Prolonged Eye Contact

I SEE YOU

shl333:

Politicians who began and instigated the “War on Drugs” which effectively put thousands of people of color behind bars, I SEE YOU.

Politicians who pass voter reform laws making it harder for those of lower socio-economic class to vote, also know as people of color, I SEE YOU

Lobbyists, politicians, and political advocacy groups who seek to limit those with uteruses access to contraception, I SEE YOU

Lobbyists and politicians and political advocacy groups who seek to limit gay, lesbian, trans*, and queer rights to marriage, adoption, insurance, to visit their dying partners in hospital rooms, to quality of life, to safety, I SEE YOU

Politicians, lobbyists, and political advocacy groups who seek to limit those with uteruses rights to abortion and even make their efforts to make reproductive choices a criminal act, I SEE YOU

Media executives and corporate heads who continue to refuse to give meaningful story lines or roles to people of color, women, gay, lesbian, trans*, and queer individuals, I SEE YOU

Media executives, advertisers, and corporate heads who continue to exploit people of color, women, gay, lesbian, trans*, and queer individuals to sell products, make jokes, and ultimately invalidate their human experiences, I SEE YOU

Media executives, advertisers, and corporate heads who continue to encourage an environment of shame against those who do not fit your societal standards of beauty such as trans*, queer, fat, gender bending individuals and people of color in order to sell products to them that they don’t need, I SEE YOU

The judicial system who refuses to prosecute, reprimand, or even criticize the behavior of members of the police force when it comes to issues of police brutality, racial profiling, and violation of civil rights, I SEE YOU

The police force that continues to brutalize, profile, and murder people of color daily, I SEE YOU

Those of you walking around everyday making jokes at the expense of sexual assault victims, people of color, women, trans*, gay, lesbian, and queer individuals, I SEE YOU

Those of you clutching your bags as a black man walks by, staring at a queer couple holding hands in the mall, asking objectifying and insulting questions about the validity of trans* peoples sex and gender, shaking your head at the girl buying plan B in front of you in the grocery store, I SEE YOU

YOU ARE NOT HIDING.
YOU ARE NOT FOOLING US.
WE WILL NOT GIVE IN. WE WILL NOT GIVE UP. WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN. 

#TRUTH

When you are talking about your privilege over me, when you’re talking about my life and my rights, I do not want a fucking ‘respectful debate’.

inflateablefilth:

You’ve got privilege over me, you have no vested interest in this debate. So I’m gonna be fucking angry and emotional. It’s disrespectful in the first place to fucking debate with me over my own fucking life. You’re in a position of privilege, sit down and shut the fuck up and let us talk.

THIS x a million.

I hate when I’m going about my day, struggling to exist and function, all the while fighting for my basic human rights to be acknowledged, and some cis man wants to “debate” with me. No, I refuse to call my life a debate. No, I refuse to stroke your ego. And no, I don’t want to engage in mental masturbation for you. These issues will never affect you. The outcomes of this “debate” won’t threaten your livelihood or devastate you. You can afford to remain calm and smug. You can get pleasure from this. Me? I always end up feeling sub-human and unimportant. So thanks for that, but you can keep your “debates” to yourself.

[TW slurs] A Friendly Reminder: Don’t Call Out -ists With -isms.

Yes, the GOP political candidates are racist, sexist, classist, ableist, heterosexist, and cissexist bigots. Absolutely. But let’s not call them out by saying they’re “idiots”, “batshit crazy”, “delusional”, “lame”, “stupid”, “retarded”, etc.

Let’s not call out racist women by calling them “dumb bitches.”

Let’s not call out cissexist feminists by calling them “morons.”

Let’s not call out heterosexist poc by calling them “welfare queens.”

Let’s not call out sexist men by calling them “fags.”

Let’s not call out ableist people by calling them “selfish sluts.”

Let’s not call out classist people by calling them “crazy rich people.”

It’s called intersectionality. And trying to combat -ists with -isms will never be okay. Few people are privileged on every single axis, oppressions can’t be compared, and your oppression doesn’t make you incapable of being oppressive on another axis. Someone said something -ist? By all means take them down. But no one needs to engage in -isms to do it. You’re hurting other people when you do that. And their oppression, perpetuated by you, is no less painful than the fucked up thing you’re angry about. Full stop.

