…something which most people don’t want to admit many men feel: that they have the right to be sexually titillated or at least aesthetically pleased, by the sight of women.
Not by women in their bedrooms, or on a date, or at a party; just by women in general, walking down the street, shopping, working, going about their daily business. Women men don’t know, have never had any dealings with and have no relevance to their lives, have no right to be out in public, unless they are making an effort to look as if they care if men want to fuck them or not. If they’re not prepared to make themselves sexually attractive to men, they they don’t really have the right to be out in the world. They should either stay at home or wear a burka, so that men’s aesthetic sensibilities are not offended. Looking as if they don’t actually care if they please men or not, is enough to be considered as a declaration of hostility by men like Demetri Marchessini. The idea that we should have dressed to please ourselves, to go about our business comfortably, rather than to have prioritised being aesthetically or sexually pleasing to men, is a terribly worrying one for men like this.
Marchessini is idiotic enough to have expressed that worry out loud in public; but there are many more men out there, who at the back of their mind have the same assumptions but just don’t express them out loud because they suspect they’d be laughed at as loudly as Marchessini has been. While it’s fun to laugh at them, it’s worth examining why they are worried; if women are comfortable and happy in their own skins and aren’t trying to please men, then that means that men can’t enjoy the power kick of being constantly reminded that women’s essential role is to be there to please them and be used by them. That’s what lies at the heart of this hostile trousers nonsense.
I won’t even begin to compare the way men express hostility to women, compared with how Marchessini et al think women express hostility to men; men’s hostility to women goes way beyond wearing the wrong trousers; in public, men catcall, harass and insult women; those women who dress without reference to pleasing men will be instructed by male acquaintances to put some make up on or cover their grey hairs and advised by men they don’t know that they are munters if they don’t; those who do dress to comply with patriarchal beauty standards will be advised that they have nice tits, or a fat arse or that they need to be fucked slowly for 12 hours or any of the other myriad threatening remarks men seem to be able to pick out of their bag without thinking. They’ll rape or sexually assault a quarter of us at some point in our lifetime; and they kill 2 women a week in the UK.
If only men could take a leaf out of women’s book and express hostility to the opposite sex by wearing clothes women find unattractive, instead of insulting us, harassing us, raping us, beating us or killing us. How much more pleasant and safe the world would be for women.
” Source: How to be hostile for men and women (via zeeblebum)stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and
there are tapes to prove that. At his trial
this policeman and in his own defense
“I didn’t notice the size or nothing else
only the color.” and
there are tapes to prove that, too.
Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing
has been set free
by 11 white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one black woman who said
“They convinced me” meaning
they had dragged her 4’10” black woman’s frame
over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval
until she let go the first real power she ever had
and lined her own womb with cement
to make a graveyard for our children.” Audre Lorde “Power” (via femignome)
HuffPo: Aurora Hostage Situation: Four Dead, Including Gunman, Police In Colorado Say
AURORA, Colo. — Authorities say four people are dead, including the suspect, after an hours-long police standoff at a Colorado townhome.
Police Sgt. Cassidee Carlson says a SWAT team was called after gunshots were heard at the Aurora, Colo., home at about 3 a.m. Saturday. Investigators say three victims appeared to have been killed before officers arrived.
Carlson says the suspect was shot and killed when he exchanged fire with officers at about 9 a.m.
A fifth person escaped uninjured, but Carlson declined to elaborate.
It never stops.
(Source: seriouslyamerica)
A Culture That Condones The Killing Of Children And Teaches Children To Kill
The Sandy Hook massacre isn’t just about the need for gun control laws, it is about a culture that condones the killing of children and teaches children that killing is okay.
It is about a country addicted to violence on television and movie screens.
It is about cuts in education spending.
It is about giving the military free access to our schools where they regale our children with romanticized delusions of military righteousness.
It is about environmental and health policies that expose our children to all manner of toxins in the air, land and water.
It is about thinking we have the right to kill children with drones or by dropping toxic munitions on their countries that cause birth defects and miscarriages.
It is about saddling our children with crippling education debt and no prospect for jobs.
