I live on a lake in a forest in mid-northern Ontario. It’s bad enough that people come here to kill animals they have no need to kill, in often painful ways, which they do every weekend all summer long, when the animals are struggling as it is, given what we’ve done to their homes and their food supplies, and call it sport no less, but yesterday I was struck—
Rounding a point in my kayak, I saw a little boy, maybe six years old, standing in a boat holding a fishing rod (his father was standing behind him). The boy saw us and pointed with delight, seeing my little dog perched on the prow like a little hood ornament. I smiled. But then he turned back, no doubt reprimanded by his father to concentrate, to pay attention, and resumed trying to kill.
How does that little boy turn from being delighted to see Keezi on the prow to trying to kill another animal? There must be a disconnect. He must not think of the barbed hook tearing at the lip of the fish, he must not think of its pain as he pulls the fish by that hook in its lip through the water as it struggles to get away, then up out of the water where it will contort itself trying to get free, unable to breathe—
And that’s how, I realized, six year old boys become twelve, and eighteen, and twenty-four year old boys—who rape. Oblivious to the woman’s screams of pain, to her squirming to get free—
“Behind every well-respected man, there’s a woman who probably does his washing [laundry].” p103
“Why is it that men who prioritise adventure and independence over family are called ‘committed bachelors’ and ‘wanderers’ who just can’t be tied down, but women who similarly pursue a life free form burdens are called ‘spinsters’ and ‘cat ladies’ and are viewed as pitiful cautionary tales? It’s because men are given the complexity to be fully rounded individuals while women are still treated like plants in need of a man’s attention to fully bloom.” p103
“The state cannot and should not be able to force anyone to give their body over to medicine for any purpose—just as a person cannot be forced to donate a kidney to someone who will otherwise die, nor should a woman be forced to provide nine months of shared living space to a foetus she does not want to keep or care for.” p117
“All of a sudden, they can’t rely on being rewarded just for turning up. And instead of sitting down for a moment and thinking about what that means, most of them lash out …” p145
“Do feminists hate men? When you consider the level of hostility women are subjected to just for standing up for ourselves, surely the better query is why do so many men seem to hate women so fiercely, so aggressively, so violently, and so passionately?” p152
“Almost two women in this country [UK] are murdered weekly by aggrieved partners or ex-partners, and the all-too-common response is ‘Well, why didn’t she leave?’ instead of ‘Why did he kill her?'” p153
“If safety [is] such an important consideration for girls, [why don’t their parents] talk to their brothers about not hurting women?” p158
Indeed.
“The abuse received after exposing abuse proves how very prevalent this problem is.” p177
Must read the entire previous page.
“While women complain about the abuse we receive, we’re told to ‘get over it’ or ‘harden up’, two pieces of advice that completely miss the irony of the fact that the most thin-skinned, sensitive and retaliatory people online are white men aged between fifteen and thirty-five.” p179
Brilliant observation.
re her Facebook ban – “To be clear, all I had done was post images of the messages and comments sent to me that had been declared fine by Facebook’s standards.” p183
So “while it was evidently acceptable for these men to send these messages in the first place, it suddenly became an act of hostility for me to make an example of them.” p183
“He’s probably married and has daughters, and he uses this fact to establish himself as some kind of common sense expert and champion for women’s rights.” p235
p237. just—p237
perhaps a good summary of which would be
“Why do you hate men? You’re a fucking cunt, you know that?”
“The reality of rape is that it’s overwhelmingly more likely than not to be ‘unplanned and spontaneous’ and for a judge to decide that this makes it somehow ‘not threatening or violent’ is absurd.” p250
Yes! The fact that it can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone, willy nilly, is what makes it MORE threatening.
re his son “didn’t deserve to be punished for ‘twenty minutes of action’ – p251 – a gunshot takes 2 seconds – so no deserving to be punished in that case either? wtf kind of logic is that?
“But shades of grey about consent can be very easily resolved by establishing whether or not your sexual partner is present in the situation, enjoying themselves, and being afforded a dignity that recognizes and respects their humanity.” p255
I’d just stop at “enjoying themselves”. I mean, seriously, how hard can that be? To determine.
And earlier comment by a woman who was gang-raped: “They never spoke to me, they spoke just to themselves, amongst themselves, laughing and thinking it was really funny. When you have sex with someone, it’s nice and you talk and you touch and this was awful. This was nothing like that.” p255
Yes, well those men had probably never had sex with someone.
