Privilege, Man Hating and History

Since I began this blog I have received plenty of trollish comments, abusive emails and so forth. By and large the biggest thing I am accused of is ‘man hating’. Of course, every feminist has most likely been the target of this accusation more times than they can count so it comes as no surprise that a very vocal feminist gets this accusation leveled at her more than any other.

I’ve noted that most of the vitriol tends to come on the heels of those posts in which I refer to ‘men’ or ‘mankind’ or some such collective term that refers to groups of men or men as a whole. A little more recently this post brought me some staunch criticism. Indeed, most people were fine with the post in which I speak about how badly I was made to feel over the EC thing. Most people had no problems with me beating myself up and questioning myself. However, at the end of the post I outlined ways in which mankind has collectively caused so many problems in this big old world.

At the end of that post I purposefully bolded the man part of ‘mankind’ in an effort to make a point. Of course, this was a perfect formula for people (namely men, although I think there may have been a few women involved as well) to complain and send me emails. Time after time the emails said:

“Sure, I know that men may not have been the greatest in the past but your present use of the word is just wrong. We have changed the laws and now women have just as many rights as men do!”

Or some twist on this theme, indeed, I tackled this issue a little bit in the comments on the individual post but, as usual, I want to explore this a bit further. In the comments I was accused several times of going into an ‘anti-male rant’, I allowed a few of the comments through moderation but most I simply held back.

The consensus among those who disagreed seemed to be this (paraphrased):

“Women also denied you EC on that day. Therefore women are just as much to blame as men and the history of the world really has very little to do with it.”

To be blunt I’m calling bullshit on this and I’ll try to explain why. Societies, whether they are global, national or local, are not based upon an individual day. Rather, societies tend to evolve, they grow upon foundations that were laid out at the beginning of the society.

Now, changes can and do come to societies but because they are generally built upon tradition rather than a snapshot of an individual day that change will likely come slower. As a general rule the longer a given tradition has been coveted and held as truth the longer it will take to change a particular mindset.

Take for example the way this society views homosexuals. Sure, laws are on the books but just because a law has been created doesn’t mean that it will protect homosexuals. The true change will come when we have dug up the foundations upon which homophobia is built.

It is ludicrous as well as deceptive to take a snapshot of a given incident and not put it into a larger perspective. This tendency to do just that allows for a skewed picture of the actual problem. Feminism is an area in which we absolutely must look at the history beneath all incidents.

Now, I will not argue when someone says that a woman denied me EC when I needed it, this is a fact. My doctor (who is female) was the first in a long chain of people who treated me like shit. However, it’s important that we look at history, as well as the foundations upon which her decision was based. The individual doctor was at fault and I am in the process of finding another doctor. But to lay the blame solely upon her shoulders is also a cop out to neglect the role that society has played in her decision is also misleading. We must look a bit deeper to determine what her actions were based upon and it is there that we find the unsettling truth that I alluded to in the second post (linked above).

 

When we begin to look at her actions within a frame of reference we find that it’s likely she acted as she did out of moral compunctions. Indeed, most of these folks are of a decidedly religious bent and here in America that is code for Christian. Christianity is a religion made by and for men and its ideals are much the same as the woman-hating ideals of nearly every large, institutionalized religion.

It is imperative that we understand that women’s decisions are not made in a vacuum. Does this mean that we give them a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card? Hell no, what means is that we must remember the history of women in this society when we decide just how much blame she should receive.

Societies are not built in a day, they are built over a long period of time and they are built on traditions. This society (as nearly every society in the world) was built upon the traditions that men found important. Women had little say in the traditions that men found to be important but it’s critical to understand that women also do not live separate and apart from those traditions. Was my doctor wrong? You bet your ass she was and I’ll be finding a new doctor as well as spreading the word about what she will and won’t prescribe. However, her decision to prescribe medication or not was not made in a vacuum. It was a decision that she came to after many years of living in this society and absorbing its traditions, expectations and so forth.

To suddenly say that women are just as responsible as men is a hollow argument. To suddenly say that women are suddenly, after thousands of years of living as second class citizens, just as responsible as those who created those traditions and beliefs is ridiculous almost beyond belief.

The practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a good example. In most of the places that practice this horrific tradition it is women who are actually performing the brutal procedure on girl children. Women are the ones who are wielding the knife and chopping up the genitalia of other women. However, I can’t think of any feminist who would hold the women who are engaging in this practice up to the same standard of responsibility as the men of that culture.

“But BB,” you say, “it’s the WOMEN who are doing it!”

Yes, you’re right. But why are they doing it? Why are they upholding this barbaric practice so faithfully?

And it is there that we find the problem, the practice is what men want and the women in these areas have been exposed to systematic abuse for thousands of years. Indeed, in some areas a woman who hasn’t had the procedure done will be outcast by all the males around her. She will be seen as dirty or promiscuous and no man will want to marry her, at the worst she can be cast from the village because she is seen as dangerous.

So while men themselves are not doing the actual cutting they are the driving force behind the procedure. When we step back and look at the history of these cultures we see a very clear picture emerge. The women are little more than the foot soldiers of the powerful males, and while their actions are individually wrong they are simply the vehicle by which men continue to exert their power and control over the women in the area.

In short when we see an individual woman acting in a despicable way we must, must, must look at the big picture and ask ourselves ‘why?’ It is at this point that I start to lose men and they start getting angry because the answers to the question of ‘why’ implicate them in something so large and awful that individual men wish to distance themselves as far as possible from it.

When we start asking ‘why’ we start seeing the foundations that men have built for this and almost every other society on the planet. Saying that men have been the instrumental force in the woman hating that happens in this country is no more dishonest than saying that white people are an instrumental force in the slavery of people of color.

When we look at racism we cannot get a clear picture until we look at the history of this country. By that reasoning when we look at sexism and the role that women play in it, we cannot get a clear picture without looking at the people who built, legislated for and actively promoted the culture of misogyny we now live in. To do anything but is to ignore history and the role that was played by the given sexes.

Feminists aren’t trying to excuse behavior of women who do shitty things; instead what they are attempting to do is show folks the basis of many of the behaviors that women may be engaging in. Only then can we begin to see the severe and I dare say, institutionalized phenomenon of the oppression of women. We must look at the entire picture to see the entire picture. And to do that, we must look at who wields the power.

Worldwide men have been at the helm; for the most part it is men who built the institutions and the laws upon which so many injustices have been committed. Historically speaking men have been at the forefront of the wars, death and destruction of this natural world, as well as at the forefront of woman hating, rape and rampant misogyny.

If we ignore that then we ignore the thousands of years of history that men have, by and large, controlled and created. These institutions do not die easily, particularly when there are still many who wish for them to be upheld and many more who derive very real benefit from them. When we have folks blaming prostitutes for prostitution rather than Johns we will never right the huge injustices before us.

 

The beauty of this worldwide system of oppression of women is that women have been recruited as being the ‘bad guys’. Women are often used as the foot soldiers of the men in power; they are used as the tools by which men can continue to live with unquestioned privilege and authority. Society grooms these women from birth, depending on where they live, it tells them that their genitalia is shameful, that they are worthless, that their importance lay in how many sons they can produce or how well they fake an orgasm. Are these women responsible for their deeds? Yes, of course they are, but so are the men in power who are pulling the strings behind all of it.

It’s a dirty truth to hear your gender be fingered for the state of affairs we have here but just because it’s painful to hear doesn’t mean that it’s not true. The urge to distance oneself from this macabre movie is strong but to do so is to deny the facts of history.

When I am accused of white privilege it’s frightening and the first thing I want to say is “No, not ME!” and become defensive. But the truth of the matter is that this accusation doesn’t come from an alternate dimension, it doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. When I look at the destruction that white people have foisted upon people of color around the world I am sickened to belong to that group. When I see the destruction we have wrought in Iraq and I look back to the destruction upon so many races throughout history I am sick to my stomach but to deny that history exists is pompous beyond anything I can even articulate.

Saying that actions and events of today have nothing to do with history is to deny that the history even existed. We cannot minimize the roles we have played even if it makes us feel like shit to own them. This lens works across the board. It does no good to take a singular incident and analyze it without also analyzing the culture and history that the incident was born in.

