Apparently Ann Romney forgot to mention to Willard that moms who don’t work outside the home do THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN THE WORLD!!!1 and already have ample dignity, thankyouverymuchyousupersexistsoand…
oh, wait — Mittens meant those moms — y’know, the ones who can’t afford dignity.
Sorry. They gotsta earn their Caddies (if not teh car elevators).
Related: Pay no attention to the ongoing war on women voting.
Gee, I can’t imagine why the gender gap between the Democratic Party and the GOP has widened into a yawning chasm:
HUNT: Let me ask you this. The Democrats of course say you are waging, the GOP is waging a war on women. I know you don’t agree with that, but looking at the polls, you have a gender gap problem. Recent polls show a huge, huge margin for Democrats among women voters. How big a problem is it? How do you close it?
PRIEBUS: Well, for one thing, if the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars, and mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we have problems with caterpillars. The fact of the matter is it’s a fiction and this started a war against the Vatican that this president pursued. He still hasn’t answered Archbishop Dolan’s issues with Obama world and Obamacare, so I think that’s the first issue.
Don’t worry, ladies (Or should I say larvae?). I’m sure Ann Romney will be happy to take some of your concerns down for the boys to look at later, once they’ve finished girding their loins for the latest pre-fab Culture War skirmish.
I hear she’s an absolute wiz at shorthand.
h/t Echidne
Image: Flickr, used via Creative Commons
So, um, Happy New Year, kids. We at bastard.logic are proud to kick off 2011 with the debut of our newest co-blogger, Amy Lauren, whom you’ll no doubt be seeing quite a bit of as the year progresses. – mb
Being a girl has become undesirable somehow, something to mock. Women are expected to behave like men on emotional level in order to gain their acceptance. I admit I’ve experienced feeling compelled to go against the “girly-girl” stereotype on a base level from the time I was old enough to perceive the reaction it evoked from the opposite gender. Always ready to roll my eyes at the behaviour of my female peers for the benefit of a guy. At the time I thought it made me cool, individualistic, set me apart from the flock. Now I wonder if I have always been naturally inclined to sell out my gender to please men? As an ardent feminist this notion is vaguely disturbing, while at the same time admitting that I haven’t entirely broken myself of this tendency.
For the twenty-thirty-something this seems to play out significantly in sexual relationships. Somehow if you’re not to be considered this negative girly-girl type you must treat sex in a casual sense. Seriously, if I had a nickel for every time I heard “I’m not looking for anything serious…” well, you know. The marriage and babies obsessed set was never my bag, but I internalized the notion to the point that it seemed okay to deny myself anything meaningful and long term as long as my physical needs were kinda-sorta met. As it turns out, meaningless sex is not my bag either.
So what’s a girl to do?
by mattttbastard
Re: the unwelcome return of Kyle Payne, pseudofeminist sex predator (y’all remember Kyle Payne, right? Mr. Sensitive Male Sex Predator? Yes, that Kyle Payne), what Ren said:
You need to stop talking about sexism, violence against women, and rape, because you, Kyle, are a sexual predator. You need to stop linking to any sort of feminist or rape survivor blog, because you are part of the very reason such things are even needed. You should still be in jail, and the fact that you gloss over all this and still write as if you are a good little feminist man with credibility and actual concern is a fucking affront not even I can leave unchallenged. I may not be a big fan of radical anti porn feminism, but you are a fucking slap in the face to everything they stand for and you do not deserve to be in such company or even associated in the most tangent of ways with those women. And I promise you this…anyone who ever Googles your name- well, I will make it my personal mission to see that they know what you have done and what you really are. The first amendment allows me to do exactly that. All the self aggrandizing bullshit in the world will never change your actions: actions that you and you alone are responsible for, and the fact that you pretend like none of it ever happened, show no real remorse or responsibility, and go on with your life and writing like you give a crap about women, rape and feminism is nauseating. Do you get it, Kyle? You are a sex offender, you have no place in rape crisis situations, feminism, or around women at all.
Also, what he said:
(Now, now–don’t get any funny ideas, Kyle.)
by matttbastard
More on this tomorrow (maybe). I’m still getting over the WTF effect. And, yeah, that infinite tape loop of shitfuckgoddammitfuckingwhatthefuckyoufuckingasswipefuckheadedfuck?
Still going.
So, for now, what Cara said (h/t Caroline).
Oh, and In what is I’m sure totally unrelated news, Lynda Waddington of The Iowa Independent also reports that Payne’s attorney has filed a motion to delay sentencing, orignally scheduled for August 11th:
Defendant is in the process of continued counseling, the results of which will be presented at sentencing in this matter and may bear upon the Court’s determination of the appropriate sentences in the above-entitled matter.