It is about telling boys (and men) they have to be tough and to fight and kill for what they want or think is right.
It is about a national policy that denies children basic rights and systemically teaches them that violence is okay.
And it is about a media so insensitive that it thinks it is okay to shove a microphone in the face of young victims in the name of sensationalized 24/7 cable “news” while under-reporting the root causes of this tragedy.
[TW: violence against trans* people, suicide, abuse] Transitions: What will it take for America to accept transgender people for who they really are?
Submitted by edge-of-gloreee:
Transgender people are some of the least protected, most persecuted people in the United States. In a recent study of transgender students, nearly half said they’d been “punched, kicked, or injured with a weapon” at least once in the last year. On average, a transgender person is murdered because of their identity every month, according to the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 2008, for instance, Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old Colorado woman, was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher when her attacker—a man she met through a social-networking site—realized that she was born male.
Transgender people are regularly evicted from their homes, fired from their jobs, and denied medical treatment. Last July, emergency room staff in an Indiana hospital refused to help a trans woman who was coughing up blood, referring to her as “it.” More than a quarter of transgender people surveyed say they have lost a job because of discrimination. Transgender people are more likely to become homeless (at an average age of 13, in New York City). And then there is the obstacle course of inconveniences that reminds transgender people every day that they don’t belong. One trans woman told me her company requires her to lock herself in when she uses the restroom—even though it’s multi-occupancy—so she is acutely aware of making other women wait. In some states, a court order is required to change a person’s gender on a driver’s license. Many health insurance plans only cover procedures for one gender, so a person born male who transitions to female can’t get both a prostate check and a mammogram.
For some, these challenges prove insurmountable. Four years ago, Mike Penner, a longtime sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times, came out to the world as Christine Daniels. But, after a year and a half, unable to cope with the scrutiny, she changed her name back to Mike and returned to living as a man. A year later, she killed herself. Daniels’s story was tragically typical: More than one in three transgender people attempt suicide at some point in their lives.
your casual reminder that Paul Ryan had security called on an old man who’s questions he didn’t want to answer. Security tackled the man to the ground, while Ryan laughed. The man ended up in the hospital.
TRIGGER WARING: RAPE [in video and below description]
“If you could see yourself, would you see rape?” With this question, a controversial new ad campaign in the UK aims to change the way teens view rape. The public service announcement uses shock value to convey the fact that rape doesn’t always take the form of a violent attack from a hooded criminal — it can happen within committed relationships.
The perception-altering ad is aimed at teens who might never associate rape with themselves or their group of friends. The 60-second video depicts a nice-looking teenage boy watching himself from behind a glass wall as things are getting heated with his girlfriend. Initially they’re kissing and nothing seems to be wrong, but he becomes forceful and the girl resists his advances — at this point, the boy begins screaming at himself to stop and pounding on the glass.
(Source: seriouslyamerica)
[tw: sexism, violence] the thing about michael fassbender…
…is that he’s a domestic violence committing, female co-star intimidating asshole. You can read the details of what he did to his female partner at the link. Regarding his treatment of female costars: Kiera Knightly didn’t want him spanking her during one of their scenes in a film & said so while tied up; in reply he said “Keira, you’re tied to a bed. You’re not really in a position to say that.” So when a woman is obviously scared and uncomfortable, his response is to scare her further, really make her feel her powerlessness to control what happens to her body. So that happened. And then some of his fans talked shit about her for not fully appreciating how wonderful it would be to get nonconsensually struck by him.
Basically, I don’t understand the attraction at all. I don’t understand. I want to push him out an airlock every time I have to see his hateful face. I want him and every other man who abuses women off my fucking planet. Kinda now.
But, yanno, I also want to shout “he freaking beat his wife!” whenever I see Sean Penn, so I guess I’m just a ~sensitive bitch~.
I find it interesting that I see their faces on my dash semi-regularly (mostly Fassbender), but apparently Chris Brown’s attractiveness isn’t sufficient to make his domestic violence inconsequential.
yeah this is an important thing for people to be aware of i think
