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Turkish President: A Woman's Role in Society Is to Be a Mom
Just a few months ago, the Turkish government landed in some hot water after a deputy minister made an outrageous statement about Women's Place in Society, claiming that womenshouldn't laugh in public. Now, in the world's worst competition, Turkey's president has really outdone his minister, claiming that men and women are inherently unequal. Hang on ladies, we're going for a ride.
At a summit on JUSTICE FOR WOMEN that took place in Istanbul, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who at this point is best known for insisting that he's not a dictator (he swears you guys), super helpfully explained that women are built for motherhood before really going to down on feminists. Behold, via AFP:
Yeah, I'm not even going to go down that rabbit hole. Jesus, Freud would have a fucking field day with this dude.
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At a summit on JUSTICE FOR WOMEN that took place in Istanbul, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who at this point is best known for insisting that he's not a dictator (he swears you guys), super helpfully explained that women are built for motherhood before really going to down on feminists. Behold, via AFP:
Yes, feminists are actually a coding error in womankind's baby-making programming. Also, Turkey, do you know this dude is running your country? Just checking."Our religion (Islam) has defined a position for women (in society): motherhood," Erdogan told an audience of Turkish women including his own daughter Sumeyye.
"Some people can understand this, while others can't. You cannot explain this to feminists because they do not accept the concept of motherhood."
He recalled: "I would kiss my mother's feet because they smelled of paradise. She would glance coyly and cry sometimes.
Yeah, I'm not even going to go down that rabbit hole. Jesus, Freud would have a fucking field day with this dude.
Yep, it's official. Woman = mother."Motherhood is something else."
He went on to say that women and men cannot be treated equally "because it is against human nature."
"Their characters, habits and physiques are different.... You cannot place a mother breastfeeding her baby on an equal footing with men.
Um, these asinine sexist comments are against my delicate nature, to be honest. Also against my delicate nature (pats forehead with monogramed lace kerchief), springboard diving into a puddle of my own tears and maybe vomit, while yelling "WHY WON'T YOU ACCEPT YOUR DESTINY" at my own uterus, but that's basically what Erdoğan's comments make me want to do. So I'll be on my way now."You cannot get women to do every kind of work men can do, as in Communist regimes.
"You cannot tell them to go out and dig the soil. This is against their delicate nature."
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Guest- Guest
The Feminist Vampire Movie That Teaches 'Bad Men' a Gory Lesson
The scare-queen at the heart of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a new "vampire Western" film set in Iran, is the exact opposite of your typical Hollywood horror villain. She's not named Freddy or Jason; she doesn't wield an axe, wear a mask, or gleefully interrupt tanned teen couples in mid-thrust. She's also not a mewling, red-lipped cat-woman or a crafty witch in a velvet hood.
Instead she's a young, hip Iranian played by Sheila Vand known simply as "The Girl." She rides a skateboard, and wears cute striped tees, and listens to indie rock, and plasters '80s posters across her walls. She's a big-eyed, blunt-banged killer with an occasional air of innocence that seems at odds with the self-proclaimed "bad things" she does. Specifically? She sucks men's blood. More specifically? She sucks bad men's blood.
Though slimy dudes—pimps, johns, drug-crazed fiends —are the pointed mark of this particular vampire's murderous wrath, the film's L.A.-based writer-director, Ana Lily Amirpour, didn't intend for the film to be a feminist statement—or a statement on anything at all. "I don't set specific targets [for my work] like that; it's more like poetry," she says.
Of course, Aminpour is aware of the ways in which A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night turns both traditional horror film tropes and everyday gender narratives on their heads. You know the ones: that predators are men and victims are women, or that a man would never feel scared or threatened by a pretty young woman trailing him in the dark. But in Bad City, the fictional Iranian oil town in which the film takes place, a man would be seriously remiss to underestimate that girl in the dark. "What's interesting about this girl and about people [in general] is that what you see is never what you get. You can have whatever [peaceful] bumper stickers on the back of your car, and then get out and shoot a dog," Amirpour says. "I'm interested in [exploring] expectations not being met... including preconceived notions of this girl and what she looks like, but also about everyone."
What's most interesting about The Girl is not just her sexist-expectation-busting–it's her successful all-around creepiness. Throughout the movie, she silently stalks men in the dark, and in one of the film's most loaded, cutting scenes, she ominously follows a clueless little boy into a dark park. When she abruptly leaps out to face him, she repeatedly asks, "Are you a good boy? Are you a good boy or not? Don't lie." When the terrified kid whimpers a yes, she bears her impressive fangs and threatens to rip his eyeballs out, instead settling on a warning: "Til the end of your life I'll watch you. Be a good boy."
Beyond all her sinister underlying warnings to the would-be bad men of the world, though, the vampire (who is never named and rarely speaks) is made up of an amalgam of very human qualities—darkness, loneliness, naiveté—that lend her significantly more complexity and weight than your average scary-movie antihero. Though one character remarks at how "cold" her undead skin feels to the touch, we catch occasional flashes of hope in her eyes, a palpable longing for connection. This manifests most clearly in her budding romantic-ish relationship with the film's other main character, Arash, a young, adorable James Dean type (played by Arash Marandi) who drives a '57 Thunderbird convertible and retains an aura of brooding hauntedness.
Arash, a gardener, lives a meandering existence in a messy house with an intense-eyed cat and an unstable drug-addict father, Hossein, who never got over the loss of his wife. (Spoiler: Hossein may or may not reach an untimely vampiric end after bullying a sad-eyed local prostitute in a motel room.) Arash struggles with aimlessness and nihilism. At one of his first nighttime rendezvous with the vampire, he gives her diamond earrings he stole from a client, then asks, "If there was a big storm coming now from behind those mountains, would it matter? Would it change anything?"
Beautifully shot in black and white, the film's most enigmatic character is the mood itself—its ongoing undercurrent of grim foreboding. That vibe is enhanced by Amirpour's plentiful shots of sparse, dusty landscapes that evoke memories of old-school Westerns. Amirpour, who grew up watching classics with her dad like Once Upon a Time in the West and the Man With No Name trilogy, says she appreciates how Westerns are "all about tension ... you're just waiting for it to pop." She also likens the vampire at the center of her film to the notorious loner protagonists in Westerns. In Man With No Name, she remembers, "Clint Eastwood's character is this mysterious person that rolls into a small, weird town, and you don't know what his motives are or whether he's good or bad, and he doesn't say a lot. I see her in that way."
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which Amirpour expanded into a comic book as she was writing the screenplay, has few cheap thrills or extraneous gore. It runs deeper and stranger than that. Like 2008's chilling childhood-vampire-friendship film Let the Right One In, it effectively merges horror with tenderness; at its heart, beneath its layers of reclusion and hopelessness, it's a love story. Because after all, as Amirpour notes, isn't "love a kind of a horror movie" in itself?
Laura Barcella is an author and freelance writer whose work has appeared in Salon, VanityFair.com, the Village Voice, and Refinery29. Check out her website and follow her on Twitter @laurabarcella.
"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" opened in New York on Friday and is currently expanding into theaters nationwide.
You can see a clip by clicking this link
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Instead she's a young, hip Iranian played by Sheila Vand known simply as "The Girl." She rides a skateboard, and wears cute striped tees, and listens to indie rock, and plasters '80s posters across her walls. She's a big-eyed, blunt-banged killer with an occasional air of innocence that seems at odds with the self-proclaimed "bad things" she does. Specifically? She sucks men's blood. More specifically? She sucks bad men's blood.
Though slimy dudes—pimps, johns, drug-crazed fiends —are the pointed mark of this particular vampire's murderous wrath, the film's L.A.-based writer-director, Ana Lily Amirpour, didn't intend for the film to be a feminist statement—or a statement on anything at all. "I don't set specific targets [for my work] like that; it's more like poetry," she says.
Of course, Aminpour is aware of the ways in which A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night turns both traditional horror film tropes and everyday gender narratives on their heads. You know the ones: that predators are men and victims are women, or that a man would never feel scared or threatened by a pretty young woman trailing him in the dark. But in Bad City, the fictional Iranian oil town in which the film takes place, a man would be seriously remiss to underestimate that girl in the dark. "What's interesting about this girl and about people [in general] is that what you see is never what you get. You can have whatever [peaceful] bumper stickers on the back of your car, and then get out and shoot a dog," Amirpour says. "I'm interested in [exploring] expectations not being met... including preconceived notions of this girl and what she looks like, but also about everyone."
What's most interesting about The Girl is not just her sexist-expectation-busting–it's her successful all-around creepiness. Throughout the movie, she silently stalks men in the dark, and in one of the film's most loaded, cutting scenes, she ominously follows a clueless little boy into a dark park. When she abruptly leaps out to face him, she repeatedly asks, "Are you a good boy? Are you a good boy or not? Don't lie." When the terrified kid whimpers a yes, she bears her impressive fangs and threatens to rip his eyeballs out, instead settling on a warning: "Til the end of your life I'll watch you. Be a good boy."
Beyond all her sinister underlying warnings to the would-be bad men of the world, though, the vampire (who is never named and rarely speaks) is made up of an amalgam of very human qualities—darkness, loneliness, naiveté—that lend her significantly more complexity and weight than your average scary-movie antihero. Though one character remarks at how "cold" her undead skin feels to the touch, we catch occasional flashes of hope in her eyes, a palpable longing for connection. This manifests most clearly in her budding romantic-ish relationship with the film's other main character, Arash, a young, adorable James Dean type (played by Arash Marandi) who drives a '57 Thunderbird convertible and retains an aura of brooding hauntedness.
Arash, a gardener, lives a meandering existence in a messy house with an intense-eyed cat and an unstable drug-addict father, Hossein, who never got over the loss of his wife. (Spoiler: Hossein may or may not reach an untimely vampiric end after bullying a sad-eyed local prostitute in a motel room.) Arash struggles with aimlessness and nihilism. At one of his first nighttime rendezvous with the vampire, he gives her diamond earrings he stole from a client, then asks, "If there was a big storm coming now from behind those mountains, would it matter? Would it change anything?"
Beautifully shot in black and white, the film's most enigmatic character is the mood itself—its ongoing undercurrent of grim foreboding. That vibe is enhanced by Amirpour's plentiful shots of sparse, dusty landscapes that evoke memories of old-school Westerns. Amirpour, who grew up watching classics with her dad like Once Upon a Time in the West and the Man With No Name trilogy, says she appreciates how Westerns are "all about tension ... you're just waiting for it to pop." She also likens the vampire at the center of her film to the notorious loner protagonists in Westerns. In Man With No Name, she remembers, "Clint Eastwood's character is this mysterious person that rolls into a small, weird town, and you don't know what his motives are or whether he's good or bad, and he doesn't say a lot. I see her in that way."
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which Amirpour expanded into a comic book as she was writing the screenplay, has few cheap thrills or extraneous gore. It runs deeper and stranger than that. Like 2008's chilling childhood-vampire-friendship film Let the Right One In, it effectively merges horror with tenderness; at its heart, beneath its layers of reclusion and hopelessness, it's a love story. Because after all, as Amirpour notes, isn't "love a kind of a horror movie" in itself?
Laura Barcella is an author and freelance writer whose work has appeared in Salon, VanityFair.com, the Village Voice, and Refinery29. Check out her website and follow her on Twitter @laurabarcella.
"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" opened in New York on Friday and is currently expanding into theaters nationwide.
You can see a clip by clicking this link
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Guest- Guest
The Potty Mouth Princesses Are Back and Now They Have Black Eyes
Last month, a for-profit T-shirt company FCKH8 released an ad featuring adorable little girlsusing bad words to describe the various injustices women face, like income inequality and sexual assault. Well, now they've upped the ante with their newest video which features similarly indignant little girls in princess costumes dropping more F-bombs for feminism. But this time, they're sporting fake black eyes and fat lips.
Once again, the young ladies make some righteous points about the state of women calling grown-ups out on sexism and the cycle of abuse, and once again they cuss a lot. They probably could have left out the twerk reference, but hey! Buzzwords! They then visually demonstrate the statistic that one in four women are victims of abuse by appearing with heavy and very realistic bruising and cuts. It's certainly shocking and deeply uncomfortable. And it totally makes me want to buy a shirt about it.
Yep, this latest spot is for a unisex tank (FCKH8 refers to it as a "Not a Wife Beater") that reads "Break the Silence on Domestic Violence." 100% of the profit ($9 per $15 tank) will go directly to anti-domestic violence charities that have yet to be decided. Cool. But let's talk about the visuals going on here.
The ad looks like it was inspired by Saint Hoax's "Happily Never After" series in which the Disney princesses are depicted as victims of abuse covered in bruises. The use of shocking imagery in this situation is quite paralyzing, and it's meant to be—the girls in the video justify it themselves. One princess, wearing a sling on her arm asks, "Got a problem looking at my fake fucked-up face?" Check. Another counters, "Um, isn't one out of four women beaten?" Mate. Another remarks, "The real disgrace." Game over.
My issue with this type of shock advertising, which isn't exactly a new tactic, is this: The shock factor precludes criticism, which is both brilliant and annoying. The ad acknowledges how graphic it is, only to unload the discomfort it generates on the viewer—it creates a zero-sum game of guilt where there isn't one. Yes, I have a problem with the fake fucked-up face, but that doesn't mean I don't have a problem with domestic violence, and it seems dangerous to conflate the two. The fact that the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from all this is "Yeah, that's the point" is not exactly reassuring. I guess it's just not my cup of tea, or my next tank top.
For the record, I think these little girls are awesome. I hear what they are saying, I am glad they are angry, and sure it's cute that they say bad words even if it's for a T-shirt company. I just can't say I enjoyed looking at the bruises painted onto their faces by a capable (and talented) adult.
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Once again, the young ladies make some righteous points about the state of women calling grown-ups out on sexism and the cycle of abuse, and once again they cuss a lot. They probably could have left out the twerk reference, but hey! Buzzwords! They then visually demonstrate the statistic that one in four women are victims of abuse by appearing with heavy and very realistic bruising and cuts. It's certainly shocking and deeply uncomfortable. And it totally makes me want to buy a shirt about it.
Yep, this latest spot is for a unisex tank (FCKH8 refers to it as a "Not a Wife Beater") that reads "Break the Silence on Domestic Violence." 100% of the profit ($9 per $15 tank) will go directly to anti-domestic violence charities that have yet to be decided. Cool. But let's talk about the visuals going on here.
The ad looks like it was inspired by Saint Hoax's "Happily Never After" series in which the Disney princesses are depicted as victims of abuse covered in bruises. The use of shocking imagery in this situation is quite paralyzing, and it's meant to be—the girls in the video justify it themselves. One princess, wearing a sling on her arm asks, "Got a problem looking at my fake fucked-up face?" Check. Another counters, "Um, isn't one out of four women beaten?" Mate. Another remarks, "The real disgrace." Game over.
