PRESS RELEASE: “Erotic Services” Denied: Craigslist and Attorneys General Are Putting Sex Workers At Risk
Repost from Waking Vixen. Please repost/tweet/spread the word!
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This is a collaborative press release – please distribute and repost widely!
Contact:
Dylan Wolfe – Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK), swank@riseup.net
Will Rockwell – $pread Magazine, will@spreadmagazine.org
Audacia Ray – Sex Work Awareness (SWA), aray@sexworkawareness.org
Susan Blake – Prostitutes of New York (PONY), pony@panix.com
Michael Bottoms – Sex Workers Outreach Project – New York City (SWOP-NYC), info@swop-nyc.org
With Craigslist’s recent announcement that its Erotic Services category will be discontinued within the week, hundreds of thousands of erotic service providers will become more vulnerable to dangerous predators. Eliminating erotic listings as Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and others propose will only drive us further underground.
Policing the masseuses, phone workers, pro-dominants, and escorts using Craigslist fails to protect those of us who are coerced into the sex industry. Preventing the use of Craigslist advertisements also eliminates the advantage of screening clients online, which makes for a safer work experience by filtering out potentially dangerous individuals. Furthermore, keeping us offline hinders police investigations of violent crime. In the Boston murder of Julissa Brisman, it was online tracking that enabled the police to identify the suspect. One has to wonder: are the Attorneys General examining the evidence or simply enforcing their moral values?
“Removing the erotic services category from Craigslist does not help prevent violence against escorts and other sex workers. It only pushes me and people like me out of the places where advertising is available,” said Jessica Bloom, a sex worker from Sex Workers Action New York (SWANK). In the face of increasing criminalization, we insist upon respect. As mothers, daughters, brothers, and members of your community, we claim that sex work is real work, work that we are entitled to conduct in safety. As such, we must be accorded the human right of full protection under the law.
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**EDIT** an addendum. I just typed this up in response to a Facebook friend asking what he could do to help. Here are some suggestions:
You can totally help, mostly by speaking up and jumping into the fray!
Legislation about consensual adult sex work (not trafficking, coercion, or child prostitution) mostly happens on the state level – since you’re in NY, you can find your assembly person here: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/ – write to him or her and tell them how you feel about the risks created and perpetuated by continued criminalizing of sex work and cracking down on advertising
Write letters to the editor of newspapers that publish misguided pieces about how the elimination of craigslist erotic services will “help” women
Comment on blog posts and online articles (if you’ve got the stomach for it!)
And check out the very excellent and thorough reports on research done by the Sex Workers Project to arm yourself with statistics
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Quote of the day
From commenter violet in a thread at PunkAssBlog (about Sex 2.0, coincidentally enough!)
The thing about staring / oogling is that yes, it’s mostly part of the background, but it’s part of a substantially violent background. We live in a culture where women are constantly told, “be vigilant! he might be a rapist!,” and however problematic we think those exhortations are, they’re in the water, and getting stared at or ogled, particularly by strange men, carries this low-level implicit threat of violence, particularly if you’re a trans woman or a woman of color.
I know this feeling all too well and it’s something that’s damn near impossible to describe to a man in a way that they will really understand, if they are not already operating from a pro-feminist or feminist-allied (a.k.a., non-asshole) stance.
This really gets to the crux of experiential vs. vicarious appreciation of a social movement. Because the feeling violet describes above, the social context in which ogling/staring occurs, and wherein men will complain, “What, I was just looking!” – it’s something that most men just don’t get. And they can’t get it, in that first-person way, because they haven’t experienced it. What they can do is listen to women, believe us and not try to discount our lived experiences. In other words, they can not be That Guy.
Concerned about violent crime in ATL?
Then be sure to check out this event at Charis tonight!
Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative Dialogue
Thursday, March 12, 7:30-9:00pm
Over the past three years, a collaborative of Atlanta based organizers have been building a framework of transformative justice focused on transforming state, communal and interpersonal response to violence. From local neighborhood violence to international genocidal violence, from Gaza & the West Bank to intimate partner & family violence, the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative (ATJC) seeks to transform the responses and conditions that perpetuate all forms of social control and violence. Join ATJC organizers Mia Mingus, Cara Page, Sonali Sadequee & Stephanie Guilloud at Charis as they discuss ways to engage communities through transformative justice and deepen cross-movement conversations within southern based strategies.
