Do You Have Any Idea...

A couple nights ago, I had gone over to the house of my dear friends to celebrate my engagement and was coming home late. I was almost home, standing at the corner waiting for the light to change, when a man approached me.

Guy: Excuse me?
Me: Yes? What?
Guy: What's your name again?
Me: I didn't tell you my name.
Guy: Oh, well, hi. What's your name? [holds out hand]
Me: Look, I don't want to tell you my name, and I don't want to talk.
Guy: Why not?
Me: It's late. [looks at phone] It's 12:30 am. I don't want to talk to you.
Guy: But I'm just being friendly. [holds out hand again] What's your name?
Me: Do you have any idea what it's like to be walking around as a woman in this city, late at night? It's scary. It's late and I want to get home and I don't want to talk to you.
Guy: [stares at me]

[stares some more]
[backs away]
[retracts his hand]

Guy: I can respect that.
Me: Thank you. Have a good night. [light changes, I cross the street and go home]

It was really bizarre—I could really see him actually considering, what is it like to be a woman walking around late at night in the city, trying to get home? Answer: it's scary, and it scary enough that you don't want to talk to anyone you don't know, no matter who they are or what they're about.

Via Bitch, PhD

And Another One

Again, I don't have much to add, unfortunately, but this is really thought-provoking. Also, it talks about Dollhouse, which as a Joss Whedon creation I'm compelled to at least follow, and Sarah Haskins. I have a huge crush on her, so there is that.

Alas, a blog | Blog Archive | November and Sarah Haskins: "The women screaming and rioting in the 100 calorie oreo advertisement will only resonate with a woman who believes she should take up no space. Comparing yoplait to a private island makes sense only if you think you should be denying yourself the sustenance and pleasure that comes from food and yoghurt is as good as it gets."

Another Little Tidbit

Found at On Being a No-Name Blogger Using Her Real Name � Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose:

"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 call Ann Coulter a tranny cunt instead of a halfwit demagogue;
**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."

And later:

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.

I've found a few of these today. They're powerful. Go. Go read them.

Another post about rape � Fugitivus

(Used her title as a trigger warning)


Came across this in the blogosphere tonight. It's pretty intense and I really recommend you read the whole thing.

Another post about rape � Fugitivus: "if women are raised being told by parents, teachers, media, peers, and all surrounding social strata that:

it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (”mean bitch”)
it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (”crazy bitch”)
it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (”stuck-up bitch”)
it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (”angry bitch”)
it is not okay to have (or express) conflicted, fluid, or experimental feelings about yourself, your body, your sexuality, your desires, and your needs (”bitch got daddy issues”)
it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (”dyke bitch”)
it is not okay to raise your voice (”shrill bitch”)
it is not okay to completely and utterly shut down somebody who obviously likes you (”mean dyke/frigid bitch”)
If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes."

Questionable Natures

I'm certainly not the only one who has raised an eyebrow at this ruling:

Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years - NYTimes.com: "In pronouncing the sentence — the maximum he could have handed down — Judge Denny Chin turned aside Mr. Madoff’s own assertions of remorse and rejected the suggestion from Mr. Madoff’s lawyers that there was a sense of “mob vengeance” surrounding calls for a long prison term. Mr. Madoff’s crimes, the judge said, were “extraordinarily evil.”"

And with good reason. Clearly, Madoff was engaged in fraud on a colossal scale, which cost a great many people a great deal of money. Some of them could afford the hit; others could not, and there's no denying that lately, any financial hit is painful. I get that.

The problem is that the Madoff sentencing comes on the tail of things like this:

• 
  Sentence in Mexico Murder Is Cut to 27 1/2 Years

Furor Builds Over Child Rapist's Sentence

David Harold Earls, 64, of the southeastern Oklahoma town of McAlester, pleaded no contest last month to first-degree rape and forcible sodomy. Normally, the rape charge carries a sentence of between five years to life in prison, but the deal he struck with prosecutors called for 19 years of his 20-year sentence to be suspended.

(Effectively sentencing Earls to one year in prison)

And, more importantly, ideas like this:

Is Rape Serious?


Why don’t police departments treat rape kits with urgency? One reason is probably expense — each kit can cost up to $1,500 to test — but there also seems to be a broad distaste for rape cases as murky, ambiguous and difficult to prosecute, particularly when they involve (as they often do) alcohol or acquaintance rape.

The point being, of course, that fraud will keep a man off the streets, but violent criminals (if the victims are even able to bring them to court) will be back on the streets before the evidence can be fully processed.

