Posts tagged patriarchy

Posts tagged patriarchy
never touch anything with half of your heart: This is how this shit works:
- When a person of color says that they hate white people, they hate white people as an institution (aka white supremacy/hegemony)
- When a woman says that they hate men, they hate men as an institution (aka male dominance/patriarchy)
- When a queer person says that they hate…
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1. Dan Savage hates trans people and uses transphobic slurs.
“Children have a right to some stability and constancy from the adults in their lives. Perhaps I’m a transphobic bigot, but I honestly think waiting a measly 36 months to cut your dick is a sacrifice any father should be willing to make for his 15-year-old son. Call me old-fashioned.
Unfortunately, your ex wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice (selfish tranny!), or it never occurred to him to make that sacrifice (stupid tranny!)…. If your son can’t deal with having his dad/mom/whatever around right now, support him and tell his dad/mom/whatever to leave the two of you alone for the time being.”
2. Dan Savage believes that bisexuals do not and should not exist.
“I’m not saying bi guys are bad people, or they don’t make great one-night stands. Bushes, bathhouses, and sleazy gay bars are crawling with bi guys. But if a guy wants more, he’ll have an easier time getting it from another gay man.”
3. Dan Savage has admonished women for not putting up with their partner’s sexual desires and has criticized female rape survivors’ stories.
“There the guy was, boned for you, and he was brave enough to put his desires out there, to make himself vulnerable (which is what the ladies are always saying they want, right?), and you lobbed the ol’ “What?!?” bomb at him and made him feel like a freak. Is it any wonder that he quickly moved on to “other things” and, one would hope, better sex partners?”
“I’m extremely sorry that you were raped, DRARS, although your baseless accusations of rape make me doubt you when you claim to be a survivor of rape. The feminist bloggers are going to accuse me of thought crimes: If a woman says she was raped then, by God, she was raped. (Tell it to the lacrosse team.) But if my reaction to your letter is a thought crime, I can only plead entrapment: I wouldn’t have had these illegal thoughts if you hadn’t sent me such a stupid letter in the first place… Finally, DRARS, I hereby withdraw my consent for you to read Savage Love. If you continue to read my column against my will, well, we all know what word to apply to your actions.”
4. Dan Savage thinks that racist gay white men are less of a threat to African-Americans than homophobic African-Americans are to gay people.
“I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.”
EDIT: Here are some more lovely gems from our resident asshole Dan Savage on his rampant hatred for everything not white, male, and gay:
5. Dan Savage thinks asexuals are secretly “fags”.
“I appreciate the feedback, Stephanie, and I’m sorry I offended you. But… um… I couldn’t help but think, as I read your letter, that your boyfriend is either a fool or a fag. But if it works for you guys—if a romantic relationship devoid of sexual attraction and activity works for you guys—then it works for you guys. Who am I to argue with success?”
6. Dan Savage is fatphobic.
“First off, LARDASS, you neglected to include a sign-off, forcing me to create one for you. I tried to create one that captured the spirit and tone of your letter, and I think I did pretty well… I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact—being heavy is a health risk; rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly—characterized as ‘hate speech.’”
(via vanillaandlavender)
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The quote is not saying that feminism itself will solve all other -isms, it is saying that all oppression is linked, that feminism is about changing the system of domination.
For example, I don’t think feminism can be successful if anti-racism is not successful, if movements like OWS aren’t successful, because all of these movements are fighting the dominant power structure and as long as ANY oppression still exists, there is going to be more. That’s why I love a lot of what is going on with OWS and having a horizontal rather than hierarchical structure, where (theoretically) everyone’s voices are heard equally (whether this is actually playing out like this everywhere is another story).
All of the progress? Look up the feminist movement. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movement:
The feminist movement (also known as the Women’s Movement, Women’s Liberation, or Women’s Lib) refers to a series of campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment and sexual violence. The movement’s priorities vary among nations and communities and range from opposition to female genital mutilation in one country or to the glass ceiling in another.