I just now found out about this, and as such won’t be able to make it tonight. But I can assure you these four ladies are all kinds of awesome, and the ATJC is the kind of organization I can get behind. I would encourage ATAC folks to attend and participate.
Quote of the day
From mythago, commenting on an otherwise deeply disturbing thread on Hugo Schwyzer’s blog where some commenters are actually defending Chris Brown.
We justify battering by pretending that grown men are like two-year-olds; aw, he can’t use his words, so he gets frustrated and takes a swing. And anyway she probably goaded him into it. In a previous era entire sitcoms were built around jokes about this.
Hugo’s post was excellent, but the comments are just scary. Not that I’m really surprised, though; anyone who says we live in a “post-feminist” world is full of it.
Friday night bytes… har, har
Lots of stuff in my head. I’ve been itching to write a long-ass blog post since last night, but I haven’t had the time nor do I think I’d be able to find the right words to really convey what I mean. I have a post in draft mode w/ all my notes to self saved for reference, in case I ever do write that post. (I also have a post in draft mode that’s been there since September, but let’s not get into that.) I’m halfway tempted to just put it up as-is, even though it would make absolutely no sense. It’s all sentence fragments and typos and weird abbreviations that make sense to no one but me.
But the truth is I’ve been bothered all day by the EAV shooting that I wrote about yesterday. I spilled it all out to Rusty at lunch and hopefully I made more sense than if I’d been writing. I even used an analogy to 9/11, and even though there should probably be a Godwin’s Law for that, in this case it fits.
I just feel sick about the whole thing and the way people are reacting – all these reactions that are making me use the word STRAWMAN, which I loathe. It makes me want to withdraw from humanity. If this is really how people think then how can I feel safe around them?
Might come back to this later and finish the fabled post. We’ll see. For now, there’s a twisted knot of sickness in my gut that won’t go away. I’m going to try to ignore it by changing the subject for now.
~*~
I continue to be paranoid (not really the right word, because it is a justified concern) about losing my nearly 7 years of blog posts to the bowels of the internet. I want this record of my life, such as it is, to be around for a long time. Recently I read about a woman who periodically makes hard copies of her blog posts for a specific period of time through lulu.com. That’s a damn good idea. For a while I was printing out all my posts and saving them in a big binder, but it got to be too much work and unmanageable. (“Admitted that my blog had become unmanageable…”) Plus – and this would still be an issue w/ the lulu.com solution – it doesn’t preserve the comment threads. But I suppose preserving the posts w/ no comments is better than preserving nothing at all. I might look into this. Someone really needs to form a start-up with venture capital from angel investors (more Bingo words!) that specializes in multi-format, redundant blog backups – NOT just copying stuff to whatever the latest form of magnetic storage is and being done w/ it.
~*~
Back to serious stuff for a minute – another thing I want to write about, in conjunction w/ the rest of my thoughts on the EAV shooting, is the false concept of the innocent victim and how it’s a red herring anyway. But I’m definitely too sleepy to get into that right now. Consider this a personal, mental bookmark.
~*~
Speaking of bookmarks, did anyone else notice that del.icio.us now redirects to delicious.com? Maybe it’s been that way for a while and I just wasn’t observant. Did that happen after Yahoo bought them? (Yahoo did buy them, right? Sometimes I can’t keep track of who’s zooming buying whom.)
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Tuesday is the inauguration and originally I was planning to work from home. Rusty is working from home that day because he has an appointment in the morning, so he’ll work 12-8 from home. I figured I’d work from home so I could have the inauguration coverage on in the background and just work on the couch w/ my laptop. But today they sent out an email saying they’ll have live coverage on the “big screen” (read: conference room projection screens) and free lunch! I’m sure it’ll be crowded but the free lunch always gets me. I’ll be going into the office.
God speed to those of you who are going to DC – including Crystal and Dominque, who are staying in Philadelphia because that’s the closest room they could find. I say, better y’all than me. Being in a crowd of that many people does NOT sound fun to me, even though I understand on a theoretical level wanting to be a part of history. I’ll just enjoy the history from the conference room at work w/ a plate of free food, thanks.