It’s very easy for a privileged class to look at the deeds of their forefathers and say, “Well, it wasn’t me who did that!” and then dismiss everything out of hand and accuse someone of just hating them for no reason. Privilege has a way of blinding one to the role that one has played and this also has the affect of alienating the oppressed class even further. It also renders the defensive person’s personal privilege and the benefits that come with that, completely invisible.

 

When we look at someone and level an accusation of ‘man hating’ at them because they are saying things that make us feel bad we also allow ourselves to not notice or forget the privilege that we are engaging in. Hell, the act of nullifying thousands of years of oppression is the HEIGHT of privilege. You don’t have to give it any weight because it’s not important to YOU.

Do any of you believe that women are happy about effectively being written out of the history books? Do any of you believe that women are thrilled about being kept out of lawmaking and politics? When someone levels a valid complaint against the powerful class they are seeking recognition to the harms done to their people, to deny that is to exist in a state of privilege that has never been afforded to the oppressed class. This same truth applies across the board; wherever oppression rears its head. Whether we’re talking about racism, sexism or homophobia this understanding is crucial.

So the next time I begin talking about the fact that women were written out of history, literature, politics, sciences (and many other fields!) I’m not ‘ranting against men’ I’m noting that there is a very real history of misogyny, fear and oppression that this society was built upon. To understand feminist theory we must also understand the roots of oppression that it is built upon.

Am I angry at the way men have kept women out of almost every powerful role? You bet your ass I am. Am I angry that women have been forced to be passive observers, their voices and protestations rendered invisible while men destroyed this planet, waged wars and committed atrocities that go beyond anything I can even imagine? Yes I am. What I want is this: I want for men to recognize their privilege and the roles that they and their forefathers played in creating this society, only then will we be able to attack the foundations of it and eradicate it.

Look behind the veil and understand that people don’t act in a vacuum. People act and react based upon roles, institutions and beliefs that are often ingrained for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Understanding is the key to making it stop; sticking your head in the sand and looking at one piece of a puzzle will simply allow the cycles to continue undimmed.

~BB

Responses to the Rapist Checklist

I posted the repost of the The Rapist Checklist yesterday and, as expected, there were quite a few comments that I garnered that were just teeming with indignant rage. As most of you know I don’t post nasty comments because I tire of the constant parade of trolls who shows up and needs to be dealt with. I’m unwilling to let their redundant crap go unchallenged but, after fighting the same unoriginal comment week after week after week, I grow tired of the same old song and dance.

However, sometimes I like to post their comments for everyone to see. It’s amusing to me as well as frightening that there are so many out there who simply don’t get it. In the spirit of a good roast I have decided to post a few comments regarding that post. So, without further ado I bring you a few of the unmoderated comments I received on that particular post.

Someone calling themselves “Cynical” posted an amusing comment. They reference several of the checklist numbers so I will copy and paste those here as well so that everyone doesn’t have to jump back and forth on their browsers to follow him. The original comment is in italics the quoted bits from the post are in bold and, of course, my current response is in the normal font.

Cynical says: On 13-15 Are you telling me I was raped when I was talked into it or nagged into it?

13. You are a rapist if you ‘nag’ her for sex. Because you manage to ply an eventual ‘yes’ from a weary victim doesn’t mean it’s not rape. You are a rapist.

14. You are a rapist if you try to circumvent her “No” by talking her into it. She’s not playing hard to get, and, even if she IS it’s not YOUR responsibility to ‘get’ her. You’re still a rapist.

15. You are a rapist if you manipulate her into sex when she doesn’t otherwise want it. If you say, “If you loved me you’d do X” then you’re a rapist. If you say, “All the other kids are doing it!” then you’re a rapist.

If you’re a man then the likely answer is No, you were not raped. If you’re a woman then perhaps you were. If you’re a woman who didn’t want to have sex but were frightened of what he’d do if you wouldn’t do it with him or felt as if there were no other choices, then yes, I would absolutely say that you were raped.

