Thanksgiving, Life and Death, and Anti-feminism
My family is trying to talk me into coming back to life. They liked having me alive — I guess it’s some kind of love thing — and with the holidays approaching they’ve been pressuring me pretty heavily to climb back into the ol’ meat suit. My mother keeps calling me up in the Smoking Lounge, talking about Thanksgiving dinner and Molly and Christmas trees and the various advantages to being alive as opposed to dead in a tent with an ex-parrot who has a pumpkin for a head.
Last night I got online again and cruised around the blogulofeminewsosphere, trying to reacquaint myself with the world. Having spent the past several weeks in a kind of self-induced psychotic break, it was a bit of a shock to be plunged back into the harsh glare:
* A gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia is sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail because she was out without a male guardian. Her husband protests the ruling yet still claims that Saudi society — in which women have virtually no legal rights and are the wards and chattel of their male relatives — is “very respectful of women.”
* Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., no doubt jealous of the Saudi success story, are brainwashing their daughters from birth to think of themselves as the property of their fathers.
* Some freak in Texas editorializes that the wearing of pants and unveiled hair has “led to the slow whorification of ladyhood.”
* An 11-year-old gang-rape victim in Georgia (U.S.) is accused of being a lying slut.
* Rape victims in Hungary are denied justice by courts and police who maintain that women who are raped are really just prostitutes or (you guessed it) lying sluts.
* Western expatriate sexist creeps in Moscow are thrilled to discover that “women’s lib never happened here.” Indeed: violence against women in Russia is so pervasive that 70% of married women are abused by their husbands. Political will and funding to deal with the problem are virtually non-existent. Moscow, a city of 10 million, does not have a single shelter for battered women.
* At Jets games in New York male fans form gauntlets and demand that any passing woman expose her breasts; the women are spat on and pelted with beer bottles for refusing. (One woman who cooperated was subsequently threatened with arrest for indecent behavior — yes, she was reprimanded, not the hundreds of men surrounding her.)
* The Australian teenagers who gang-raped a girl and then sold the video of it as homemade pornography are released without serving any jail time.
* The rape nightmare in the Congo continues unabated; many hospitalized victims are so badly injured their internal plumbing no longer works.
* A feminist activist in Iran is sentenced to be whipped and imprisoned as punishment for advocating women’s rights.
* Less than 60% of Americans believe unequivocally that women should play an equal role with men in public life.
* Maureen Dowd refers to Hillary Clinton as a dominatrix, Chris Matthews calls her a she-devil, and a McCain barnacle calls her a bitch. (I believe “lying slut” is reserved for rape victims.)
* The U.N. reports that most of the 800 million illiterate adults in the world are women; most of the 100 million children not in school are girls. Women earn three-quarters of what men do and their unpaid labor would, if calculated, equal trillions of dollars. Women hold only 17% of the parliamentary seats in the world, but they constitute 70% of the people living in poverty.
Yep, the world is still a shit pie for women. And that’s by no means a systematic survey; it’s just what caught my eye in the hour or two I spent getting caught up around the tubes. My reaction is twofold:
1. I want to go back into the tent with Raoul.
2. We need more feminism in the world. A lot more.
On the first point I need not elaborate; long-time readers will have observed that I have a tendency to disappear (into a tent, the Smoking Lounge, France, what have you) when The Horror Of It All starts to be too much.
I don’t need to belabor the second point either, but I do have something to add. Look again at that list of news items. That’s why I have no tolerance for anti-feminists. None. Zero. Feminism is the belief that women are human; it is the movement to secure their full human rights. It’s about stopping the rapes and the lashings and the mutilations and the oppression and the abuse. If you think that the best way for you to spend your time in this world is by working against feminism, then I’ve got no time for you.
And that goes for all anti-feminists, whatever the variety. MRAs with miniature dicks? Check. Christian fundamentalists who think Saudi Arabia sounds like Big Rock Candy Mountain? Check. So-called liberal dudes who become annoyed every time they’re asked to consider women’s rights? Check.
