document how privileged majority groups use words. They don’t aim to represent how people should use words, or to advocate the correct (as in non-oppressive) usage of words. They are not all-knowing tomes of wisdom that can illuminate current social problems because that’s not their purpose.

(Source: )

kitface:

goodreasonnews:

The Boston archdiocese postponed a Boston priest’s plan for a Mass in support of Pride Week, but parishioners showed their support with a rousing standing ovation as the priest raised the issue yesterday.

“Some people have said that by celebrating a liturgy we were supporting a Gay Pride agenda,” the Rev. John Unni told a standing room only crowd at St. Cecilia’s yesterday during his sermon. “I confess I don’t know what that is. As a Catholic, my only agenda — just like Jesus — is to love and accept one another.”

The controversy erupted last week when the church bulletin announced that St. Cecilia’s Rainbow Ministry invited friends and supporters of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community to a Mass in celebration of Boston’s Pride Month next Sunday.

But conservative Catholic bloggers and the Catholic Action League responded angrily and urged Boston Archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley to cancel the event, reaffirm Catholic teachings about the “intrinsic immorality of homosexual behavior” and remove those responsible for the Mass.

(via Church delays priest’s gay-friendly Mass - BostonHerald.com)

WWJD? I’m sure he’d “respond angrily” if the “intrinsic immorality” were not being taught in favor of love and acceptance.

Heaven forbid that a Christian actually does what the Bible’s general message tells them to - be nice.

I like this John Unni man.