Friday, April 15, 2011

Heinous victim-blaming, slut-shaming crap.

Someone on my FB page asked for my thoughts on this article, in which the reprehensible "No means yes, yes means anal" rape apologism at Yale is blamed on the sexual license argued for by feminists. Yes, that's right. It's all the uppity bitches' fault.

A group of mostly female students is suing Yale University for allowing a “sexually hostile environment” to exist on campus.

The women, of course, have a point. After all, when frat boys are allowed to parade around the old campus chanting “No Means Yes,” or to hold up signs that read “We Love Yale Sluts,” I guess you could say that’s a sexually hostile environment.

But may I ask a question? What did you expect?


The rage, it knows no bounds.

I think this man is an asshole who is bitter on behalf of all jilted men that women are fighting for the right to fuck, but not with him. I mean, look at this.

The disgusting, intimidating behavior at Yale -- and on many college campuses -- is a classic example of the post-modern impasse. For nearly 50 years, academia, the feminist movement, and post-modern society have embraced sexual freedom as the ultimate good.

And the feminists led the way. They wanted to control their bodies; to be free from any consequences of sexual license.


He completely misses the point that women want to control their bodies, even though it's right there in his own description of their goals. The goal of feminism was never that women's bodies ought to be treated like public property; that is in fact the PRECISE WORLDVIEW that feminism is still fighting.

This asshole seems to think it's perfectly natural and inevitable that uppity women who have the nerve to do what they like with their sexuality should be treated like disposable whores, there for the taking by any man.

As far as I can tell, Colson literally CANNOT envision a world in which female sexuality is not controlled by somebody other than the woman herself. He presents an utterly insane and backward choice for women--either you let Jesus own your sexuality, or it will lay there unclaimed and men will just rape you all the time because you don't belong to anybody.

"Does the Christian view of sex promote intimidation, harassment, and brutish behavior like we’re seeing at Yale, or does it promote moral and ethical virtue?"

By treating female sexuality as something which must always be in the possession and under the control of a man, it certainly does promote intimidation, harassment, and brutish behavior. By treating this as the natural outgrowth of women thinking they can just walk around like they're human beings with a right to do things other than powerspawn babies for their husband and Jesus, he reinforces the slut-shaming and depersonalization of women who fuck that is the very basis of the rape culture we live in.

This man is an asshole. He is an asshole, he is an asshole, he is an asshole, and if you want the most obvious indication that he is an asshole, he is blaming feminism for the culture of degradation and rape on college campuses INSTEAD OF BLAMING THE RAPISTS. Why? Well, because boys will be boys, and it's always the woman's fault if she gets raped. She had to have done something to ask for it, right? Like demand the right to vote, to have or deny sex, to hold a job, to decide not to have children. The natural outgrowth of the fight for women to have these things is not RAPE. That is the natural outgrowth of SOMEONE BEING A RAPIST.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Sucker Punch

Okay, so Sucker Punch.

Yeah, I liked it. There are a couple of reviews linked here which are super spoilery, so they're mainly for people who have already seen it. These are not what you want to read if you're trying to figure out whether you're going to like it. Go find a review that's written for that.

The short, spoiler-friendly version is this:

I am not the final voice on all things feminist. I am not a major authority on women's empowerment (at least, not any more than any other woman), and I am not anybody's fun police. That said? I am probably the loudest, least compromising, angriest ballbusting feminist that most of my friends know, and I am this way because that is a correct thing to be. I've been accused of being oversensitive and humorless and mean, simply for paying attention to what a particular song, movie, book, or television show is saying about me and mine.

At this point I generally trust myself to notice if there's some fucked up woman-hating bullshit happening.

I was, in fact, prepared for fucked up woman-hating bullshit, because in the previews it's basically FETISH MODELS IN TRENCH WARFARE VERSUS CLOCKWORK ZOMBIES AND ORCS WITH MINIGUNS AND BATTLEMECHA AND A KATANA WHILE WHITE RABBIT PEAKS and frankly, anybody who walked in expecting a brilliant history-making bit of cinema after that was a total fool.

That said? I was pleasantly surprised. I apologize for demanding that you take me at my word here rather than reading a great and involved explanation as to why, but I don't know how to do that without spoiling you except to tell you what I walked in with and how that had changed by the time I walked out.

If you have already seen it, here are the reviews. Did I give a spoiler warning? I hate spoilers myself, so consider yourself duly warned.

This is a good review that gives a more thoughtful look at it than 'why are they wearing fetish boots ugh this is for horny guys' which is apparently what a lot of objections to it seem to boil down to.

Dreamwidth user Silveradept also posted this review of Sucker Punch posted on the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center website. Yeah, you read that right.