The Times obituary on Shere Hite (nee Shirley Diana Gregory; November 2, 1942 – September 9, 2020) looks at the career of the “controversial sexologist and feminist who shed new light on the female orgasm and once posed for Playboy”, noting: “she gave an even greater hostage to fortune by using s.hite as the first part of her email address.”
Her research conducted by a survey led her to a key finding: “I was making the point that clitoral stimulation wasn’t happening during coitus. That’s why women ‘have difficulty having orgasms’ – they don’t have difficulty when they stimulate themselves.”
Her career began with a campaign:
A Seventies advert for Olivetti typewriters depicted a sexy blonde at her typewriter, legs seductively crossed, red-lipsticked mouth pouting provocatively at the camera. “The typewriter that’s so smart that she doesn’t have to be,” crowed the caption. Members of the National Organisation for Women were so furious at this blatant display of sexism that they protested outside the company’s offices in New York.
One of their number was a striking, pale-skinned blonde who eventually admitted to the sisterhood that she was the model in the advert. It was a significant moment for the women’s movement: the not-so-dumb blonde was Shere Hite…
The biography on a site dedicated to her work, has more:
In her report, she posited a radical and utterly far-out theory: that women didn’t need men to give them an orgasm. From the time of Freud, it was widely accepted that women could only climax through penetrative sex – “the great male thrust” – and if they couldn’t, there must be something wrong with them. For frustrated women faking orgasm, the report was a godsend, alerting women to their own sexual power, and informing men of the existence of the clitoris.
But rather than welcoming Hite’s book, a serious academic study based on interviews with more than 3,000 women, the American male population saw it as an attack on their virility. Hite was cast as the witch queen of feminism, out to steal men’s mojo and turn women into onanistic she-devils. Playboy magazine dubbed it the “Hate Report”, but those who dismissed Hite as a Birkenstock-wearing militant man-hater were in for another shock when they discovered that Hite was actually a bit of a looker, and had posed naked in Playboy while studying at Columbia University. She had also posed provocatively in a typewriter ad to earn money for her college fees, but when she read the ad’s strapline, “The typewriter is so smart she doesn’t have to be”, she joined a feminist protest against the very ad she had appeared in.
The report went on to sell more than 50 million copies.
Sex sells. Olivetti and Shere Hite could agree on that.
We’ve come a long way, baby. On Twitter @WPCelebratio compiled a list of nine everyday things American women were banned from doing in 1971 (via):
Readers’ responses are illuminating:
The Telegraph looked at what women in the UK could not do in 1918:
Applying for a credit card or loan in their own name
Working in the legal profession and civil service
Inheriting and bequeathing property on the same terms as men
Claiming equal pay for doing the same work as men
Prosecuting a spouse for rape
no images were found
Posted: 11th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment
F1 will no longer feature female models – Grid Girls – in the pits. Women won’t be in the cars, either. That tradition stays. Says Sean Bratches, managing director of commercial operations:
“While the practice of employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula 1 grands prix for decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms.
“We don’t believe the practice is appropriate or relevant to Formula 1 and its fans, old and new, across the world.”
The BBC spoke with one of the newly sacked: Charlotte Gash:
“It’s upsetting and I’m rather disgusted that F1 have given in to the minority to be politically correct…. I know the grid girls are there to look pretty when they’re out on the grid but my role was interacting with the crowd and we were there as an advertisement for the sponsors. We love doing it we don’t want it taken away from us.”
Charlotte Gash, there.
Men, start your engines…
Posted: 31st, January 2018 | In: Sports, TV & Radio | Comment
If you’re going to better yourself by ignoring straight white males because they are lesser beings – less compassionate; less knowing; less human – it might be an idea not to use the tools these Untermensch invented to amplify your superiority over them:
Yep, you read that on the Internet. You know who invented that?
Posted: 1st, August 2017 | In: Strange But True, Technology | Comment
SEXIST!
So far the attack on Manchester in which saw 22 people were murdered at a pop concert by Salman Abedi has been used to illustrate racial harmony, insult footballers, lambaste apathy, find missing children in Australia and spot fake news. Joanna Williams has a great look at how the horror is being used to insult men.