Counsel for Defendant is in the continued process of acquiring letters of support to support to the Court (sic) at sentencing and reasonably believes that additional time is need (sic) to acquire additional letters.
From Payne’s…post:
My actions have been terrible and tremendously hypocritical, and they have caused harm not only to the victim, but to women generally, who deserve nothing less than an end to rape and all other forms of male domination. Recognizing what I feel to be my responsibility as a male ally to feminism, as well as a decent human being, I ask that any women reading this letter who wish to share their responses contact me via email at kyle.d.payne@gmail.com. I welcome your questions, concerns, feelings, and anything else you would like to share. And I would especially welcome your thoughts on how I might move forward in my life with respect and compassion toward women. As I mentioned, practicing this posture of listening is vital to any notion of justice, and furthermore, it represents, I feel, a way forward through which some good can come of this situation. [emphasis in original]
And, y’know, while you’re helping Kyle be a better ally/human being, you can also pass along a letter of support for the poor duck–if you feel so inclined. Not that I’m suggesting that his heavily-promoted ‘cry for help’ ain’t nothing but a desperate, cynical ploy to save his ass from getting what it deserves.
Of course not.
P.S.: Fuck you, Kyle.
Update: Or, as Renegade Evolution puts it:
Listen, you fucking moron asshole, YOU VIOLATED that woman. Period. End game. Who is to blame? YOU! Got it, jerk? YOU. I hope to ALL that is sane or holy YOU pay for it. You have NO place in feminist spaces, no place where victimized women might be, no place speaking for or with us, you stain. YOU are a predator, got it?
Right the fuck on.
Update 2: Go read Debi Crow’s fisking of Payne’s statement. Go. (Also via Caroline.)
Update 3: Practical advice from belle:
Seriously, WTF? Who is the genius legal counsel who thought this was a good idea? I can’t even wrap my head around the REST of it. Just…die.
egh, never mind, sorry folks, better things to talk about here, just…wow.
–oh yeah, you CAN still write a letter to the judge to request that he get a -harsher- sentence (presumably this little heartfelt plea was meant to inspire the opposite response, God knows how). Details at Eleanor’s Trousers:
An “open sentencing” in the state of Iowa means that the public can attend, but not that the public can speak. While it always looks good to have people show up in support of the prosecution — and I’d personally really like to see some strong support in the courtroom — the fact is that not everyone is going to be able to speak.
For those who have a unique interest in the case… for instance, have served as advocates or can somehow speak with authority as to how horrible Payne’s actions were… get in touch with me. lynda@essentialestrogen.com
If you want to share your (civil) thoughts about this incident prior to sentencing, your best bet is to write to the judge that will preside over the sentencing:
District Court Judge Don E. Courtney
Buena Vista County Courthouse
215 E Fifth St.
Storm Lake, IA 50588As a final note, there has been some discussion about Payne being charged with child pornography. This is not a charge he faces from the state of Iowa.
– Lynda Waddington
email: lynda@essentialestrogen.com
Update 4: Yeah, about the whole ‘more on this tomorrow’ thing–fuck that noise.
I could do a long, well-thought out response to his statement, picking my way through his words paragraph by paragraph. I could explain how I feel after reading this statement and include in-depth reasoning why I feel as I do.
I could, and I’d do it well.
I don’t wanna, tho.
Don’t wanna talk about Kyle Payne no more!
If one is going to waste any more words on Kyle Payne, I would humbly suggest that one should do so in a letter to District Court Judge Don E. Courtney (which I plan on writing tomorrow).
Also see jfpbookworm (h/t) for, er, a long, well-thought out response to Payne’s statement (along with a link round up of various blog reactions).
Update 5 08/03: Speaking of well-thought out responses, here’s Hysperia upending Payne’s abuse excuse (h/t Ren):
There is surely no question that male (and some female – but we’re talking about a man here) victims of childhood sexual abuse very often go on to become predators. That doesn’t make them insane adults who are neither morally nor criminally responsible:
Statistics involving men in New Jersey prisons convicted of sexual abuse, found that over 95% of the men, were in fact abused themselves. And we don’t know, but it could be that the 5% of non-abused men in that case don’t remember being abused as children; they may have amnesia or a traumatic dissociation.. Some abuse may be the attempt to relive one’s own abuse, with power roles reversed. Another reason may be these people have learned that abuse is a way of feeling in control. Fundamentally, in all cases of abuse, it certainly is about power and control. […] It’s a complex and still unclear set of issues that drives childhood sexual abuse. However, it is up to adults to control their own behaviors.
