The Privilege of Men by Judith Mazzucco starts as an unremarkable novel about the meat industry, but then WHAM! the metaphor in chapter 16— At least I think, I hope, it’s a metaphor and not something that’s actually happening somewhere right now. Though—and I’m not sure whether this is Mazzucco’s point or whether she’s ‘just’ …
Category: misogyny
Oct 06
Meghan Murphy’s “The Unbearable Coolness of Porn”
A simple but stunning observation: “… paying for sex is coercive – we all know that when people want to have sex with one another, they do it for free. No one needs to be paid unless one party is not enthusiastic about the sex.” Read the whole thing here: https://www.feministcurrent.com/2022/09/12/the-unbearable-coolness-of-porn/
Sep 05
What’s in a word? (on being ‘knocked up’ or …)
So I’ve been thinking not only about the words people use to describe sexual intercourse (screwed, fucked—both used to describe what is done to the woman—both of which also describe a general state of disaster) (which, actually, is often accurate if pregnancy results), but also about the words used to describe pregnancy itself: “knocked up” …
May 15
Can’t decide which is more appalling …
While reading Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women, a scene from a movie based on a true story about a young woman who was captured by a man and kept imprisoned/enslaved by him for years popped into my head: at one point, she was allowed outside to help him wash his car or something and …
May 13
Men Who Hate Men: the extremism nobody is talking about, Laura Bates
I highly recommend this book! (Laura Bates is the person behind “Everyday Sexism” for those of you who don’t know …) A few quotes and notes … About all the pick-up artist sites (p79) teaching men what to say and do, how to trick a woman into having sex with him – They must not …
Sep 06
from Jeffreys’ The Spinster and her Enemies
“As Dale Spender points out in Women of Ideas, women’s theory has been routinely dismissed and written out of history whereas men’s ideas have been called philosophy or politics.1 In no instance is this clearer than in the case of the feminist philosophy of sex that we will be looking at here. The contempt with …
Nov 14
Do I hate men?
Yes, generally speaking, I do. I hate the way they take up more physical space than necessary, sprawling over the confines of their chairs, elbowing the people beside them. I hate the way they take up more conversational space, speaking slowly, repeating themselves, and making irrelevant comments that derail the discussion. I hate the way …
Sep 12
“The Adult Market”
What’s adult about forcing someone to do something she doesn’t really want to do? What’s adult about doing sexual things to children? What’s adult about humiliating another person? What’s adult about hurting another person? We should call it what it is. The psychopathic sociopathic misogynist market. The sick fucks market. (I’d intended …
Aug 22
The Grammar of Male Violence – quick perception-changing read
Read this (takes a couple minutes) and your perceptions will be forever changed: http://www.ncdsv.org/images/GrammarofMaleViolence_9-10-2004.pdf
Aug 20
Responding to Wolf-Whistles
Many men will wolf-whistle at any woman.* So it’s not a special insult toward the woman in question (yes, men, wolf-whistles are insulting when they occur in everyday contexts—because they emphasize our sexuality when we’re trying to be seen for our personhood and our various competencies; it thus reduces us to sexual objects) (a wolf-whistle …
fiction
