Fight Like a Girl, Clementine Ford – quotes and notes

“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

 

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notes and quotes from Victoria Smith’s Hags

“… 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

WHAT?

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advertising spending

“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.

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Covering Viagra, But Not Birth Control

“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.”

Great idea!

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Seems to be a bit heavy on the killing … Ya think?

 

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God works in mysterious, inefficient, and breathtakingly cruel ways …

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“Bear, because If I got attacked by a bear people would believe me.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/us/man-bear-safety-tiktok-question-cec/index.html

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Man or Bear?

Read esp from “I need to get away …”

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If men could get pregnant …

“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 …

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“clear, coherent, willing, and ongoing”

Read the whole article here:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/university-montana-rape-sexual-assault-experiment-education-training

 

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