Just hours after the attack, feminist writer and speaker Jaclyn Friedman tweeted: ‘Here is what the coverage will not say: targeting an Ariana Grande concert is targeting young women. This is a violent act of misogyny.’ …
The argument that the bombing was ‘a massive act of gender-based violence’ has continued. The headline of one article, ‘The bombing at a Manchester Ariana Grande show was an attack on girls and women’, is as simplistic as it is inaccurate. Most obviously, it overlooks the fact that men died in the attack too – fathers, brothers and boyfriends attending the concert or waiting to take people home. The author goes on to explain how ‘Grande has advanced a renegade, self-reflexive sexuality that’s threatening to the established heteropatriarchal order’. Rubbish. Grande’s Nickelodeon cuteness combines bunny ears with pink balloons. She’s loved by teen girls because her sexuality is safe and fun and threatens no one.
And it keeps coming.
“It’s not Muslims or people with mental-health problems who are most likely to kill you in a terrorist attack – it’s men’” –Independent.
Why Manchester Bomber Targeted Girls – Rolling Stone.
During Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman tour, Abedi gave the world a sick reminder of the dangers of being a woman in public in 2017, attacking largely female concertgoers for doing nothing but enjoying themselves while listening to music.
These girls and women weren’t just listening to any music, either – this was feminist music.
Williams nails it: “In presenting terrorism as part of a broader gender war, feminism ultimately reduces mass murder to just another example of everyday sexism.”
The movement towards creating explicit codes of behaviour for every aspect of life – especially the messy bits about sex – welcomes the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which is now using the ‘F-rating’ to signal films of a feminist type. This is “so [viewers can choose films that fairly represent women on screen and behind the camera.” It is “applied to all films which are directed by women and/or written by women and/or have significant women on screen.”
That part about ‘significant women’ opens up a few issues, not least of all when it comes to grot movies, especially the girl-on-girl sort. The F-rating might not be the best guide to family entertainment or indeed anything approaching entertainment of any strain. But, then, the F-rating is not about films; it’s about educating the masses and turning people – wonderfully complex humans – into quotas. The official F-rated website explains the vision:
‘The stories we see on screen need to be told by a broad spectrum of people to represent our diverse culture. Without change, we will train the next generation to only recognise white males as the protagonists and the ones in control of the cameras, scripts and budgets. As well as equality on screen and behind the camera, more female film critics from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities need to be welcomed into the industry so that opinion and feedback is balanced.’
It’s certainly not about viewers, many of whom are women. It’s about gender. The thinking is that female film fans go to the cinema not to seek escapism but to reaffirm their identity. You’re not watching them; you’re looking at yourself. But you’ve already got free use of Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook to gawp at idealised filmic versions of yourself, so why spend good money on watching a narcissistic film?
Note 1: If equality is the mantra, then the IMDb could look at itself. According to Wikipedia, the IMDb ‘originated with a Usenet posting by British film fan and computer programmer Col Needham entitled “Those Eyes”, about actresses with beautiful eyes.’ Col is a white male – and since he flogged the site to Amazon, a very rich one.
Note 2: Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos, a rich white male. Amazon Inc. has 7 ‘Officers’. All are white. One is a woman. Amazon has 11 directors – 9 of whom are male. Should businesses get an F-rating, too – and if so would the IMDb warrant one?
Posted: 15th, March 2017 | In: Film, Money, Reviews | Comment
Thanks to Labour MP Jess Phillips we now know that women – portrayed by many as irony-proof, reactionary, weak and victims-in-waiting – can handle themselves. Phillips’ contribution to womanhood was to tell fellow Labour MP Diane Abbott to “fuck off” during a heated debate at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).
Phillip, MP for Birmingham Yardley MP, is upset that the four top jobs in party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s team have gone to men. She wanted a woman to get one or more of them, perhaps a woman like her – a woman who in the heat of diplomacy told Ms Abbott what to do. As she says:
“I roundly told her to fuck off.”
After which, according to Ms Phillips, Abbott “fucked off”.
Future Foreign Secretary Phillips tells the HuffPost:
“People said to me they had always wanted to say that to her, and I don’t know why they don’t as the opportunity presents itself every other minute. I said: ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’”
The tableau only gets more lovely when we realise that Mr Corbyn and Ms Abbott, appointed Shadow International Development Secretary by the new Labour leader, were lovers in the 1970s.