My issue with this type of shock advertising, which isn't exactly a new tactic, is this: The shock factor precludes criticism, which is both brilliant and annoying. The ad acknowledges how graphic it is, only to unload the discomfort it generates on the viewer—it creates a zero-sum game of guilt where there isn't one. Yes, I have a problem with the fake fucked-up face, but that doesn't mean I don't have a problem with domestic violence, and it seems dangerous to conflate the two. The fact that the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from all this is "Yeah, that's the point" is not exactly reassuring. I guess it's just not my cup of tea, or my next tank top.
For the record, I think these little girls are awesome. I hear what they are saying, I am glad they are angry, and sure it's cute that they say bad words even if it's for a T-shirt company. I just can't say I enjoyed looking at the bruises painted onto their faces by a capable (and talented) adult.
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Guest- Guest
Doctor Acquitted in Egypt's Very First Female Genital Mutilation Trial
Earlier this year, Egypt broke some serious ground by arresting Dr. Raslan Fadl and charging him for manslaughter of Sohair al-Bata'a, a 12-year-old girl who died while he was performing a female genital mutilation (FGM) operation on her. Many hoped the case would deter both family members and doctors from continuing FGM, banned since 2007 and criminalized since 2008. Unfortunately, both the doctor and the girl's father who was also facing criminal charges have been acquitted.
The Guardian reports:
No reason was given by the judge, with the verdict being simply scrawled in a court ledger, rather than being announced in the Agga courtroom.
Despite the fact that Sohair's parents admitted to taking her to Fadl's clinic specifically for a FGM procedure, Fadl claimed that he would never perform such an operation as it was against religious teaching. He claimed he had removed a wart from her pubic area and that she had died from an allergic reaction to penicillin. Meanwhile Egypt's forensic authority released a report saying that "what happened in the genital area of the girl was a clear circumcision operation."
Fadl and Sohair's mother reached an out-of-court settlement and Fadl was ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds, or almost $700 USD to the Sohair's mother.
"Of course there will be no stopping any doctor after this. Any doctor can do any FGM he wants now," said Atef Aboelenein, a lawyer for the Women's Centre for Guidance and Legal Awareness, who was the first to find out the verdict.
Equality Now, along with local lawyers plan to appeal the court's decisions, while activist bodies have planned to engage with Egypt's rural community about FGM in an effort to curb the practice.
The Guardian reports:
No reason was given by the judge, with the verdict being simply scrawled in a court ledger, rather than being announced in the Agga courtroom.
Despite the fact that Sohair's parents admitted to taking her to Fadl's clinic specifically for a FGM procedure, Fadl claimed that he would never perform such an operation as it was against religious teaching. He claimed he had removed a wart from her pubic area and that she had died from an allergic reaction to penicillin. Meanwhile Egypt's forensic authority released a report saying that "what happened in the genital area of the girl was a clear circumcision operation."
Fadl and Sohair's mother reached an out-of-court settlement and Fadl was ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds, or almost $700 USD to the Sohair's mother.
"Of course there will be no stopping any doctor after this. Any doctor can do any FGM he wants now," said Atef Aboelenein, a lawyer for the Women's Centre for Guidance and Legal Awareness, who was the first to find out the verdict.
Equality Now, along with local lawyers plan to appeal the court's decisions, while activist bodies have planned to engage with Egypt's rural community about FGM in an effort to curb the practice.
Guest- Guest
German Student Dies After Defending Teen Girls From Harassers
About 150 people gathered in Berlin, Germany, today to attend a vigil commemorating Tugce Albayrak, a 23-year-old woman who died after she was beaten by a man she had just stood up to earlier for harassing two teen girls.
On November 15, Albayrak was in a McDonalds in Offenbach (near Frankfurt) when she heard cries for help from the restroom. Two teenage girls were being harassed by a group of men. Albayrak courageously and successfully intervened. But later on that night in the McDonald's parking lot, one of the men from the group of harassers attacked her in the parking lot. He struck her in the head, though it's unsure as to whether he used a bat or stone or other weapon, or if he punched her and she fell, hitting her head on a stone.
As a result of the attack, Albayrak was left in a coma—when doctors informed her parents she was braindead and would never regain consciousness, they decided to turn off her life support. It was her 23rd birthday.
Her attacker has been named as Senal M, and 18-year-old from Serbia. He has confessed to striking her, but has since kept mum ahead of his trial. He is expected to be charged with assault resulting in unintentional manslaughter.
While a petition for Albayrak to be posthumously honored with the nation's order of merit has gathered over 100,000 signatures, German President Joachim Gauck has praised her bravery, writing to her family, via BBC:
"Like countless citizens, I am shocked and appalled by this terrible act. Tugce has earned gratitude and respect from us all.
"She will always remain a role model to us, our entire country mourns with you.
"Where other people looked the other way, Tugce showed exemplary courage and moral fortitude."
Once again we are faced with the reality of doing the right thing. Once again we are faced with the reality of how unsafe it is for a woman to simply be and how much more unsafe it is for a woman stand up for what's right, and it will never get any less devastating. I wish the best to Albayrak's friends and family and hope that they find peace knowing that that woman is a hero.
Thank you, Tugce.
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On November 15, Albayrak was in a McDonalds in Offenbach (near Frankfurt) when she heard cries for help from the restroom. Two teenage girls were being harassed by a group of men. Albayrak courageously and successfully intervened. But later on that night in the McDonald's parking lot, one of the men from the group of harassers attacked her in the parking lot. He struck her in the head, though it's unsure as to whether he used a bat or stone or other weapon, or if he punched her and she fell, hitting her head on a stone.
As a result of the attack, Albayrak was left in a coma—when doctors informed her parents she was braindead and would never regain consciousness, they decided to turn off her life support. It was her 23rd birthday.
Her attacker has been named as Senal M, and 18-year-old from Serbia. He has confessed to striking her, but has since kept mum ahead of his trial. He is expected to be charged with assault resulting in unintentional manslaughter.
While a petition for Albayrak to be posthumously honored with the nation's order of merit has gathered over 100,000 signatures, German President Joachim Gauck has praised her bravery, writing to her family, via BBC:
"Like countless citizens, I am shocked and appalled by this terrible act. Tugce has earned gratitude and respect from us all.
"She will always remain a role model to us, our entire country mourns with you.
"Where other people looked the other way, Tugce showed exemplary courage and moral fortitude."
Once again we are faced with the reality of doing the right thing. Once again we are faced with the reality of how unsafe it is for a woman to simply be and how much more unsafe it is for a woman stand up for what's right, and it will never get any less devastating. I wish the best to Albayrak's friends and family and hope that they find peace knowing that that woman is a hero.
Thank you, Tugce.
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Guest- Guest
Terry Crews: Modern Day Masculinity Can Be as Damaging as the Taliban
While you probably know Terry Crews from Brooklyn 99, Everybody Hates Chris or his time playing in the NFL, you might be less familiar with his work as one of the most progressive and thoughtful voices in gender criticism. The actor—who just published the book Manhood: How to Be A Better Man - Or Just Live With One—recently took part in the What Makes A Man 2014: Maps to Manhood conference and sat down with Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss feminism, consent and what it means to "be a man" today.

Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One
Amazon.com: $18.30
Buy now

The entire talk is well worth a listen, but here are some particularly choice excerpts.
On feminism:
I think the big thing about feminism is that it scares men because, you know—the big deal is that people are scared of being controlled...I want to be clear that feminism is not saying "women are better than men." That's not what's going on...What it is is that we're talking about gender equality, true gender equality...but the problem is that men have always felt like they're more valuable...I have been that guy where I felt I was more valuable than my wife and kids.
On being outspoken about the problems with modern day masculinity:
I get a lot of guys who are like, "You know, that's good, man. That's cool," and I also get guys who are like, "What are you DOING?"...It's like, what is the big deal? But it's [that I'm] telling. [I'm] telling. "It's MAN CODE, dude. Man Code! C'mon."...but does Man Code work when it's your daughter who gets raped? Man Code—does that work when your mom gets abused?
...I'm living in the real world and you can drink the Kool-Aid all you want. A lot of guys love the Kool-Aid. The sports world is Kool-Aid world...You can do anything if [you win]...What happens is they win and they go, "You know that girl? She's my trophy. I deserve that girl. In fact, she don't even want to be with me, but I don't care. I'm going to take it." What kind of mindset is that? Never never never never never should that ever be accepted. That's not "code." That's Taliban. That's ISIS.
On the importance of men supporting the feminist cause:
I kind of relate it to slavery. Or even civil rights. Let's not even go back to slavery, let's go to civil rights—the people who were silent at the lunch counters, when it was the black lunch counter and the white one or the schools were segregated...and you were quiet. You were accepting it. Same thing with men right now. If you don't say anything, you are, by your silence—it's acceptance. I'm not going to be silent.
Crews also expounds on the many ways that perceptions of masculinity hurt men. (Again, give the full interview a watch!)
Conclusion: Terry Crews should lead talks across America.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One
Amazon.com: $18.30
Buy now

The entire talk is well worth a listen, but here are some particularly choice excerpts.
On feminism:
I think the big thing about feminism is that it scares men because, you know—the big deal is that people are scared of being controlled...I want to be clear that feminism is not saying "women are better than men." That's not what's going on...What it is is that we're talking about gender equality, true gender equality...but the problem is that men have always felt like they're more valuable...I have been that guy where I felt I was more valuable than my wife and kids.
On being outspoken about the problems with modern day masculinity:
I get a lot of guys who are like, "You know, that's good, man. That's cool," and I also get guys who are like, "What are you DOING?"...It's like, what is the big deal? But it's [that I'm] telling. [I'm] telling. "It's MAN CODE, dude. Man Code! C'mon."...but does Man Code work when it's your daughter who gets raped? Man Code—does that work when your mom gets abused?
...I'm living in the real world and you can drink the Kool-Aid all you want. A lot of guys love the Kool-Aid. The sports world is Kool-Aid world...You can do anything if [you win]...What happens is they win and they go, "You know that girl? She's my trophy. I deserve that girl. In fact, she don't even want to be with me, but I don't care. I'm going to take it." What kind of mindset is that? Never never never never never should that ever be accepted. That's not "code." That's Taliban. That's ISIS.
On the importance of men supporting the feminist cause:
I kind of relate it to slavery. Or even civil rights. Let's not even go back to slavery, let's go to civil rights—the people who were silent at the lunch counters, when it was the black lunch counter and the white one or the schools were segregated...and you were quiet. You were accepting it. Same thing with men right now. If you don't say anything, you are, by your silence—it's acceptance. I'm not going to be silent.
Crews also expounds on the many ways that perceptions of masculinity hurt men. (Again, give the full interview a watch!)
Conclusion: Terry Crews should lead talks across America.
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Guest- Guest
Re: Women's Rights/Issues
That's such an outrageous number. It would be more believable to say around 2,000 to 3,000. I think that's the number a few porn actors and rockstars have claimed.
Re: Women's Rights/Issues
Yeah, that Lemmy guy from that metal band (real specific huh) says he's around 10,000. Although that's in his entire career. 2,000 wouldn't have sold books.CauseItsReal wrote:That's such an outrageous number. It would be more believable to say around 2,000 to 3,000. I think that's the number a few porn actors and rockstars have claimed.
10,000 makes me wonder what her vagina looks like.
Guest- Guest
The 39 Most Iconic Feminist Moments of 2014
In 1998, TIME magazine declared feminism dead. Nearly 15 years later, it wondered if instead, perhaps feminism should be banned. Constantly on attack from all sides, feminism has spent the past few decades proving its importance and relevance over and over and over again. If there's one thing history has taught us, it's that the backlash against feminism will always be a measure of our success. That's the thing with progress — it is far too often perceived as a threat by those took weak to embrace equality.
Indeed, as we head into December, it's clear that the year 2014 was a historic one for feminism. Across the Internet and the world, women stood up for their rights, challenged stereotypes, fought for recognition and took control of the dialogue. The following is a non-exhaustive list of some of the most iconic feminist moments this year:
1. Malala accepted the Nobel Peace Prize — and went straight back to chemistry class.
Source: Getty Images
The Nobel Peace Prize is "not going to help in exams" Yousafzai joked to reporters after becoming the youngest person to ever win the award. In addition to advocating against violence, poverty and advocating for more access to education for women and girls, the seventeen-year-old activist has become a symbol of hope and proof that feminism really does have the power to change the world.
2. Mo'ne Davis made everyone want to "throw like a girl."
Source: AP
When the 13-year-old Davis led her team to the Little League World Series, it's safe to say she captivated the nation. Poised and confident, Davis was an instant role model for millions of little girls — and boys — and also was the first Little Leaguer to grace a Sports Illustrated cover. To top it off, she was also recently named Sports Illustrated Kid's "SportsKid of the Year." You go, girl.
3. Emma Watson stunned the U.N.
Source: Getty Images
We knew Emma Watson was destined for big things as soon as the U.N. named her as an official Goodwill Ambassador, but we had no idea how much of an impact she would have — and so soon — until she gave a speech highlighting the importance of gender equality and feminism. Although some feminists were disgruntled by a perceived lack of acknowledgment by the star of her own privilege, her public defense of feminism certainly started a conversation, sending the message that feminism is important and should be embraced by both men and women across the globe.
4. A survivor brought her mattress — and sparked a national movement.
Frustrated by what she saw as an unacceptable response from school officials to her alleged sexual assault, Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz decided to take matters into her own hands. As part of her senior performance art project, Sulkowicz announced that she would carry her mattress everywhere she went until her alleged rapist was expelled. It didn't take long for others to notice, eventually sparking a national day of protest culminating in 28 mattresses being dropped in front of the office of Lee Bollinger, the president of the university, in a dramatic show of solidarity.
5. Jennifer Lawrence beat the Internet's worst trolls at their own game.
Source: AP
It's no coincidence the 4chan celebrity nude scandal targeted almost exclusively female celebrities. Culturally, we still view women's sexuality as inherently shameful, making the exploitation of said sexuality one of the most effective ways we have to try to put women down. Jennifer Lawrence, however, is far too strong a woman to be shamed by a few cowardly trolls hiding behind the anonymous cloak of the dark net. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she explained why those who attempt to denigrate women for taking intimate photos are the ones who should be ashamed. "I started to write an apology, but I don't have anything to say I'm sorry for," she said. Amen to that.
6. Women stormed the halls of Congress.
Source: AP
The 2014 midterm election may have been a "shellacking" for Democrats, but it also saw victories by a new wave of women, on both sides of the political aisle, ultimately increasing the ratio of female representatives greatly. A record 100 women will serve in the 114th Congress, and that's something we should all celebrate.
7. A bro tried to defend cat-calling on TV — and was totally shut down.
Source: CNN via Youtube
Although it's rare to hear anyone describe a crime like harassment as a "compliment," it's always shocking to hear a man on television think he can get away with telling women how they should or should not feel about it. Although multiple pundits have suggested that women for harassment, when Amanda Seales did not take kindly to Steve Santagati's suggestion that women should be thankful for the attention during a debate . From now on, every reaction to mansplaining will forever be judged against the flawless takedown that resulted.