However, I get the feeling that this is a guy and, as such, the answer is most notably “NO”, you were not raped but of course, you already knew that you simply wanted to try and get the mean ol’ feminist with your idea of a silver bullet. You were fully aware that you weren’t raped but figured that you were the first man who ever approached me with your particular brand of logic and that you’d be able to shut me up or make me cower beneath the threat of your clearly superior logic.

Wrong.

You weren’t raped if you were talked into it and here’s why.

First off, do you ever fear being physically and violently raped if you tell a woman “No”? Of course not. You know that if you tell her “No” the worst that will happen is that she will ask a few times and then give up. Do you fear that if you raise your voice to her or even hit her if she continues to ‘nag’ you that you will be beat to death? That you will be held down against your will and penetrated? These are fears that huge numbers of women experience and fears that you will never, ever experience. The same sort of pressure for you is not there.

Secondly as a man in this society you have likely been socialized to understand that you are ‘allowed’ to do whatever you want in pursuit of getting your dick into some woman’s body. It’s clear that you don’t respect the word “No” which is a verbal boundary. Therefore, it’s likely that you have engaged in this behavior yourself since you clearly are unable to comprehend the importance of the word “No”, particularly as it pertains to females.

It’s also likely that you are/were much larger than the woman you bullied (i.e. ‘nagged’) into sex with you. Even if you weren’t you, as a male, have been socialized to be violent and ‘manly’ in your life. Violence, the threat of it, and the normalization of it, is something that men experience as acceptable during their formative years. Particularly in the pursuit of penetration.

Women, on the other hand, are unilaterally taught that violence is unacceptable and that they must never engage a man in violence.

The situation you put women into is literally a situation in which, if you decide not to listen to her repeated “No’s” she is forced to up the ante of violence, perhaps by hitting you? Screaming at you? Telling you that you are attempting to rape her? Screaming the word “NO” as loudly as possible?

You are forcing your ‘partner’ (i.e. victim) to up the level of violence, most likely going against everything that society has taught her to do from a very young age as well as breaking one of the largest taboos a woman can face that taboo being to precipitate violence against a male.

The woman you raped in this way also has a 1 in 3 chance of having been raped before and over a 50/50 chance of having been physically hurt by a male. With these other factors in mind it is far less likely that your victim would up the ante. Even if she was a woman who had never experienced ANY of these things she has certainly watched the endless parade of faceless women on television who are beaten, raped and murdered by men. These news stories are bound to have an effect, that effect will predictably be to not initiate violence against a man lest they risk becoming one of the nameless, faceless women on the nightly news.

The fact that you clearly don’t respect the word “No” as a boundary just as real as any physical boundary tells me that you very likely wouldn’t respect any boundary that she laid other than one that was clearly physical.

It is also clear to me that since it never occurred to you that a female could have a past that wasn’t what you believe it should be that you will likewise be incapable of actually understanding this argument because it would implicate you in a crime that you find abhorrent. Of course, you only find it abhorrent when the person engaging in the crime isn’t following the rules of engagement as you have decided them to be. In other words, rape is clearly only a crime when a woman is battered and beaten, not when she is frightened and says “Yes” to avoid becoming one of those battered and beaten women.

Of course, it’s also likely that you are reading this right now and are offended beyond belief because, according to you, you are a non-violent man and of course she should somehow intuit that you weren’t planning on becoming physically violent with her. Your victim(s) are never allowed to be frightened of you because it would bring into focus the actual wrongness of the act that you are perpetuating upon their bodies. As well as make you ponder on why you don’t believe that “NO” is a ‘real’ boundary.

You clearly do not respect the word “NO” and you clearly believe that she should, for whatever reason, up the level of violence to get you to leave her the fuck alone. In other words, you believe that she is responsible to stop you. SHE is responsible for making you leave her alone; she is also responsible if she fails in the expectation that she stop your repeated aggression. If she is unable to stop your violent and aggressive behavior then she must have ‘wanted’ it. If she gives in as a result of fear, worry, or perceived lack of choices when she is most likely outgunned, out-muscled and certainly out-forced by a man who has been socialized into violence then she is clearly at fault.