It might also offer an explanation as to who daubed the graffiti on a wall in Stoke Newington Church Street, where Abbott is MP. For years the legend declared:
“Diane Abbott is a Slag”
Ms Phillips is not done. She adds:
“It was nothing to do with the fact they were lovers.”
She then writes in The Huffington Post:
“Whilst our start was cordially disharmonious, perhaps me and Jeremy Corbyn can take this journey together. Me a new MP, him a new leader.”
She had us right up to’ journey’. Jeremy would put you inside your own special carriage, with all the other, strident, foul-mouthed women.
Posted: 17th, September 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Charlotte Proudman, 27, is in the news. She posted a photo of herself on LinkedIn – perhaps one she selected to portray her at her best, or worst, or fairest, or plainest, or most trustworthy, or most diligent, or most likely to get the judge’s approval and win over the jury? (She tells the Standard it was selected to show her as “smart and neutral“.)
Lawyer Alexander Carter-Silk, 57, saw the snapshot and replied to her:
“Charlotte, delighted to connect. I appreciate that this is politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!!. You definitely win the prize for the best Linked in picture I have ever seen. Always inteerst to understant (sic) people’s skills and how we might work together.”
Proudman (and what nominative determinism, there, readers) went tonto. She claimed the lawyer’s words were sexist.
“I am on linked-in (sic) for business purposes, not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men.”
She did not see it as a bonus. She saw it as grossly offensive.
She slammed the lawyer’s “unacceptable and mysogynistic behaviour”.
Yeah. His compliment she decreed was a symbol of Mr Carter-Silk’s, 57, hatred of women. Hate, you see, is not only manifest in chucking acid in a woman’s face, denying them the right to vote, domestic abuse or the any other myriad offences against women. Hatred of women is manifest in telling a woman she looks good.
Proudman slapped the entire comment on twitter – presumably so we could all be aghast at Carter-Silk and tell him what a ugly dog he was.
She tells the Standard:
She acknowledges “the importance of privacy”, especially for Carter-Silk’s wife and his daughter, who is the same age as Proudman, but adds: “In this case there is a public interest that outweighs privacy. He should have thought about his actions before sending a sexist message to a 27-year-old barrister. It was a message sent to me and I have a right to expose it. If these people aren’t made to feel repercussions for actions, which are wrong, then their behaviour won’t change and the culture will remain incredibly sexist.”
She tells the Times:
“When I read the comment I thought – here we go again, another sexist message. When I saw it was from a senior professional in the law, I thought ‘no’ – this is really unacceptable. This is someone entrusted to uphold the law. If he is willing to do this on line, how does he treat his women professional colleagues? But it is typical of the sexism at the Bar – exposed in a recent Bar report – which is very bad and which I have experienced myself from both other barristers and judges.”
If that’s typical of sexism at the bar, the bar is a fine, dandy and enlightened place to be.
Barrister Blogger notes:
His offence was not a great one. He didn’t come leering over her shoulder, or rub himself against her in a crowded tube. He didn’t pinch her bottom on the train. He didn’t, as seems to be the custom these days, send her a rude photograph or even make any remotely indelicate suggestions to her, unless perhaps the suggestion of “working together” could be so construed.
He was not abusing a position of power over her: he could have no influence, or at most only a tiny amount of potential influence over the future of her career, should she decide to move away from human rights work and into the very different worlds of intellectual property and reputation management.
He simply, and rather clumsily, said, or implied, that the picture, which she herself had chosen to put on Linked In, looked very beautiful. For this she denounced him for “objectifying her” and “eroticising her physical appearance.” No doubt Ms Proudman will put me right, but I don’t see why a comment on her physical appearance “objectified” her (presumably as a sex object), any more than a comment on the quality of her work would “objectify” her as a mere barrister, rather than the fully rounded person that she is. And if Mr Carter-Silk found her picture “erotic” (which is anyway bit of a jump from saying it was “stunning”), he wasn’t “eroticising” her appearance, he was simply telling the truth about his own feelings. Men like beautiful women.
‘Nuff said.
#NUSWomen15: Putting Policy into Action. So runs the slogan for the National Union of Students get together:
This year, on March 24 until the 26, hundreds of women will be descending upon Solihull for the best three days of the year: Women’s Conference.
Alongside debates on sex work (it should decriminalised) and money, motions to be debated include:
Motion 101: Putting pronouns on the cards
Submitted by: NUS LGBT Committee
Conference Believes:
1. Pronouns are used in the English language to replace nouns in order to make conversation easier. An example of the use of a pronoun is when referring to somebody instead of using their name.