Lastly, garnering solidarity under the guise of -isms isn’t cool either.

You “Stand With Planned Parenthood”? How about you support them instead?

Facebook and misogyny [TW: misogyny, rape culture, slurs of all kinds, slut/body shaming]

what do you think of this?

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=364055580287398&set=a.149408831752075.32465.149402158419409&type=1 

If you openly post the link could you please get rid of my name?

______________________________________________

[Yes of course! I would have just replied privately but my answer is too long for an ask on your page and it looks like you don’t have submissions enabled…]

This made me throw up a little in my mouth. Right off the bat I’m seeing slut shaming, victim blaming (she posted the pic, what did she think would happen?), sandwich jokes, internalized misogyny by the women commenting, sexist slurs like whore/slut/bitch, ableist slurs (idiots, correcting spelling condescendingly), silencing tactics, etc. Then saying things about fapping and wanting to “do her” feeds directly into rape culture. Those aren’t innocent and non-violent things to say about a person, especially when it’s a man talking about a woman (who I’m assuming doesn’t know her picture has sparked a conversation with over 300 comments?).

Then they have the audacity to call her fat? Body shaming and fatphobia all rolled into one. This nonsense is exactly the type of thing that leads to suicide and eating disorders. Oh, and Charlie here thinks she should be happy she’s getting any “compliments” at all considering she’s wearing a one-piece, the nerve she has! Since when does a one-piece bathing suit make you a “dirty whore”?! What fucking planet is this? This is absolute slut shaming. The word never has be spoken in conversation for it to be slut shaming. And we don’t call it slut shaming, Mercator, because the women in question are “sluts” per se, it’s because that’s how misogynists perceive and treat them based solely on how they’re dressed, etc.

The fact that a simple photo of a woman in a bathing suit could elicit such vile hatred and behavior points to the fact that we live in a society steeped in misogyny and rape culture. These men act as if they are entitled to make these comments. This girl’s body being “on display” in a photo or on the beach doesn’t mean you get to make comments. She’s not wearing the god damn thing for you. Your opinion is entirely irrelevant to her self-worth and is down right offensive. Oh and “butt hurt” is a violent rape reference.

Seriously, I hope these people aren’t your friends that you have to engage with daily because I’d want to tear my hair out. Facebook really just allows the worst to come out in full force which is probably why I don’t use it. If there’s any way to report them or contact the woman in the picture, I would recommend that.

Civil Rights Letter Opposing H.R. 3541

[pregnant people, not just women]

skankassqueer:

MRA types talk a lot about how “misandrist” feminists are. It’s patriarchy that thinks men are stupid, not feminists. Patriarchy says that men can’t control their urges, that they’re simple creatures of impulse. Feminism says no, men are people, and they can control themselves, and tells them to do so. They claim that TV shows portray men as simple, dim-witted, lazy, cowardly creatures doing whatever their wives tell them to. They cite this as proof of a “feminist conspiracy” in which feminists (who in their eyes are invariably women) have invaded the film industry with the sole purpose of making men look bad. Yes, these are sexist stereotypes, but they’re not the result of some feminist conspiracy. The people writing these characters are not feminists. They’re the same people who write female characters as ditzy, self-absorbed, shallow, sex objects. The same people who write sexist stereotypes of men are writing sexist stereotypes of women too. Feminism is opposition to sexism, not “reverse sexism.”

(via fuckyeahsexeducation)

Meet 8 Right-Wing Groups Practicing Scorched-Earth Anti-Choice Nuttery Against Women

sexgenderbody:

(via Alternet)

By Amanda Marcotte, AlterNet
Posted on December 11, 2011, Printed on December 13, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153351/meet_8_right-wing_groups_practicing_scorched-earth_anti-choice_nuttery_against_women

Is there a rift in the anti-choice movement? A recent story in the New York Times centered around Ohio Right To Life’s unwillingness to lend their support or endorsement to a bill banning abortion from the time a heartbeat is detected in an embryo certainly makes that clear. As reproductive rights activists have noted for a couple of years now, there’s a war breaking out between two anti-choice groups, the incrementalists and the absolutists. Both largely agree on the goals of the movement, which is a complete ban on all abortion, with severe restrictions and possibly bans on contraception as well. What they disagree about is tactics. Incrementalists view themselves the more mainstream branch of the movement, and they focus mainly on chipping away at abortion rights. They’re wary of taking the fight to the courts, who tend to routinely shoot down any legislation perceived as an out-and-out ban on abortion.

