Aside from a sprinkling of leaders and 1 or 2 “great people” – who are male bodies anyway – and despite being 50% of the population I should be happy we just got that, I’m told. Well, I’ve been advocating flipping the ratios of government offices so that we have a majority of women instead of men for a long time – nothing wrong with that, right? My overall point being that women constantly get that we should be happy with whatever bone someone throws us, but to reverse the situation would be utterly ridiculous and inconceivable. And I suppose you can say that politics is such a different thing in comparison to representation in a game, but that’s the problem – women are so rarely represented in an equal manner ANYWHERE. And we’re expected to just be happy with what we’ve got. We live in the man channel baby! (Chick flick = film with more than two women. Chick books = books about women. Some sort of equal representation of experiences might dilute testosterone or something.)

I’m cutting the angry part. Read at your own risk.

First story of the day I see, Rihanna was beaten to a bloody pulp and left unconscious in the street by a no good piece of shit. (Kanye West – “Give him a break.” At least I know you’re a no good piece of shit too!) But of course she must have done something to provoke him. Yeah. Let’s continue to be a world full of domestic violence and rape apologists because then we’ll never actually have to address the problem – abusers and rapists rather than the women they beat and rape and murder. Let’s keep letting these men off the hook in favor of concentrating on the woman’s actions.

Add to that the Muslim woman who was beheaded by her husband because she filed for divorce. (Why she stays – often a woman is seen as “stupid” for staying and continuing to take abuse, except that violence escalates when she makes the move to leave, and this is often when he will kill her.) Of course, that’s one story from today, and there are always more and more and more both here and around the globe. I want to know what a world looks like where we take violence against women seriously.

In a similar vein, something that has been pissing me off for a long time – also filed in the “men use religion for all sorts of heinous things” and “women are chattel” categories – Christian nutjobs who deny women the right to leave an abusive husband because “it doesn’t say so in the Bible.” I’m looking at you Rick Warren, and all your small brained misogynistic cronies. Take your (written by men, surprise surprise) Bible and shove it.

Also, the Rock for Life cretins who believe it’s their right as patriarchal Christian men to restrict a woman’s access to abortion and birth control. I was also horrified to see them glorify women who opt not to have abortions despite their lives being in danger. Remember, the cells growing in your body are far more important than you. To say otherwise would actually grant you person-hood and that’s only reserved for men.

You can all take your patriarchy and your religion elsewhere. In fact, go to El Salvador where women are put in jail for 30-50 years if they have an abortion, and you can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya till someone has an unwanted pregnancy (In part due to your mind-boggling restrictions on birth control. Get me a hanger. The constant effort to control the reproductive and sexual lives of women enrages me. But hey, FREE VIAGRA!).

I planned to write a longer post on all these things – Rick Warren, El Salvador and Rock for Life men, but the whole thing just gets me so angry that I really haven’t been able to untwist my brain from the knots they give me.

Speaking of patriarchal Christian men, how can I not mention Mike Huckabee, a man who freed a rapist despite victim’s pleas and advocates that women submit to their husbands. Yeah, I’d certainly trust you to take care of me! “Do the Right Thing” my ass. Please return to whatever hole you came from. Whatever God has in store for you, I hope she makes it good. Eye for an eye and all that, right? Your presidential campaign videos, in which you sat around with Chuck Norris (won’t even start with him) with a cowboy motif (representative of a genocidal era) and talked about how we need a real man for president was truly sickening. You need to get hit with the clue bat, sit down and STFU.

Last but not least, Cara blogged about a Japanese computer game called “RapeLay” in which “The entire objective of the game is to rape women with varying levels of violence — sometimes stalking them first, sometimes using gang rape scenarios, and sometimes forcing them into abortions afterward.” And here I was disgusted at the level of rape and misogyny in Conan the Barbarian and GTA games!

The point isn’t “oh my god, this game is going to create rapists.” The point is “oh my god, this game is going to make rapists think that people are on their side.” Which, of course, too many people actually are already, through their rape apologist jokes and excuses. The premise of the game reinforces the idea of rape as okay and not a big deal. It reinforces the idea that women exist for the sexual pleasure and abuse of men. And the preview of the game Boing Boing, which does not include any actual rapes but only attempted rapes, also ends up reinforcing the dangerous and stereotypical idea of your “real” rape victim who always cries, calls out in distress and overall completely breaks down at actual violence or threats of it.