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Today our Realtor scheduled our closing, so barring any catastrophes next week (and you better believe I’ll be emailing EVERYONE on Tuesday to “follow up”), as of January 29 in the late morning/early afternoon, Rusty and I will be homeowners! It’s so hard to believe. Not sure how I’m supposed to be reacting, but it’s really weird. Every so often it’ll hit me and I’ll realize that this is our house and we can do whatever we want – this happens w/ a start, like one of those “OMG where’s my purse??” moments, only to then remind yourself you left it in [x] place on purpose. We can paint the walls whatever color we want and no one can tell us otherwise or charge us a fee to paint them back! We can drill holes in the ceiling and floor to mount a permanent pole and there’s no security deposit to lose! The list goes on.
And indeed, one of the first things we plan on doing, before we move all our furniture over, is painting. So we have to think of colors! Rusty might paint the kitchen Tennessee orange, which despite my obligatory protestations, I’m actually okay with. We know for a fact we’re going to have a yellow room. Other than that, we haven’t decided.
The order of events will go like this:
- Install security system
- Have the pest control people come out for the works
- Put sealant/protectant (whatever you call it) on deck so rainwater doesn’t damage it
- Paint various rooms
- Put up lots of birdfeeders, nestboxes, and birdbaths in the backyard. Also plant shrubs that produce berries that birds like to eat.
Initial heads-up: we’ll be selling our washer and dryer because the house comes with a new set. I’ll also be selling my pole/stage. We can give you our microwave for free because the house comes w/ one and I doubt this microwave is worth much in terms of money, but it functions just fine. If you want any of these things, let me know. We also have some unraveling wicker chairs, and you can have those too if you want them. I was figuring they’d go to the Goodwill donation center.
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It’s cold outside and we have the little space heater set up next to the bird cage. I have it on the almost-lowest setting. The first night we ran it, I had a nightmare that it cooked Puff and Stuff to death in their sleep. It was awful and I hate that I even mentioned it because now I’m thinking about it again. I’m really concerned about it not being too hot for them, while at the same time keeping them warm.
For those who are curious, here are pictures of Puff and Stuff. Sometimes I can’t get over how adorable they are.
I apologize for the state of the perch Stuff is standing on in that picture. Rusty and I are very responsible birdkeepers and we clean their cage and perches regularly.
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Rusty is sitting next to me on the couch playing a game of NCAA Football on his X-Box, and I just looked up and this status bar thing said “Commencing graduation ceremony,” and then 2 seconds later it moved on to the next thing. Ha.
~*~
It’s a three-day weekend so maybe I’ll finally get off my duff and write some damn emails. I feel like a bad friend. :P I should get over that, because we’re all constantly connected thanks to Twitter and Facebook, but still. God.
Okay, turning off the ramble spigot for now and hitting the sack. Commence adding a million tags which take up 3 or 4 lines.
More Saturday night stuff (complete withOUT proofreading)
Woo! Time for another packed-full-of-too-much-stuff, non-SEO-friendly, old-school-blogging post!
Speaking of SEO, Rusty and I were talking yesterday about how everyone wants high search engine rankings, and they’ll invest in all the whiz-bang SEO stuff but they won’t do the one thing that really matters: making sure anyone else knows their site exists so they’ll get some incoming links. Is that ironic? Or just unfortunate?
And that reminds of me of the scene in Reality Bites where Winona Ryder’s character (a journalism major who was valedictorian of her class) is asked, at a job interview, to define irony, and she stumbles over her words and can’t come up with a definition. Then she goes home and tells Ethan Hawke’s character what happened and complains that no one can define irony anyway, and he immediately defines it as when the actual meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning. When I first saw the movie, I remember thinking that that definition sounded awfully fancy, but when you think about it, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Now, searching webster.com, I see they include the same definition:
Main Entry: iro·ny
Pronunciation: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural iro·nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler
Date: 15021: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other’s false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony
2 a: the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b: a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c: an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony tragic irony
To me it seems like 3a is the definition that makes the most sense.
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But enough of that. The big news is, re: the house… we are officially under contract!! We have binding agreement as of Thursday. This morning, we had our home inspection, termite inspection, mold test (will get results by Tuesday), and appraisal. The appraiser was so stereotypical. He struck me as someone out of a 1960s movie. But he was apparently impressed enough with the house to actually speak to us and say as much. Ha! As for the home inspection, it went well. The inspector found a few issues (naturally), but most of them are small things that the workers should have done in the first place during the renovation.