Once again, here’s how Payne describes what he did:
While caring for the female student, I felt a sudden impulse to expose her breast. Not knowing how to deal with this feeling at the time – and to put it more clearly, not knowing how to make sense of such an urge, given my personal values and my politics – I acted upon it. With a digital camera I kept with me regularly, I briefly photographed and took a few seconds of video of the woman’s breast. She did not consent to this act, nor did she have any knowledge of it at the time. This event ended as quickly as it began, leaving me in a state of disbelief at what I had done.
That’s the excuse of a child with his hand in a cookie jar: woops, my hand slipped. Give that one a rest, Kyle. You say you didn’t know what to do with the urge? That suggests you thought about what to do with it. You know what the answer ought to have been. You had time to think about it. You had time to erase the photographs you took. You had time to find treatment and confess what you’d done. Apparently, you did none of that until, thankfully, you were caught and stopped. I hope your therapist tells you what to do with that urge the next time you have it. If not, check back here.
Also, Hysperia digs deeper into Payne’s purported work as an on-campus rape counsellor.
Update 6: Also via Ren, my future potty-mouth wife (assuming his current marriage disintegrates) PhysioProf drives the nail home with this foul-mouthed hammer of a post:
One hopes that parties involved in the sentencing priceedings will make all of this very clear to the judge. His actions continue to demonstrate an absence of willingness to take responsibility for his actions, and his delusions about the significance of his participation in FEMINISM and his self-attributed stature as a WOMEN’S ALLY are a scary sign that he deserves the harshest possible sentence to wake his ass the fuck up.
How do them cookies taste, Kyle?
Update 7: Purtek has a hammer, too:
The thing about “making amends” is first that you have to have actually changed in order for it to matter, at least enough for you to recognize when your so-called amends are causing harm. One of the first questions male “allies” to feminism ask – and here I mean real allies, which you can tell because I identify them as the ones who ask – is what they can do as men to help women. To help women deal with male violence, with pressure and double-standards and past traumas and current fears, to help end “rape culture” and the ubiquity of sexual violence. In your case, there’s a really simple answer to this question: stop violating women.
Update 8: It’s already been said, but it deserves to be repeated ad nauseam:
A true ally doesn’t feel the need to assault women in this manner. If you were even a half way decent human being, what you would have done is gotten up and left the room…but personal responsibility does not apply to you, does it?
Werd.
by matttbastard
I know that we use media to anaesthetize our selves from the daily strain of this mortal coil however, a release should not be achieved by watching or listening to someone else be degraded. The media is not the benign lifeless force that we construct it to be. It helps to frame morals, and is a reflection of our social discourse. When we sit there blindly consuming these images without giving pause to understand that some of these images are a reflection of the ugliest parts of humanity, indeed we are embracing the darkness. There are just some things that will never be funny. When we sit there and laugh at things like rape, domestic violence, or the sexual objectification of women we are colluding with patriarchy in our own marginalization. This has real world effects because it normalizes this behaviour therefore reducing the possibility that such crimes will be taken seriously. Just because it is not happening to you does not give you the right to assert privilege, and demean the life experiences of others.
– Renee, Feminists Have No Sense Of Humour
by matttbastard
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said, in the course of covering the Obama candidacy, and I’m paraphrasing,
” He (Barack Obama) brings none of the ‘ bad stuff’, you know?”By ‘Bad Stuff’, he meant the legacy of enslaving Africans in this country and then keeping them as second-class citizens until 1965, a mere 11 years before this country celebrated its 200th anniversary. So, for 189 years from its official founding as a country, and tack on another 150 years pre-Revolutionary War, and you’ve got the ‘ Bad Stuff’ done to people of African descent. You know, ‘the original sin’, or ‘ the birth defect’, as Condi Rice called it.
But, guess what…..despite being ‘ oh so smart’ by supporting Barack Obama, the ‘Bad Stuff’ smacked White America in the face.
First, with the revelation that his White Side was still involved in ‘the bad stuff’ (slavery), only as SLAVEOWNERS.
I had a good chuckle on that.
But, also, he comes home every chance he can, to ‘the bad stuff’.
To the ‘ Bad stuff’ wife and ‘ Bad stuff’ children he had with said wife.
And there it is: the 400 years of ‘ Bad stuff’, wrapped up in Michelle Obama.
When that came to me on the elliptical machine this morning, it all made sense.
Michelle Obama is a direct threat and lightening bolt against White Superiority.
Because, she’s Black…
VISIBLY BLACK…
But, does not, in any way, shape, or form, contour to the acceptable Black Pathologies that enable White Supremacy to sigh with relief.
