Links - July 18, 2011 *Updated*

Links July 18, 2011


The F Word: Feminist Media Collective "Of course pornography is a prisoner's right. Because women aren't actually human beings"

 Excerpt:
‘Only in America’, I thought immediately. Only in America would a person be so selfish, so deluded, to think that their individual rights should exist at the expense of the human rights of others. And this is exactly what pornography does. It removes the rights of women to be human. Women in pornography are not represented as whole human beings, they are represented as things to ejaculate onto or into. Women, in pornography, are not represented as women, they are represented as body parts.


The F Word: Feminist Media Collective "Burlesque: They tell me it's just for fun...Except I'm not having any"


Excerpt:
I have seen several burlesque shows in Vancouver. And Ariana and I went again, for research purposes; to check out what’s happening on the scene these days. Hoping we would find all sorts of subversion, you know, challenges to gender norms, maybe some comedy, something even remotely feministish. What we found was a stage and some women awkwardly taking off their clothes, with smiles pasted across their faces so we knew they were enjoying themselves. A man in a business suit ‘hosted’ the evening, and introduced all the ‘girls’. He remained clothed throughout the evening. A male MC was also allowed the privilege of keeping his clothes on. One after another, ‘girl’ after ‘girl’ got up on stage, unzipped her dress and, by the end of the ‘show’ was in pasties and a g-string, posing for a cheering crowd. Let’s play find the subversion! There is nothing new here. It’s just the same old thing. And I wasn’t having any fun.

Nimbostratus Parade "Dude Sentencing or Why real Justice Eludes Women"

Excerpt:
I just read about one Xavier Robert Bissonnette, a fifty-six year old Calgary man who raped a seventeen year old girl he was corresponding with over the internet. The story apparently is newsworthy only because Bissonnette is HIV positive. He was diagnosed in 1998. He has most likely signed the death warrant of the child he raped. The charges he is facing in a court of law?
Aggravated sexual assault.
That's it. That's all. The only charge.

Womon On a Journey "On rape fantasies and BDSM"

Excerpt:

Clearly, our fantasies arise fromsomewhere, and since we have the capability of changing our fantasies, they are not biologically programmed.
Perhaps to the BDSM crowd, radfems seem perfect, as though we never think an “unpure”  thought (to use a moralistic term)  regarding sex. This just simply isn’t so. Plus, I have met women who used to be really into BDSM as a way to cope with abuse, who now have embraced radical feminism and feel much freerer for it.  However, we can never expect radical feminism to have the appeal that sex-pozzie “feminism” has, because “sex pozzie” feminism does not seek to challenge the patriarchial values we are surrounded in like a fish in water.

I Blame the Patriarchy "A Bit of Lighthearted Fun"

Excerpt:


"The true nature of our status as the sex class is, by the way, that we are imprisoned in a rape continuum. This continuum ranges from the “voluntary” performance of femininity (which quantifies women’s usefulness to men), to compulsory heterosexuality (which ensures availability to men), to pornography (which eroticizes inequality), to violent sexual assault (which is at the apex of the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women)."


Sociological Images "Racism and Jingoism Among U.S Soccer Fans"


Excerpt:


"After the tsunami in March, we featured a series of hateful Facebook updates suggesting that the Japanese deserved the devastation. Yesterday Japan won the women’s World Cup against the U.S. and we’re seeing the same rhetoric.  The collection below, and more, was up on Buzzfeed as of yesterday night."


In the News

The Guardian "Doctors' anti-abortion views could impact on women's access to service"

Excerpt: 

"A survey of medical students has found that almost half believe doctors should be allowed to refuse to perform any procedure to which they object on moral, cultural or religious grounds, such as prescribing contraception or treating someone who is drunk or high on drugs."

Ottawa Citizen "Hudak says he 'may have' signed anti-abortion petition"

Excerpt: 

"Ontario Tory leader Tim Hudak was grilled over his stance on abortion Monday, as he staged a press conference to tout a policy targeting convicted sex offenders. Hudak, entering his first provincial election campaign as party leader, told a group on the Christian right in 2009 he was opposed to abortion and had signed petitions calling for the defunding of abortions."

Newsweek "The Growing Demand for Prostitution"

Excerpt: 


"One man in the study explained why he likes to buy prostitutes: “You can have a good time with the servitude,” he said. A contrasting view was expressed by another man as the reason he doesn’t buy sex: “You’re supporting a system of degradation,” he said."