8. Frozen gave us a lot of feelings — and broke all of the records.
Signaling an important break in the traditional princess genre, Disney's smash hit Frozen featured a prince-less feminist cartoon hero who sings "Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free!" Equally important, the blockbuster became the highest-earning animated movie of all time, proving that children — and grown-ups — will pay to watch complex and strong female characters. And it was written, directed and composed by women! Currently, only 1 in 4 speaking animated characters are female, the success of Frozen is expected to change the way we think about gender at the movies.
9. Laverne Cox didn't break barriers, she crushed them.
Laverne Cox, in addition to being an incredibly talented actress, has spent the past year helping to open door after door for her transgender brothers and sisters. Some of her firsts included being the first openly transgender woman to garner an Emmy nomination for her role as Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black, a rare, realistic portrayal of a transgender woman in mainstream pop culture. Cox also graced the cover of Time magazine, shining a brilliant light on the talent of trans individuals and the growing strength of the transgender rights movement.
10. Taylor Swift had a feminist epiphany
Source: Getty Images
After years of comments to the contrary, the superstar entertainer finally came out of the gender equality closet this year, confiding to the Guardian that she was totally a feminist all along (knew it)! Swift then set about proving her commitment to the movement, releasing a video for her single "Blank Space" that was described as a "dystopian feminist fairy tale" by Jessica Valenti. Indeed, over the span of only a couple months, Swift has been on something of a feminist tear, disproving stereotypes about feminists, calling out the music industry's trivialization of women artists and giving thanks for the invaluable role of female friendships in her life. Oh and can we talk about that VMA performance?
11. #YesAllWomen reached almost 2 million tweets in under four days.
Not all men assault, rape and harm women, but #YesAllWomen have to deal with the threat of being hurt every day. That was the rallying cry behind what may be the most viral feminist hashtag of all time. Born out of the tragedy that took place in Santa Barbara, it was an opportunity for women to speak openly about the injustices that plague their lives. At one point, the hashtag trended more than Kim Kardashian's wedding, proof that the conversation was long overdue and resonated with many. Thanks to #YesAllWomen, the conversation about the shooting was seen through a gendered lens, something that the media has been reluctant to do for far too long.
12. Facebook stopped censoring breastfeeding.
Source: AP
After helping to ensure Facebook cracked down on content trivializing and in some cases glorifying violence against women last year, a feminist coalition led by advocates including Soraya Chemaly wasn't done yet. Working together, the group of determined women managed to convince Facebook to change its policy banning photos of women breastfeeding, in the process demolishing a problematic double standard that sent the message that women's bodies are inherently obscene.
13. Beyoncé danced in front of the world — and a gigantic feminist banner.
Source: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Remember the bizarre spectacle that was last year's VMAs? For all those wondering if they would ever get Robin Thicke's gyrations out of their nightmares, Beyoncé's 16-minute performance was quite literally a sight for sore eyes. The world's biggest diva proved feminism wasn't just accessible, it was cool. As Time remarked, the entire show was about women's empowerment. From Swift's lively performance with exclusively male backup dancers to Nicki Minaj's assertive "Anaconda," the performances gave many of us hope for a future music industry that respects and highlights its female talent.
14. Ellen Page came out, made our hearts grow 10 sizes.
Source: YouTube
"I'm here today because I am gay. And because ... maybe I can make a difference [...] I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission," the actress told a captive audience at the Human Rights Campaign's Time to THRIVE conference this February. Page's coming out sent a powerful message to LGBT youth around the country that they were not alone.
15. Lupita Nyong'o forced Hollywood to take blackness seriously.
Source: YouTube
After becoming only the fifth black woman to receive a best supporting actress award for her role in 12 Years a Slave, Lupita Nyong'o set off on a whirlwind awards tour, earning a Glamour Woman of the Year honor and the Essence magazine Black Woman in Hollywood Breakthrough Award. Proving that she was as brilliant as she was beautiful, Nyong'o's speech on body image and blackness deeply moved the Essence audience. "I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful," she told the audience at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "I put on the TV and only saw pale skin, I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin." The path to self-acceptance is hard, she noted, but finally coming to terms with the idea that beauty comes in many shades has changed her life.
16. Robin Thicke's new album fell flat on its face.
Those familiar with Robin Thicke's previously questionable artistic decisions — singing about the "blurred lines" of consent being perhaps his most infamous — may not have been surprised when his new album was released, and was creepy as hell. More surprising, however, was that people weren't buying it. Literally. To be perfectly fair to Thicke, Paula, named for his now ex-wife, did sell like 530 copies in its first week. But the moral of the story seems to be that the era of the open misogynist may be coming to an end in the music industry.
17. Mindy Kaling nailed it, repeatedly.
Clearly, not everyone can be Mindy Kaling. The multitalented star produces, writes and stars in her show, and yet also has the time to make effortlessly brilliant statements about being a woman of color in media. Whether it's her response to a snarky question at SXSW or her witty retort after being mistaken for Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai ( "Did he really think I'm Malala? And that if I were, I'd be at the Boom Boom Room?"), Kaling has proved adept at fighting Hollywood's old boys club. And she does it with panache. According to Kaling, every woman's motto should be "Why the fuck not me." She's living proof that women can and should be leading these discussions.
18. Moronic pickup artist booted out of several countries because of feminist activism.
Source: Look Human
The self-described "international leader in dating advice" may have fooled men into thinking he could get them dates, but thanks to a series of public petitions, the world soon learned that Julien Blanc was nothing short of a misogynist and racist who encouraged men to assault and choke women. To date, Blanc has since been banned in Australia, the U.K. and recently Singapore. Feminists also ensured that Blanc wouldn't be giving his "boot camps" and "seminars" in numerous countries, drawing attention to the flawed logic that fuels PUAs — and the men's rights activists who breed them.
19. Shonda Rhimes took down bigots on Twitter.
An adept social media user, Rhimes has really had the run of Twitter this year. In addition to utilizing the social media platform to take down the New York Times' critique of her as an "angry black woman," the Scandal creator also effectively shut down critics of the gay characters in her storylines.
20. A new kind of Barbie revolutionized the toy aisle.
Did you know that if Barbie were a real woman she would be 5'9" tall, have a 39" bust, but only a 18" waist, a tiny shoe size of 3 and have to crawl on all fours because her body is so small it couldn't support her head? While there have been many attempts at a Barbie alternative, perhaps the most realistic was created this year by Nikolay Lamm, whose "average" Barbie even comes with imperfections like acne and cellulite.
21. Periods got cooler — like, way cooler.
Source: YouTube
While "Aunt Flo" was arguably always kind of rad (period mixtapes and bottomless Twizzlers, anyone?), HelloFlo, a sanitary product company, made us think about periods in a whole new, celebratory light. In an effort to highlight their first period package, Naama Bloom's company produced a hilarious short video describing the glorious "period party." Not only did it make that time of the month seem way more fun, the commercial proved that there's nothing gross or weird about a woman's body.
22. Aziz Ansari broke down feminism for dudes.
Source: YouTube
During his appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in October, Aziz Ansari made some crucial points about feminism to an otherwise pretty mainstream late night audience. "If you look up feminism in the dictionary, it just means that men and women have equal rights," he said. "And I feel like everyone here believes men and women have equal rights. But I think the reason people don't clap is that word is so weirdly used in our culture."
Ansari's message was clear — feminism is not about pitting men and women against each other. "If you believe that men and women have equal rights, if someone asks if you're feminist, you have to say yes because that is how words work," he said. "You can't be like, 'Oh yeah, I'm a doctor that primarily does diseases of the skin.' Oh, so you're a dermatologist? 'Oh no, that's way too aggressive of a word! No no, not at all, not at all.'"
23. Janet Mock taught Piers Morgan (and the rest of America) how to talk about trans people.
Source: YouTube
There's the right way to interview a transgender person, and then there's the Piers Morgan way. The bombastic former CNN host made several key errors while interviewing Mock on his program in February. Mock accepted an offer to come back on the show, however, and proceeded to thoroughly school Morgan on the proper way to interview a trans person. She followed that series of interviews with equally important appearances on the Stephen Colbert show and AM Tonight on Fusion.
24. Crafty crafters did amazing things in Hobby Lobby stores.
After the Supreme Court ruled in Hobby Lobby's favor, effectively allowing the crafting giant to stop providing birth control in female employees' insurance packages, clever and crafty feminists took to the aisles at were, expressing their frustration via pro-woman messages left in stores across the nation. The best part? It wasn't just women, male customers also got in the fun. Its good to know that you don't have to be a lady to appreciate the responsibility of for-profit corporations to provide comprehensive contraceptive care.
25. Amy Poehler wrote a really good book.
In addition to starring in her own award-winning sitcom Parks and Recreation, casually teaching male comedians about what it's like to be a woman in a sexist society and hosting a website dedicated to empowering women called Smart Girls at the Party, Amy Poehler also managed to write a bestselling book this year, titled Yes Please. In addition to being hilarious, Poehler's opus was full of amazing feminist statements, like this interview she gave with Elle.
26. The Notorious R.B.G. proved particularly notorious.
Source: AP
Whether it was her ability to make a Supreme Court dissent go viral or her admission that she owns a surprising number of R.B.G. T-shirts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was particularly badass this year. One of her top moments, however, had to be her interview with Katie Couric, during which she admitted that the ideal gender ratio for Supreme Court justices would be all female.
27. The Super Bowl included a heaping helping of girl power.
Source: YouTube
After winning a crowdfunding campaign, toy company GoldieBlox's overtly feminist commercial was a very welcome change from more typical, male-oriented fair. Long a bastion of sexist tropes, the GoldieBlox piece promoted the benefits of teaching girls how to creatively crush gender stereotypes.
28. Olivia Pope threw her hat in the feminist ring.
Source: Getty Images
A pop culture phenomenon heralded as possibly the "most feminist show on television" got a whole lot better this season when protagonist Olivia Pope "came out" as a feminist. "Still, as a feminist, I absolutely understand if you want to refuse to make adjustments to your image," the fictional power broker and red wine aficionado noted.
29. Beyoncé wrote a flawless feminist essay.
In a piece that was featured in the Shriver Report, the superstar's essay "Gender Equality Is a Myth" notes that "women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77% of what the average working man makes" and that "we have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life." Proving her grasp of gender studies is as potent as her singing range, she went on to argue that "women are more than 50% of the population and more than 50% of voters" and therefore "must demand that we all receive 100% of the opportunities."
30. The MTA took a stand against "man-spreading."
In an encouraging move, this fall New York transit announced it was beginning a campaign to combat the amount of space some men take up in public. The problem, sometimes known as "man-spreading," "lava balls" or "subway sprawl," will be tackled through awareness programs the MTA is planning to roll out in January 2015. While women may miss witty feminist Tumblrs like Your Balls Aren't That Big, we certainly won't miss having to deal with men's wide-legged dominance on a daily basis.
31. Women stood at the front lines of Ferguson.
Source: Getty Images
Despite reports of women being silenced or interrupted by male activists, women made sure their voices were part of the growing chorus of dissent coming out of Ferguson, Missouri. "Historically, women have always been leading," protester Thenjiwe McHarris told MSNBC. "A lot of times women are often unseen leaders because women are all just doing it — we're all just doing the work." In addition to helping lead marches and chants, women like Jamilah Lemieux from Ebony also fearlessly reported on events from the ground. Although police Officer Darren Wilson was ultimately not charged in the killing of Michael Brown, the conversation about racial justice will continue, with women as some of its most invaluable warriors.
32. Getty Images embraced lady diversity.
Images of girls and women shapes the perception that we have about them, in other words, you can't be what you can't see. After realizing stock pictures of women were often stereotypical, Getty Images teamed up with advocacy organization Lean In to increase the diversity of images of women in their catalog. The popularity of these images across the world proved the demand for more realistic portrayals of women, especially in industries like finance and tech.
33. Cosmo redefined its target female.
In addition to launching the #CosmoVotes initiative to engage the young female electorate, Cosmopolitan magazine's decision to increase its feminist content and redefine its standard reader is a testament to the mainstreaming of the modern female-empowered movement. In the words of Joana Coales, the editor-in-chief, the new Cosmo woman is "interested In mascara and the Middle East." Clearly, being interested in sex and fashion doesn't mean women aren't also interested in solving the global oil crisis.
34. Feminists finally got us talking about Bill Cosby.
Allegations against Bill Cosby have been around for years, but for some reason (ahem, misogyny), the mainstream media took a while to actually start to care about it. But that all changed after comedian Hannibal Buress' routine woke the not-so-sleeping giant of the feminist network. Overnight, activists left the media no choice but to pay attention, a movement solidified after savvy Internet users hijacked a promotional chat, R. Kelly style. In the wake of this outpouring of support, even more victims have come forward to tell their own stories of alleged abuse at the hands of the venerable comedian.
35. Joseph Gordon-Levitt became the face of male feminists everywhere.
Source: Getty Images
One of the most vocal male feminist right now, Gordon-Levitt spent a lot of 2014 talking about why feminism matters to him. JGL is also planning a crowd-sourced video based on all your feelings about the word — just one more thing to look forward to in 2015.
36. One pro-choice couple showed us the best response to pro-life protesters.
Move over, Beyoncé and Jay Z, this "celebrity couple" may be your new biggest rival. After spending their Saturdays defending a local abortion clinic and its patients from loud pro-life protestors in Cary, N.C, Tina Haver Currin and her husband Grayson Haver Currin decided to get creative, posting photos of their increasingly hilarious signs on Tumblr. Their ability to merge humour with activism was just what the Internet needed this year.
37. In historic first, a quadruple amputee walked the runway
Source: Carrie Hammer
After showcasing Danielle Sheypuk, a clinical psychologist from New York who uses a wheelchair, Carrie Hammer, a designer with a disruptive approach to fashion, booked Karen Crespo, a quadruple amputee for her latest show. Hammer, who prides herself on the motto "Role Models, Not Runway Models," always makes diversity a priority, and this year's show was no exception. Crespo's confident strut proved that you don't have to be in Sports Illustrated to look and feel confident in your own skin.
38. Sweden introduced a gender-neutral pronoun.
"Hen" may just refer to poultry in English, but in Sweden, it actually means a lot more. As part of Sweden's effort to lead the gender-neutral feminist revolution, they've introduced the word as a gender-neutral pronoun to stand in for han ("he") or hon ("she"). No wonder the country beats everyone when it comes to gender equality. Although it's rare to hear anyone describe a crime like harassment as a "compliment," it's always shocking to hear a man on television think he can get away with telling women how they should or should not feel about it. Although multiple pundits have suggested that women should be thankful for harassment, when Amanda Seales did not take kindly to Steve Santagati's suggestion that women should be thankful for the attention during a debate on CNN. From now on, every reaction to mansplaining will forever be judged against the flawless takedown that resulted.