This post has a lot more vitriol than I usually like to display. I’ve been feeling angry and sad over the pieces of news all day, and I’m just angry at the world right now. People are sick. In blocking these things out for the last few months I seem to have lost a degree of numbness. I am going back to Civ IV. Let me know when the financial crisis has blown the world up for good.

ETA: Twisty’s post sort of restored a little bit of my sanity.

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• 1) The media is actually talking TO us for once, instead of lining up the typical role call of men to talk ABOUT us and
  2) THAT THEY EXPECT IT TO WORK. (One pair of ovaries is the same as any other, and we’ll be voting on that basis amirite?)

What dimension am I in?

McCain chooses a woman as his Vice Presidential candidate and now we have entreaties from them that the war on the glass ceiling doesn’t have to end with Hilary! Ahem. Drafting a woman to prop up your misogynist policies, when you pay attention to issues that affect women AT ALL, will not get me to vote for you. It’s a slap in the face. Nor can you pat yourself on the back for being so “progressive” as to choose a woman and proclaim that you can finally overcome the glass ceiling. I will believe this when women have TRULY REPRESENTATIVE numbers in government. The white hetero male monopoly on government will not be transformed into a place that all of a sudden welcomes women and minorities thanks to a woman Vice President, or EVEN a woman President. But yes, she really does expect us, as someone chosen by a man for a very specific purpose, to believe that she can “shatter the glass ceiling once and for all.”

And sending Huckabee – Mike Huckabee as an ambassador to tell women that there’s a PLACE for us with the Republicans is probably the MOST LAUGHABLE THING I have heard all week. This is a man who signed a 1998 FULL PAGE USA Today Ad advocating that a wife “submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

This is the man who pardoned a rapist during his term as governor because he felt the man was put away for “political” reasons. This was despite NUMEROUS letters from the women(sluts) he had raped, including one of Clinton’s cousins(democrat sluts less deserving of justice). This rapist then went on to RAPE AND MURDER TWO MORE WOMEN. I wonder what kind of judgment your god has in store for you Huckabee. And yet, he has the gall to try and appeal to us (The article on this circus is here.):

“Sarah Palin is a pleasant surprise for those of us who had hoped that Senator McCain would pick a principled and authentic conservative pro-life leader,” former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said.

Huckabee also used the Palin pick to reach out to women.

“Governor Palin … will remind women that if they are not welcome on the Democrat’s ticket, they have a place with Republicans,” he said.

Pleasant surprise… so lukewarm! Kind of makes me snicker to think how he must feel about a woman being appointed over an oh so godly man like him. Lovely invitation but I won’t be accepting, as I’m not interested in fulfilling your vision of woman as faithful servant to husband and fetus incubator, only for you to want to trot me out when convenient. Don’t try to sell me on a candidate who thinks the antidote to sexism is “work harder, don’t say anything”. (PLEASE say this to the women working at Wal-Mart with a straight face.)

I really like the way Melissa McEwan put it at Shakesville:

You know, there are a lot of reasons I’m feeling pissed about John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin.

I’m pissed at the Dems because it feels like they let Clinton get beat to fuck against that glass ceiling until she was black and blue only for the fucking Republicans to make use of her sacrifice, while the Democrats gave us a total dipshit who made fun of his wife being educated in his acceptance speech.

And I’m pissed at the GOP who, chief among them John McCain, have made patently clear while going after Obama that the experience threshold for a national ticket is beyond what he has, and that said threshold is non-negotiable, but nonetheless chose someone who failed to pass that threshold, ergo heavily suggesting that Palin is merely a token.

And I’m pissed at everyone who’s using the nomination of a woman to a national ticket to unleash yet another torrent of misogyny, whether to demean or to “honor” her.

But mostly I’m pissed that John McCain and Karl Rove and the GOP shat all over a historic moment in our nation’s history and couldn’t give Obama one. goddamn. day. to be rightfully celebrated as a candidate of national historical significance. Everyone should be talking about that speech today. Everyone should be contemplating what it means to have that barrier broken, should be thinking about fucking bookends.

Edited to add: Some of this may be construed as an attack on Palin herself. Don’t mean to characterize her as a mindless borg, but I do think that the men of the Republican party are using her for a very specific purpose.

Other posts I really enjoyed on the matter:
McCain Chose Palin?! >> Karnythia at The Angry Black Woman
Colluder of the Week: Sara Palin >> Renee at Womanist Musings
Firedoglake: Sarah Palin Broke the Law to advocate the defeat of environmental initiatives.
Jump off the Bridge: My Problem with Palin

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