Proving once again that, here in America, money is worth much more than humanity.

Ten Things Wrong with Sarkozy's Burqa Ban

Via the Czech

1. Mandating how women should dress is mandating how women should dress, whether it is a mandate to wear a burqa, or a mandate not to wear one. When a man tells a woman how to dress, it’s paternalism and subjugation one way or the other.

2. Plus, as Dori points out, a man telling a woman that too much of her body is covered, and that she needs to expose more of it to his view, is pretty weird. How much modesty is too much? How much exposed flesh is enough to satisfy Sarkozy?

3. A Christian man imposing rules of dress upon Muslim women does little to actually foster the kind of gender equality he claims to be advancing.

4. Sarkozy talks as though there is no “subjugation of women” among the non-Muslim denizens of France. As though France is a wonderland of gender equality. According to WikiGender: “Compared to other countries, France has always been rather late in adopting gender equality as a goal and designing policies to achieve it.” So why suddenly all this concern for a certain subset of French women, who just randomly happen to come from a community hated and feared by many in France?

5. What other items of clothing does Mr. Sarkozy disapprove of? Do they also happen to correspond to certain disfavored, marginalized communities?

6. Any attempt to “eliminate” burqas in France will only serve to further marginalize the women who wear them. Burqas, for some women, represent a compromise. Some individuals believe women are not supposed to be seen in public, or be looked at by men outside of the family. In this extreme view, women would be entirely confined to the house and removed from outside society unless they can put on a burqa and go out. Eliminating the burqa for these women would mean eliminating their access to the world. Better conditions for such women require a little more work than outlawing a piece of clothing.

7. Eliminating burqas in France would not mean that women’s oppression in Muslim communities would end. It would simply be a cosmetic change that would do nothing to actually work with communities and empower French Muslim women to achieve equality. It is a measure that ignores all nuance and avoids all honest work to actually tackle the heart of the problem.

8. All this “eliminate the burqa” talk fits just a little too snugly with the popular “Islam oppresses women” meme that Christian Westerners like to toss around, particularly when they are trying to frame a “War of Civilizations”.

9. Also, doesn’t this just come off as a cheap attempt at burnishing his Women’s Issues credentials while effectively only harassing a marginalized, already-persecuted minority? And doing little to nothing to further true societal equality for all women in France?

10. What real issues do French women, and French Muslim women in particular, actually face that Sarkozy is completely avoiding by diverting attention with this stunt? Why randomly target French Muslims now?

overheard in Chicago: making my point for me

"Gir: (blowing her nose)

Woman: 'Oh, do you have a cold?'

Girl: 'No, my date is an ass.'

Woman: 'Well, they don't get any better when you marry them, honey.'"

Dissolution

Do our problems with marriage arise from our impoverished ideas about romance?

In this article at Salon, Amanda Fortini discusses the story of Sandra Tsing-Loh and the dissolution of her 20-year marriage, in "Why Your Marriage Sucks." Her premise, along with those of her sources, is that the majority of relationships fail because of warped expectations of relationships. It's not the first time we've heard this excuse.

I'd be willing to place a lot more fault on reality than on fiction. I'm even willing to "blame the feminists," in that yes, women have come to expect more from marriage than financial support. We want a partnership, which may be suggested in romance novels, but fuck.

I suppose I should note that this is coming in on the tail end of my engagement, which is dissolving like a sugar cube in boiling water. Yes, I'm a little jaded, because for a long time I held onto the idea that this was a good man, and he is. He is a truly caring individual, and is quite attentive. But.

I am capable and competent, and I want more from my life than comfortable. I want happiness. I did not have happiness with him, and without the complications of children to hold me to it, I find it difficult to force myself to stick it out. My mom says, "they're all like that, so you might as well keep the one that's nice to you."

If they're all like that, I don't want one.

There's no reason a woman shouldn't expect her man to share the load. I don't mean "help out." The jobs need done, it is OUR home, they are OUR jobs. Not MY jobs you can help me with. Most women I know will give you this same frustration, even if she is happy in her relationship.

At any rate, I think it's more an unwillingness to put up with the frustrations of married life than disillusionment. Few women expect that we will find a Mr Darcy, and on a romantic level, are frequently perfectly happy with mediocre romance. It's when the inequality becomes so rampant that it's unbearable. We were raised to stick up for ourselves and not be walked on; we shouldn't have to exchange that self-reliance for love.