The absolutists, on the other hand, claim this is a failed strategy and want to come out of the closet as full-throated soldiers in the war on women and sex, by directly attacking Roe v. Wade and taking the fight beyond abortion to contraception. Absolutists have managed to go around the more mainstream anti-abortion movement, passing legislation and gaining ground in the Republican Party. They’ve even managed to make Democrats cower, as evidenced by the highly unusual decision of the HHS to overrule the FDA’s decision to make Plan B available over the counter.

Who are some of these absolutists? Here’s a snapshot of some of the organizations that are demanding not just immediate challenges to Roe, but also want a rapid escalation of the war on women’s right to contraception and other forms of basic reproductive health care.

Who are some of these absolutists? Here’s a snapshot of some of the organizations that are demanding not just immediate challenges to Roe, but also want a rapid escalation of the war on women’s right to contraception and other forms of basic reproductive health care.

Personhood USA. This is the umbrella group for various state activist groups pushing to get “personhood amendments” onto the ballot. Unlike most anti-choice organizations that push for a variety of actions, Personhood USA has only one ostensible goal, to amend state constitutions to get fertilized eggs defined as legal “persons”. Behind this seemingly simple goal lies a radical agenda. Not only would personhood amendments ban abortion, but they would also make it illegal to treat ectopic pregnancies, save women suffering incomplete miscarriages from dying of sepsis, open up criminal investigations of miscarriages, and ban IVF and research on stem cells, personhood advocates have repeatedly suggested that it should also be used to ban the birth control pill and the IUD, which they incorrectly argue work by killing fertilized eggs. The radical nature of the initiative made it impossible to pass in Mississippi, arguably the most conservative state in the country, giving incrementalists ammo in their argument against the absolutist approach.   

Live Action. That absolutists can’t get their agenda past the voters doesn’t mean that their radical approach is a failure, however. After all, they don’t have to win over voters so long as they control the Republican Party on the choice question.  Live Action provides some of the best evidence of the success of the absolutist approach. Live Action openly supports the absolutist agenda, putting their support behind personhood initiatives and attacking Planned Parenthood not just for providing abortion, but because the organization is willing to provide STD and contraception information to minors and self-identified sex workers. 

Early in 2011, Live Action launched a series of deceptively edited videos that managed only to prove that Planned Parenthood follows the law, provides perfectly legal health care to minors and self-identified sex workers, and immediately complies with reporting laws regarding the abuse of minors. Even though they did nothing but prove that Planned Parenthood obeys the law and standard medical ethics, Live Action still managed to compel a national crisis over Title X funding offered to clinics who provide contraception services that culminated in the Republicans threatening to shut down the federal government if contraception subsidies weren’t immediately halted. This, even though 77% of Republican voters support contraception subsidies.  The word “abortion” was thrown around a lot to justify this attack on Title X, but at the end of the day, Live Action and the Republicans were attacking contraception, as Title X legally cannot subsidize abortion. 

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The USCCB presents itself simply as a support structure for American Catholic churches, but a large wing of the organization is devoted to lobbying for extremist anti-choice policies that are often far beyond anything being asked by incrementalist anti-choice activists. Conservative media threw a fit when Nancy Pelosi described this group as “lobbyists”, but the term is utterly accurate. The USCBB does spend a great deal of time and  money lobbying for severe restrictions on abortion and contraception access.  