And the women, too, alas — though I don’t mean those true believers who have been Stockholmed into accepting their own God-ordained inferiority. No, I mean the women who cynically capitalize on the popularity of anti-feminism for the sake of their own self-aggrandizement. (You know the shtick — from Ann Coulter to Wendy McElroy to Toni Bentley to the trolls who haunt the blogosphere posing as “feminist critics.”) Since they are also women under patriarchy I usually hold my fire, but do I have time for them? That would be no, Bob.
So the next time some anti-feminist goblin shows up here and I promptly zap its tiny ass into a smoldering cinder, you’ll know why. I got no time for those people.
Happy Thanksgiving.
17 Responses to “Thanksgiving, Life and Death, and Anti-feminism”
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Infidel says:
Happy Thanksgiving Violet, I’d give you a list of food to think about but you know the shtick, besides; my mom’s cooking/your mom’s cooking. One thing that is looking up is there’s an entire cable channel or two devoted entirely to food and cooking, an entire cable channel devoted to the weather- and those two things are probably the last things on a thirteen year old white anglo saxon boys mind.
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:50 pm EST -
The Ghost of Violet says:
Happy Thanksgiving to you too. My family’s feast is postponed until Saturday, the earliest we can all get together.
The Weather Channel is good.
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Rent Party says:
Great post. Sobering and all, but: knowledge leads to understanding, which is empowering.
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Ann Bartow says:
Happy Thanksgiving, Violet. I was at a family thing today, with two more planned for tommorrow and Saturday. That’s a lot of cornbread and bean dip! (My specialties). The women do all the work of course, but we are thankful for a lot of things anyway. Warmest wishes.
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Heart says:
Great, though devastating, post, Dr. Violet Socks. Thank you for writing it.
Heart
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bob c says:
Happy? The world of hurt continues so I suppose we must be thankful for ANY progress toward true human equality and also thankful for the strength and vision to continue. Very little in the sceme of things so fundamental to our evolution as a fully functional group of spirits. We deffinatly need a lot more progress. Do I think gender determines wisdom? That would be no, Ghost of Dr…Blessings and wisdom to you and yours. BTW, what do spirits do while protein ingests mass quantities of other proteins and carbs? Other forms of asimilatable spirits? Hey, Raoul, nice smile!
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2sheds says:
All I can say about the 220 hundred lashes is AAAAAARRRGGGH. Stop the world I want to get off. To paraphrase Mao the sky is held up by 51% women and 49% men. My parents were married for 61 years and you get this joker in Saudi who thinks it is ok for his wife to get this torture is ok. Again AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGH
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anna says:
Who is Toni Bentley? Google is not telling me.
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TP says:
Thanks to you, for putting so much effort in reminding us all that we are pro-feminist because we are not soulless monsters.
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The Ghost of Violet says:
Anna:
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B. Dagger Lee says:
And Christmas is right around the corner! What’s this under the tree for me and thee? Oh! Shit pie! Why thank you, you can never have enough shit pie! Look what Santa’s brought us, girls!
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Rhea says:
I hadn’t heard of some of these events. How awful. How can this go on?
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kiuku says:
We need Feminism alright. We need -Radical- Feminism.
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Level Best says:
Ghost of Violet, your brief definition of feminism is a jewel which I am going to print out and put on my corkboard at work for inspiration. Whatever our different body types and circumstances, we are all humans and we should aspire to treat one another (and other life forms on this planet) with justice and kindness to the best of our abilities. Antifeminism is, well, UNjust and UNkind and should be UNDONE. Lift your lance and charge at all evidences of it and then retreat to your ghostly sanctuary when you must, but let your thoughts and words get to the rest of us!
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Infidel says:
Yeah! Violet because it is more than merely defending to the death your right to say it. You’re right too, say it!
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Theriomorph says:
Thanks for the sanity this morning, Ghost.
And yes, happy belated t-day.
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K.A. says:
It’s astonishing to me that we still live in a time in which misogyny is a valid political position. MISOGYNY IS NOT A VALID POLITICAL STANCE!
“So-called liberal dudes who become annoyed every time they’re asked to consider women’s rights?”
I’m catching up, and I now see that my comment about liberals on your most recent blog is in good company. Christian conservatives think Jesus will take a dump on them from heaven to hell for all eternity if they attempt to think straight, but what’s the excuse of liberal dudes in the absence of this faulty memetic software?