2. The current delegate name badges at all NUS conferences and events simply state the delegate’s name, their constituent membership and if they attend an HE or an FE institution.
3. Delegates who use gender neutral pronouns currently have to write this on their badges themselves to ensure other delegates use their correct preferred pronouns.Conference Further Believes:
1. Delegates currently having to manually write their pronouns on their badges may make them feel uncomfortable, othered, or outed as trans* (despite the safe space policy).
2. NUS Women’s Campaign is open to all who self-define as women, including (if they wish) those with complex gender identities which include ‘woman’, and those who experience oppression as women. The campaign affirms that self-definition of gender identity and pronouns are at the sole discretion of the individual in question.
3. Delegates to NUS Women’s conference may use pronouns that are not she/her, and encouraging all delegates to specify their pronouns will foster a culture of not assuming pronouns based on gender presentation and help ensure that everyone’s preferred gender pronouns are upheld.
4. All delegates specifying their pronouns and asking each other for pronouns may help to ensure that delegates are not misgendered, as this can make delegates feel unsafe or trigger gender dysphoria.
Conference Resolves:
1. To ask all delegates attending NUS conferences and events for their pronouns at the point of registration (this would be a blank box which text could be typed into).
2. To print pronouns on all delegate’s badges.
3. To continue to reiterate when establishing the safe space policy that all delegates should respect and uphold each other’s pronouns.
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Posted: 24th, March 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
Rose Evelth has news for woman in science:
A man’s crew member’s work is never done:
Or ‘guide’ as the Chrome auto-demanner says…
Posted: 27th, February 2015 | In: Technology | Comment
Katherine Timpf reports a story that is so ludicrous we thought Chris Morris had written it. The headline suggests that what follows is the work of a parodist:
Harvard Law Prof: Student Banned from Areas of Campus for Resembling Classmate’s Rapist
Harvard Law professor Janet Halley writes in the Harvard Law Review that she “recently assisted” a student who had been “ordered to stay away from a fellow student (cutting him off from his housing, his campus job, and educational opportunity) — all because he reminded her of the man who had raped her months before and thousands of miles away.”
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Are all students rapsits and absuers-in-waiting? Spiked reports that 26 British univestities banned the Sun and the Daily Star as part of the ‘No More Page 3 campaign’; 21 student unions forbid the student body from listening to Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines on campus; Bristol University’s student union banned sales of Charlie Hebdo – the magazine that became the totem of free speech was banned because it would fail the college’s ‘safe space’ policy.
Eighteen per cent of unions have “safe space” policies, protecting students from material deemed offensive, and more than two-thirds of these were judged to place significant restrictions on freedom of speech.
Sheffield Student Union banned Eminem. Students at Oxford Univesity banned a debate on abortion. The UCL Student Union banned the college’s Nietzsche Club. King’s College Students banned Israel. The University of East Anglia Students banned a UKIP MP. The NUS banned free Speech and refsued to condemn for fear of looking Islamophobic. And our favourite was the London School of Economics, which banned T-shirts.
The assumption is that allowing anything that a loon or agenda-driven censor could decry as ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobic’ would trigger race riots and convince slack-jawed male students that women’s rights, equality and debate are wrong.
It also assumes that the colleges will be complicit in any resulting crimes, having failed to police free thought they will make victims less aware of the perils to their physical and mental wellbeing. Student are no longer adults with free thhought and passionate ideas. They are idiots how must be coddled.
Ashe Schow is astounded:
For the past several years, activists have been telling us that any suggestion relating to protecting oneself from becoming a victim is victim-blaming. Tell a woman not to walk down dark alleys at night, and you’re essentially telling her that it’s her fault if she ends up being assaulted, robbed or murdered.
But now, outright bans on risky behavior — all in the interest of protecting women — are suddenly coming back into fashion.
First, sorority women at the University of Virginia were banned from attending parties with boys this weekend by their own National Panhellenic Conference. The reason for the ban, which carries undisclosed sanctions if broken, was “safety concerns,” due to sexual assault allegations in the past.
The message is clear: Keep women from partying and they won’t be sexually assaulted.
How is that not victim blaming?