If she fails to provide you with a ‘good enough’ argument to ‘convince’ you to stop and leave her alone then she clearly wanted you to penetrate her. And of course, she should up that level of violence in such a way that she doesn’t offend you because then she’s in danger of pissing you off because she thinks you may be dangerous. You ARE dangerous but you hide beneath the cover that so many men like you hide behind. That cover being to ascribe power to her that she doesn’t actually have and then expect her to utilize that nonexistent power to make you stop. If she is unable to do that then she is clearly to blame and it’s a case of you being ‘confused’ rather than you bullying her for hours until she is so exhausted by repeated “No’s” that she gives in to you to hopefully get you to leave her the fuck alone. If she shows you fear and you see it mirrored in her eyes it would probably piss you off beyond recognition as it is likely doing right now.

So tell me, what exactly do you expect her to do to make you stop? Any woman that is with you must repeatedly and gently tell you “No” until you grow tired? Must she hit you with something? Does she need to give you an excuse that will allow you to ‘let her off the hook’? Why is her verbal boundary, her “No”, not enough? Why does it never occur to you that this may very well be a woman who has been either hit or raped before? Why do you feel that you can continue to pressure her for a yes? Do you think that if she says “No” 100 times that suddenly on the 101st time she is dying to have your big manly cock put inside of her? Do you believe that, even though she didn’t want you for the last two hours, somehow you are able to turn that tired “NO” into a Yes and she will love it?

 

I seriously doubt that you believe this as you are well aware that when someone is nagged or bullied into doing something they rarely, if ever, glean any real enjoyment for the act that they were bullied into. Therefore, it’s clear to me that your desire to penetrate another person’s body has absolutely nothing to do with her enjoyment, pleasure or anything of the sort. The verbal gymnastics and exhausting games that you employ aren’t so that you can penetrate her and feel a bonding with a person you consider an equal. Indeed, they are performed and carried out with the express purpose of ‘winning’ and the orgasm is simply a bonus.

No man who gives a flying fuck about women or who considers her to be an autonomous individual who is equal to them, will deliberately and continually push through a woman’s “No’s” until they get a “Yes”. The selfishness that is displayed to get her to a point of turning that No into a Yes precludes any logical thinking creature from believing that you, in any way, think of the woman you are penetrating as an equal.

Up to that point you selfishly refused to acknowledge her “No”, waltzing through her verbal boundaries and putting her into a position of risking violence against you. You forced her to play the ‘guess what you need to do to make me stop harassing you’ game.

You put her into a position where her “No” is meaningless to you and showed her, quite clearly, that you are fully capable, willing and able to continue to press her with whatever means necessary to get her to ‘consent’ to what you want to do to her. The fact that you utterly and completely ignored her “No’s” tells her that you are capable and willing to force her to either:

A) Hit you
B) Scream at you or
C) Otherwise put herself into a vulnerable position against you.

You have forced her to attempt to read your mind in an attempt to ascertain whether or not you could become violent. You clearly care nothing for her enjoyment as your actions indicate that you are primarily concerned with sticking your dick inside of her. Her “No” means nothing to you. Her tired “Yes” is all that matters.

And of course, seeing that you have grown incredibly angry with me right now for pointing this out to you, I can also safely assume that you expect the woman to also pretend to enjoy it after you have exhausted her into a “Yes”. If she lays there like a dead animal looking at the ceiling you will be mightily offended and so, she not only must put up with your incessant bullying but also, when she finally gives in, she must act as though she enjoys it. I suspect that you’re one of those guys who also believes that every woman you’ve ever been with has been brought to orgasm multiple times by penetration alone.

Here’s a clue, those screams are faked BECAUSE she knows that you’re a violent fuck who could turn into a complete monster if she doesn’t fake them.

On 29 (wedding night). Absolutely correct. Weddings can be exhausting. If it bothers you go sleep on the couch. If it really bothers you a lot, you can always go get an annulment in the morning, you aren’t ready to be married

29. If it’s your wedding night and she doesn’t WANT to have sex with you and you force or coerce her anyway then you’re a rapist.

So clearly you believe that marriage is all about a man sticking his member into a woman. Penetration is clearly the mark of a woman who is ‘ready’ to be married. Notice also that my phrasing on 29 was if you ‘force or coerce’ her and this is the language that you disagree with.

