| WAR ON WOMEN: ifeminists.net is a hateful right-wing pile of disinformation Although I'm taking a break from blogging until December 11, this one couldn't wait. I got a response to my GunGuys.com post from yesterday extensively quoting ifeminists.net . The problem? ifeminists.net is a right-wing propaganda site that seeks to harm the rights of women by undermining the real feminist movement. Here are some of the outlandish philosophies espoused on this website along with my retorts. Note that my retorts involve actual thinking while the philosophies are just parrotted viewpoints from the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: Verbal sexual harassment? If women want an equal right to explore their own sexuality, they risk encountering the offensive sexual attitudes of others. TRANSLATION: Women should accept sexual harassment and allow men to exploit them in the workplace. The idea that men and women are equal victims of sexual harassment defies common sense and objective facts. Verbal sexual harassment has no place in the workplace as it discourages women from moving up the ladder, reinforces negative stereotypes about women and psychologically damages women. These are 100% tort claims that deserve to be "made whole." Thankfully, verbal sexual harassment is no longer acceptable in society, although it would be if ifeminists.com had their way. Affirmative action? You cannot create equality with men by embedding gender privilege for women into the law. TRANSLATION: Women should stop the fight against being second-class citizens and hope that the whole problem will just go away if we stop talking about it. There is no gender equality. Men still earn more than women. There is embedded gender privilege in our government and society and the facts demonstrate this. The only way to fight this is through legislation designed to force fairness upon sexists businesses. The idea that you can't fight discrimination with discrimination sounds appealing, but makes no sense once you get past the "sounds appealing" part. Ifeminism supports the right of individuals to defend against violence. Firearms are a legitimate tool of self-defense. TRANSLATION: Despite the only available evidence indicating that, in fact, firearms are not a legitimate tool of self-defense because they are more likely to kill you or a loved one rather than protect you, ifeminism supports guns because we get big donations from wacko-gun nuts. Ifeminists oppose the use of non-defensive violence by any person regardless of gender. We recognize that the conventional wisdom- that men are the perpetrators while women are the victims- is based on politics rather than on fact. TRANSLATION: Men are the victims of domestic violence just as often as women. Wait a second. Did they really say that? Holy smokes, they did. This is so patently false that I hestitate to respond, but I will. IFeminists are lying here. A 1998 United States Department of Justice study found the following: 25 % of women report being victims of domestic violence; only 8% of men do. Women are twice as likely to be injured from the assault. Women's studies programs are a good example of why universities should not be publicly funded. TRANSLATION: Oh boy. First, it's SIMPLY INSANE to say that universities should not be publicly funded. This is a far-right position that essentially calls for the dismantling of every Community College and State University system in America. Anyone making such a claim is either loony or excessively privileged. If we got rid of public universities, poor people such as myself never would have received a college education. Dumber, but richer, people would be the only ones with degrees. Horrible economic inefficiences would result and our nation would end up being destroyed due to all the dumbell silver spoons at the top. Second, Women's Studies programs are just as legitimate as any other field of learning. Women are essentially ignored in the history books and underrepresented in fields such as science and literature. The story of women's movements and the nature of women's rights would cease to exist under the infeminists platform. Who would fund disinformation such as this? ifeminists is funded by the Eugene B. Casey Foundation . They support organizations such as the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army receives federal funds under Bush's "faith-based" initiative and use MY TAX DOLLARS to support explicit discrimination against gays. If you are gay, you don't get a job or any help from the Salvation Army. This kind of hate is criminal. Other than donating to the anti-gay Salvation Army, the Eugene B. Casey Foundation mostly donates to prevent crime in Maryland, gives to a few universities and supports throat cancer. Good causes, but all of these causes have a common theme: they help rich white people and do nothing for the poor. I need to get back to studying, but the War on Corporate Evil will return permanently and in full force on December 11. |
posted by blogmaster at 1:00 PM
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Stephen McArthur said ... (5:53 AM) :
post a commentI thought you'd be interested in a piece I wrote for my blog.
