An easily understood illustration on what Kavanaugh's hearing felt like to women

Simply put.

It is time to make a fuss.

On the same subject:  women don't owe you anything.

Moon dust and cereal...

Moon dust and its dangers.

Negotiating with terrorists.

An Iraq War Veteran says what he thinks about war and warmongers.

Why ignorance is being embraced as a virtue in the GOP.

Life in the most religious states.

Tom Tomorrow gets it right.

Plastics, even non-BPA, can affect your hormones.  And pesticides may give your child autism.

10 invasive species

Women listening to men in Western Art History.  And speaking in a sexist language.

Cereal killers...

Usual Thursday....

First the parrots...They are plotting to take over the world!

What can happen to women denied abortions.

Scary muslim pictures.

Mass shooting for the last 30 years... brought to you by the NRA, the gun companies, and a cowardly Congress.

High Fructose Corn Syrup... apparently not even related to corn anymore:

While “trans-fat free” and “no MSG” are widely misused in the food world, nothing seems to come close to the ultra popular “natural.” With no definitive guidance from the FDA as to the meaning of the term, food manufactures slap it on products with abandon. Author and blogger Bruce Bradley, a 15-year veteran of the food product marketing world, says, “There is no FDA definition of ‘Natural,’ and in that vacuum, processed food companies have filled the void with their own, self-serving interpretations.” As an example, Bradley cites high fructose corn syrup, which he describes as “anything but natural…the result of an extraordinarily intensive process involving a series of enzymatic and chemical reactions. In fact, as one pro-HFCS group states, ‘the corn undergoes so much processing, and the products of the processes are so removed from corn that there is no detectable corn DNA present in HFCS.’” As the litigation lingers on, it will hopefully have the side effect of informing all those still clueless shoppers out there that what they see advertised about a food may bear little or no relationship to what they actually get – and in that way, can and will “benefit the public” after all.

Belly buttons.

Doggies and video game dragons.

Teaching girls to become engineers.

Actually white landowners are the only men who count..

Apparently no one else counts.

The war against women

Has been going on for a long time around the world.  In some places, women face down death threats. In others, legislation to control those naughty lady parts is constantly brought to the vote, pushed forward by those who have no understanding of women's physiology.

Because apparently we are now celebrating the Era of Stupidity.

Update 10/26:  sexism is everywhere.

And Malala Yousafzai is able to walk, talk, and can remember.

The horrific facts about rape.

Just desserts

Kicking asshole off plane.

The taxman payeth.

Routers are everywhere.

China rates the US on human rights.

Versailles, creating the next war at the end of the first World War:

The war on women, past and future

Thank you, madam, for helping women make their own reproductive choices.

Dr. Jean Pakter, a former health official who made New York City a national model for providing safe, legal abortions and led an innovative effort to educate women about the benefits of birth control, prenatal nutrition and breast-feeding, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 101.

And yet, there is a lack of understanding about reproductive control as a right and some people will never give up trying to stuff women back into a fairy tale make-believe pseudo 1950s life style, where men were men, women were in awe, and minorities knew their place. Times they are a changin' guys.  Finding out that women are humans like men and have feelings comes as a shock to some....

The war on women

As explained by Senator Boxer.

The thing is...

These kind of quotes are piling up daily, as if a dam has broken and all the sexism and hatred is flooding out for all to see.  These attitudes didn't suddenly spring up, they have been seeping up from deep underground for decades.  Fear of losing imagined dominance, fear of being emasculated, fear of powerful women who do not need men to live their lives....  if only those damned hussies would just get back into the kitchen....



(via Steve Bates)

Sex? This is the default position of the GOP?

Is this all they have once they've been shamed into silence about their racism? Republican men rule because they have dicks? Or because they are dicks? Really? They're hoping to reignite fear of flower children and free love?:

ARMEY: I’m so damn glad that you can never be my wife because I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that prattle from you every day.

WALSH: Boy, that makes two of us sir. That was really an outstanding comment.

ARMEY: That’s what I’m talking about — she’s making a political malarkey here.

And reactions to the statement:

GALLAGHER: Now, now, feminists are very angry that he said, “I’m glad you couldn’t be my wife.” I mean…

WALLACE: It’s pretty funny actually.

GALLAGHER: It’s hysterical. Do you know how many times a week I say, “thank God I don’t have to wake up next to her.” I mean some of these callers, these shrews that call.

This idiocy seems to have been on the talking points list for Republicans:

Conservative pundit and marital rape apologist Dennis Prager has some advice for you ladies with faltering marriages: don't think that just because you don't want to have sex your husband shouldn't try to fuck you.