Obviously you believe that any woman who marries you forgoes her right to say “No” to sex. Because you’ve done her the presumably wonderful service of marrying her she owes you sex and if she doesn’t like it then she can just leave. If she doesn’t want you to harass her for hours on end then her options are to either sleep on the couch or divorce you. I wonder if you tell any woman you’re thinking about marrying that you believe she has no right to tell you “No” and have that “No” be respected before you marry her?

“NO” means nothing to you, even after you’ve supposedly bonded with a woman for the rest of your life.

Evidently to you, “In sickness and in health til death do you part” translates into, “As long as you let me stick my dick in you we’re fine but don’t you dare think that that pussy doesn’t belong to me and that I don’t have a right to use it when I wish. If you don’t like it then get the fuck out.”

You could add: don’t get mad at or criticize your guy for not taking no for an answer. If you didn’t mean no, you shouldn’t have said it. Don’t try to train your guy to take no for an answer.

Yes, because clearly in your world women don’t have that right and the only type of boundary that you will respect is the boundary in which she points a gun at your head and tells you to get the fuck out of her bedroom. I love how you give yourself unilateral permission to bully each and every woman you are with into sex with you. It also stands to reason that you probably believe that you are a wonderful lover.

 

The sickest part of all is that you likely also believe that you actually love your partners, in which case your definition of love is so twisted that I can scarcely contain myself from sobs for the poor female who is partnered with you.

Clearly to you, love is all about penetrating her. And it’s not orgasm you’re seeking, it’s penetration which to you, as to many men in this society, has morphed into a quick fix for power. If it were simply intimacy that you’re seeking then kissing, cuddling and so forth would be enough to fulfill you. And if it were orgasm you sought then you’d simply masturbate. However, you are undoubtedly one of those men who has decided that each and every time you get a boner that the woman you’re with should take care of that boner.

It’s a sad state of affairs when a man can refuse to hear a woman’s pleas of “No”, coerce, nag, bully and frighten her into sex. Expect her to then like it and pat himself on the back for being such a wonderful lover when she fakes 5 orgasms just to make him leave her the fuck alone. And then, on top of all that, to make a claim that he loves her.

Clearly your actions have nothing to do with intimacy, mutual respect or mutual satisfaction and everything to do with control, conquest and ‘winning’. You chase a woman as if she were a gazelle, conquer her with your repeated and likely frightening advances, and then expect her to enjoy being devoured.

Not only that, but you believe that this is a normal expression of love or affection between two people. You ascribe a woman power that you deny her. You say that she shouldn’t have said “Yes” if she didn’t mean it but you don’t allow her the option of saying “No”. You act as though you are giving her power that you really have no intention of allowing her because the only acceptable answer to your repeated (and likely pathetic) come on’s is a “Yes”. Nothing short of a baseball bat or a knee to the groin will stop you and not only is this considered ‘normal’ to you, it is also something that women should not attempt to stop.

Talk about twisted.

I disagree with you about 46. Anybody can be crazy or lie. Someone who never met him sued David Letterman for harassment (sic) for sending her coded messages through his show. If she had claimed he raped her, would disbelieving her encourage rape?I think it is the opposite. If we encourage blind faith in everyone who says she was raped, we lose credibility when we say “I believe her”. Then they could say “so what, you believe everybody, so your believing this particular victim doesn’t mean anything”.

46. If you don’t believe a woman when she says she was raped then you’re encouraging rape.

The false reporting for rape is the exact same as the false reporting for any other crime. About 2% of rape reports are false reports, just as 2% of car theft reports are false reports and 2% of robbery reports are false reports.

Of course, I’m certain that you don’t look to your friend who has just had his car stolen and say, “I think you’re lying!” Why? Because clearly, to you at least, women are lying manipulative bitches.

There is no other crime in which a victim is immediately thought to be lying except for those crimes that are perpetuated onto females. Have you ever looked at a news report where a home was burglarized and thought immediately to yourself, “They’re probably lying! If we assume that they’re telling the truth about being robbed then we lose credibility!”

