'nuff said.

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"In short, you can't stop rape and domestic violence without curtailing male dominance, and social conservatives support male dominance".

This hits the nail on the head. When push comes to shove, policies and programs to combat sexual violence focus all their attention on the victims taking responsibility for prevention because to place responsibility on the perpetrators would mean changing the way our society is structured and what our social values are. And the upper echelons (including many so-called progressives) either don't want to or simply are just not brave enough to.

great article. thank you.

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...she is a CENSOR, and anyone who censors is not a progressive...
i don't care HOW she dresses it up, she BELIEVES IN AND USES CENSORSHIP...
sorry, kampers, them there's the facts...
i don't care how righteous and 100% metaphysically correct she may be on 99% of the issues on our plates, she is a CENSOR and she believes in it JUST AS MUCH as reichwing censors do...
*that* is not a good progressive, period, i don't care how you slice it...
now, run along little baby citizen marcotte, don't let anyone rain on your (CENSORED) parade...

art guerrilla
aka ann archy

eof

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Oh, it is so funny, isn't it, our continued, public debates over these issues; Men. Women. Penises, Vaginas. Do you want fries with that? Biology. What moves within us? What stirs within ones breast, as a beautiful women flows by, her scent reaching up, deep inside, her vision floating in front of awestruck eyes. That smile, which comes, unbidden, so soft, and, one is... lost, in wonder.

All of this, other, this nastiness, this damage, this anger, all thought, all rational, all politics, all hate. All psychology. And, it will not go away. All the dead women, their wombs filled with the unwanted, shallow graves of grief and shame, and utter selfishness. Who identifies with those who, stand alone, within themselves, contemplating a crime born of fear, or rejection?

I cannot say this is a problem of male domination, it is a crime committed by people, against other people, male domination is but a cloak, but a justification which never fully penetrates the soul of the perpetrator, not at the time of the act.

Don't stop V-day.
Peace

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i had the opportunity to perform this play for my college and you wouldnt believe the number of crossed-arms and scowls in the audience. Granted, the fact that some of these people came is progress.. but I got the impression that this was an ideological freak show to certain demographics.

The play talks about things that some men dont want to hear. menstruation, effects of rape, menopause... they all want to eat the hamburger but not see how its made.

In general, I'm a little worried about over-the-top feminism because it goes beyond making men aware of us, it practically demonizes masculine men. Where are the stats that support the belief masculine guys beat women? From observation, I've found the guys that are not quite up there in the patriarchy to be most dangerous. they pick on women because they can't compete with other men. Your uber-males are very protective of women.. emasculating them is doing a great disservice to society at large.

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Don't forget violence on vaginas. I mean the carving up of vaginas; the removal of the clitioris and inner labia of young women and girls in some (mostly Muslim) cultures to prevent them from experiencing pleasurable sex, to preserve the woman's honor?!!

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Some conservatives aren't so afraid of vaginas as they are that they're powerless to decide exactly what a woman does with one.

All those free-roaming, untethered genitalia out there keeps them awake at night.

It's the same mindset that produces an abstinence-only education policy. The motto of conservatives on Capitol Hill seems to be "If you're not having sex with me then you shouldn't be having sex at all."

Some conservative women seem afraid to admit they even have a vagina. They probably shower with their eyes closed. How sad.

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Noe-cons even the old school con have a very big problem. They think they can tell everyone how to live,what to wear, how to speak and what it is to be spoken too. Stray outside this very closed minded set of outlines and you're a threat to them. They believe the more underinformed you are the more easy it is to control you. If they make you afraid of your body,it will make you less likely to have sex and that makes more room for their 'more deserving' babies. So they think.
Conservatives are a problem because they hold no other doctrines than their own. They used to prostitute themselves as 'upholders of the Constitution', to bad that was just salesmanship. Conservatives only want to conserve 'their' way of life not yours,mine or anyone who else who does'nt fit in their cliche. The conservatives are only going to give us more of what we already have...Hell on Earth
Draft jeffrey7 for Prez '08

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First, let everyone who cares about women in this country understand that, unlike discrimination based on race and religion, discrimination based on sex (gender) is not restricted in the Constitution. The U.S. never passed the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) so, today, women still do not have Constitutional protection from discrimination due to their gender! As a result, state and federal lawmakers can pass laws that discriminate against women and employers can legally discriminate against women. Educate yourselves and your children. Bring back the fight for the ERA.

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The conservative mind is a sickness, as you say it has a problem with everything that smells of change and hence a threat to the way they go about controlling and gaining power. It is a sickness because it exists alongside sociopathy, control, anti-ecothinking.