I’m not going to bother answering your first ask which said
Why do all the slutwalk signs seem to be aimed at actual rapists? Do the slutwalkers think that people rape because they didn’t get taught it was socially unacceptable? It seems like they just feel the need to walk around with signs making noise because it will make them feel better about getting raped, isn’t it incredibly redundant in reality? Doesn’t it trivialise patriarchy for predominant feminist rallies to be so pointless and (in the nicest way) stupid?
because I think my answer to that will be addressed here.
Slutwalk is a pretty recent thing (though, essentially another version of Take Back the Night). If your problem with feminism is that Slutwalk isn’t effective—-get in line with many feminists! It is not something that all feminists are in agreement (though I would say all feminists do want to fight rape culture and bring awareness to the issue, all do not agree that Slutwalk is the best way, and if you continue looking around the internet you can find many feminist critiques of it, especially how many feel it is not entirely inclusive) It isn’t the end-all-be-all of the movement, it is just one of many in a long history of movements within the overall “feminist” movement.
I think it is great that there has been a recent move to fight against a culture that promotes sexual violence, and I think Slutwalk HAS been effective in bringing awareness to the issue, making it a valid movement.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
Although it had been in academic usage since its inception, the term ‘rape culture’ was scarely used in popular culture and the media until 2011. The Slutwalk movement is credited with popularizing the term via mass media reports about the protesters.[3] The rallies aim to raise awareness of rape culture - which they define as a culture where “sexual violence is both made to be invisible and inevitable” - and to end slut-shaming and victim blaming.
Maybe you don’t think people marching around with signs is effective, but it is a strategy that a lot of groups and movements use to raise awareness for their causes.
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Maybe the police aren’t beating me for being a woman, but my husband/boyfriend/friend/date/someone I met at a party is.
Violence against women (and members of the LGBTQA community) is a societal problem, promoted by rape culture.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture
According to the rape culture theory, acts of sexism are commonly employed to validate and rationalize normative misogynistic practices. For instance, sexist jokes may be told to foster disrespect for women and an accompanying disregard for their well-being. An example would be a female rape victim being blamed for her being raped because of how she dressed or acted. In rape culture, sexualized violence towards women is regarded as a continuum in a society that regards women’s bodies as sexually available by default.[6]
The root cause of rape culture is generally agreed to be the “domination and objectification of women”.[7] However, academic theory holds that rape culture does not necessarily have a single cause, and causes may be localized based on other social aspects of culture.[8] For example, in South Africa the overriding “war culture” which emphasized masculinity and violence led to a culture in which rape was normalized.[7][5] A University of California Davis public document alleged that the enforcement of the following of social rules by women and the conditioning of gender roles were major causes.[9] In a study of date rape, gender-based miscommunications were held to be a major factor supporting a campus rape culture.[10] The general unwillingness of police and district attorneys to prosecute rapes where force was not involved or where the victim had some sort of relationship with the aggressor is also cited as a motivation for date rape and campus rape.[8] Rape culture is also closely related to slut-shaming and victim blaming, where rape victims are considered at fault for being raped, and it is argued that this connection is due to the presence of a culture that shames all female sexuality.[8] That some rapes are not reported to the police due to fear that they would not be believed is often cited as a symptom of a rape culture,[11][8] that they thought the police would not believe them is cited as a reason by 6% of women who did not report rape.[12]
Although its use as a theory to explain the occurrence of rape and domestic violence was focused on the rape of women, rape culture has been described as detrimental to men as well as women. Some writers and speakers, such as Jackson Katz, Michael Kimmel, and Don McPherson, have said that it is intrinsically linked to gender roles that limit male self-expression and cause psychological harm to men
Rape DOES have to do with patriarchal values in SOCIETY, and the rapist lives in and has been socialized in a society that promotes rape culture. The feminist movement is working to bring awareness to this, and create a more equal culture. Cultures in which men and women are more equal have less partner and domestic violence.