39. Roxane Gay showed the world that there's no such thing as a good feminist.
Writing in her collection of essays Bad Feminist Gay notes that while there are many different kinds of feminists, the most important thing is to acknowledge our differences and continue to work together towards the end goal of gender equality. Ultimately, feminism is not a competition, it is a calling.
"I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all," she concludes.
Indeed, as we head into December, it's clear that the year 2014 was a historic one for feminism. Across the Internet and the world, women stood up for their rights, challenged stereotypes, fought for recognition and took control of the dialogue. The following is a non-exhaustive list of some of the most iconic feminist moments this year:
1. Malala accepted the Nobel Peace Prize — and went straight back to chemistry class.
Source: Getty Images
The Nobel Peace Prize is "not going to help in exams" Yousafzai joked to reporters after becoming the youngest person to ever win the award. In addition to advocating against violence, poverty and advocating for more access to education for women and girls, the seventeen-year-old activist has become a symbol of hope and proof that feminism really does have the power to change the world.
2. Mo'ne Davis made everyone want to "throw like a girl."
Source: AP
When the 13-year-old Davis led her team to the Little League World Series, it's safe to say she captivated the nation. Poised and confident, Davis was an instant role model for millions of little girls — and boys — and also was the first Little Leaguer to grace a Sports Illustrated cover. To top it off, she was also recently named Sports Illustrated Kid's "SportsKid of the Year." You go, girl.
3. Emma Watson stunned the U.N.
Source: Getty Images
We knew Emma Watson was destined for big things as soon as the U.N. named her as an official Goodwill Ambassador, but we had no idea how much of an impact she would have — and so soon — until she gave a speech highlighting the importance of gender equality and feminism. Although some feminists were disgruntled by a perceived lack of acknowledgment by the star of her own privilege, her public defense of feminism certainly started a conversation, sending the message that feminism is important and should be embraced by both men and women across the globe.
4. A survivor brought her mattress — and sparked a national movement.
Frustrated by what she saw as an unacceptable response from school officials to her alleged sexual assault, Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz decided to take matters into her own hands. As part of her senior performance art project, Sulkowicz announced that she would carry her mattress everywhere she went until her alleged rapist was expelled. It didn't take long for others to notice, eventually sparking a national day of protest culminating in 28 mattresses being dropped in front of the office of Lee Bollinger, the president of the university, in a dramatic show of solidarity.
5. Jennifer Lawrence beat the Internet's worst trolls at their own game.
Source: AP
It's no coincidence the 4chan celebrity nude scandal targeted almost exclusively female celebrities. Culturally, we still view women's sexuality as inherently shameful, making the exploitation of said sexuality one of the most effective ways we have to try to put women down. Jennifer Lawrence, however, is far too strong a woman to be shamed by a few cowardly trolls hiding behind the anonymous cloak of the dark net. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she explained why those who attempt to denigrate women for taking intimate photos are the ones who should be ashamed. "I started to write an apology, but I don't have anything to say I'm sorry for," she said. Amen to that.
6. Women stormed the halls of Congress.
Source: AP
The 2014 midterm election may have been a "shellacking" for Democrats, but it also saw victories by a new wave of women, on both sides of the political aisle, ultimately increasing the ratio of female representatives greatly. A record 100 women will serve in the 114th Congress, and that's something we should all celebrate.
7. A bro tried to defend cat-calling on TV — and was totally shut down.
Source: CNN via Youtube
Although it's rare to hear anyone describe a crime like harassment as a "compliment," it's always shocking to hear a man on television think he can get away with telling women how they should or should not feel about it. Although multiple pundits have suggested that women for harassment, when Amanda Seales did not take kindly to Steve Santagati's suggestion that women should be thankful for the attention during a debate . From now on, every reaction to mansplaining will forever be judged against the flawless takedown that resulted.
8. Frozen gave us a lot of feelings — and broke all of the records.
Signaling an important break in the traditional princess genre, Disney's smash hit Frozen featured a prince-less feminist cartoon hero who sings "Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free!" Equally important, the blockbuster became the highest-earning animated movie of all time, proving that children — and grown-ups — will pay to watch complex and strong female characters. And it was written, directed and composed by women! Currently, only 1 in 4 speaking animated characters are female, the success of Frozen is expected to change the way we think about gender at the movies.
9. Laverne Cox didn't break barriers, she crushed them.
Laverne Cox, in addition to being an incredibly talented actress, has spent the past year helping to open door after door for her transgender brothers and sisters. Some of her firsts included being the first openly transgender woman to garner an Emmy nomination for her role as Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black, a rare, realistic portrayal of a transgender woman in mainstream pop culture. Cox also graced the cover of Time magazine, shining a brilliant light on the talent of trans individuals and the growing strength of the transgender rights movement.
10. Taylor Swift had a feminist epiphany
Source: Getty Images
After years of comments to the contrary, the superstar entertainer finally came out of the gender equality closet this year, confiding to the Guardian that she was totally a feminist all along (knew it)! Swift then set about proving her commitment to the movement, releasing a video for her single "Blank Space" that was described as a "dystopian feminist fairy tale" by Jessica Valenti. Indeed, over the span of only a couple months, Swift has been on something of a feminist tear, disproving stereotypes about feminists, calling out the music industry's trivialization of women artists and giving thanks for the invaluable role of female friendships in her life. Oh and can we talk about that VMA performance?
11. #YesAllWomen reached almost 2 million tweets in under four days.
Not all men assault, rape and harm women, but #YesAllWomen have to deal with the threat of being hurt every day. That was the rallying cry behind what may be the most viral feminist hashtag of all time. Born out of the tragedy that took place in Santa Barbara, it was an opportunity for women to speak openly about the injustices that plague their lives. At one point, the hashtag trended more than Kim Kardashian's wedding, proof that the conversation was long overdue and resonated with many. Thanks to #YesAllWomen, the conversation about the shooting was seen through a gendered lens, something that the media has been reluctant to do for far too long.
12. Facebook stopped censoring breastfeeding.
Source: AP
After helping to ensure Facebook cracked down on content trivializing and in some cases glorifying violence against women last year, a feminist coalition led by advocates including Soraya Chemaly wasn't done yet. Working together, the group of determined women managed to convince Facebook to change its policy banning photos of women breastfeeding, in the process demolishing a problematic double standard that sent the message that women's bodies are inherently obscene.
13. Beyoncé danced in front of the world — and a gigantic feminist banner.
Source: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Remember the bizarre spectacle that was last year's VMAs? For all those wondering if they would ever get Robin Thicke's gyrations out of their nightmares, Beyoncé's 16-minute performance was quite literally a sight for sore eyes. The world's biggest diva proved feminism wasn't just accessible, it was cool. As Time remarked, the entire show was about women's empowerment. From Swift's lively performance with exclusively male backup dancers to Nicki Minaj's assertive "Anaconda," the performances gave many of us hope for a future music industry that respects and highlights its female talent.
14. Ellen Page came out, made our hearts grow 10 sizes.
Source: YouTube
"I'm here today because I am gay. And because ... maybe I can make a difference [...] I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission," the actress told a captive audience at the Human Rights Campaign's Time to THRIVE conference this February. Page's coming out sent a powerful message to LGBT youth around the country that they were not alone.
15. Lupita Nyong'o forced Hollywood to take blackness seriously.
Source: YouTube
After becoming only the fifth black woman to receive a best supporting actress award for her role in 12 Years a Slave, Lupita Nyong'o set off on a whirlwind awards tour, earning a Glamour Woman of the Year honor and the Essence magazine Black Woman in Hollywood Breakthrough Award. Proving that she was as brilliant as she was beautiful, Nyong'o's speech on body image and blackness deeply moved the Essence audience. "I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful," she told the audience at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "I put on the TV and only saw pale skin, I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin." The path to self-acceptance is hard, she noted, but finally coming to terms with the idea that beauty comes in many shades has changed her life.
16. Robin Thicke's new album fell flat on its face.
Those familiar with Robin Thicke's previously questionable artistic decisions — singing about the "blurred lines" of consent being perhaps his most infamous — may not have been surprised when his new album was released, and was creepy as hell. More surprising, however, was that people weren't buying it. Literally. To be perfectly fair to Thicke, Paula, named for his now ex-wife, did sell like 530 copies in its first week. But the moral of the story seems to be that the era of the open misogynist may be coming to an end in the music industry.
17. Mindy Kaling nailed it, repeatedly.
Clearly, not everyone can be Mindy Kaling. The multitalented star produces, writes and stars in her show, and yet also has the time to make effortlessly brilliant statements about being a woman of color in media. Whether it's her response to a snarky question at SXSW or her witty retort after being mistaken for Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai ( "Did he really think I'm Malala? And that if I were, I'd be at the Boom Boom Room?"), Kaling has proved adept at fighting Hollywood's old boys club. And she does it with panache. According to Kaling, every woman's motto should be "Why the fuck not me." She's living proof that women can and should be leading these discussions.
18. Moronic pickup artist booted out of several countries because of feminist activism.
Source: Look Human
The self-described "international leader in dating advice" may have fooled men into thinking he could get them dates, but thanks to a series of public petitions, the world soon learned that Julien Blanc was nothing short of a misogynist and racist who encouraged men to assault and choke women. To date, Blanc has since been banned in Australia, the U.K. and recently Singapore. Feminists also ensured that Blanc wouldn't be giving his "boot camps" and "seminars" in numerous countries, drawing attention to the flawed logic that fuels PUAs — and the men's rights activists who breed them.
19. Shonda Rhimes took down bigots on Twitter.
An adept social media user, Rhimes has really had the run of Twitter this year. In addition to utilizing the social media platform to take down the New York Times' critique of her as an "angry black woman," the Scandal creator also effectively shut down critics of the gay characters in her storylines.
20. A new kind of Barbie revolutionized the toy aisle.
Did you know that if Barbie were a real woman she would be 5'9" tall, have a 39" bust, but only a 18" waist, a tiny shoe size of 3 and have to crawl on all fours because her body is so small it couldn't support her head? While there have been many attempts at a Barbie alternative, perhaps the most realistic was created this year by Nikolay Lamm, whose "average" Barbie even comes with imperfections like acne and cellulite.
21. Periods got cooler — like, way cooler.
Source: YouTube
While "Aunt Flo" was arguably always kind of rad (period mixtapes and bottomless Twizzlers, anyone?), HelloFlo, a sanitary product company, made us think about periods in a whole new, celebratory light. In an effort to highlight their first period package, Naama Bloom's company produced a hilarious short video describing the glorious "period party." Not only did it make that time of the month seem way more fun, the commercial proved that there's nothing gross or weird about a woman's body.
22. Aziz Ansari broke down feminism for dudes.
Source: YouTube
During his appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in October, Aziz Ansari made some crucial points about feminism to an otherwise pretty mainstream late night audience. "If you look up feminism in the dictionary, it just means that men and women have equal rights," he said. "And I feel like everyone here believes men and women have equal rights. But I think the reason people don't clap is that word is so weirdly used in our culture."
Ansari's message was clear — feminism is not about pitting men and women against each other. "If you believe that men and women have equal rights, if someone asks if you're feminist, you have to say yes because that is how words work," he said. "You can't be like, 'Oh yeah, I'm a doctor that primarily does diseases of the skin.' Oh, so you're a dermatologist? 'Oh no, that's way too aggressive of a word! No no, not at all, not at all.'"
23. Janet Mock taught Piers Morgan (and the rest of America) how to talk about trans people.
Source: YouTube
There's the right way to interview a transgender person, and then there's the Piers Morgan way. The bombastic former CNN host made several key errors while interviewing Mock on his program in February. Mock accepted an offer to come back on the show, however, and proceeded to thoroughly school Morgan on the proper way to interview a trans person. She followed that series of interviews with equally important appearances on the Stephen Colbert show and AM Tonight on Fusion.
24. Crafty crafters did amazing things in Hobby Lobby stores.
After the Supreme Court ruled in Hobby Lobby's favor, effectively allowing the crafting giant to stop providing birth control in female employees' insurance packages, clever and crafty feminists took to the aisles at were, expressing their frustration via pro-woman messages left in stores across the nation. The best part? It wasn't just women, male customers also got in the fun. Its good to know that you don't have to be a lady to appreciate the responsibility of for-profit corporations to provide comprehensive contraceptive care.
25. Amy Poehler wrote a really good book.
In addition to starring in her own award-winning sitcom Parks and Recreation, casually teaching male comedians about what it's like to be a woman in a sexist society and hosting a website dedicated to empowering women called Smart Girls at the Party, Amy Poehler also managed to write a bestselling book this year, titled Yes Please. In addition to being hilarious, Poehler's opus was full of amazing feminist statements, like this interview she gave with Elle.
26. The Notorious R.B.G. proved particularly notorious.
Source: AP
Whether it was her ability to make a Supreme Court dissent go viral or her admission that she owns a surprising number of R.B.G. T-shirts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was particularly badass this year. One of her top moments, however, had to be her interview with Katie Couric, during which she admitted that the ideal gender ratio for Supreme Court justices would be all female.
27. The Super Bowl included a heaping helping of girl power.
Source: YouTube
After winning a crowdfunding campaign, toy company GoldieBlox's overtly feminist commercial was a very welcome change from more typical, male-oriented fair. Long a bastion of sexist tropes, the GoldieBlox piece promoted the benefits of teaching girls how to creatively crush gender stereotypes.
28. Olivia Pope threw her hat in the feminist ring.
Source: Getty Images
A pop culture phenomenon heralded as possibly the "most feminist show on television" got a whole lot better this season when protagonist Olivia Pope "came out" as a feminist. "Still, as a feminist, I absolutely understand if you want to refuse to make adjustments to your image," the fictional power broker and red wine aficionado noted.
29. Beyoncé wrote a flawless feminist essay.
In a piece that was featured in the Shriver Report, the superstar's essay "Gender Equality Is a Myth" notes that "women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77% of what the average working man makes" and that "we have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life." Proving her grasp of gender studies is as potent as her singing range, she went on to argue that "women are more than 50% of the population and more than 50% of voters" and therefore "must demand that we all receive 100% of the opportunities."
30. The MTA took a stand against "man-spreading."
In an encouraging move, this fall New York transit announced it was beginning a campaign to combat the amount of space some men take up in public. The problem, sometimes known as "man-spreading," "lava balls" or "subway sprawl," will be tackled through awareness programs the MTA is planning to roll out in January 2015. While women may miss witty feminist Tumblrs like Your Balls Aren't That Big, we certainly won't miss having to deal with men's wide-legged dominance on a daily basis.
31. Women stood at the front lines of Ferguson.
Source: Getty Images
Despite reports of women being silenced or interrupted by male activists, women made sure their voices were part of the growing chorus of dissent coming out of Ferguson, Missouri. "Historically, women have always been leading," protester Thenjiwe McHarris told MSNBC. "A lot of times women are often unseen leaders because women are all just doing it — we're all just doing the work." In addition to helping lead marches and chants, women like Jamilah Lemieux from Ebony also fearlessly reported on events from the ground. Although police Officer Darren Wilson was ultimately not charged in the killing of Michael Brown, the conversation about racial justice will continue, with women as some of its most invaluable warriors.