Now that I’m not quite as nervous about jinxing the sale, I’ll post a few more photos:
There’s also an old wooden swingset in the backyard that’s super cool.
I’m so excited! Thank you to everyone who has @’ed or DM’ed on Twitter about the house. I really need to write emails to people. I don’t want to become one of those people who constantly whines on being soooo behind on email, blogs, etc. But I think I’ve reached a tipping point where it’s all getting to be too much to manage. More on that later, though. The point: Thanks for all the well-wishes about the house! I’m going to be a home-owner, holy crap!
~*~
I don’t know how to write about this without upsetting someone, because regardless of my intent I know emotions are (100% understandably) a bit raw right now. Yet I still feel the need to speak, and I admit I’m doing it after Karsh did the hard work of speaking first. Ever since I heard about the vigil at The Standard and the formation of the Facebook group against rising crime in Atlanta, something about it didn’t sit well with me. Karsh articulated it well:
Yes, citizens in Atlanta need to feel safe. But I get the overwhelming perception from people I’ve talked to and read about that because this happened in East Atlanta, things must really be out of hand. I’d disagree with that. What if this happened in Bankhead or East Point or Buckhead? Would the public outrage be this great or this social-media oriented? Why start organizing now? Because it happened at a familiar haunt? I can almost smell a Twitter hashtag forming. (I’m partially kidding about that.)
I don’t disbelieve Maigh’s sentiment, and yet the fact is, we haven’t seen this type/level of outrage over other murders. To me it kind of smells like when I call a guy on sexist behavior and he insists, “I’d treat a man the same way!” Well, we don’t know that for a fact, now do we? And it’s moot anyway, because you haven’t treated a man this way. (Yet another clumsy analogy [I'm all about those lately] but I can’t think of a better one right now.)
Note this is not about accusing individuals of being “racists,” as in, a noun. People always latch onto that kind of thing and it derails discussions, because once again racism is cast as something that individuals perpetrate against other individuals, and you are either “a racist” or you aren’t; rather than racism being acknowledged as the systemic, ingrained, oft-unnoticed (by white people) issue it really is. Oh and if someone didn’t mean something in a racist way then it’s not racist. Except, that’s the entire point.
There are systemic issues here that have to be addressed, and if they’re not addressed, nothing will change. Yes, the cutting of the budget and reduction in police force is part of the problem. But far too many people are either ignorant of, or willfully ignoring, the deeper issue.
I’m sure someone will come over here and comment that I’m being disrespectful of John Henderson’s memory and that it’s not the appropriate time and that I’m just being an asshole. If they do, I understand. As I said, emotions are raw right now, and maybe it’s not the right time – but then, I wonder when the right time will be. I know what it feels like to deal with the loss of someone close to you, and the desire for “rational discourse” on a blog FFS is pretty much priority zero. So I understand and I’m sure I would feel the same way if it were my friend who had been murdered. But I just wanted to say my piece.
~*~
I admit I am a bit annoyed with this discussion of sex-positivity at Ren’s. Obviously I respect Ren’s right to like or dislike any terms, and to identify however she chooses! I get frustrated, though, when sex-positivity is constantly portrayed as meaning “I like sex.” Too many people have taken too many steps to explain why this is not the case for the myth to continue to be put forward. I know it’s a hard one to fight against because the marketing world has co-opted the term and applied it to things like fashion magazines, expensive shoes, and men’s body spray. As I said in the comments at Ren’s:
The sex-positive feminism wikipedia page and sex-positive wikipedia page actually have a much more detailed history of the term than the about.com article. I’m always a bit wary about linking to those pages though, because sometimes they get edited by anti-sex-positive people with an ulterior motive.
Anyway, personally, I’m not interested in debating the meaning of the term. It’s been spelled out pretty clearly in many places. For me, it’s part and parcel of feminism because it centers women’s sexual health and the way women’s sexuality has been pathologized under patriarchy. I provided links in order to help clarify some of the history behind the term; most people are not familiar w/ the history and unfortunately the way we most often hear it now is in the co-opted marketing sense, where it’s been twisted around so that it stands in for “anything vaguely related to sex, at all.” Often it’s applied to things that are completely the *opposite* of true sex-positivity.