As if the U.Va. ban wasn’t bad enough (it was based off of a discredited rape allegation in Rolling Stone, after all), Dartmouth has decided to ban hard liquor on campus — in part to cut down on sexual assaults.
It was just last year that telling women not to drink so much was considered victim blaming, but now it’s okay?
We seem to be going back in time; telling women where they can go, whom they can associate with — even what they can drink. At least it’s all in the name of protecting us poor, fragile ladies, am I right?
It’s not just the ladies. It’s all student minds.
Photo via.
Posted: 2nd, February 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
The news Ghostbusters movie is an all-female affair. It’s going to be fan-tastic. Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray were at the top of their games when the first Ghostbusters film hit the big screens. But who needs them when you have a script like this?
Spotter and scriptwriter: Sean Mullins
Hollwyood has run dry of ideas when you get the third film Ghostsbusters made with an all-female cast. The Hollywood Reporter notes:
Melissa McCarthy, who was already in talks for one of the leads, has signed on for the Paul Feig-directed reboot, and the studio is now negotiating with Kristen Wiig, as well as “Saturday Night Live” players Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon…
CNN spots that naysayers:
As some of the Twitterati accused the ladies-led “Ghostbusters” concept of being a “gimmick,” Feig swiftly responded, “Interesting how making a movie with men in the lead roles is normal but making a movie with women in the lead roles is a ‘gimmick.’ #its2014.”
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As Brendan O’Neill writes of the shrill campaing to ban the Sun’s naff Page 3:
All this talk of ridding Britain of the scourge of Page 3 brings to mind the Suffragette Mary Richardson, who in 1914 took a knife into the National Gallery and slashed Velazquez’s ‘Rokeby Venus’. “I didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long.” Richardson later became the head of the women’s section of the British Union of Fascists.
That story is well told on Flashbak: The Suffragette and Fascist Mary Richardson and the Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery
Posted: 22nd, January 2015 | In: Politicians, Reviews | Comment
Like us, Milo Yiannopoulos looked at the pathetic feminist outcry over ‘Manspreading’:
After the numerous and well-publicised feminist fiascoes of 2014, it has become clear to all but the most ideologically determined observers that the intersectional third-wave harpies who so dominate in the American and British media and to whom obeisance has been paid for many years have nothing left to fight for and no arguments left to win.
Manspreading is the movement that killed feminism:
Witness the absurd, offensive, ludicrous spectacle of inanity and stupidity currently surrounding the New York subway: a campaign to stop men sitting comfortably on public transport. We “manspread,” apparently, which observers have interpreted as “sit in such a way as not to painfully crush the testicles or penis” but which feminists insist is an expression of patriarchal authority. You could not, as British newspaper columnists like to say, make this shit up. . . .
The manspreading complaint is couched as a response to “rudeness” by men, but it is no such thing: it is pathetic feminist pipsqueakery, the last dying gasp of a movement with nothing to win and nothing to say, determined to abuse and antagonise the male sex at all costs and for whatever perceived or outright imaginary infraction it can conjure from the vicissitudes of everyday life. It is offensively trivial, and those associated with it ought to be ashamed.
Such people include the author of a New York Times story on this otiose playground jihad against men, and the subway officials who endorsed a poster campaign warning men of the social anxiety caused by their choice of sitting position…
Men of the world: if you get accused of manspreading, spread wider.
Feminism is a poisoned term. It is tainted; stained by the petty misandrist misdeeds of a thousand spoilt brats on the pages of the Guardian; an army of Jessica Valentis whinging about wrapping Christmas presents instead of objecting to the acid thrown in Indian women’s faces.
And men: stop being so tall. You’re blocking the view…
Posted: 23rd, December 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Atticus Finch: American literature’s most celebrated rape apologist, says Ashe Schow:
“If ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ were taught in women’s studies classes today, Finch would have to be labeled the villain of the book for not accepting at face value an accuser’s tale of rape and for posing difficult, painful questions to her on the witness stand.”
Maywella Ewell imagined a modern take on the story:
And that’s why I told the court that Tom Robinson raped me. It wasn’t the upsetting but educational choice of a girl who was new to sex. It didn’t feel like a choice at all. I wasn’t sure whether I couldn’t stop or if I didn’t want to.