Of course you don’t because to you, as you have so aptly illustrated in your comments, women are simply a means to an end. To you, women are lying, cheating, and thieving creatures that must be treated with mistrust and violence when necessary.

Who does this line of thinking benefit? Who does it benefit when you immediately disbelieve all accusations of rape? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. It benefits the rapists. It allows rapists to walk and it allows for public opinion of rape victims to be twisted to allow for men like you to rape without consequence.

A woman who is raped is much less likely to fight you off when you walk through her “No’s” because she’s intimately familiar with the violence that men are capable of. And so, in a quest to not be physically hurt she will wearily say “Yes” rather than risk being physically and violently violated. This benefits YOU specifically and in general it benefits each and every single man who uses the same tactics as you do. In other words, you benefit and continue to defend those benefits that physically violent rapists have given you and you also see no problem with that.

You are so willing to believe men over women but yet, you don’t question crimes that occur to men by other men. Even when the rates of false reporting for the crimes are identical. You never routinely question whether or not a carjacking was real, why?

Why is it that, even though only 2 out of 100 reports of rape are actually false, you insist that women are lying and that to believe them means that women everywhere will suffer from credibility issues? Again I ask, do you believe someone when they say they were robbed? Or do you interrogate them and tell them that “Anyone could say they were robbed! You probably sold your stuff to a pawn shop and then decided that you were robbed!”

If you don’t do this then I strongly suggest that you consider why you don’t.

I was going to post a few more comments but I’ve decided not to bother. They are much the same as this guy wherein they determine, without ever having looked it up, that women are liars and that most rape allegations are false.

Why? Because they, as much of society, have placed more weight on the truthfulness of men’s words than women’s. It doesn’t surprise me that so many men in particular don’t want to see any of these things as applying to them. Of course men like ‘Cynical’ want to keep the status quo, it allows them to unilaterally and without consequence, rape women who would otherwise run like hell from them.

~BB

A Note On Recent ‘Scientific’ Studies

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve gotten several links to articles which are reporting that pornography on the internet decreases rape rates. Apparently someone out there has decided that because reported rape rates have fallen it must be due to the vast amounts of pornography on the internet.

Here is one of those articles: How The Web Prevents Rape. I haven’t responded to any of this because, well, to be perfectly honest I really didn’t see the need to. When you take a stance like mine on pornography you start to see some really ridiculous ’studies’ and this is no exception.

In this ’study’ what the researchers did was to literally take the reported rape rates and then take reported internet usage, not just porn usage but internet usage as a whole, and when they saw that reported rapes were down, they inferred that it must be due to pornography on the internet.

There are so many reasons that this is a fallacious assumption to make.

1. Nobody bothered to ask what these people were doing online, it is, of course, assumed that people are browsing FreeXXX sites. Apparently these researchers think that men have nothing better than to peruse pornography sites all day.

2. Where is the consideration for the vast amount of work that women’s groups have engaged in designed to decrease rape? In one fell swoop all of the effort, time and money of women’s groups who have begun grassroots campaigns all over the place to prevent rape have been erased.

3. They didn’t correct or account for the fact that perhaps more women are simply not reporting rape. With the recent influx of women who have been charged with a crime when there isn’t enough proof to convict her accused rapist I think that this is certainly an extremely important factor to consider. Indeed, the climate surrounding the Duke case and many others like it has undoubtedly had an impact. I now speak to many women who immediately state that they would not, under any circumstances, report their own rapes.

4. The ‘researchers’ on this study clearly believe that rape is sex and nothing more.

Notice that these studies always compare reported rapes, not actual rapes. There are many problems with studies like this that place them unequivocally into the camp of junk science.

Only one of many problems is the equation of sex and rape. The underlying message beneath all of these studies is that men are seeking sex when they violently rape a woman. In a society which classes porn as little more than ‘naked people fucking’ the only conclusion that said society will come to upon hearing such a claim is that men are simply taking sex from females when they rape them.

This has extraordinarily troubling implications even if we assumed that it wasn’t a load of shit. It implies that men are so dangerous that they must literally be fed a diet of pornography to keep them from harming women. As a class they are so out of control and terrifying that if we don’t let them see women being fucked then they will violently take women against their will.