The USCBB lobbies for an overturn of Roe, but that’s only the tip of their anti-choice advocacy. They exploited the health care reform debate to try to push for Congress to prevent private insurance companies from covering abortion care. They have taken a strong anti-contraception stance that makes fallacious, unscientific claims about contraception, including claiming that contraception artificially induces an unhealthy state (something actual medical experts would strongly argue against) and making unscientific claims about how contraception works. Currently, they are demanding that religiously affiliated organizations that take taxpayer money, such as hospitals and universities, be allowed to deny contraception coverage to the female employees, many of whom aren’t even Catholic. They are also fighting the Obama administration’s choice to give groups who offer complete health care to trafficking victims grants instead of giving them to Catholic organizations that refuse contraception or abortion referrals for women who have been forced into prostitution, suggesting that their main concern isn’t getting women out of trafficking situations, but blocking them from having healthy and consensual sex lives after escaping forced prostitution.  

Ohio ProLife Action. As described in the New York Times, Ohio Right to Life refuses to support a bill that would ban all abortions after a heartbeat is detectable, not because they don’t wish they could, but because they believe it’s a political loser. The heartbeat is less extremist than personhood initiatives, but that’s like saying it’s less dark at 10PM than midnight: technically true, but not particularly relevant. The heartbeat bill is a direct assault on Roe v. Wade, and Ohio RTL wants to wait until the Supreme Court is even more conservative before challenging Roe.  

Meanwhile, the heartbeat bill is far more extreme than the simple abortion bans that were in place prior to Roe. Medical exceptions were available prior to Roe, and if a woman showed up in the emergency room with an incomplete miscarriage, doctors were allowed to save her life by removing the failing pregnancy. Under the heartbeat bill, doctors would be forced to wait until any kind of pulse in the embryo had ended before intervening, which would put women at risk of sepsis and would like result in unnecessary deaths—-all the save pregnancies that were unsalvageable to begin with. Ohio RTL likely realizes that it’s hard to endear yourself to voters when you stand up for torturing or even killing women for having incomplete miscarriages, so Ohio ProLife Action was formed to support this attack on women’s right not just to choose, but to survive a pregnancy gone wrong.   

Susan B. Anthony List. Anti-choicers fallaciously claiming to be supportive of some “older” form of feminism have been around nearly as long as conservatives supporting racist policies while quoting MLK, and so the SBA List is doing nothing new with their ahistorical claims that irreligious, childless Anthony would have, if she was alive today somehow miraculously supported their highly religious assault on abortion rights. But SBA List stands for a lot more than a simple overturn of Roe. In the name of Susan B. Anthony, who aligned herself with the 19^th century “voluntary motherhood” movement that turned into the birth control movement, the SBA List has expanded into assaults on contraception access. SBA List has worked strenuously to defund contraception programs both on the national and international level. They claim to do so out of opposition to abortion, but in reality, the funds that they object to that go to Planned Parenthood and the United Nations Population Fund are used strictly for non-abortion reproductive health services. UNFPA does not provide abortion services or referrals, but because they prevent women from dying of botched abortions and offer contraception services, SBA List opposes them. Even under Roe, doctors were permitted to treate women suffering from botched abortions, but SBA List embraces a far more radical vision than a mere repeal of women’s right to legal abortion. 

In addition, SBA List put together a pledge for Republican presidential candidates to sign that hinted at a strong anti-contraception agenda with calls for the HHS and NIH to be staffed with “pro-life” leadership. Under George Bush, such leadership did more than simply oppose abortion, but fought against expanded contraception access at every turn. SBA List’s request for more of the same would endanger HHS regulations requiring insurance companies to treat contraception as preventive care that should be offered without a co-pay to insured women.  

Leslee Unruh with the Alpha Center. Leslee Unruh is a one-woman machine of anti-choice extremism in South Dakota. Unruh was instrumental in getting complete abortion bans on the ballot in South Dakota not once, but twice (both were voted down). Unable to get an abortion ban in South Dakota the honest way, anti-choice South Dakota legislators, who appear to hang on Unruh’s every word, passed a law requiring women to seek “counseling” from anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers before being allowed to have an abortion. Unruh’s CPC was clearly the one that they had in mind, as it’s right down the street from the Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls that is the sole provider of abortion in the entire state. The legislation would basically force women to go through Leslee Unruh and her staff before they could have an abortion.  