32. Getty Images embraced lady diversity.
Images of girls and women shapes the perception that we have about them, in other words, you can't be what you can't see. After realizing stock pictures of women were often stereotypical, Getty Images teamed up with advocacy organization Lean In to increase the diversity of images of women in their catalog. The popularity of these images across the world proved the demand for more realistic portrayals of women, especially in industries like finance and tech.
33. Cosmo redefined its target female.
In addition to launching the #CosmoVotes initiative to engage the young female electorate, Cosmopolitan magazine's decision to increase its feminist content and redefine its standard reader is a testament to the mainstreaming of the modern female-empowered movement. In the words of Joana Coales, the editor-in-chief, the new Cosmo woman is "interested In mascara and the Middle East." Clearly, being interested in sex and fashion doesn't mean women aren't also interested in solving the global oil crisis.
34. Feminists finally got us talking about Bill Cosby.
Allegations against Bill Cosby have been around for years, but for some reason (ahem, misogyny), the mainstream media took a while to actually start to care about it. But that all changed after comedian Hannibal Buress' routine woke the not-so-sleeping giant of the feminist network. Overnight, activists left the media no choice but to pay attention, a movement solidified after savvy Internet users hijacked a promotional chat, R. Kelly style. In the wake of this outpouring of support, even more victims have come forward to tell their own stories of alleged abuse at the hands of the venerable comedian.
35. Joseph Gordon-Levitt became the face of male feminists everywhere.
Source: Getty Images
One of the most vocal male feminist right now, Gordon-Levitt spent a lot of 2014 talking about why feminism matters to him. JGL is also planning a crowd-sourced video based on all your feelings about the word — just one more thing to look forward to in 2015.
36. One pro-choice couple showed us the best response to pro-life protesters.
Move over, Beyoncé and Jay Z, this "celebrity couple" may be your new biggest rival. After spending their Saturdays defending a local abortion clinic and its patients from loud pro-life protestors in Cary, N.C, Tina Haver Currin and her husband Grayson Haver Currin decided to get creative, posting photos of their increasingly hilarious signs on Tumblr. Their ability to merge humour with activism was just what the Internet needed this year.
37. In historic first, a quadruple amputee walked the runway
Source: Carrie Hammer
After showcasing Danielle Sheypuk, a clinical psychologist from New York who uses a wheelchair, Carrie Hammer, a designer with a disruptive approach to fashion, booked Karen Crespo, a quadruple amputee for her latest show. Hammer, who prides herself on the motto "Role Models, Not Runway Models," always makes diversity a priority, and this year's show was no exception. Crespo's confident strut proved that you don't have to be in Sports Illustrated to look and feel confident in your own skin.
38. Sweden introduced a gender-neutral pronoun.
"Hen" may just refer to poultry in English, but in Sweden, it actually means a lot more. As part of Sweden's effort to lead the gender-neutral feminist revolution, they've introduced the word as a gender-neutral pronoun to stand in for han ("he") or hon ("she"). No wonder the country beats everyone when it comes to gender equality. Although it's rare to hear anyone describe a crime like harassment as a "compliment," it's always shocking to hear a man on television think he can get away with telling women how they should or should not feel about it. Although multiple pundits have suggested that women should be thankful for harassment, when Amanda Seales did not take kindly to Steve Santagati's suggestion that women should be thankful for the attention during a debate on CNN. From now on, every reaction to mansplaining will forever be judged against the flawless takedown that resulted.
39. Roxane Gay showed the world that there's no such thing as a good feminist.
Writing in her collection of essays Bad Feminist Gay notes that while there are many different kinds of feminists, the most important thing is to acknowledge our differences and continue to work together towards the end goal of gender equality. Ultimately, feminism is not a competition, it is a calling.
"I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all," she concludes.
Guest- Guest
My Neck, My Gash: Men Don't Know What to Call Your Vagina. Let's Help.
There comes a time between a person and another person with a vagina when that vagina is going to need to be addressed. Out loud. Not in the clinical sense, but in the romantic or sexual sense. It seems some guys aren't sure how to proceed, at least according to one of their spokesmagazines. So let's help them out.
Over at Maxim, in a piece called "What to Call Her Lady Parts," we are given the premise, ostensibly a relatable one for many men, from author Cara Hessel, who writes:
Nothing ruins a romantic moment quite like the word "vagina." Fortunately, there are many, many alternative terms out there that can be deployed to better – in most cases - effect. You've got to know your audience to know which phrase to use, but there are a few hard and fast rules. For instance, never ask to "pet her kitty" if she does not, in fact, own a cat.
In an attempt to help you become a more cunning linguist (sorry), we've curated a list of euphemisms you can choose from. A word of warning: She'll probably hate whichever one you choose.
What follows is a list of alternatives:
Cooter
Clam
Beaver
Cooze
Vajayjay
Muff
C.U. Next Tuesday
Trim
Pussy
Snatch
Fanny
Box
A word of advice: She will hate whichever one you choose if you pick ANYTHING from this list except for "pussy." For advanced lovers, "cunt" is an option, but comes with caveats. More on that in a minute.
Seriously: Why are there no good other words for vagina when it comes to sex times? There are a couple other options for penis: Dick. Cock. Both work just fine, and if cock is too much—as it surely is for certain men, according to an informal poll I conducted—it's not because anyone is going to think the woman is creepy.
Here's a theory: Too many vagina descriptors are in fact, creepy- or gross-sounding. Consider all the aforementioned, plus the ones we don't like to mention—the ones that involve food, gashes and slits. Hatchet wound, anyone? Gash? No? Didn't think so.
Meanwhile, the various words a woman could utter in place of "penis," if she felt like becoming an amateur erotica writer in the bedroom, are decidedly not creepy. Silly maybe, but not disgusting. They tend to celebrate the penis's girth, hardness and length. There's "hardness," "manhood," and even "member" and "staff"—both overused by romance novel standards, according to this roundup of sex euphemisms from SmutWriters. And it's not that there aren't dumb names for dicks: rod, for instance, is a real riot, as far as I'm concerned. Fifty Shades of Grey's Anastasia is fond of "his length," which is too vague to be satisfying. But these at least sound functional and not nasty, like "clam" or "beaver."
But box, snatch, gash, clam, cooze, and for the love of all that's pH balanced, beaver—well, why not call it a stinky cylinder and call it a day?
Maybe it's that all this feels too co-opted by gross dudes, or co-opted in ways that sound too porny (though it's impossible to avoid pornified anything at this point, on some level, including pussy). Which is why the answer to this question—what to call your lady's vagina in a sexual or sexty scenario—is actually pretty simple.
I polled two groups: a handful of women and a handful of men in their late 20s or early to mid 30s, and asked them what they call a vagina or wish a vagina to be called in a sexual scenario. The conclusion was the same: Pussy. Cunt, depending.
Pussy
Pussy pussy pussy. I think it's kind of a silly word. I hate that it's used as a pejorative for weak men, as Hessel also notes in the Maxim piece, and I could rant about that forever. But as she says, it's been around for centuries. Of all the possible options—ye olde cavernous cavern, cul de sac, waterin' hole—pussy has had staying power for a reason. Probably because it's not vagina! It's pussy.
And it will outlast us all, like it or not, because it is the safest, most ubiquitous, most in-the-water term available that communicates a sexualized vagina. It's a workhorse of sex terms, because for most people most of the time it will get the job done. Those are reassuring odds, friend. Anyone who hates the term pussy—and I encountered both men and women who do—the burden is on them to let others know, same as if you're someone who dislikes handshakes. That's what pussy is at this point. A handshake.
Dudes Said These Things
The dudes I talked to said it was all very case-by-case to get with women and have to decide what to call that woman's vagina. If the girlfriend had a preference, they would go with it, assuming it wasn't too ridiculous. However, some of them were ridiculous, like "delicate flower," or, in one extreme case, "butterfly," because of that Crazy Town song (WTF, women). They all said that generally, girlfriends had "playful, nonsexual words (chooch, hoo-ha)" for their vaginas in non-bonin' scenarios, but for sex, pussy it was. Apparently, honeypot is a thing people call a vagina, but I would like to never meet those people.
One note: The men I spoke with said a little guidance would not hurt in the slightest, and that any reasonable man would appreciate it. One said, "On the third date, it'd be super helpful if a woman said, 'So this is what we're going to call my vagina.'"
Women Told Me These Things
The women felt, across the board, that "pussy," imperfect though it is, is the default. Everything was else was too gross, and too porny. Though one woman said pussy felt "Straight outta Playboy 1975," it was still the best choice out there. Ultimately, they felt there was no good word, really. And when we tried to think of unique alternatives, they were terrible.
Crotch boob
Tiger (sexy cat?)
Opening
Core
Innermost
Bagel
Dim sum
Delicious hamburger
One woman realized she'd been "poisoned by romance novels." Another was just really hungry.
Here's a thought: The women I polled appreciated when men did what you might call a "pussy workaround." In other words, don't refer to it directly. Just do stuff that feels good and/or dodge the descriptor. Rather than say "Your muff is so wet," one woman advised, simply say "You're so wet."
On a sadder note, we agreed that it does "mean something" that there is no good word. "It means we aren't proud of it," one woman lamented.
So, pussy.
"'Vagina' isn't sexy," said one woman. "And 'cunt' is hostile sometimes."
"I would shout 'cunt' from the mountaintops before I ever said 'flower,'" said another.
Oh yes, back to cunt caveats.
Cunt
Pussy is the winner, but cunt is the wild card. Cunt is extremely execution-dependent. It should not be attempted by amateurs. All women polled agreed that cunt should only be used by a seasoned linguist who understood the boldness with which it should be undertaken—unless, one added, Clive Owen is doing the saying.
"He could say and get away with it. Few others."
If all else fails, you could just ask your lady what she prefers, but this is better done in advance. Stopping the proceedings mid-moment (e.g., I can't wait to slide my member into your — oh hey, what do you want me to call your vagina?) is not exactly going to lube that hole.
Oh, and one last thing: It's clit. Not clitoris. Not like, a bean or whatever. Clit.
Over at Maxim, in a piece called "What to Call Her Lady Parts," we are given the premise, ostensibly a relatable one for many men, from author Cara Hessel, who writes:
Nothing ruins a romantic moment quite like the word "vagina." Fortunately, there are many, many alternative terms out there that can be deployed to better – in most cases - effect. You've got to know your audience to know which phrase to use, but there are a few hard and fast rules. For instance, never ask to "pet her kitty" if she does not, in fact, own a cat.
In an attempt to help you become a more cunning linguist (sorry), we've curated a list of euphemisms you can choose from. A word of warning: She'll probably hate whichever one you choose.
What follows is a list of alternatives:
Cooter
Clam
Beaver
Cooze
Vajayjay
Muff
C.U. Next Tuesday
Trim
Pussy
Snatch
Fanny
Box
A word of advice: She will hate whichever one you choose if you pick ANYTHING from this list except for "pussy." For advanced lovers, "cunt" is an option, but comes with caveats. More on that in a minute.
Seriously: Why are there no good other words for vagina when it comes to sex times? There are a couple other options for penis: Dick. Cock. Both work just fine, and if cock is too much—as it surely is for certain men, according to an informal poll I conducted—it's not because anyone is going to think the woman is creepy.
Here's a theory: Too many vagina descriptors are in fact, creepy- or gross-sounding. Consider all the aforementioned, plus the ones we don't like to mention—the ones that involve food, gashes and slits. Hatchet wound, anyone? Gash? No? Didn't think so.
Meanwhile, the various words a woman could utter in place of "penis," if she felt like becoming an amateur erotica writer in the bedroom, are decidedly not creepy. Silly maybe, but not disgusting. They tend to celebrate the penis's girth, hardness and length. There's "hardness," "manhood," and even "member" and "staff"—both overused by romance novel standards, according to this roundup of sex euphemisms from SmutWriters. And it's not that there aren't dumb names for dicks: rod, for instance, is a real riot, as far as I'm concerned. Fifty Shades of Grey's Anastasia is fond of "his length," which is too vague to be satisfying. But these at least sound functional and not nasty, like "clam" or "beaver."
But box, snatch, gash, clam, cooze, and for the love of all that's pH balanced, beaver—well, why not call it a stinky cylinder and call it a day?
Maybe it's that all this feels too co-opted by gross dudes, or co-opted in ways that sound too porny (though it's impossible to avoid pornified anything at this point, on some level, including pussy). Which is why the answer to this question—what to call your lady's vagina in a sexual or sexty scenario—is actually pretty simple.
I polled two groups: a handful of women and a handful of men in their late 20s or early to mid 30s, and asked them what they call a vagina or wish a vagina to be called in a sexual scenario. The conclusion was the same: Pussy. Cunt, depending.
Pussy
Pussy pussy pussy. I think it's kind of a silly word. I hate that it's used as a pejorative for weak men, as Hessel also notes in the Maxim piece, and I could rant about that forever. But as she says, it's been around for centuries. Of all the possible options—ye olde cavernous cavern, cul de sac, waterin' hole—pussy has had staying power for a reason. Probably because it's not vagina! It's pussy.
And it will outlast us all, like it or not, because it is the safest, most ubiquitous, most in-the-water term available that communicates a sexualized vagina. It's a workhorse of sex terms, because for most people most of the time it will get the job done. Those are reassuring odds, friend. Anyone who hates the term pussy—and I encountered both men and women who do—the burden is on them to let others know, same as if you're someone who dislikes handshakes. That's what pussy is at this point. A handshake.
Dudes Said These Things
The dudes I talked to said it was all very case-by-case to get with women and have to decide what to call that woman's vagina. If the girlfriend had a preference, they would go with it, assuming it wasn't too ridiculous. However, some of them were ridiculous, like "delicate flower," or, in one extreme case, "butterfly," because of that Crazy Town song (WTF, women). They all said that generally, girlfriends had "playful, nonsexual words (chooch, hoo-ha)" for their vaginas in non-bonin' scenarios, but for sex, pussy it was. Apparently, honeypot is a thing people call a vagina, but I would like to never meet those people.
One note: The men I spoke with said a little guidance would not hurt in the slightest, and that any reasonable man would appreciate it. One said, "On the third date, it'd be super helpful if a woman said, 'So this is what we're going to call my vagina.'"
Women Told Me These Things
The women felt, across the board, that "pussy," imperfect though it is, is the default. Everything was else was too gross, and too porny. Though one woman said pussy felt "Straight outta Playboy 1975," it was still the best choice out there. Ultimately, they felt there was no good word, really. And when we tried to think of unique alternatives, they were terrible.
Crotch boob
Tiger (sexy cat?)
Opening
Core
Innermost
Bagel
Dim sum
Delicious hamburger
One woman realized she'd been "poisoned by romance novels." Another was just really hungry.
