Lolita's Fist

Today my timeline is full of decent men asking, "How can I help?", in the wake of the viral #MeToo movement created by www.twitter.com/TaranaBurke . I'm going to take this question as sincere, and give a few suggestions. Here are some concrete ways men* can help: (*I wrote this specifically for a small group of my own male friends who were explicitly asking for advice after being stunned by the ubiquity of the #metoo abuse hashtag. I wasn't anticipating this being shared so many times. These tips can be used by people of all genders.) 1. Practice these phrases: "That's not cool" and "That's a shitty thing to say". Say them to other men who are saying disrespectful things to or about women. 2. Follow some feminist writers on social media. Sometimes what they write may seem "exhausting" or "too angry". Put aside that discomfort because that feeling is your male privilege allowing you to disengage from an importan...

WATCH (1h26m) YouTube version of the documentary WATCH YouTube playlist of and about the 2015 documentary A documentary about the rapes being ignored by American universities. The rapes are being ignored by both the universities and the local university-educated justice representatives who benefit from the university. The documentary shows the systemic way in which the universities are covering up the rapes because they are selling a product - education and sports tickets and TV - that would be tarnished by rape convictions or expulsions. There is a list in the documentary, see the video College Sexual Assault Statistics, in which they list roughly 200 rapes per university - yearly, and roughly 2 expulsions per rape - yearly. (Most expulsions are on a temporary basis, where the rapist is re-enrolled on appeal. Some rapists are assigned a term paper as punishment on how to meet women, or fined $75, and other overtly not-punishment punishments.) At the end of the statistics sequenc...

IMDB's consistently top-ranked film - The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - makes an appearance as the US' best-rated film. https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/every-countrys-best-movie

I don't want to be a part of this social madness. Huggers should have an H branded on their foreheads for this behaviour, like the Adulterers back in the day.  I don't want to be hugged as part of the display of your social currency. If everyone hugs you back then you are liked. No. And when I say No the value of my Hug should not go up, should not make you more bankable. People should see you 'persuading' me in the same light as when a woman says No and you go on pushing, wheedling, whining, dismissing her sovereignty over her body. People should look at that and say, Hey, cut that out. Or intervene, or distract you with a colourful plastic toy.  I am uncomfortable with hugging and touching people and I am uncomfortable x855 touching people who don't honour my discomfort or are sexist in another way, or racist. I don't want to hug PROBLEMATIC people. And I definitely don't want to hug people so that I can do the whole KEEP THE PEACE, NO SOCIAL CONF...

#Feminism and why I hate humanism. "Humanism depends on the collective effort to nurture a motivational environment through 'dignity and reciprocity'." Yeah, that never happens when you're dealing with the entitled who use your-maintaining-dignity (no rage allowed no matter how much the patriarchy ignores my pleas) as an excuse for conflict-avoidance and reciprocity means you-do-it-my-way, ja-but, ja-but (but the patriarchal way has worked for thousands of years). Dignity and reciprocity all come from the oppressed and suppressed, 'or else'.

WATCH (1h26m) YouTube version of the documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAgoKuYIt1k&list=PLYbTaOBdS1W5T4XAOjyvsRoSnxsLsoJKo&index=3&t=0s WATCH YouTube playlist of and about the 2015 documentary https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYbTaOBdS1W5T4XAOjyvsRoSnxsLsoJKo A documentary about the rapes being ignored by American universities. The rapes are being ignored by both the universities and the local university-educated justice representatives who benefit from the university. The documentary shows the systemic way in which the universities are covering up the rapes because they are selling a product - education and sports tickets and TV - that would be tarnished by rape convictions or expulsions. There is a list in the documentary, see the video College Sexual Assault Statistics, in which they list roughly 200 rapes per university - yearly, and roughly 2 expulsions per rape - yearly. (Most expulsions are on a temporary basis, where the rapist is re-enrolled o...

As you know, I only really am interested in commercial movies. I like to see what messages are being delivered to people in the world. Obviously, series don't count, that would be too obvious to not have named women communicating with each other. So series are automatically on the Bechdel. So let's fling some math. I have watched 3400 films in four years. I watched all the movies I could remember watching. 600 or so passed the Bechdel - two named women speaking to each other about something other than a man. That's about 5500 hours of film, of which about 900 hours were films that contained at least a few words that were not about men and between two women. Now let's not get excited, because only a tiny amount of minutes in those 900 hours devoted themselves to conversations between women. And the word conversation is an extreme description. Most were more like ten word exchanges in the whole film. Most of those conversations were fights, accusations, or denigra...

I introduced myself as a feminist to Peter. During the conversation I mentioned incels. He'd never heard of them. He feels he's a #NotAllMen, but he's never heard of incels. Yah-ah. He's a #NotAllMen that doesn't know what he's a #NotAllMen to. Putting your head in the sand and keeping it there makes you an ostrich, not a #NotAllMen. I know that he's more than just out of touch because he didn't want to know more about the incels. If he by accident one day accidentally yah like that would ever happen finds out that the word incels was not made up by those pesky feminists, that incels made up their own word and live in their own-defined world, Peter's gonna blush. He stormed out because he thought I made it up. I bet he didn't want to be confrontational. Like not-asking, and not-staying, and passive-aggressive silence is 'not confrontational'. It is. Silence is confrontational. #NoteToSelf   Yikes. Back in the day when women were fo...