If you go to Alpha Center and aren’t pregnant, you’re still out of luck, because they certainly don’t offer contraception counseling for those who wish to avoid pregnancy. In addition to being anti-abortion, Unruh is an outspoken anti-contraception activist who claims that the birth control is “playing God” and that women should forsake contraception because Unruh personally would like to see “more babies”. In addition to her CPC, Unruh runs the Abstinence Clearinghouse, which lobbied heavily for abstinence-only education during the Bush administration and now sells materials denouncing contraception, premarital sex (and premarital kissing), and even masturbation, even going so far as to threaten young people who send sexy text messages with claims that doing so causes depression and suicide.   

American Life League. The American Life League is an oldie but a goodie. Just as the Tea Party couldn’t get started without some long-standing far right organizations feeding them radical ideas, ALL led the charge of the hard-right turn of the absolutist anti-choicers. Before personhood amendments were even on the anti-choice radar, ALL was demanding not just an overturn of Roe, but also an overturn of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that legalized contraception for married couples. ALL has an annual anti-Griswold event called “Pills Kills”, where they charmingly argue against legal contraception on the grounds that it supposedly kills marriages. The theory is that sexual encounters that don’t make babies somehow drive couples apart, a theory that the 99% of American women who have used contraception at some point in their lives would find hard to believe.  

ALL doesn’t even bother with claims that they object to contraception spending because of poorly established links to abortion. This is a group that uses scare quotes around the term “reproductive health services”, implying that a woman getting a Pap smear in order to prevent dying of cervical cancer is not receiving legitimate health care, but is instead participating in some kind of anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-God conspiracy. In addition to objecting generally to women’s reproductive health care, ALL fights mandatory vaccination, linking pages that claim falsely that the MMR is made from aborted fetuses, and that these aborted fetuses cause autism. For “pro-life” people, they heavily support increasing the incidence of often-fatal disease such as cervical cancer and preventable childhood illness. 

The entire anti-choice movement of Kansas. Maybe it was because Operation Rescue kept getting away with consorting with violent people and known terrorists. Maybe it’s because they were aided and abetted by district attorney Phill Kline, who abused his power to get the private medical records of abortion patients, which had information in them that miraculously became available to people who had absolutely no right to read them, such as Bill O’Reilly. (Kline’s license to practice law in Kansas has been indefinitely suspended due to his unethical behavior.) Maybe there’s something in the water in Kansas. For whatever reason, the Kansas anti-choice movement brings the concept of extremism to a new level.  

Unlike Ohio RTL, Kansas RTL offers full-throated support to a personhood amendment, as part of their interconnections with American Life League. They claim that this will “restore” personhood to fertilized eggs, but in fact this law would be far more extreme than anything that was in place prior to Roe. The Kansas Coalition for Life continues to brag about the daily harassment they dealt to Dr. George Tiller, even though the harassment campaign culminated in an assassination of Dr. Tiller while he was in church in 2009. Instead of showing remorse for the role they played in painting a target on  his back, KCFL moved on to the next target, Dr. Leroy Carhart, creating fliers with descriptions of his offices in nearby Nebraska with pictures of the doctor prominently displayed. Kansans for Life seems relatively mild compared to these two, but they still support defunding Title X subsidies for contraception. They also trade heavily in conspiracy theories around former pro-choice governor Kathleen Sebelius, accusing her of destroying evidence against Planned Parenthood in one of the various harassment lawsuits that anti-choicers in the state have filed against the organization.  

By ordinary American standards, incrementalists are already radical, with their willingness to make abortion increasingly difficult to get while working towards an eventual overturn of Roe v. Wade. But by anti-choice standards, incrementalists are beginning to look almost moderate, simply because they have patience when it comes to stripping women of basic human rights. Unfortunately for them, the wild-eyed fanatics that want to strip all abortion rights and contraception and do it now are gaining prominence and power, and the fealty of conservative politicians who are afraid of looking “soft” on sexually active women.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

They’ve all been discredited and they are all notorious for lying. How anyone falls for their propaganda and emotional manipulation is beyond me.