"Don't Make Your Girlfriend Angry" (or she will kill you)
The headline, above, is what a promotion for the most popular television drama CSI, Crime Scene Investigation, warns boyfriends about and what I believe it implies parenthetically.
The promotion (or advertisement) shows the body of a dead man and the voiceover says: "Things I learned from watching CSI: Don't make your girlfriend angry."
I am not certain why the producers of the show chose the example of intimate partner voilence (IPV) that represents the smallest slice of reality, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that young men are probably the show's largest audience. And we all know, don't we, that young men live in daily fear of being beaten, if not actually killed, by their girlfriends.
The facts, of course, are exactly the reverse of this cautionary CSI promotion:
intimate male partners kill their intimate female partners 3 times more often. But in the case of the deaths of male partners, it is usually (in as many as 75% of the cases) after male battering of the female;
Nearly 5.3 million intimate partner victimizations occur among U.S. women ages 18 and older each year. This violence results in nearly 2.0 million injuries and nearly 1,300 deaths. Of the IPV injuries, more than 555,000 require medical attention, and more than 145,000 are serious enough to warrant hospitalization for one or more nights;
an estimated 201,394 women are raped by an intimate partner each year;
recent studies show an intimate killed about 33% of female murder victims and 4% of male murder victims.
Violence against women by their male partners represents 85% of partner violence in the United States.
The Family Violence Prevention Fund is an organization that has huge resources that the producers of CSI might have consulted. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) undertook an enormous study of the terrible costs of violence against women that the producers of CSI might have read. This UNICEF study of violence against girls and women around the world is a shocking report that the producers of CSI probably are not aware of, but should read. The US Department of Justice also has a substantial report on Intimate Partner Violence.
Here is what the Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment Validation Study, released by the US Justice Department in March of 2005, had to say about fatal violence against men by women:
The largest decreases in intimate partner homicide have been for male victims. Consequently, the proportion of male homicides by female intimate partners has decreased and the proportion of femicides by male intimate partners has increased. From 1976 to 1996, the percentage of intimate partner homicides with female victims increased from 54% to 70% (National Institute of Justice, 1997; Zawitz, 1994). The decrease in the number of men killed by female partners coincided with the development of services for battered women and the enhancement of the criminal justice response. A connection has been made between the increased alternatives and protections available to battered women, such as the reduction of barriers to leaving violent relationships, legal sanctions and shelter resources and the decline in the male intimate partner homicide rate: women are able to secure safety from violence rather than kill an abusive partner (Browne et al., 1998; Dugan, Nagin & Rosenfeld, 2003; Rosenfeld, 1997).
Here is what the same study has to say about why female intimate partners kill male intimate partners:
The majority (67-75%) of intimate partner homicides involve battering of the female by the male intimate, no matter which partner is killed (Bailey et al., 1997; Campbell, 1992; Campbell et al., 2003; McFarlane et al., 1999; Mercy et al., 1989; Moracco et al., 1998; Pataki, 1998; Websdale, 1999). Two earlier American studies in different jurisdictions documented that two-thirds of the intimate partner femicide cases had a documented history of battering of the female partner (Moracco et al., 1998; Campbell, 1992). The recent 11-city study found that 72% of the intimate partner femicides were preceded by physical violence by the male partner before he killed the woman (Campbell et al., 2003). Intimate partner homicides of men by women are also characterized by a history of battering of the female homicide perpetrator by the male partner in as many as 75% of the cases (Hall-Smith et al., 1998; Campbell, 1992). It has long been noted that female-perpetrated intimate partner homicides are often characterized by self defense, when the male partner is the first to show a weapon or strike a blow and is subsequently killed by his victim (Block ’93; Browne, Williams & Dutton, 1999; Campbell, 1992; Crawford & Gartner ‘92; Jurik & Winn ’90; Smith et al., 1998; Websdale, 1999; Wolfgang, 1958).
So there lies CSI's poor dead guy killed by his girlfriend.
What they don't say is that he was, in all likelihood, a guy who beat his girlfriend, abused her physically and psychologically, threatened her, perhaps stalked her, or even raped her.