“Why are you so angry? I’m angry that this is even a question, because implicit in it is the suggestion that women have nothing to be angry about. …” p266
and just carry on and read the whole paragraph. the whole chapter.
“What happened to you that made you so fucking bitter and angry? [A lifetime in] a society that not only freezes us out of its core operations unit but seizes every opportunity to hurt and demean us.” p271
“We should be angry. Because if we aren’t, we aren’t paying enough attention.” p271
“… equivalent numbers of middle-aged men are not getting themselves treated in order to look less angry, aggressive, or miserable.” p49
“When female bodies deviate from the paths set by male ones, this is till treated as a design flaw … We need different ways of organizing education, work, and relationships to accommodate specifically female needs. Workplace accommodations are ‘special treatment’; the front-loading of education and career progression into the life stage during which one might also get pregnant cannot be questioned.” p76
Right. And isn’t justice supposed to compensate for bad luck? Both male and female choose to reproduce, but it’s just the female’s bad luck that the thing grows in her body, not his.
“Women are penalized towards the end of life for having been progressively exploited at earlier life stages.” p97 (re wages)
“… during the 2020 lockdowns women’s home work involved far more interruptions for domestic and care work, ‘irrespective of [the couples’] pre-lockdown relative pay’ …” p98
“You know what men could do that would ‘dispel the myth of a binary existence’? Do the laundry. Wash the dishes. Do the cooking … Do some of their family’s emotional labour … Now THAT would be revolutionary.” Gia Milinovich p104
“… men are progressively stealing time and money from women” p106
“People find it particularly shocking when a woman refuses to be kind: there’s something unnatural, offensive about a female mouth declaring that the limits of her care are here and she will not be giving any more.” Sarah Ditum p116
“For younger women, the belief that you are destined for greatness … relies on the conviction that older women were never really worth it, and that you will never be them.” p133
“women who began their adult life assuming their sex didn’t matter can be shocked to find that, actually, it matters a great deal.” p141
And men who made a similar assumption remain clueless, have yet to be shocked. (Tell them to read What Happened to Tom. And about those two people, one male and one female, who accidentally switched email accounts and found response to them, their work, waaaaay different …)
“Imagine we lived in a time in which there was no Pornhub, no OnlyFans, no revenge porn, no mega brothels, no normalization of prostitution as a way for female students to fund university courses. No choking and hitting as ‘standard’ sex, no ‘rough sex’ defences, no child sex dolls on Amazon, no exponential rise in sexual assaults in schools. …” p159
I don’t have to imagine it. I lived then. I was a girl, a teenager, a young adult then. A popular book was The Joy of Sex.The Hite Report. Masters and Johnson.
And I’m appalled at the present. HOW THE FUCK DID WE GET HERE — TO ALL THAT?
“there is no male equivalent of the scold’s bridle, no history of women using ‘nagging’ as an excuse for slaughtering their husbands, no stories of great civilizations in which women forbade men from speaking at political assemblies.” p209
re being at the YWCA … p227
“That in Salem widows were allowed to own property outright may have been the reason that the witch hunt there was especially intense.” Barstow p261
Interesting.
“Until 2018, the murders of women over the age of fifty-nine were not included in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.” p276
“All 50,000 workers at the Yue Yen Nike Factory in China would have to work for 19 years to earn what Nike spends on advertising in one year.” No Logo, Naomi Klein (p352)
“According to the 1998 United Nations Human Development Report, the growth in global ad spending ‘now outpaces the growth of the world economy by one-third.'” No Logo, Naomi Klein (p8-9)
In 1998, the overall ad expenditures n the U.S. were $200 billion. Which was (and still is) more than the GDP of most countries.
“In response to the “informed consent” bill the Kentucky House passed on January 28th, which requires women to consult a doctor–by video conference or in person–at least 24 hours before having an abortion, Kentucky state representative Mary Lou Marzian proposed a rather tongue-in-cheek bill of her own: a law requiring women to approve their husband’s request for Viagra, and making only married men eligible to receive the drug.”
“She glances down at the members of Parliament strolling in across the pea-green carpet below. Suits, bald heads, and shoes shinier than mirrors. The men who never in their lives had to worry about getting pregnant, dying in childbirth, or trying to access an abortion within their own restrictive system.” Looking for Jane, Heather Marshall (p140)
Indeed. If men could get pregnant– That might have been the single most thing that would have changed everything …
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (short drama 15min)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…
