White people, do not do this

This past weekend, that hateful “March for Life,” wherein right wing organizations and schools bus people in to DC to march for the “right” of men to control the lives of anyone born with an uterus, took place concurrently with the Indigenous Peoples March.

One of the schools that sent teens and chaperones to march this year was Covington Catholic High School, an all-male private school in Kentucky. There are long and terrible threads on twitter¹ with personal stories of survivors from both the school and the all-girls school across the street, which Covington assholes have nicknamed “whore school.” Charming boys, no?

At one point, a fairly large group of kids from Covington was facing off with four older members of another hate group, the Black Hebrew Israelites, and things were tense and likely heading to violence, when Omaha Elder Nathan Phillips, on his way to closing the Indigenous Peoples March at the Lincoln Memorial, intervened, placing himself between the two groups–and becoming the target of the white kids’ ire, once they were deprived of their original target.

There is video² and a plethora of articles about this harassment. There are interviews with witnesses AND with Nathan Phillips. Go google them.

There are also people defending the “boys” or rather, specifically, the white male teen wearing a MAGA hat, smirking with hateful disdain to the face of an elderly Native man.

Little girls grow up.

In January this year (yes, that’s like a century ago, but bear with me), over 160 women, teens and girls came forward to confront Larry Nassar, who for DECADES had abused them, while being shielded by the organization that should have protected all those young girls from becoming teens and adult women marked by sexual abuse.

One of those speaking was Kyle Stephens, who said (in part):

A loving god

(I would advise any religious/devout readers to skip this one)

Today, as I was driving home from work, letting the mind wander while waiting for the traffic light to change, I noticed something about the car tags in this here hellhole that I hadn’t noticed before. You have the state in smallish letters, the the tag number in LARGE letters, then you have…”IN GOD WE TRUST” in smaller capital letters.

And I realized why I don’t.

Trust in god, that is.

Thoughts and prayers, and farting to the wind

(Originally posted to a restricted section at MyMedia, so I can’t link)

School shooting in the UK (Dunbane, 1996): guns banned. Guess how many school shootings since? Guess how many ‘regular’ massacres using guns since?

Massacre in Australia (Port Arthur, 1996): guns banned. Guess how many massacres using guns since?

Side effect in both places: the numbers of suicides reduced drastically, partly because most other ways to kill oneself give the suicide enough time to fear pain, to reflect, etc. that many/most call for help before it’s too late, or get other help instead of trying.

208 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999: oh, well, mmm…erm…
58 people killed at a night club in Orlando in 2016: oh, well, drinking, and sex, and homosexuals, and…
58 people killed and over EIGHT HUNDRED INJURED while attending a concert in Las Vegas: so tragic, but…well, the second amendment…and freedom…and that’s just the crazies…and…well…nothing can be done
Mass killings by guns (where at least four people are killed by someone using a gun) have increased steadily for years in the US, and gee, wow, the majority of the people killing people with guns are white AND have a history of domestic violence, but let’s point the finger at mental health instead of misogyny, while at the same time eliminating restrictions to own guns for people with mental health issues.

Because ‘freedom’ and ‘the constitution’ and ‘the sacred right to bear arms’ amirite?

FUCK ALL THAT SHIT AND FUCK THAT ATTITUDE.

edited to add: not even two days later, we have reports of a community college locked down for reports of possible gunfire, on the other side of the continent. February 14, Parkland, Florida.

February 17, Des Moines, Washington. update: apparently, this one was a false alarm. Absolutely believable, but untrue.

Why is the romance genre inherently feminist?

(Originally posted to the Community section of MyMedia forum)

Because is written mostly* by women for (mostly*) other women, centering mostly* women’s needs, and pleasure, and joy.

And that, sadly (because women are just over half the human population of the planet, and still the immense majority of stories center on the male experience), it’s inherently feminist.

“Romance reminds us that women want, and it celebrates this fact. How sad that that’s subversive, but it is. Also subversive: the idea of women reading books that are escapist delights instead of “bettering” themselves via the male-adjudicated canon or, honestly, doing housework or tending to their kids. Romance novels are political because of, not despite, the fact that they are usually really fucking fun.”

(source: Who Gets a Happily Ever After)

* mostly and not all, because, you know who has embraced genre romance and the opportunity for positive representation it offers? Minorities, particularly those in the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Because the idea of joy and love that triumph over the miseries of life is necessary for those to whom the world is already unwelcoming, simply by virtue of being

~ * ~

Please note that the piece linked, at the time I post this, states that Jules Cassidy, from Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooters series, is a SEAL. He’s not; he was written, from his first appearance on, as an out and proud FBI agent. I’ve contacted the author of the piece, and I hope there will be an edit on this at some point. But if not, now you know.

Biology, social conditioning, sex and pain

(Originally posted to the Community forum at MyMedia)

So.

#MeToo.

Women talking for a few weeks (perhaps just over a month?*) about their experiences with different levels of sexual violence/assault/harassment.

Lo and behold, to most women’s sorrow, yet utter lack of surprise, it turns out the most of the women we know have suffered some sort of sexual violence, and sometimes several different kinds, sometimes more than once over the course of their lives, sometimes at the hands of several different men.

And the natural response, from #notallmen, is to express their dismay that all this outpouring of female suffering…will make their dating lives harder.

That men will become afraid of dating, because “accusations of sexual abuse/domestic partner violence ruin lives!” (I can off the top of my head name at least an even dozen of male celebrities whose professional lives have suffered NO HARM, regardless of how many people bring receipts–hello, Woody Allen, Johnny Depp, Chris Brown, Casey Affleck, Donald Trump, Floyd Maywather, Kobe Bryant, Azis Ansari, Mike Tyson, James Franco, Al Franken, Joel Kramer, Kevin Spacey).

That mostly women accuse men to ‘gain something’ or ‘for revenge’ (the ultimate whine on that vein: Larry Nassar’s letter to the sentencing judge quoting ‘hell hath no fury’).

And, the icing on the WTAF cake: that women should consider/understand/learn about how men cannot control themselves because ‘biology.’ That this is ‘just how men are.’ The pseudo grown up version of ‘boys will be boys,’ if you will.

So, let’s talk biology, social conditioning, and pain.

“What about the meeeeeeeennnnnzzzzzz???????”

Originally posted to the Community section at MyMedia

“Why do you harp so much on all the injustices done to women? What about the MEEEEEENNNNN??????”

Meet Jessica Eaton, who runs a charity exclusively focused on men’s mental health (in the UK), getting zero criticism from either men or women for this, yet gets everything from “you fat c*nt feminist” to rape and death threats for her advocacy against blaming women and girl victims of violence.