Again, for me, I find that the term fits, and I will continue to self-identify as a sex-positive feminist. Everyone else is free to do what they want, of course!
See also my page of sex-positive feminism reference material, especially Queer Dewd’s post from two years ago on the matter. I (or anyone else) will never be able to say it better than she did.
~*~
This has been saved in my Bloglines for weeks, and I’m not sure what I can say about it, because you just need to check it out: $pread’s excellent cultural analysis of anti-trafficking posters. Seriously, read it. And tell me those images aren’t fucked up.
What we’re fighting
I reblogged this on my Tumblr, but it’s important enough to cross-post here as well.
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Via Rachel:
If sex worker-hating commenters are future of the law, we’re all fucked
I have more to say about this, as a law school escapee (is it worth $250,000 or whatever I’ve had to pay in loans? hell yes), as someone kinky who gets off on having her face slapped on occasion, as a feminist, but no time at the moment. Got there via Feministe, and even though Jill tells the 2L to ignore the evil commenters, I can’t quite do it. It horrifies me that that level of hatred is what is filling our law schools. I’m a few days late to this story and maybe that’s what I should expect, but it makes me ill – and it’s not just the commenters. Above the Law could do with a semblance of awareness of BSDM and sex work.
I’m talking about as far as I got, anonymous guest asshole #28 – I’m not normally violet but I would love to kick that person in the balls (and not in a kinky way at all):
Is this dumb bitch joking?
Listen you fucking whore – and that’s what you are – a filthy fucking whore. You’re lucky we don’t live in a society where you would be stoned to death. And you have the nerve to ask for your law license, or forgiveness?
Puhleeze.
You knew exactly what you were doing – whore. And you got what you deserved. If I ever see your disgusting whore ass in a courtroom I’ll spit in yoru face.
And the folks from $pread Magazine add:
what a way to celebrate the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
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:(
This is what we’re up against. This is the type of ignorance and hate the sex workers’ rights movement and sex-positive feminism is fighting every day.
Sadly such sentiments are not the territory of a few crazies. This is the prevailing attitude, even among otherwise intelligent and self-identified progressive people.
Quote of the day
From that same thread at Octogalore’s, this time from commenter Suzie:
Nooses have come to symbolize lynching of African-Americans. But there isn’t one such symbol to represent the rape and murder of women. It’s usually represented by a man grabbing a woman. Perhaps some men see Favreau “only” grabbing a woman’s breast. But others of us are creeped out by the idea of two men grabbing a woman, when we know they don’t like her and would like to put her down.
Some of us have had the experience of a man grabbing us, with us not knowing what he intended to do next.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
As I mentioned a few days ago, today is the 10th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. As I write this the candlelight vigil is about to start at the Georgia State Capitol. I’m not going because it’s the first day of this cleanse and I don’t yet feel like leaving the house. But I did want to link to some good posts about the day.
From Sexual Ambiguities:
Transgender Day of Remembrance is not a once-a-year deal. You don’t show up for services, murmur “lest we forget” and then promptly forget for the rest of the year. Today lives within us, because we cannot afford to forget.
Still. Today most of all, we remember those who were killed. Because we die violently, unmemorialised, and are mocked after our deaths.
Because the world sees us disposable, less than human (and who can mourn that?). Many of the dead lost their lives because they were trans women of colour, doubly disposable.
Who would mourn a thing, a that, an it?
Few will respect our lives as they were, and few will mourn them, and they must be mourned. Their lives were meaningful, their names and genders were real and important, and they lost their lives from hate.
Today we hold on to some memory, even if it only be a name and a photo, so that they are not as erased as completely as their killers would have.
From Butterfly Cauldron:
I will never understand what motivates someone to kill another human being when their life is not in danger. I will never understand what it is inside someone that makes them pick up a weapon instead of simply walking away. I will never understand how human life can have so little value to some people. But I know that there are people in this world, far too many people, who can kill. Who can pick up a gun or a knife or a rock and strike out. For what? Because someone doesn’t meet your expectations? Because they live their life in a way you don’t approve of? Which god tells you that you can do that? Which god gives you permission? And how can the world, how can so many otherwise decent people, simply nod and say ‘well, what did you expect? Not guilty!’?