In the film Streisand's young self cuts her hair in the bathroom, hacking it off. They don't say so in the film, but it suggest she was trying to escape the attention of her predator stepfather. It suddenly occurred to me that I did the same sort of thing. I refused to wear clothes that DIDN'T have holes in. I shaved my hair off. It occurred to me that the reason I did this is to make myself unattractive to the predators hunting me. I started doing the holes-in-clothes thing when I was about eight. #Journal  #TheTotalShutdown 

You know I apply the Bechdel Test very strictly. Otherwise I wouldn't have 600 Bechdel-passers on my 3400 films list ( https://imdb.to/2L5HBS2 ), I would have far fewer passers. Even if the named women speak to each other with three words, and the words break each other down, the film passes.   Today I will reach a new low - two named women speaking to each other about something other than a man... with a man present and also conversing, and who gets the bulk of the attention from both women.  Other plus points of the film are - the beauty cult is ignored, and the lead female character is not white, and she also has a disability. And, cherry-ily, she doesn't speak in modulated tones.  Although the above ploy could be there to distract us because the beauty-cult-undermined can also be part of the new wave of films that portray women as harpies and the men as whipped. Which this film does. To its credit, it does make the woman into a Jesusy character, but it ma...

The fact that you, a poet or standup, asks whether you can speak in another's voice already earns you the right to speak. That you had before anyway. I don't believe in any kind of censorship. And for poets, writers, and standups, that no-censorship rule goes double in my books. These are word crafters. They put more effort into putting a piece together than Facebookers, or tweeters, and they can't just delete their words out of the sound channel of our lives. They take the rap when they say something others don't like.  As a woman, a radical feminist, incensed by the media, movies, and gaming, I would rather hear it.... AND NOT HAVE MY RESPONSE CENSORED. I have my own voice. Someone of my gender has their own voice, a homeless person has their own voice. Instead of shouting at you, I would listen to your poem, and the next time I see a homeless person, listen to them, and encourage them, facilitate their voice, AND I HAVE DONE THIS.  My approach is always ...

#Activism ~ A Vision is what gives the joy of activism. You are building something. All the accusatory and sulky responses to incels and meninists and sexists and patriarchs is just expressed irritation at the people getting in the way of the Vision. Don't stare yourself flat against the wall of watching the irritable responses and forget that there's a huge part of the iceberg under the water that is only busy with Vision. You're missing out on *that* part.

  I was astonished at this video  because it didn't depict the patriarchal narrative of woman-as-victim, slinking off AS IF to hide her shame (this is how men hear our silence, and other women, and the next victim who then feels she must be silent and not tell HER mother, "what if I get blamed for soliciting that sexual attention" [when I was under 12] [in my personal view I believe the age of consent is stretching it at 16]). (Yes we want sex when we are under 16, but that doesn't give anyone the right to take advantage of our inability to make adult decisions about what to do with our bodies.) What has this got to do with the public groping of an adult woman? That attitude right there is where the thinking is wrong. No girl, no woman, is there for you to act upon at any time without her express, enthusiastic, informed, uncoerced consent. No debate.  AND THEN look at the very last moment of this video. #Aargh His friends embrace him back into the fold, here...

#8thAmendment ~ Ireland. First choice is free contraception-on-demand, no age restrictions, no parental-inform laws, multiple access points that operate 24 hours, the morning after pill, and Copper-T information despite its lack of popularity with the capitalist exploitative-of-womens-bank-account patriarchy... many of these were provided by Planned Parenthood... and then, second choice, is abortion. Without the first choice, the second choice is essential. When Catholics and Christians fight FOR the first choice - contraception - then they won't have to fight AGAINST the second choice - abortion. Think about that.

One of those Bechdel-passers that drives women mad. It passes because two named woman characters speak to each other about something other than a man - it's one word, but it counts. "Mama."

"I had to rape her, she was wearing a miniskirt." "I had to be trashy, she called me trash." Just another blame shift from perpetrator to victim. Modus operandi. When we call them 'partner' they often don't behave like 'partner'. What do you suggest women do? Call them 'king'? How do we address the trashiness of men's behaviour? The #NotAllMen surely know this doesn't apply to them. Does the 'good man' in you say 'fuck it' when you know it doesn't apply to you? Is goodness not your pride to have? I don't feel slutty when men call women sluts and hoes and bitches. I go on being the person I am. Do you think men don't?

Irritated that Sally smiles after telling Glenn that Rolo tried to force her. Rolo did try to force her. Coercion is force, definitely not consent. "You made us drive out here, you have to give me something in return." But the smile implies that she got him into trouble when he didn't deserve it. Fuck that.

Being rude is never right. And white women do have a slight advantage. I have been told by men that when they get angry things escalate much quicker. Another man will step in and violence erupts, so they hold themselves back. White women can get angry because it's unlikely someone will hit them, in public. So they are likely to right wrongs. They have the power to sit next to a person of color being harassed, or stand with a child being bullied, or rustle up the interest of a lazy rude fuck that's interrupting her busy two-job + housework + blow-job day. In private women get hit, so their silence is kept for their homes.

Teenage movies back in the day were about how we felt different to our peers, we were each unusual and didn't fit. The movies were about how we tried.   The films were highly inappropriate, but we were so normalized to inappropriate that we didn't notice. Rapey, racist, sexist, were normal.   Grease (1978) was chock-a-block full of sex talk - I didn't notice - children ignore what they don't understand and fit what they do into a world that normalized what they did understand.  Girls tossed aside if they didn't put out and accepted if they look like sluts was normal. Normal. But to grown men our ignorance of what we were looking at looks like consent, acquiescence, flirting. "Young girls come on to me." Olivia's pants were fashion. Slut pants were fashion. Even now I am deeply uncomfortable with using the term 'slut'. And does my discomfort systemically play right into the patriarchal agendas depic...

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