Posts tagged feminism

Earlier today I asked whether the term ‘violence against women’ was discriminatory, and presented my views. I was delighted to read the mostly-vitriolic responses from feminists, which I’ve reproduced below for your consideration (and entertainment). All emphases are mine.

Consider this reblog part of my campaign to at least spend my energy mocking posts on a wider variety of topics,  and mocking posts that are more clearly stupid.  Also, my long term commitment to misandrist discourse.

- gaylesofnovember

Standing in misandrist solidarity.

Maybe when women aren’t overwhelmingly the victims and men aren’t overwhelmingly the perpetrators we can talk about changing it.

- coldbitterness

Misandrist = saying “well, maybe you aren’t the most important person in this discussion”

seriously, I have a met a lot of people involved in domestic violence activism, and have yet to encounter a single one who was hostile to or unwilling to help a man who was genuinely a victim of partner violence, not to mention all the boys who grow up in homes where violence occurs. It is very much in the interest of women to remove boys from those situations, because they will become men. The underlying implication of this attempt to ungender DV is that advocates are out to harm men, deliberately or by omission, which is fucking appalling considering that it is women who are overwhelmingly the targets of violence. Any attempt to recenter men and sweep the violence inherent in heterosexual interactions under the table lest it alienate anyone (men) only serves to harm women. You can’t even be beat bloody without some fucker asking you to make room for the men, even when men are not there in sufficient numbers to need that room.

so yeah, misandry 4 life

- desliz

SO MUCH FUCKING WORD. GOD! YES! Male victims’ voices should be heard and seen as REAL victims. BUT FOR THE FUCKING LOVE OF GOD-DO NOT SILENCE WOMEN’S VOICES in order to prove a “BUT WAHT ABOUT THE MEN WAAAH!!!” point. It is sick, it is counter-productive, it ignores women, and it is fucking sexist. And also? Wanna know WHY men aren’t seen as real victims in the first fucking place? Because of misogyny and a patriarchal system…one that participates in shit like this. Because women are incapable of being a fucking threat and men are incapable of being real vicitims. That’s fucking why. Whenever a discussion with Violence against women comes up and some asshole (typically a dude, occasionally a woman) starts with a “but it happens to guys too..” I will tell them to fucking check themselves before they wreck themselves. Because seriously? WHAT FUCKING POINT ARE U TRYING TO MAKE?!! What? Are you trying to defend violence women face? Are you trying to erase women’s experience so you can keep the status quo? Because A) that doesn’t help the men you claim are “ignored by the evil women” and B) it does shit to combat VAW and domestic abuse period. WHY ARE YOU SO DEFENSIVE AGAINST THE THOUGHT OF GIVING 2 SHITS ABOUT WOMEN?!?!!! FUCKING WHY??!?! ARE R U A COWARD TRYING TO EVADE THE FACT THAT MISOGYNY EXISTS?!!

- nowherezone11

RAWR.

If these were guys ranting at a woman putting forward her views, this would be psychological abuse and misogynist raving, wouldn’t it? I am entertained by the double standard and still maintain my original views. Which chapter in the Feminist Playbook does it say that “men must not have views which run counter to women’s on the matter of gender based violence, and if they do, there should be no dialogue with them on this matter apart from a barrage of fuck yous”?

According to the feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, “the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.” Tell that to the pecs and speedo-clad cocks wiggling in LMFAO’s new video for their hit, Sexy And I Know It.

Keep this in mind the next time a certain type of feminist tries to skew the gender dialogue to imply that women are solely, or vastly more objectified, than men.

Though I’ve kept this post deliberately brief, I later explained my rationale for this post during the pow-wow in the comments below.

Code Red beat me in commenting on the curious reaction among some in Jamaica and Barbados to this recent murder-suicide, which could’ve either been a result of domestic violence and rape, or plain old ‘Barbados hates Jamaica’ bullshit. It’s been said so perfectly, I have nothing else to add.

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Over her dead body: Nationalist rhetoric as (erasure of) violence against women

Natoya Ewers, a Jamaican woman, was hacked to death by her intimate partner, leaving behind three children.  I came across this Jamaican Facebook page where the occasion of this woman’s death was used to denounce the ‘fact’ that Bajans did not like Jamaicans. 

Many readers asserted that the woman should not have left Jamaica to travel to that “Third World full-stop of an island, Barbados.” Absolutely no mention of violence against women. No mention of the Jamaican women who lost their lives at home in Jamaica at the hands of intimate partners during that same week. No mention of how increasingly violent Caribbean societies had become.  I told myself it’s just one Facebook page. Surely that is not most people’s reaction. Then I saw the Jamaica Observer cartoon above and it confirmed my initial fears.

Caribbean feminist scholar, Alissa Trotz, has outlined how “women’s bodies [become] the site on which group loyalties are enacted.” Not to be outdone, on the Nation News Facebook page comments (which have since been removed) were also nationalistic as readers alleged that the man who committed the murder and subsequently killed himself was Vincentian. They quickly moved from the nationalistic to the sexist:

But lets face the truth. Bajan women take and take and take and just take too much from men. Its not like the men can afford to give so much. Men feel compelled to give because its the only way they can keep these selfish Bajan women. Bajan women have become a society of beggers.

Just say ” hello” to a Bajan women and she wants a top up.

Of course, the other Facebook users moved to correct the commenter quoted above, not to chide him for his sexism but to remark that the woman in question was not Bajan but Jamaican.   The stereotype of Caribbean women as mercenary, materialistic and financially dependent on men and these “facts” in and of themselves being presented as a justification of murder went unchallenged.

While the recent tensions surrounding the treatment of Jamaican nationals at the Barbados airport and the rape of a Jamaican woman in police custody explains in part this recourse to an unthinking nationalism, it does not explain why all the “talk” following this woman’s brutal death made absolutely no mention of  the similarity with so many other murders of Caribbean women and displayed very little feeling for the woman herself. Reports are that she had confronted her partner about sexually abusing her daughter. On local television one of her neighbours reported watching the woman’s murder from the safety of his bedroom window.

Women’s bodies are used as boundary-markers in what has become an asinine Barbados versus Jamaica beef played out at the highest and lowest levels.  Wasted time, talk and energy that could be put towards fighting against what is really at issue here: men’s violence against women, society’s sanctioning of it, incest and child sexual abuse.

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CODE RED is a feminist collective of Caribbean women and men.