It is a sickness of an overinflated sense of self. Hence it rails against anything that has no hierarchy such as thinking in an egalitarian or ecological way. It is threatened by consciousness altering drugs for the same reason - such experiences tend to open people to the reality of their manipulation and invite ecological rather than hierarchical and classical/categorical thinking.

These are the real cancer of our societies, and probably always have been since we gained the ability to have excessive power over nature, and its a sickness that has probably evolved to take advantage of the power that comes when one can hold resources and manipulate others mentally and physically.

It is cruel to the point of sociopathy and psychopathy - look around you at the arrogant, unsympathetic nature of business 'leaders' and politicians where this sickness is most concentrated.

But they can only do this while the rest of us can be kept ignorant. Not for much longer though. The internet promises a revolution of mind that will overthrow these inhuman social retards. Fight them with logic and watch the dim reactionary frothing response, then fight them with more until they go confused, half-relaising, gibbering to the shrink where they belong.

Free the vagina and protect women. Fight the fear and free the love.

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The feminist movement loves rapists. Yes, I said it, and I'll say it again. The feminist movement loves rapists. It gives them a poster boy to point at and say "SEE!! THATS WHAT ALL MEN ARE LIKE!!", when the opposite is the actual truth.

As a male, I'd like the make the minimum penalty for rape, first time offender, be immediate execution. First because they deserve it, and second, so I wouldn't have to hear it anymore.

Quite frankly, rapists are the biggest traitors to men's rights everywhere, AND the biggest perpetrator of crimes to women.

Why can't we just execute em and make everyone happy?

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This is one of the most poorly written articles I have ever read. It is difficult, if not impossible, to post a meaningful comment because the article is more deserving of a freshman composition evaluation. I have read (and will continue to read) AlterNet articles daily for the past year, and frequently email (and will continue to do so) them to friends, family, and colleagues. However, I will use this one with my students as an example of how not to write a meaningful argument.

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I've always been fascinated with the idea that the gender divide is much deeper than the one between humans and chimps, or even between humans and dioecious plants.

Species have come and gone over and over and over, but the unbroken line of gender division can be traced back to some of our most primitive ancestors, many hundreds of millions of years ago.

Countless eons have passed, subtly fashioning unique gender outlooks, idiosyncrasies, and kinks reflecting complementary reproductive roles, far beyond our capacity to comprehend as we live the one into which fate cast us.

And yet, the differences between individual males and females, in character, ability, intelligence, wisdom, and countless other traits are often much less than the range of those same differences one finds among samplings of males or females alone.

It's just a damn shame what should be mutually celebrated and enjoyed is so often subverted to serve fear-based, low self-esteem impulses as dominance or reprisal.

Peace and understanding, sisters and brothers.
Keep shaking those body parts, and never stop speaking out against injustice.

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"In short, you can't stop rape and domestic violence without curtailing male dominance, and social conservatives support male dominance"
This is a punchy, well written article. Read the books of Dr. James Dobson the ideological darling of the right-wing Evangelical movement (and advisor to the White House) to see how much emphasis is still placed on male dominance within the hetro nuclear family by Christian conservatives. It is God's law that a woman obey and serve her man and to defy it is being disloyal to Him. !

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Those who don't like vaginas may have been j'cked
off behind a billboard.

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I dunno. I get these thoughts sometimes that men really are afraid of the power women have over them. I know that most folks might say, “oh, men can beat the daylights out of women, but how bad can a woman beat up a guy?” Okay, women using baseball bats and shotguns aside, saying that’s only an acknowledgment of the male power base, i.e., their upper body strength, including all the ramifications of physical strength, such as assertiveness, aggression, forcefulness, etc.

So, what’s a women’s power base? Hypothetical situation, highly oversimplified because I’m still working this out in my head: Two lawyers, one female, one male. All their qualifications for partnership are identical. They’re both equally smart, equally capable lawyers, both personable and a good fit for the partnership. In their interviews for partnership, neither one of them gets any signals from the senior partners to indicate which one they might favor. The two are told there will be a decision in a few days.

The guy thinks to himself, “we’re both equally qualified. There’s nothing I can do to set myself above her.” Then, he goes ballistic ‘cause he thinks, “Omigod, she can screw the boss and it’ll be all over for me.” A woman’s power base is her lower body advantage. There are ample examples of men literally fighting their way to the top, as there are examples of women screwing their way to the top, so the guy is scared to death she’ll use her power base to disadvantage him.

Next example: Guy meets girl, guy wants girl, girl is willing to be wanted by the guy. One problem: The guy’s brother is married and the guy thinks his brother is pussy-whipped. His brother does anything his wife tells him, she belittles him for real and imagined faults, but the sex is so good the brother takes it all. The guy is hoping for good sex with his girlfriend, too, but doesn’t want to be as wimpy and controlled as is his brother.