From Dented Blue Mercedes:
The value of a life is sometimes not much, if the victim is transgender. The same is also sometimes true when the victim is gay — the event is not intended to erase that or to proclaim one community more victimized than the other. The responsibility is invariably placed at the feet of the victim. Even many in the transgender community associated Angie Zapata’s death with deception and trumpeted mandatory disclosure when dating — something that can be just as risky.
And the blaming of the victim and minimization of the crime goes much further than panic defenses. There is the trial by media to consider. Newsweek examined the case of Lawrence King, a 14-year-old who was shot to death by a classmate in an Oxnard, California classroom, and commented, “Larry, being Larry, pushed his rights as far as he could. During lunch, he’d sidle up to the popular boys’ table and say in a high-pitched voice, ‘Mind if I sit here?’ In the locker room, where he was often ridiculed, he got even by telling the boys, “You look hot,” while they were changing, according to the mother of a student.” Hardly anything was said about the shooter and his background. As Alex Blaze wrote, it was almost as if to say, “If only that mean gender nonconforming boy had left Brandon alone, he wouldn’t have had to have killed him.”
And as is typical, the accompanying headlines are often glib, similarly-blaming tag-lines, like “Fooled John Stabbed Bronx Tranny” (Sanesha Stewart; link now gone), or “Police Hunt for 19-year old Suspect in Transvestite Murder Inquiry” (Silvana Berisha). The articles are filled with repetitive references to transsexuals as “man dressed as woman” or “hypermasculine female” — anything that gives good headline. And invariably, they always insist on faithfully reporting only the birth name, occasionally mentioning the name that the transsexual lived by as though it were an illusory alias (often in “quotes”) — even in instances where there had been a legal name change. All of this emphasizes the suggestion of deception, sensationalizes transsexuality as some inscrutible and perverse sexual compulsion and attempts to erase and invalidate a transsexual’s identity.
AngryBrownButch has an excellent list of ways to help.
And, more link round-ups (how recursive is this?!) can be found at Bird of Paradox and Feministe.
Quote of the day (or at least the morning) – A MUST-READ
From Kate at Shapely Prose, via Jaded Hippy:
You, dear male reader, are totally not one of those men. I know this, and I appreciate it. I really do. But here’s where all this victimy girl shit concerns you:
- every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;
- every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to why a woman’s upset;
- every time you say any woman–Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Phyllis Schlafly, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, any of us–”deserves whatever she gets” for being so detestable, instead of acknowledging there are things that no human being deserves and only women get;
- every time you joke about how you’ll never let your daughter out of the house or anywhere near a man, ’cause ha ha, that’ll solve everything;
- every time you say, “I don’t understand why thousands of women are insisting this is some kind of woman thing”;
- every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;
- every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…
You are missing an opportunity to help stop the bad guys.
You’re missing an opportunity to stop the real misogynists, the fucking sickos, the ones who really, truly hate women just for being women. The ones whose ranks you do not belong to and never would. The ones who might hurt women you love in the future, or might have already.
‘Cause the thing is, you and the guys you hang out with may not really mean anything by it when you talk about crazy bitches and dumb sluts and heh-heh-I’d-hit-that and you just can’t reason with them and you can’t live with ‘em can’t shoot ‘em and she’s obviously only dressed like that because she wants to get laid and if they can’t stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen and if they can’t play by the rules they don’t belong here and if they can’t take a little teasing they should quit and heh heh they’re only good for fucking and cleaning and they’re not fit to be leaders and they’re too emotional to run a business and they just want to get their hands on our money and if they’d just stop overreacting and telling themselves they’re victims they’d realize they actually have all the power in this society and white men aren’t even allowed to do anything anymore and and and…
I get that you don’t really mean that shit. I get that you’re just talking out your ass.
But please listen, and please trust me on this one: you have probably, at some point in your life, engaged in that kind of talk with a man who really, truly hates women–to the extent of having beaten and/or raped at least one. And you probably didn’t know which one he was.
And that guy? Thought you were on his side.
As long as we live in a culture where the good guys sometimes sound just like the misogynists, the misogynists are never going to get the message that they are not normal and that most people–strong, successful men included–do not hate women.
The entire post is a must-read. I couldn’t quote the whole damn thing because it’s too long. But I did quote slightly more than Jaded Hippy did.
Seriously. Read it. Several times, preferably.