But Tom Robinson said he didn’t rape me, and Mr. Finch seemed to believe him. He said that I had invited him into the house many times to do odd jobs, that he hadn’t taken pay because he felt bad for me. He looked down at me. He said that the night he raped me, I invited him in and specifically sent away my siblings so that I could have my way with him. He said I grabbed him around the legs, hugged him around the waist, kissed him on the side of his face. He testified that I said that I’d never kissed a grown man before, and what my papa did to me didn’t count. He told the court that I’d said, “Kiss me back, n—–.”
Then he said my papa came to the window and yelled, “You goddamn whore, I’ll kill ya.”
If fine fancy gentlemen don’t want to do anything about my rape, they’re all yellow, stinking cowards. I have had my character and credibility questioned at every turn. I have been attacked online with violent and misogynistic language. My words have been torn apart in an attempt to prove I am a liar, or worse, a deviant myself. But I don’t believe I am to blame. I don’t believe any of us who have been raped and/or assaulted are to blame. Survivors have the right to tell their stories, to take back control after the ultimate loss of control. There is no right way to survive rape and there is no right way to be a victim.
So, Mr. Finch, I need your support, not your pity. What survivors need more than anything is to be supported, whether they choose to pursue a criminal investigation or to rebuild their world on their own terms. You can help by never defining a survivor by what has been taken from her. You can help by saying I believe you.
A story with a rape allegation carries an immediate electric charge. In Jim Crow’s South, lynchings often came with a story of the victim having raped a white girl. With the energy of such a story, it wasn’t too hard to whip up a fury strong enough to leave a man hanging from a tree. The “rape propaganda” was necessary to garner the emotions necessary to press the real, dark, agenda. Al Sharpton took a page out of the old South’s playbook and brought us Tawana Brawley, who accused six white men of raping her. The story of white on black crime resonated, and it helped to promote a social justice agenda, but Tawana Brawley was no more a rape victim than two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama, who falsely accused nine black teenagers more than 80 years ago.
What do these stories have in common? Someone had an agenda, and they knew that a rape story would put it on a rocket powered toboggan.
The College Fix says this:
The College Fix recently reported on emerging questions regarding the alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. Even the Washington Post is now questioning the accuracy of Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s UVA story.
Does the Post also believe the Holocaust never happened?
When views are so entrenched, who needs facts..?
Have you see the Ugly Girls’ Club? Members convene at the Royal Holloway’s feminist society.
Natasha Barrett, president of the society and a second-year English Literature student, said:
“It started very small, as a joke between society members that was a bit tongue-in cheek.” With hundreds of selfies posted on Twitter in under two weeks and 4,000 Facebook fans, the campaign is blossoming into more than they could ever have imagined.
“We’ve had a lot of support from Exeter University and their feminist society there. They showed a massive amount of enthusiasm for it and we realised we should get in touch with more feminist societies. It’s becoming the case that there aren’t very many university feminist societies left that we haven’t heard from. We’ve had support from America, Canada and Australia as well. It’s really cool – even people from Oklahoma!”
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Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s story on gang rape at the University of Virginia was all about the narrative. She looked for a tale that would fit her agenda. Even when JAckie asked for it to be pulled, Rolling Stone and the writer oushed it through. Not need for facts, proof nor a right to reply from the men accasued of rape.
The story was quickly picked up nationally. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., cited it as a reason to pass federal legislation on campus sexual assault. People who questioned the story were accused of sexism. And University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan suspended the entire Greek system — not just the fraternity in question — in response. The U.Va. campus was rocked by protest, the fraternity house was vandalized, people were arrested, and U.Va. faculty members even staged their own protest.
The above image is by artist Sabo, who wants us to look again at Lena Dunham, UVA and Bill Clinton in fake Rolling Stone Covers:
In an email, Sabo told The Hollywood Reporter: “Remember (Dunham) accused a Republican of raping her in college, and that story is falling apart. Then you have the politics of Hollywood with her, Cosby, the Rolling Stone article that is being detracted. Last but not least, our beloved Bubba Clinton’s blast from the past and the double standard of why Rolling Stone didn’t run with his rape allegations but they ran with the UVA false story.”
Natasha Vargas-Cooper nailes it:
Here’s something that’s also sort of “unfair:” not talking to seven unconvicted, alleged criminals about their involvement in a purported horrendous crime! It is not rude, shaming, or belittling to seek quotes from alleged rapists. Actually, it is what a responsible journalist does, even when it makes said journalist’s source uneasy. And if making a source uneasy makes a journalist uneasy, it’s time for the journalist in question to find another profession.