Like Tucker Carlson before him, Prager thinks the key to a successful marriage is just doing it even when you don't want to. In Prager's case, he means "whenever your husband wants," regardless of your "mood," which shouldn't matter. Of course, you could be in that mood because your husband is a liar and a cheat, or because he's just driven your family into debt or hit you (not too hard, of course, but things happen), but as long as he wants to fuck, well, you should suck it up and submit.

According to Prager, women just don't understand that men view your willingness to "submit" to his penetration of your body as the way that you show love.

Women should feel validated when a man wants to have sex with them and ugly women therefore are useless? Bush 41's joke (youtubed at the site) and a reaction:

First, 41 thinks it's HILARIOUS to bash the ugly angry feminist by saying that he would not fuck her, i.e. "no problem" with him staying out of her womb. Yes, 41, you're right. We ugly angry feminists just want to fuck all you Republican asshats who want to strip us of our reproductive rights. And even better, we want to spawn with you so that you can spread your misogyny through your offspring. So be sure to continue your fight to limit access to contraceptives and abortions.

And 41, do TELL, why was it necessary to call her "one of the ugliest" women you had ever seen? Are women to be SEEN and NOT heard in your world? God forbid our appearances not cause a stirring in your loins.

All other forms of sexuality are bad?

The Associated Press reports that two 16 year-old girls were expelled from a California Lutheran high school “because they were suspected of being lesbians.” Suspected? Ugh.

And some advice to DABAs (Dating a Banker Anonymously), those who are practicing gold-digging:

Commiserating about the new lack of bottle service in your life is not going to make you feel any better. It's going to perpetuate your psychology of deprivation (an ironic state for a group of women who can still afford to sip cocktails). What will actually make you feel better, I promise, is to get sober about who is most deeply affected by economic downturn in this country and start seeking justice more sustainable than getting rich dudes to take you out to dinner at fancy restaurants. Here are a few stats to start you off:

Women make up 30% of borrowers for mortgages, but are 32% more likely than men to receive sub-prime mortgages, despite slightly higher credit scores (682 versus 675).
-The National Council for Research on Women

The gender wage gap is now 22.2 percent.
-Institute for Women's Policy Research

Annual earnings for young men who are employed full-time year round are about 10% higher
than for young women who are employed full-time year round -- $30,786 compared to $28,008.
Annual earnings for all other young men with earnings, which include part-time and/or part-year
earners, are about 32% higher than for all other young women with earnings, $15,033 compared
to $11,393.
-Legal Momentum

In other depressing news: word on the street is that ex-Lucky Beauty writer Dawn Spinner, Laney Crowell, a beauty editor at StyleCaster, and lawyer Megan Petrus (the shallow minds behind DABA) are getting a big juicy book deal. This from an industry that consistently tells brilliant, hardworking women that there's no market for books on feminism, class etc. Ugh.

And finally, a young woman's bizarre selling of her virginity for 3.8 million dollars. Right. Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon ponders the meaning:

Of course, the most logical solution to the problem is to let a woman’s deflowerer to decide if she really had this “virginity” and he really took it. And that was the initial solution for much of history, but it creates massive problems, namely that many grooms will decide their wives weren’t virgins and either have them executed or returned to their families in an unmarriageable state, because their virginity is definitely gone now. Now, if you’re a feminist, you see the major problem with this system, which is that it treats women like property. But the perceived problem was the expense and trouble of it, as well as the family dishonor issues, so lawsuits were inevitable. Since taking women’s word for it was out of the question, people started to come up with physical tests of virginity. I recommend reading the book for all the various ones, a variety that shows that, in truth, there was no test, and that includes the hymen test, which is just our culture’s specific myth.

And that’s not even taking into account that anyone can define “virgin” however they want. Maybe you only think it counts if you have PIV intercourse, but then are “gold star” lesbians virgins, even if they’ve slept with a hundred women? Some teenagers subject to abstinence-only education think fooling around but avoiding PIV isn’t sex, but they’re engaging in sexual behaviors, so isn’t that a form of sex? Where do you draw the line? This problem is obviously a looming one for the Christofascists who’ve become positively obsessed with sexual “purity”. Realizing that virginity is an amorphous concept, they’ve desperately been defining it with an ever-growing list of “Thou shalt nots”, at least if you want to make sure, and so now you’re seeing couples crowing about how they never even kissed or held hands before their wedding.