Here's a thought: The women I polled appreciated when men did what you might call a "pussy workaround." In other words, don't refer to it directly. Just do stuff that feels good and/or dodge the descriptor. Rather than say "Your muff is so wet," one woman advised, simply say "You're so wet."
On a sadder note, we agreed that it does "mean something" that there is no good word. "It means we aren't proud of it," one woman lamented.
So, pussy.
"'Vagina' isn't sexy," said one woman. "And 'cunt' is hostile sometimes."
"I would shout 'cunt' from the mountaintops before I ever said 'flower,'" said another.
Oh yes, back to cunt caveats.
Cunt
Pussy is the winner, but cunt is the wild card. Cunt is extremely execution-dependent. It should not be attempted by amateurs. All women polled agreed that cunt should only be used by a seasoned linguist who understood the boldness with which it should be undertaken—unless, one added, Clive Owen is doing the saying.
"He could say and get away with it. Few others."
If all else fails, you could just ask your lady what she prefers, but this is better done in advance. Stopping the proceedings mid-moment (e.g., I can't wait to slide my member into your — oh hey, what do you want me to call your vagina?) is not exactly going to lube that hole.
Oh, and one last thing: It's clit. Not clitoris. Not like, a bean or whatever. Clit.
Guest- Guest
17 Badass Women You Probably Didn’t Hear About In 2014
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Guest- Guest
Re: Women's Rights/Issues
NEW YORK -- The highest-ranking Hispanic woman in a management position at Major League Baseball headquarters said in a lawsuit on Thursday she has faced discrimination there for two decades.
Sylvia Lind's lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks unspecified damages for what she describes as a failure by the league to consider, interview, appoint and promote qualified Hispanic women to managerial and executive positions. Lind, 48, says the league has created a hostile work environment for her because of her age.
Lind, the league's director of baseball initiatives in its Office of the Commissioner, names as defendants the league, commissioner Bud Selig and Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, who supervised her. Messages to the league were not immediately returned Thursday.
The lawsuit says Lind works in an industry dominated by white men and has been passed over for promotions and underpaid since 1995.
Lind said Hispanics are underrepresented in the management level while baseball has a high percentage of Hispanic players. She said of 52 people who are vice presidents or above only two are Hispanic and only 12 are women.
According to the lawsuit, Lind, who is of Cuban descent and lives in New Jersey, earned her law degree from Fordham University School of Law in 1995. It says she began working for Major League Baseball on Nov. 21, 1995, as supervisor in the legal department of MLB Properties Inc. at an annual salary of $43,000.
She said she was the only Hispanic female lawyer in the legal department at the time and no Hispanic attorneys have been hired since.
Lind said her troubles with the league worsened after Robinson, who played for several teams between 1956 and 1976, became executive vice president of baseball development in June 2012 and criticized her writing and other skills.
She said Robinson, who won rookie of the year and MVP honors with the Cincinnati Reds and MVP with the Baltimore Orioles, lacked the educational credentials, professional license and executive experience to qualify for the job, which paid him more than $1 million annually.
Lind said the league's discriminatory conduct was carried out even as she was assigned to plan, advance and promote the league's annual Civil Rights Game.
"While plaintiff has always maintained a professional demeanor to the public and endeavored to do what is in the best interest for MLB, it has been extremely disheartening, utterly demoralizing and extraordinarily taxing on her, both emotionally and psychologically, to almost singlehandedly perpetuate what she has known to be the diversity and equal employment opportunity falsehood," the lawsuit said.
Sylvia Lind's lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks unspecified damages for what she describes as a failure by the league to consider, interview, appoint and promote qualified Hispanic women to managerial and executive positions. Lind, 48, says the league has created a hostile work environment for her because of her age.
Lind, the league's director of baseball initiatives in its Office of the Commissioner, names as defendants the league, commissioner Bud Selig and Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, who supervised her. Messages to the league were not immediately returned Thursday.
The lawsuit says Lind works in an industry dominated by white men and has been passed over for promotions and underpaid since 1995.
Lind said Hispanics are underrepresented in the management level while baseball has a high percentage of Hispanic players. She said of 52 people who are vice presidents or above only two are Hispanic and only 12 are women.
According to the lawsuit, Lind, who is of Cuban descent and lives in New Jersey, earned her law degree from Fordham University School of Law in 1995. It says she began working for Major League Baseball on Nov. 21, 1995, as supervisor in the legal department of MLB Properties Inc. at an annual salary of $43,000.
She said she was the only Hispanic female lawyer in the legal department at the time and no Hispanic attorneys have been hired since.
Lind said her troubles with the league worsened after Robinson, who played for several teams between 1956 and 1976, became executive vice president of baseball development in June 2012 and criticized her writing and other skills.
She said Robinson, who won rookie of the year and MVP honors with the Cincinnati Reds and MVP with the Baltimore Orioles, lacked the educational credentials, professional license and executive experience to qualify for the job, which paid him more than $1 million annually.
Lind said the league's discriminatory conduct was carried out even as she was assigned to plan, advance and promote the league's annual Civil Rights Game.
"While plaintiff has always maintained a professional demeanor to the public and endeavored to do what is in the best interest for MLB, it has been extremely disheartening, utterly demoralizing and extraordinarily taxing on her, both emotionally and psychologically, to almost singlehandedly perpetuate what she has known to be the diversity and equal employment opportunity falsehood," the lawsuit said.
Guest- Guest
Re: Women's Rights/Issues
"Ancient moon priestesses were called virgins. 'Virgin' meanest not married, not belonging to a man - a woman who was 'one-in-herself'. The very word derives from a Latin root meaning strength, force, skill; and was later applied to men: virle. Ishtar, Diane, Astarte, Isis were all called virgin, which did not refer to a sexual chastity, but sexual independence. And all great cultural heroes of the past, mythic or historic, were said to be born of virgin mothers: Marduk, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Osiris, Dionysus, Genghis Khan, Jesus -- they were all affirmed as sons of the Great Mother, of the Original One, their worldly power deriving from her. When the Hebrews used the word, and in the original Aramaic, it meant 'maiden' or 'young woman' of independent sexuality, needless to say; they distorted the meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched."
--K. Child
--K. Child
Guest- Guest
How My Culture Failed Me After I Was Raped
My rapist and I both ran in the same large circle of first-generation Indian kids who tangentially knew each other at UC Berkeley. Like me, Neil* was one foot in, one foot out of the generally insular Indian scene. He was a senior on a varsity sports team, a decidedly un-Indian activity at Berkeley; I was a freshman involved in our on-campus news station, covering sports. I had met Neil earlier in the year through an Indian dorm mate, but got used to running into him at frat and sports parties, where we’d often joke about being the only two Indians in the room.
My friends didn’t like him much — he gave off a bit of a creepy vibe, and was all too quick to invite freshman Indian girls over to his apartment. Still, we had stopped by to pregame at his apartment once or twice, thanks to his proximity to our dorm and our limited access to alcohol. At the time, I was getting over a rough breakup with someone else in the Indian community. I was still trying to win my ex-boyfriend back but found myself attracted to Neil’s similar discomfort hanging out solely with other Indians. He may have been a little aggressively flirtatious for my taste, but he was proof that it was possible to exist with feet in the monolithic Indian community and outside of it.
But when it came to telling my friends that he raped me, why did my Indian friends find it so hard to believe a fellow Indian could do what Neil did to me?
These things don’t happen to us. First-generation Indian kids are constantly walking a tightrope between our Indian heritage and our American identities. We may not have had to sign up for the arranged marriages of our parents, but we also weren’t allowed to date growing up. We could have our freedom to have a good time in college like our white American counterparts, but the price tag for it was earning a respectable degree that leads to a good job. We played it safe, because we couldn’t afford not to — we are our parents’ children, and our parents sacrificed everything for us to be raised in America. Dating? Sex? Alcohol? Those were all perks — privileges to be enjoyed quietly, and never to be abused.
Even now, nearly nine years later, I’m fighting the urge to explain that I know not all first-generation Indians, people like me who were born stateside to immigrant parents, are as conservative as I like to pretend they are. My own parents, for example, were incredibly liberal compared to most Indian immigrants, and perfectly open to the idea of their daughters dating in high school and college. Everyone’s parents vary in their degrees of traditionalism. Not all Indians. But when it came to sex, I was always the outlier, the harlot. My three closest Indian girlfriends and I all had our various freshman-year entanglements, but I’d had sex with a high school boyfriend, and for that I always felt a little dirtier, a little more judged — a chip on my shoulder I’m willing to admit I likely placed there all on my own.
Being Indian was my entire identity at the start of college, and I quickly immersed myself in the scene as much as possible. As I started to make friends outside of the Indian community, the lingering disconnect between my Indian friends and I felt even more amplified. Maybe there’s no such thing as “a good Indian girl,” but that didn’t take away from the fact that I was still much further away from it than any of my Indian friends. I knew it, they knew it, and the divide was ever present.
When Neil invited me to a party being thrown by the lacrosse team that April, I was hesitant about going. I still wasn’t over my ex-boyfriend Rahul*, a sophomore who had broken up with me after three months because I wasn’t as conservative as he wanted his girlfriend to be — especially not as he ran for student government. Determined to transform into the sweet Indian girlfriend of his dreams, I went as far as to give up drinking in a bid to win him back. For the next part of my plan, I invited Rahul to the lacrosse party too, figuring he would get a chance to shake hands and kiss babies in advance of the election — while hoping my invite from a cute athletic senior would create the requisite dose of jealousy needed to push us back together.
What I didn’t expect was being roofied, not remembering the rest of the night, and waking up in Neil’s bed covered in bruises.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. I remember snippets of the night. I fully remember insisting no alcohol be in my beverage when Neil offered to pour me a mixed drink — a choice integral to my plan of presenting my best self. I remember a very hazy moment: walking down a hill toward Neil’s apartment, daring him to let me wear his lacrosse jersey. I was definitely drugged by then, but eight years later I remember that brief moment of flirtation I surely was complicit in. And I remember coming to during the act itself, no idea where I was. Letting it go on for a few more minutes, confused, but not fighting it off either, as I always imagined I’d do if ever trapped in that situation. I remember being in the bathroom looking at my neck, certain it was going to be bruised by the next morning.
Even in this retelling, I’m hesitant to admit what I remember because there’s less culpability in not remembering. Isn’t there? To remember is to admit that there were maybe moments where you could have stopped it sooner.
View this image ›
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
I don’t remember how I got home, but it wasn’t that late when I got there. I called my ex-boyfriend, who was convinced my multiple pleas for him to come over were misguided attempts at drunken seduction. He reminded me that it was my choice to not drink for a month, yet here I was wasted on the third day of the self-imposed ban. He had to go do work for the campaign, at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. He hung up.
I don’t remember if my closest female friends, Indian girls who lived in my dorm and had been to Neil’s apartment with me before, came over that night or the next morning. I do know that when two of them took one look at my neck, covered from side to side in a macabre grin of angry purple bruises and bite marks, they knew something had happened that wasn’t supposed to. I told them what I remembered from that evening as best I could, and they were incredibly supportive, especially given that none of us had dealt with anything of this nature before in our eight months of friendship. But it also didn’t stop them from asking, “Are you sure you guys didn’t just accidentally hook up last night?” After all, they had seen mine and Neil’s ill-advised flirtations in the weeks prior. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe the date rape hadn’t occurred; it was that there was a stronger tendency to want to chalk this up to drunken shenanigans. These things don’t happen to us. Neil may have given us an off-vibe from day one, but at the end of the day, he was a good Indian boy, and I was supposed to be a good Indian girl.
Given my friends’ suspicions that there was maybe more to the story than I was letting on, even knowing that my judgment had to have been chemically clouded, I started to question my own recollections. Neil and I had been flirting here and there in the weeks leading up to the party. If I hazily remembered flirting with him on the walk home, who’s to say I didn’t say no when push came to literal shove? Even though I’d never blacked out, and don’t remember drinking at all, did I maybe just get really drunk? I logically knew the answer to all those questions pointed to no, this wasn’t my fault, but if I couldn’t even believe myself entirely, there was no way I was going to be a believable victim.
Even though I had told my friends the majority of what happened, I edited out a few of the parts that I was convinced might give Neil plausible deniability, even to my best friends. That was the first time I sanitized the story. It’s not that it didn’t happen in the parts I was able to recollect, but it was much easier to be a believable victim when I was irrevocably wronged. I dropped the mention of remembering that he gave me a drink at all (even though I do remember Neil being a little too insistent that it was “just Tampico Punch” — a non-alcoholic mixer — “don’t worry”), just to play it safe. I also started to leave out the brief recollections of us walking back from the party. Even after I had sufficiently retold the story multiple times, I still got the sense that there was some disbelief — I had hooked up with someone else during a trip earlier in the school year despite wanting to win my ex back, and there was still that lost high school innocence I’d never be able to undo. But the bruises spoke for themselves, as well as Neil’s texts the afternoon after, trying both to flirt and minimize the night before in the same breath.
Going to campus police was never an option. It’s not that our Indian community wasn’t having sex, but we sure as hell weren’t talking about it. I wasn’t explicitly talked out of wanting to press charges, but it never even came up in the discussion process of how to move forward. I was worried about others in the Indian scene finding out, and the rumor mill dropping the non-consensual aspect of me having had sex (a step Rahul and I hadn’t even taken when we dated). My friends and I all were aware of how it would play out in the Indian community if we blew it up. Not dragging Neil’s name through the mud wasn’t to protect him, it was to protect myself, to not give my circle even more ammunition to render me damaged goods, and question whether my account held up. Neil wasn’t the most popular student in the Indian community, but after my breakup, neither was I, and to duke out who was more believable if the story came out was a battle I wasn’t willing to lose.
Our South Asian campus club was putting on a culture show that night — an ironic event, given that I was convinced I fit into what my culture expected of me even less now than I ever did before — so my friends slathered as much concealer as they could find on my neck to cover the evidence of the previous night, and we all were secretly glad I hadn’t invited my parents to come up to watch the show. Gratefully, none of them brought up the anecdote that they used to make fun of me for the most: that I had picked Berkeley as the college to go to after visiting and watching that same culture show a year prior. Seeing that show as a high school senior was the first time I felt like I had belonged to a community. One year, two and a half hours, and 14 colorful dances later, I never felt more ostracized from it.
Meanwhile, Neil, who was also participating in the show, was continuing to text me. The flirty texts from the morning that had gone unanswered had morphed into worried texts where he tried to downplay the night before, joking around that maybe we both got carried away. When those texts also went ignored, he quickly turned angry, instructing me to keep my mouth shut “for both of our sake.” Dealing with Neil’s angry texts, alongside the stress of being in charge of the opening routine of that night’s show, pushed me to a near breaking point, and I couldn’t stop crying. I was worried about running into him backstage or at that night’s afterparty, just to have another confrontation like the one I was trying to avoid over text.