– Rikyrah, Update: Michelle Obama As Racial Rorschach Test (h/t Michelle Obama Watch)
Thanks to Alberta: Get Rich or Die Trying for the video (by way of MOW)
by matttbastard
Via Polly Jones, the ultimate judicial Catch-22–drunk teen rape “sex” not a crime: Justice Peter McIntyre claims victim was too drunk to prove she didn’t consent:
Having sex with a drunken 14-year-old he had plied with alcohol was not a criminal offence by former Calgary man, a judge ruled yesterday.
Justice Peter McIntyre said there was insufficient evidence the girl didn’t consent to having sex with Trevor Byron Niebergall.
But McIntyre did find Niebergall guilty of sexual assault for placing his genitals on the girl’s face after she passed out — an act the offender captured on his cellphone camera and showed to co-workers.
McIntyre said the fact the teenage complainant didn’t remember her sexual encounter with Niebergall at a December 2005 New Year’s Eve party did not mean she hadn’t consented.
He noted one witness said she appeared to have the capacity to consent when she and Niebergall went to a washroom in his brother’s apartment, where they had sex. And the Queen’s Bench judge said the girl willingly consumed large amounts of alcohol supplied by Niebergall even after he made lewd sexual comments.
[…]
“The accused’s lewd comments towards her did not compel her to leave,” the judge said. “The complainant was not forced to consume alcohol — she drank … beer willingly and then switched to alcohol. It is not at all clear why she drank so heavily.”
[…]
McIntyre said because the girl drank so heavily and had little recollection of events at the party, he could not accept her claim she didn’t agree to have sex.
“Her evidence was not reliable after she started drinking,” he said
I have much more to say about this at Shakesville.
by matttbastard
Star-Tribune columnist Charles Quimby on how access to abortion in the US isn’t just being threatened by anti-choice legislative measures:
I don’t have firm statistics, but I would say most of the physicians providing abortion services in Minnesota today are my contemporaries or older. That is, people who experienced the days of illegal abortion and the complications that ensued. That is, doctors within a decade of retirement. The late Dr. Jane Hodgson, who tested Minnesota’s law by deliberately performing an illegal abortion in 1970, continued to perform abortions until age 76, traveling from St. Paul to Duluth, because doctors there would not. She was born in 1915 and reached reproductive maturity about the year nearly 2,700 women in America died from reported self-induced or illegal abortions.
Most of the subsequent generations of doctors, including those who completed OB-GYN residencies in the early ’80s who will soon be leaving practice, received no training in terminating pregnancies, and the attitude in medical schools still seems to be “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Residents who want to learn about the full range of women’s health issues are free to arrange their own training, if they can find someone to provide it. The barriers don’t just involve learning medical procedures that are not mentioned in class; there are also issues about malpractice coverage and getting institutional approval.
Today’s medical residents were born in post-Reagan America, went to college in during the Rehnquist/Scalia era and have only known a post-Roe existence. Faced with roadblocks in their already stressful training regimens, even strongly prochoice residents may not pursue this on their own.
Meanwhile, practicing physicians who believe in choice may advise patients about all their options in handling a pregnancy, but they aren’t going to provide all the options — especially without having the training. But also because of outright harassment, fear of bad publicity or concern for their family’s safety, they have quietly decided to let reproductive freedom become not just the patient’s decision, but the patient’s problem.
As they say, read the whole goddamn thing.
Related: Via Vicky Saporta, Pamela Pizarro examines how the “lack of trained abortion providers in Canada is huge problem and is keeping women in our country from accessing adequate sexual and reproductive health services”:
When you consider that up to 40% of women will have an abortion during their life time, it is astonishing that the abortion procedure is not required to be taught in any medical school curricula. In fact in a study conducted by Medical Students for Choice, 40% of 50 schools that they surveyed “do not teach any aspect of abortion in the pre-clinical years.”
by matttbastard
I can’t really wrap my head around uber-hypocritical faux-feminist Kyle Payne. Over the past 24+ hours I’ve been vacillating between rank disgust, random profanity, and coming to terms with the fact that way too many people these days seem determined to dance a merry jig on irony’s already well-trampled grave. So for the real 411 on BVU’s “Male Leader of the Year” (retch), go read Ren, belle (h/t), Cara, Renee, Caroline, purtek, GallingGalla (again) Jeff Fecke and the many others who have more to say about this (as opposed to the infinite tape loop of shitfuckgoddammitfuckingwhatthefuckyoufuckingasswipefuckheadedfuck that’s been running through my brain since this all came to light).
Oh, and as for Mr. Sensitive Male Sex Predator,
say hello to my little friend:
Asshole.
bastard.logic 