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Judith Levine on the culture of using racism and bigotry to attack anyone who seeks evidence of a rape:
Just before Thanksgiving, Richard Bradley sensed something was wrong with the story inR olling Stone of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. On his blog, Bradley, editor-in-chief of Worth magazine, suggested some possible consequential omissions in Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s reporting. Why, for instance, was there no response—or even a “no comment”—from any of the alleged offenders?…
Bradley’s questions unsettled Reason staff editor Robby Soave, who had until then taken Erdely’s narrative at face value. Soave followed up. His headline was hyperbolic: “Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?” But the piece was a straightforward skeptical inquiry, which, after all, is Reason’s raison d’être.
This did not go over well in certain feminist circles. It didn’t help that the two skeptics were men.
On Jezebel, Anna Merlan expressed her opinion with characteristic Jezebelian eloquence:“‘Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?’ Asks Idiot” And typically, readers chimed in with gender-baiting:
“But never mind Erdely’s months of work. Two guys who have no idea what they’re talking about don’t believe it. Case closed.”
“Newsflash: Most libertarians are misogynist/racist white men.”
“What an asshole.”
Read the rest of this entry »
AND on its goes, the row over Dr Matt Taylor’s shirt.
Dr Sheldon:
“Modern feminists’ focus on behaviour, its propensity for censorship and its increasingly anti-man rhetoric, is creating a dogmatic and divisive feminism that turns women into victims who need protecting from the big, bad world, rather than equipping women with the tools to tackle real issues of gender inequality.”
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Posted: 19th, November 2014 | In: Key Posts, Reviews | Comment
The dressmaker’s dummy, the kitchen apron, the shopping bag and the clothes line all figured in this “banner” carried by Stephanie Gilbert, (L) and Judy Gilbert-Scott as militant women rallied at speaker’s corner, Hyde Park.
Date: 06/03/1971
THE web hates men because of new feminism. Well, so they say…
Sigh. A new current has developed in the polluted ocean of online videos. If you’re a Facebook user, you’ll have noticed it: it involves women, and men, and the former being incessantly harassed by the latter.
I’m talking about those hidden-camera clips in which a female actor records the appalling level of harassment that she was subjected to by men in the street.
The best known was made by Shoshana Roberts, who was filmed walking the streets of New York amid catcalls and sexual comments. Thus far, it has attracted a staggering 36 million views, and has been hailed as a much-needed exposure of the plight of a woman in 21st Century society…
Depictions of decent men have now become strikingly absent online. The overall suggestion is that men are guilty until proven innocent; this only reinforces gender stereotyping.
Indeed, we have reached a stage where feminist sites like Jezebel run stories like “How to kick men in the balls: an illustrated guide”, confirming the impression that the internet hates men. Misogynist trolling by horrid little men is a huge concern, but the answer is not to alienate the rest of us.
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Posted: 14th, November 2014 | In: Reviews | Comments (2)
Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart of The Eurythmics.
Date: 24/04/1984
ONE of the big problems with feminism is that women like to spend great chunks of the debate, attacking each other. Of course, any movement needs criticism to adapt and sharpen the mind for future debates, but isn’t it a bit sad to see women trying to pull other women down, when ostensibly, their aims are the same?
And so to Annie Lennox, who said that she isn’t very impressed with Beyonce calling herself a feminist.
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Posted: 2nd, October 2014 | In: Celebrities, Politicians | Comment
FEMINISTS are really, if we’re being honest here, only truly great at one thing – and that’s picking holes in people’s arguments. That would be the arguments of the patriarchy, sexists and bigots and, most importantly, the arguments of other feminists.
Throwing a match on the kindling is Lily Allen, who thinks feminism shouldn’t even be a thing in 2014, stating that “everyone is equal” in the modern world.
Good news for all those children who have been victims of FGM, the women who are denied rights by backward governments and the rest.
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YOU are looking at a photograph of the conference on ‘women in society’ staged at Qassim university, Saudi Arabia. No. It’s not a meeting of Union leaders, business gurus or a Surrey golf club. It’s those male Saudis, the people Estern men look to for guidance and a glimpse of what might have been…
Of course, there might be one woman in the room. Can you spot her?
Posted: 30th, June 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (6)