My friends broke rank and told one Indian upperclassman, a sympathetic junior who was a sexual health education peer at the university health center. She was the first person to believe my story verbatim, no sanitization necessary, even with all the caveats that made me a bad victim. After offering to take me to campus police, and then assuring me that it was OK that I was dead set against going, she deftly handled Neil (a mutual friend of hers at the time, as well) over text message, assuring him that I would absolutely be pressing charges if he didn’t stop threatening me. She later arranged for me to be seen by a doctor, and pointed me toward therapy options to talk through the trauma. I am still forever trying to emulate her grace and compassion when put in similar situations.
Still, I continued to sanitize, even in the years later when I became more comfortable talking about my assault. But I do think that my unwillingness to deal with it in the immediate aftermath only encouraged the suspicions that I was embellishing. One of my own friends went so far as to suggest that I made up the entire thing as a cover for a consensual hookup, because I was unable to hide the bruises from my ex-boyfriend. The Duke lacrosse scandal was playing out across the country at the exact time that my rape occurred in the spring of 2006, and someone unwittingly mentioned to me, “Wow, your Neil story is just like an episode of Law & Order: SVU! Roofied by an athlete; that just screams ripped from the headlines.”
I keep coming back to the phrase “Not all Indians.” I know I’m not alone in my quixotic quest to balance the conservative parts of my Indian upbringing with the realities of living in a modern American culture. But I still feel that I don’t fit the mold of “good Indian girl” with my friends, with my family, with the first-generation Indian community at large. I still sometimes date Indian men and hang out with Indian friends, who truly are wonderful, but more than one has asked me why I have to write about private aspects of my life for career “sport.” Not one has asked if it’s cathartic or something I enjoy, because in our culture, we don’t prop up the sensitive aspects of private lives for any reason — especially ones that come up because we failed to adhere to the good Indian code of ethics in the first place.
When you don’t talk to your kids about sex, how do you talk to them about sexual assault? In our traditional, conservative culture, these things generally don’t come up. Rape rates in India are soaring, but it still reads as an “India problem” — something born out of the old country’s inability to modernize; as distant and antiquated a notion as having a servant, or shaving your hair off on a yearly temple pilgrimage. And sexual assault in America is still seen by immigrants as something that “doesn’t happen to us.” It’s a wholly American epidemic.
I still have a hard time always telling my story in full. The need to sanitize is ever present, just to ensure that people believe me. I know I did nothing wrong, but in being the type of person to depart from my cultural values, I still often feel I did everything wrong. Rape culture and the difficulties victims face in coming forward are incredibly real. The pressure I felt from my own culture in trying to tell my story? Even stronger.
Name has been changed.
My friends didn’t like him much — he gave off a bit of a creepy vibe, and was all too quick to invite freshman Indian girls over to his apartment. Still, we had stopped by to pregame at his apartment once or twice, thanks to his proximity to our dorm and our limited access to alcohol. At the time, I was getting over a rough breakup with someone else in the Indian community. I was still trying to win my ex-boyfriend back but found myself attracted to Neil’s similar discomfort hanging out solely with other Indians. He may have been a little aggressively flirtatious for my taste, but he was proof that it was possible to exist with feet in the monolithic Indian community and outside of it.
But when it came to telling my friends that he raped me, why did my Indian friends find it so hard to believe a fellow Indian could do what Neil did to me?
These things don’t happen to us. First-generation Indian kids are constantly walking a tightrope between our Indian heritage and our American identities. We may not have had to sign up for the arranged marriages of our parents, but we also weren’t allowed to date growing up. We could have our freedom to have a good time in college like our white American counterparts, but the price tag for it was earning a respectable degree that leads to a good job. We played it safe, because we couldn’t afford not to — we are our parents’ children, and our parents sacrificed everything for us to be raised in America. Dating? Sex? Alcohol? Those were all perks — privileges to be enjoyed quietly, and never to be abused.
Even now, nearly nine years later, I’m fighting the urge to explain that I know not all first-generation Indians, people like me who were born stateside to immigrant parents, are as conservative as I like to pretend they are. My own parents, for example, were incredibly liberal compared to most Indian immigrants, and perfectly open to the idea of their daughters dating in high school and college. Everyone’s parents vary in their degrees of traditionalism. Not all Indians. But when it came to sex, I was always the outlier, the harlot. My three closest Indian girlfriends and I all had our various freshman-year entanglements, but I’d had sex with a high school boyfriend, and for that I always felt a little dirtier, a little more judged — a chip on my shoulder I’m willing to admit I likely placed there all on my own.
Being Indian was my entire identity at the start of college, and I quickly immersed myself in the scene as much as possible. As I started to make friends outside of the Indian community, the lingering disconnect between my Indian friends and I felt even more amplified. Maybe there’s no such thing as “a good Indian girl,” but that didn’t take away from the fact that I was still much further away from it than any of my Indian friends. I knew it, they knew it, and the divide was ever present.
When Neil invited me to a party being thrown by the lacrosse team that April, I was hesitant about going. I still wasn’t over my ex-boyfriend Rahul*, a sophomore who had broken up with me after three months because I wasn’t as conservative as he wanted his girlfriend to be — especially not as he ran for student government. Determined to transform into the sweet Indian girlfriend of his dreams, I went as far as to give up drinking in a bid to win him back. For the next part of my plan, I invited Rahul to the lacrosse party too, figuring he would get a chance to shake hands and kiss babies in advance of the election — while hoping my invite from a cute athletic senior would create the requisite dose of jealousy needed to push us back together.
What I didn’t expect was being roofied, not remembering the rest of the night, and waking up in Neil’s bed covered in bruises.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. I remember snippets of the night. I fully remember insisting no alcohol be in my beverage when Neil offered to pour me a mixed drink — a choice integral to my plan of presenting my best self. I remember a very hazy moment: walking down a hill toward Neil’s apartment, daring him to let me wear his lacrosse jersey. I was definitely drugged by then, but eight years later I remember that brief moment of flirtation I surely was complicit in. And I remember coming to during the act itself, no idea where I was. Letting it go on for a few more minutes, confused, but not fighting it off either, as I always imagined I’d do if ever trapped in that situation. I remember being in the bathroom looking at my neck, certain it was going to be bruised by the next morning.
Even in this retelling, I’m hesitant to admit what I remember because there’s less culpability in not remembering. Isn’t there? To remember is to admit that there were maybe moments where you could have stopped it sooner.
View this image ›
Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed
I don’t remember how I got home, but it wasn’t that late when I got there. I called my ex-boyfriend, who was convinced my multiple pleas for him to come over were misguided attempts at drunken seduction. He reminded me that it was my choice to not drink for a month, yet here I was wasted on the third day of the self-imposed ban. He had to go do work for the campaign, at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. He hung up.
I don’t remember if my closest female friends, Indian girls who lived in my dorm and had been to Neil’s apartment with me before, came over that night or the next morning. I do know that when two of them took one look at my neck, covered from side to side in a macabre grin of angry purple bruises and bite marks, they knew something had happened that wasn’t supposed to. I told them what I remembered from that evening as best I could, and they were incredibly supportive, especially given that none of us had dealt with anything of this nature before in our eight months of friendship. But it also didn’t stop them from asking, “Are you sure you guys didn’t just accidentally hook up last night?” After all, they had seen mine and Neil’s ill-advised flirtations in the weeks prior. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe the date rape hadn’t occurred; it was that there was a stronger tendency to want to chalk this up to drunken shenanigans. These things don’t happen to us. Neil may have given us an off-vibe from day one, but at the end of the day, he was a good Indian boy, and I was supposed to be a good Indian girl.
Given my friends’ suspicions that there was maybe more to the story than I was letting on, even knowing that my judgment had to have been chemically clouded, I started to question my own recollections. Neil and I had been flirting here and there in the weeks leading up to the party. If I hazily remembered flirting with him on the walk home, who’s to say I didn’t say no when push came to literal shove? Even though I’d never blacked out, and don’t remember drinking at all, did I maybe just get really drunk? I logically knew the answer to all those questions pointed to no, this wasn’t my fault, but if I couldn’t even believe myself entirely, there was no way I was going to be a believable victim.
Even though I had told my friends the majority of what happened, I edited out a few of the parts that I was convinced might give Neil plausible deniability, even to my best friends. That was the first time I sanitized the story. It’s not that it didn’t happen in the parts I was able to recollect, but it was much easier to be a believable victim when I was irrevocably wronged. I dropped the mention of remembering that he gave me a drink at all (even though I do remember Neil being a little too insistent that it was “just Tampico Punch” — a non-alcoholic mixer — “don’t worry”), just to play it safe. I also started to leave out the brief recollections of us walking back from the party. Even after I had sufficiently retold the story multiple times, I still got the sense that there was some disbelief — I had hooked up with someone else during a trip earlier in the school year despite wanting to win my ex back, and there was still that lost high school innocence I’d never be able to undo. But the bruises spoke for themselves, as well as Neil’s texts the afternoon after, trying both to flirt and minimize the night before in the same breath.
Going to campus police was never an option. It’s not that our Indian community wasn’t having sex, but we sure as hell weren’t talking about it. I wasn’t explicitly talked out of wanting to press charges, but it never even came up in the discussion process of how to move forward. I was worried about others in the Indian scene finding out, and the rumor mill dropping the non-consensual aspect of me having had sex (a step Rahul and I hadn’t even taken when we dated). My friends and I all were aware of how it would play out in the Indian community if we blew it up. Not dragging Neil’s name through the mud wasn’t to protect him, it was to protect myself, to not give my circle even more ammunition to render me damaged goods, and question whether my account held up. Neil wasn’t the most popular student in the Indian community, but after my breakup, neither was I, and to duke out who was more believable if the story came out was a battle I wasn’t willing to lose.
Our South Asian campus club was putting on a culture show that night — an ironic event, given that I was convinced I fit into what my culture expected of me even less now than I ever did before — so my friends slathered as much concealer as they could find on my neck to cover the evidence of the previous night, and we all were secretly glad I hadn’t invited my parents to come up to watch the show. Gratefully, none of them brought up the anecdote that they used to make fun of me for the most: that I had picked Berkeley as the college to go to after visiting and watching that same culture show a year prior. Seeing that show as a high school senior was the first time I felt like I had belonged to a community. One year, two and a half hours, and 14 colorful dances later, I never felt more ostracized from it.
Meanwhile, Neil, who was also participating in the show, was continuing to text me. The flirty texts from the morning that had gone unanswered had morphed into worried texts where he tried to downplay the night before, joking around that maybe we both got carried away. When those texts also went ignored, he quickly turned angry, instructing me to keep my mouth shut “for both of our sake.” Dealing with Neil’s angry texts, alongside the stress of being in charge of the opening routine of that night’s show, pushed me to a near breaking point, and I couldn’t stop crying. I was worried about running into him backstage or at that night’s afterparty, just to have another confrontation like the one I was trying to avoid over text.
My friends broke rank and told one Indian upperclassman, a sympathetic junior who was a sexual health education peer at the university health center. She was the first person to believe my story verbatim, no sanitization necessary, even with all the caveats that made me a bad victim. After offering to take me to campus police, and then assuring me that it was OK that I was dead set against going, she deftly handled Neil (a mutual friend of hers at the time, as well) over text message, assuring him that I would absolutely be pressing charges if he didn’t stop threatening me. She later arranged for me to be seen by a doctor, and pointed me toward therapy options to talk through the trauma. I am still forever trying to emulate her grace and compassion when put in similar situations.
Still, I continued to sanitize, even in the years later when I became more comfortable talking about my assault. But I do think that my unwillingness to deal with it in the immediate aftermath only encouraged the suspicions that I was embellishing. One of my own friends went so far as to suggest that I made up the entire thing as a cover for a consensual hookup, because I was unable to hide the bruises from my ex-boyfriend. The Duke lacrosse scandal was playing out across the country at the exact time that my rape occurred in the spring of 2006, and someone unwittingly mentioned to me, “Wow, your Neil story is just like an episode of Law & Order: SVU! Roofied by an athlete; that just screams ripped from the headlines.”
I keep coming back to the phrase “Not all Indians.” I know I’m not alone in my quixotic quest to balance the conservative parts of my Indian upbringing with the realities of living in a modern American culture. But I still feel that I don’t fit the mold of “good Indian girl” with my friends, with my family, with the first-generation Indian community at large. I still sometimes date Indian men and hang out with Indian friends, who truly are wonderful, but more than one has asked me why I have to write about private aspects of my life for career “sport.” Not one has asked if it’s cathartic or something I enjoy, because in our culture, we don’t prop up the sensitive aspects of private lives for any reason — especially ones that come up because we failed to adhere to the good Indian code of ethics in the first place.
When you don’t talk to your kids about sex, how do you talk to them about sexual assault? In our traditional, conservative culture, these things generally don’t come up. Rape rates in India are soaring, but it still reads as an “India problem” — something born out of the old country’s inability to modernize; as distant and antiquated a notion as having a servant, or shaving your hair off on a yearly temple pilgrimage. And sexual assault in America is still seen by immigrants as something that “doesn’t happen to us.” It’s a wholly American epidemic.
I still have a hard time always telling my story in full. The need to sanitize is ever present, just to ensure that people believe me. I know I did nothing wrong, but in being the type of person to depart from my cultural values, I still often feel I did everything wrong. Rape culture and the difficulties victims face in coming forward are incredibly real. The pressure I felt from my own culture in trying to tell my story? Even stronger.
Name has been changed.
Guest- Guest
Study: Women Are More Empathetic Toward Their Partner Than Men
[size=31]In terrible, not particularly shocking news for heterosexual women worldwide, Griffith University and the University of Queensland in Australia just announced research demonstrating that women have more empathy in relationships than men. (By the way, I think we can all agree that every great scientific finding begins with the phrase: "Women may long have suspected it to be the case...")[/size]
[size=31]Researchers used data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) study, a national survey of over 20,000 people in Australia, to evaluate how the mental health of individuals changes based on their partners' experiences. Dr. Cindy Mervin from Griffith Health Institute's Centre for Applied Health Economics and Professor Paul Frijters from the University of Queensland found that "when partners were ill or experienced the death of a friend, women were noticeably affected, yet men were not significantly affected by the negative events in their partner's life." Bleak. But wait, a silver lining![/size]
[size=31]"It is not that men are unemotional or uncaring, since they are quite strongly affected by what happens to themselves, but they simply are not very emotional when it comes to the feelings of their partner," said Dr Mervin. "It is possible that men are probably more affected by their own roles and image as partners, than by the actual feelings of their partner," said Professor Frijters.[/size]
[size=31]Everybody chill the heck out, it's not that your boyfriend doesn't care about shit! He just doesn't care about your shit. The release explains: "Female partners levels of empathy could be measured as comparable to the event happening directly to themselves, whereas men's emotional lives were not linked to the experiences of their partner."[/size]
[size=31]Maybe it's an Aussie thing?[/size]
[size=31]Researchers used data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) study, a national survey of over 20,000 people in Australia, to evaluate how the mental health of individuals changes based on their partners' experiences. Dr. Cindy Mervin from Griffith Health Institute's Centre for Applied Health Economics and Professor Paul Frijters from the University of Queensland found that "when partners were ill or experienced the death of a friend, women were noticeably affected, yet men were not significantly affected by the negative events in their partner's life." Bleak. But wait, a silver lining![/size]
[size=31]"It is not that men are unemotional or uncaring, since they are quite strongly affected by what happens to themselves, but they simply are not very emotional when it comes to the feelings of their partner," said Dr Mervin. "It is possible that men are probably more affected by their own roles and image as partners, than by the actual feelings of their partner," said Professor Frijters.[/size]
[size=31]Everybody chill the heck out, it's not that your boyfriend doesn't care about shit! He just doesn't care about your shit. The release explains: "Female partners levels of empathy could be measured as comparable to the event happening directly to themselves, whereas men's emotional lives were not linked to the experiences of their partner."[/size]
[size=31]Maybe it's an Aussie thing?[/size]
Guest- Guest
Re: Women's Rights/Issues
I think it's interesting. In my experiences, yes, it is true. Like the article states, I don't think it's a lack of empathy, but rather the inability to relate because they don't feel what their partner feels.CauseItsReal wrote:Do you think that's true?