All he’s got to counter his girl-friend’s lower body power is his upper body power. He doesn’t want her to start dominating him as his sister-in-law has done to his brother. He’s afraid she’ll dominate him (and he’s not into whips and chains), so he starts being overly assertive. She can’t figure out what his problem is and is as yet unwilling to break it off. She thinks she’s not being sexy enough for him, so she starts vamping him. He sees that as confirmation she’s trying to use sex to get over on him. So, the poor schmuck gets even more aggressive. She thinks he wants to play rough and goes out and buys some whips and chains. The guy goes screaming out the door.

Okay, scratch that last bit.

See, and I know what it takes to work through this, lots of adjustments, probably some sacrifice, lots of talk and, the hard part, both a commitment from each to make it work for the other person and an assumption that the other person will be trying to make it work for you. But underneath it all is that power base thing and the hope that the fear part gets set aside.

If this is anywhere accurate, isn’t it an innate, probably primal circumstance? Is this notion entirely off the mark? I feel safe enough putting out rough, unfinished ideas here, so if there’s any feedback, I’d appreciate it. Please be gentle.

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nothing at all opined by me, but the Latin word "vagina" in its original military meaning is "scabbard" or "sheath" - just interesting.

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...are GAY, duh! How the hell are gays supposed to like vaginas, anyway?! Sheesh!
Here's some staunch Conservatives: Mark Foley, Larry (Wide-Stance) Craig, (all pro-war, pro-estate tax and ANTI-gay marriage) need I say more??? Oh yeah, one more thing:

Thank GOD, that I'm an opposite-sex loving Liberal! (None of that 'progressive' crap for me, either!)

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The media perpetuate gender stereotypes of all kinds from making men look ridiculous, moronic, and childish in cartoons like The Simpsons to turning women into sex objects who love nothing more than getting diamonds for Valentine's Day. Note the plunging necklines and tight pants on most of the women on the CSI shows!

But although I am aware that both genders are targeted in the media, there is a really unfortunate disparaging of women that would not be accepted if it were directed at any race or ethnic group. This goes along with many other forms of ridiculing women that are implicitly accepted in American culture.

I have written about this in numerous other posts, but it bears repeating because it does not seem that this will cease anytime in the near future. Some examples of bias against women are using "balls" as compliments and "pussy" as insults, coaches calling their team members "ladies" to get them to perform, and calling a boy a "sissy" as opposed to the more tolerant or affectionate "tomboy" for a girl.

Recently there have been a rash of advertisements that make fun of women. The first, and probably most egregious, are the light beer commercials that show some man behaving in a sensitive, "weak," or somehow non-masculine way, after which a beer squashes him and the voice-over says, "Men should act like men." Wow! Because acting otherwise makes them like women, and that would be really, really awful!

Then there's the ad for Hungry Man dinners. A couple of guys are sitting together and they decide to accompany each other to the rest room, even though they "don't really need to go" and just do it for the company. As they pass another man, he says something about "where are you LADIES going?" Okay. Women like to go to the restroom together, and that's hillarious, especially when men do it to show how silly it is. MEN, of course, are all independent and don't need to communicate (because maybe that's just weak and feminine) and if they act like women, they are LADIES and that most definitely is not good.

And now there's one for AT&T. A man has this pink phone with little bells because he has a teenage daughter. Why he has this phone is unclear - maybe his daughter buys his phone for him - and it is not what he needs. But, according to the daughter, this phone is HOT. After he gets off the phone with her, a waitress asks, "More coffee, PRINCESS?" Imagine a woman with a "masculine" phone and someone asking, "More coffee, SARGE" to make fun of her gender role. It doesn't happen in reverse in quite the same way.

There is an underlying assumption that it's just not OK for men to be feminine in any way at all. If women begin to take on male roles, it's seen as an improvement, so Buffy and other women who are strong and aggressive are fine.

In addition, Viva Viagra and erectile dysfunction are perfectly acceptable advertisements on prime time TV, but a glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple sends the wingnuts into a frenzy. Men's reproductive performance is an important, dignified issue, but the part of the body that feeds those fetuses once they are born is obscene!

It's not that the media never make fun of men or make them look foolish - obviously this happens regularly. It's that men are still understood to be superior to women in some essential way. Maybe someday this will change, but it's not likely to happen in the current macho, hyperaggressive society in which we live. Until women are really and truly thought of as "just as good as men," violence against women will continue, "conservatives" will deny that it exists, and women's genitals will still be considered by many to be off-limits in polite society.

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Serious assault is a felony everywhere and whether or not someone's your wife has nothing to do with it. If the feminists weren't lying (again) they'd have linked to the evidence not the claim.

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