Let the pearl clutching and hand wringing begin now that the dirty fucking hippie liberals are in charge and will destroy all that is good and holy with their wanton, bodice-ripping, sweaty, writhing, panting .... *ahem*... godless ways.

Damn those uppity women!

Get back there and clean his socks!:

Rome, Italy (AHN) - An Italian man was arrested after police said he kidnapped his ex-girlfriend from a pub and took her home, forcing her to wash the dishes and iron clothes.

Police said the man dragged the woman out of a pub in Genoa, shoved her into a car and took her home where he threatened her if she didn't do his dishes and ironing.

How dare she leave and make him do women's work!

Feminism is not an excuse for being cranky, bitchy about every little thing

Feminism makes one able to recognize society's acceptance of misogyny and its unawareness of how pervasive it is, that it is the little daily things that allow misogyny to grow.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville:

Of all the condescending, dismissive, and factually incorrect accusations used by concern trolls (or hostile trolls) to attempt to silence, shame, or in some other way discourage feminists from addressing sexism in all its manifestations, perhaps none is quite so stupid as the charge that feminists are "looking" for things about which to be offended—as if feminism is a product that will go out of production if there aren't enough buyers and sales are waning because sexism is, like, so over, dude.

This notion is ridiculous for a couple of reasons. For a start, misogyny is so pervasive that no one has to look for it.

[snip]

The idea that feminism should be kept under glass, broken only in case of a "real" and "serious" emergency, is predicated on the erroneous assumption that "the little things" happen in a void, as do, presumably, the "real" and "serious" things, when, in reality, they are interwoven strands of the same rope. And as soon as one begins to judge the worthiness of feminists' attention on a sliding scale, even generally-regarded "serious issues" like equal pay are dwarfed by global concerns like sex trafficking or government-sanctioned use of rape as a tool of war. It doesn't have to be one or the other—feminists can multi-task.

And, in a very real way, ignoring "the little things" in favor of "the big stuff" makes the big stuff that much harder to eradicate, because it is the pervasive, ubiquitous, inescapable little things that create the foundation of a sexist culture on which the big stuff is dependent for its survival. It's the little things, the constant drumbeat of inequality and objectification, that inure us to increasingly horrible acts and attitudes toward women.

Irrespective of intent, the recommendation to "ignore the little stuff," so often intertwined with accusations of looking for things about which to get offended, is not just ill-advised, but counter to the ultimate goal of full equality. It's like a knife in my gut when I see feminists accusing other feminists of "hurting the cause" by focusing on "the little stuff," because that's It—that's the stuff, that's the fertile soil in which everything else takes root and from whence everything else springs, that's the way that the fundamental idea that women are not equal to men is conveyed over and over and over again.

Even though I am a woman, I confess I have indulged in misogyny because it brings a cheap laugh, but in the end I have created one more 'little' thing that will end up hurting myself, my daughter, women. Vigilance is required and it's so much easier to be lazy and say that's just how things are.

I still have a lot to learn.

Explaining the boob wars and sexism on the net

NTodd has the timeline. (And the following link)

Jessica Valenti, editor of Feministing.com, reports about sexism on the net:

Jill Filipovic, a 23-year-old law student who also writes on the popular blog, Feministe, recently had some photographs of her uploaded and subjected to abusive comments on an online forum for students in New York. "The people who were posting comments about me were speculating as to how many abortions I've had, and they talked about 'hate-fucking' me," says Filipovic. "I don't think a man would get that; the harassment of women is far more sexualised - men may be told that they're idiots, but they aren't called 'whores'."

Most disturbing is how accepted this is. When women are harassed on the street, it is considered inappropriate. Online, though, sexual harassment is not only tolerated - it's often lauded. Blog threads or forums where women are attacked attract hundreds of comments, and their traffic rates rocket.

Jessica concludes the article:

Thankfully, women are fighting back. Sparked by the violent harassment of Sierra, one blogger started a "stop cyberbullying" campaign. This was picked up by hundreds of other bloggers and an international women's technology organisation, Take Back the Tech, a global network of women who encourage people to "take back online spaces" by writing, video blogging, or podcasting about online harassment.

It won't mean the end of misogyny on the web, but it is a start. Such campaigns show that women are ready to demand freedom from harassment and fear in our new public spaces. In the same way that we should be able to walk down the street without fear of being raped, women shouldn't have to stay quiet online - or pretend to be men - to be free of threats and harassment. It is time to take back the sites.

Update: Stop Cyberbullying site has info and coping techniques.