However, this opens the door to other couples. What of homosexual couples? Asexual and androgynous partners? The question then becomes, is this a sex based issue or is it ingrained gender issues?
Boys are taught from a young age to not have certain feelings and questions of feelings are not common discussions for them because to feel is to be weak.
What do you think?
I think it is gender and sex. Women tend to be naturally maternal, which explains the empathy and if boys are taught to push feelings aside as to not appear weak, then that is ingrained gendered behavior.
Guest- Guest
12 Historical Women Who Gave No F*cks
[ltr]View Original[/ltr]
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English-born physician Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female MD in the United States. Rejected by many medical schools due to her gender, she ended up getting a place at the Geneva Medical College in New York, where she had to put up with a lot of douchebag classmates and a professor who thought she should leave the room for lectures on reproductive anatomy in order to protect her “delicate sensibilities”.
Turned out she didn’t give a fuck about delicate sensibilities and went on to become a world-famous obstetrician.
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It is quite possible that no one has ever given less of a fuck in a photograph than mountaineer Annie Smith Peck.
Peck scaled all the major mountains of Europe, then went to South America, where in 1908 she was the first person to scale Peru’s highest peak, Mt Huscaran, gaining international acclaim.
She was also an influential scholar, writing multiple books and lecturing around the world. She kept climbing until the age of 82.
Oh, and she didn’t wear the long skirts expected of women at the time.
And people were like, “OoOOooOooOh but Annie! Such immodesty!”
But did she give any fucks about them?
[/ltr]
LOL, nope.
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Mary Lou Williams, pictured third from the left not giving a single fuck, was a pianist prodigy and one of the most influential musicians and composers of the first three decades of jazz. She performed professionally from the age of 12, was a great influence on “Kansas City swing” big-band jazz and bebop, composed music in multiple genres, and was 100% badass all of the time.
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Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6Tfx_gVHXcMC&pg=PA250&lpg=PA250&dq="I+can%27t+read+little+things+like+letters"&source=bl&ots=8f6uFgYtuE&sig=KUDMgH2_hv-q_xX0cRF-UEl-RtU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YPOmVL3fB42EgwTkuYKIAw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q="I can't read little things like letters"&f=false]once engaged in the following exchange[/url] with the young suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch in which she gave literally no fucks:
Harriot Stanton Blatch: “Sojourner, can’t you read?”
Sojourner Truth: “Oh no, honey, I can’t read little things like letters. I read big things like men.”
SOJOURNER.
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Ada Lovelace was a mathematician (and an absolute baller) who is widely considered to have written the first computer program, working with Charles Babbage on his plans for a sort of proto-computer, the “analytic engine”.
Babbage once entreated her:
“Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible
its multitudinous Charlatans – everything in short but
the Enchantress of Numbers.”
Which basically meant:
“Don’t give a single fuck.”
Beatrice Potter Webb was a social reformer, economist, and historian who campaigned with her husband Sidney for policies to benefit the urban poor, working towards the first minimum wage laws, developing the early Labour party in Britain, authoring hundreds of books, and founding the London School of Economics – all while giving no fucks.
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Journalist and aviator Lilian Bland lived a life full of badassery. In 1910, she built her own plane in Ireland. She didn’t have a fuel tank for it, so she fashioned one from an empty whisky bottle and her aunt’s ear trumpet. She then flew it for 30 yards – a very impressive flight for those days.
Her hobbies included smoking, wearing trousers, martial arts, motor cars, and swearing. She passed her retirement in Cornwall gambling, drinking, and painting – all the while, of course, giving no fucks.
[/ltr]
Ethel L. Payne was an absolutely kickass investigative journalist who covered the American Civil Rights Movement and international affairs. As a member of the White House Press Corps, she once famously pissed off President Eisenhower with her persistent questioning on desegregating interstate travel, leading him to ignore her in future press conferences like an absolute ninny.
Over the course of a long career, she reported for the Chicago Defender on stories from across the globe, and became the first female African-American commentator on a national network when she was hired by CBS in the 1970s. Some detractors complained about her assertive questioning style. Luckily, she did not give a single fuck about those assholes.
[/ltr]
Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting in Japan’s imperial court during the Heian period, and wrote what is believed to be the first novel in human history: The Tale of Genji.
Her father apparently praised her intelligence, but lamented that she was “born a woman”. In her diary, she records that she learned Chinese by listening through the door to the lessons her father gave her brother, because women were not meant to learn Chinese. Murasaki Shikibu, however, gave no fucks about this whatsoever.
[/ltr]
Nellie Bly was a daring and influential investigative journalist who wrote groundbreaking stories about political corruption and poverty. She once faked madness in order to report undercover from an abusive mental institution in New York City, which led to outcry and reform. Her jealous peers referred to her investigations as “stunt reporting”, but Nellie, of course, didn’t give a fuck about those whiny little shits.
Oh, and she once travelled around the world in a record-breaking 72 days, just ‘cause.
[/ltr]
Nzinga Mbandi, the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba (modern day Angola), was a straight-up boss bitch. She took power when her brother Ngola Mbandi died in 1624, and gained international acclaim for her brilliance in diplomacy, military tactics, and giving zero fucks. Her skill in warfare, espionage, trade, alliance-building, and religious matters helped her hold off Portuguese colonialism for the duration of her life.
Nzinga, you literal queen.
[/ltr]
This is the face that Austrian-born American actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr would make when she gave no fucks, which is to say, the face she made every single day. She invented “frequency hopping” technology, which was put to use in a secret communications system and in radio-controlled torpedoes in WWII, which in turn laid the foundations for future technological developments such as Wi-Fi and GPS.
She was also a movie star.
Because why the fuck not?[/ltr]
[ltr]
1. Dr Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910)
[/ltr]
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[ltr]English-born physician Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female MD in the United States. Rejected by many medical schools due to her gender, she ended up getting a place at the Geneva Medical College in New York, where she had to put up with a lot of douchebag classmates and a professor who thought she should leave the room for lectures on reproductive anatomy in order to protect her “delicate sensibilities”.
Turned out she didn’t give a fuck about delicate sensibilities and went on to become a world-famous obstetrician.
2. Annie Smith Peck (1850–1935)
[/ltr]
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[ltr]It is quite possible that no one has ever given less of a fuck in a photograph than mountaineer Annie Smith Peck.
Peck scaled all the major mountains of Europe, then went to South America, where in 1908 she was the first person to scale Peru’s highest peak, Mt Huscaran, gaining international acclaim.
She was also an influential scholar, writing multiple books and lecturing around the world. She kept climbing until the age of 82.
Oh, and she didn’t wear the long skirts expected of women at the time.
And people were like, “OoOOooOooOh but Annie! Such immodesty!”
But did she give any fucks about them?
Did you, Annie?
[/ltr]
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[ltr]LOL, nope.
3. Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981)
[/ltr]
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[ltr]Mary Lou Williams, pictured third from the left not giving a single fuck, was a pianist prodigy and one of the most influential musicians and composers of the first three decades of jazz. She performed professionally from the age of 12, was a great influence on “Kansas City swing” big-band jazz and bebop, composed music in multiple genres, and was 100% badass all of the time.
Here she is again, without a second to spare for anyone’s bullshit.
[/ltr]
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[ltr]4. Sojourner Truth (1797–1883)
[/ltr]
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[ltr]Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth [url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6Tfx_gVHXcMC&pg=PA250&lpg=PA250&dq="I+can%27t+read+little+things+like+letters"&source=bl&ots=8f6uFgYtuE&sig=KUDMgH2_hv-q_xX0cRF-UEl-RtU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YPOmVL3fB42EgwTkuYKIAw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q="I can't read little things like letters"&f=false]once engaged in the following exchange[/url] with the young suffragist Harriot Stanton Blatch in which she gave literally no fucks:
Harriot Stanton Blatch: “Sojourner, can’t you read?”
Sojourner Truth: “Oh no, honey, I can’t read little things like letters. I read big things like men.”
SOJOURNER.
5. Ada Lovelace (1815–1852)
[/ltr]
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[ltr]Ada Lovelace was a mathematician (and an absolute baller) who is widely considered to have written the first computer program, working with Charles Babbage on his plans for a sort of proto-computer, the “analytic engine”.
Babbage once entreated her:
“Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible
its multitudinous Charlatans – everything in short but
the Enchantress of Numbers.”
Which basically meant:
“Don’t give a single fuck.”
6. Beatrice Potter Webb (1858–1943)
[/ltr][You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Hulton Archive / Getty Images
[ltr]Beatrice Potter Webb was a social reformer, economist, and historian who campaigned with her husband Sidney for policies to benefit the urban poor, working towards the first minimum wage laws, developing the early Labour party in Britain, authoring hundreds of books, and founding the London School of Economics – all while giving no fucks.
7. Lilian Bland (1878–1971)
[/ltr]
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[ltr]Journalist and aviator Lilian Bland lived a life full of badassery. In 1910, she built her own plane in Ireland. She didn’t have a fuel tank for it, so she fashioned one from an empty whisky bottle and her aunt’s ear trumpet. She then flew it for 30 yards – a very impressive flight for those days.
Her hobbies included smoking, wearing trousers, martial arts, motor cars, and swearing. She passed her retirement in Cornwall gambling, drinking, and painting – all the while, of course, giving no fucks.
8. Ethel L. Payne (1911–1991)
[/ltr]
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
[ltr]Ethel L. Payne was an absolutely kickass investigative journalist who covered the American Civil Rights Movement and international affairs. As a member of the White House Press Corps, she once famously pissed off President Eisenhower with her persistent questioning on desegregating interstate travel, leading him to ignore her in future press conferences like an absolute ninny.
Over the course of a long career, she reported for the Chicago Defender on stories from across the globe, and became the first female African-American commentator on a national network when she was hired by CBS in the 1970s. Some detractors complained about her assertive questioning style. Luckily, she did not give a single fuck about those assholes.
9. Murasaki Shikibu (973–1025…ish)
[/ltr]
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
[ltr]Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting in Japan’s imperial court during the Heian period, and wrote what is believed to be the first novel in human history: The Tale of Genji.
Her father apparently praised her intelligence, but lamented that she was “born a woman”. In her diary, she records that she learned Chinese by listening through the door to the lessons her father gave her brother, because women were not meant to learn Chinese. Murasaki Shikibu, however, gave no fucks about this whatsoever.
10. Nellie Bly (1864–1922)
[/ltr]
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
[ltr]Nellie Bly was a daring and influential investigative journalist who wrote groundbreaking stories about political corruption and poverty. She once faked madness in order to report undercover from an abusive mental institution in New York City, which led to outcry and reform. Her jealous peers referred to her investigations as “stunt reporting”, but Nellie, of course, didn’t give a fuck about those whiny little shits.
Oh, and she once travelled around the world in a record-breaking 72 days, just ‘cause.
11. Nzinga Mbandi (1583–1663)
[/ltr]
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
[ltr]Nzinga Mbandi, the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba (modern day Angola), was a straight-up boss bitch. She took power when her brother Ngola Mbandi died in 1624, and gained international acclaim for her brilliance in diplomacy, military tactics, and giving zero fucks. Her skill in warfare, espionage, trade, alliance-building, and religious matters helped her hold off Portuguese colonialism for the duration of her life.
Nzinga, you literal queen.
12. Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000)
[/ltr]
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
[ltr]This is the face that Austrian-born American actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr would make when she gave no fucks, which is to say, the face she made every single day. She invented “frequency hopping” technology, which was put to use in a secret communications system and in radio-controlled torpedoes in WWII, which in turn laid the foundations for future technological developments such as Wi-Fi and GPS.
She was also a movie star.
Because why the fuck not?[/ltr]
Guest- Guest
Men's Rights Activist Threatens to Murder Women Who Visit His Site
[ltr]The creator of a new social media site for men - called Manbook and bound to confuse lots of dudes who are there for something else — is angry that women (especially feminists) might try to join the network. So he's issuing a threat: Sign up and die.[/ltr]
[ltr]Joschua Boehm, who is, objectively, a real piece of work made it clear that his site was for men only. NO GIRLS ALLOWED. And because women so often don't listen, Boehm posted the following message (obtained by Raw Story) on the site.[/ltr]
[ltr]Boehm, who has already ruined the life of a woman who he accused of lying about a sexual assault is happy to harass women online. According to Raw Story he also runs a site where he names women whom he suspectsof crimes against men.[/ltr]
[ltr]Boehm ends his warning thusly:[/ltr]
[ltr]Joschua Boehm, who is, objectively, a real piece of work made it clear that his site was for men only. NO GIRLS ALLOWED. And because women so often don't listen, Boehm posted the following message (obtained by Raw Story) on the site.[/ltr]
[ltr]OK, Ladies? If you want to stay alive, you'd better respect these dudes because not following the orders of men's rights activists will result in your possible (but not probable) death. I don't know what this guy and his friends have got going on over on Manbook, but it's so secret that just trying to sign up might cost you your life. It's probably pictures of baby animals and gay porn, though. I mean that's why I'd go to a site called Manbook.[/ltr][ltr]
"We would ask you women to respect our rights as you wish your rights to be respected. If you are unwilling to respect our right to freedom of association do not expect men to respect your right to life. Ok?"[/ltr]
[ltr]Boehm, who has already ruined the life of a woman who he accused of lying about a sexual assault is happy to harass women online. According to Raw Story he also runs a site where he names women whom he suspectsof crimes against men.[/ltr]
[ltr]Boehm ends his warning thusly:[/ltr]
[ltr]I guess he hasn't learned that threatening to kill others for going to a website isn't actually a right guaranteed by the constitution. I bet women wrote that, too, though, so it's OK.[/ltr][ltr]
"So. Ladies. Learn what a right is and do not be violating the rights of other people, especially men, if you are not prepared to have your rights violated in return. Ok?"[/ltr]
Guest- Guest
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