From The Truth about Rape
By Robert N. Golden, Fred L. Peterson, Ph.D., Kathryn Hilgenkamp, Judith Harper, Elizabeth Boskey
The classic study of the effect of culture on rape was performed by the anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday in 1981. In her book Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality, Sanday classified societies as either rape-free or rape-prone. Rape-free societies tended to be those in which women and men contributed equally to the community. They also tended to encourage children to value nurturing emotions and avoid aggression. In contrast, Sanday found that rape-prone societies had more separation of sex roles and that they tended to respect, or at least tolerate, male violence and aggression. These results have been confirmed by other scientists. The 2005 World Health Organization (WHO) multicountry report on domestic violence and women’s health found several societal factors that increased a woman’s risk of gender-based violence. These include how equal men and women are economically, as well as confirming most of the other factors identified by Sanday in her groundbreaking work…In the words on the WHO report, “Challenging the social norms that condone and therefore perpetuate violence against women is a responsibility for us all.” Rape, sexual assault, and all forms of violence against women may be crimes committed by individuals, but they are crimes shaped by society. Changing the way that societies view, and treat, women would be a more effective way of preventing gender-based violence than any amount of criminal prosecution.
(bolding is mine)
Patriarchy is a problem, and it is hurting men just as it is hurting women.
http://www.safercampus.org/blog/2011/03/essential-concepts-how-patriarchy-and-rape-culture-hurt-men/
This is a great list of ways in which patriarchy hurts men, and I suggest you give it a read.
And let’s not forget that the man-cave also has to do with the growth in size of the average American house, at the same time that family size shrunk. So, children have their bedrooms (and less and less do we have siblings sharing bedrooms, it is more and more individualized); fathers can get their man-cave. The only person not having an individual space is actually the wife / mother. Her space is either shared (bedroom) or a collective space (living room / kitchen) but the whole house is her space, right? So it’s all good. Because still to this day, a woman is a first and foremost a social being whose existence is not individualized and whose fulfillment is supposed to come through dedication to others whereas other members of the household are entitled to their privacy and individuality.
(Source: sociolab)
“Men-ups” by Clickandclash on Flickr.
Men who pose like this: goofy
Women who pose like this: sexy
WTF is wrong with us?
Whitney Ad from NBC, around 30th and 6th Ave
I like the concept behind this Tumblr, but I think actually writing, “not cool” on the actual ads themselves would be more powerful. I mean, the only people who are going to see these pictures are the ones who happen to stumble across this blog, right?
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slutwalk nyc
Create a world without rape!
(via excusemeroday)
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Great piece. Totally recommended:
…[C]alls for strong female characters start to run into trouble with trans women, nonwhite women, and women of colour in pop culture. Because women in all three of these categories are automatically expected to be strong. It is, in fact, part of their characterisation. Trans women are frequently framed as secret men (ah!) and thus can be expected to display physical strength and emotional toughness, because it’s part of the game the creator wants to play with you. These women aren’t ‘real women,’ because they’re strong. Those masculine traits aren’t empowering, in this case, aren’t an affirmation that girls can do anything. Just the opposite. They are dehumanising and violent. They are a reminder to viewers that trans women are not real because they are really, at heart, masculine. Yet, to depict them as emotionally vulnerable, even fragile, is to play into other stereotypes about women, leaving them in a double bind; they cannot be strong, they cannot be weak. They cannot exist.
Women of colour and nonwhite women have also been subjected to the physically strong, solemn or stoic archetype since time immemorial. When pop culture bothers to include them at all, they are often heavily masculinised. Loud. Oversexed. Spicy. Overwhelming in their physicality. Or, on the flip side of things, especially for Asian women, meek and submissive; objects of sexual fetish. Bodies inherently charged with sexuality that are treated as objects in pop culture narratives. Do we need more ‘strong female characters’ when it comes to women of colour, in a media that repeatedly reiterates stereotypes about stoic, unemotional, physically strong Black women, for example?
[…]
…[W]hat people are usually talking about when they talk about the need for ‘strong female characters’ is white cis women, specifically. [….] “…you have to be assumed weak in the first place for it to be groundbreaking.”
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This whole piece is amazing and totally rings true for me. Men generally tend to be intimidated and/or intrigued by my intelligence and education. They react either by not even attempting to ask me out or trying to somehow domesticate me, i.e. involving me in long, exhausting debates in order to prove that I’m not that smart.
What I’m actually used to men doing is attacking me once they start intellectual fights they can’t finish. I’m used to men putting me in the friend zone because they find my smarts intriguing but not sexy. I’m used to men straight up belittling and insulting me—calling me stupid, unattractive, or using “feminist” like an expletive—in order to get the upper hand when they feel intellectually outmatched.
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