I know some men who would vehemently disagree with this idea and rightly so. I am often called a man-hater which is always amusing to me because when we really look at what researchers like this are trying to say it is clearly THEM who hate men. I personally believe that men are NOT out of control beasts that require a steady diet of degradation to relieve their terrifying urge to rape women. But this study, and studies like this one, always reduce men to creatures who are incapable of not raping unless and until we give them what they want.

Sex is not rape. Rape is not sex. I have done articles on this before, indeed, I have done many articles on the topic. Rape is violence and control using sex as the weapon. Rape is the action by which a man takes control and autonomy from a woman, sex is the tool. Rape is the culmination of deep seated hatred and lack of empathy by men against women. Penetration is merely one of the most effective ways in which they can degrade and dehumanize us.

To men, perhaps rape is simply sex. But to women who have been raped there is a very clear difference. Rape is about forcing a woman, through a myriad of ways, to succumb to the will of the man. For the rapist it is not penetration that he’s looking for, it’s the ‘kill’. It’s the victory of taking a woman that is the high and the rush. And this entire society condones and even conditions men to use whatever means necessary to get that ‘win’.

Women who experience this are fully aware of it. It’s not about the orgasm, it’s about the ‘win’ that they get when they bend a woman to their demands either by sheer force, threatening body language, taking her other options away or some other means.

So that is just one very large problem with this sort of study. Rape is not sex and sex is not rape. These are dangerous studies because they imply that if every man has his orgasm demands met then he won’t rape and this in turn, implies that to keep women safe we MUST feed men a steady diet of images of women that they can use and orgasm to. Even if we take the same assumption that the ‘researchers’ take and assume that porn is just good clean fun we are still left with troubling facts that are very hard to get around and terrifying to even the bravest of women. That message is this:

If women don’t placate men’s desire to orgasm then men will hurt women.

This mindset sets up a ‘blame the victim’ paradigm. It places the responsibility for male violence onto the shoulders of women. It assumes that women must give men the orgasm they desire or men will rape us to get more of it. In so doing this paradigm also creates a subset of women who will always be ‘fed’ to male desire, acting as a sacrificial lamb to keep the rest of us safe. When this mindset bears fruit it will always be in the form of victim blaming. Male violence against females will inevitably be blamed on females, either on the victim directly or onto females as a group because the theory rests on the notion that men cannot control themselves and must orgasm to real live women in order to be reasonably expected to control themselves.

Therefore a man who rapes a woman will always be held with less responsibility than the female whom he raped or females at large in the society. Because of his ‘need’ for orgasm clearly if she turned him on or did something ‘inappropriate’ it’s her fault.

The male drive for orgasm is likened to the predatory drive seen in large carnivores. We can’t really blame the lion, even if it’s a ‘tame’ lion, for lunging after the goat because that’s what lions do. When we slip into this sort of description for male orgasm then we almost invariably wind up saying, “Well, you can’t blame the guy for raping her because he was taken over by his desire to orgasm and that’s what men do.”

Other flaws in this junk science are that reported rapes reflect actual number of rapes. This particular story even assumes that violent movies curb the urges of men to be violent. It comes to this conclusion by assuming that when violent movies are running in the theatres that violent men are watching these movies instead of being violent against others.

As it pertains to rape however, I find it frightening that any ’scientist’ would assume that reported rapes are the same as actual rapes. We have recently seen a virtual plethora of rape cases in which the victim is brutalized by the media and the public. Her accusations fall onto deaf ears because they assume that she is a liar. She then morphs into the villain in the media and openly on the internet, in newspapers and so forth. The Duke case is only one of these; many more cases follow behind this one.

Women understand that the moment a rape charge is leveled that the cries of “She’s a lying whore!” are soon to come. Because of this many women are deterred from reporting rape, add this to the basic assumption of people that rape is sex and she becomes even more afraid to report her trauma.

Recently there have been many cases in the media that have gone terribly wrong for the woman who reports the rape. In one case a young woman reported being gang raped by her boyfriend and his friend when she was getting ready for a party. The men, of course, claimed that it was consensual. When the young woman appeared before the judge he determined that she wasn’t “acting like a victim” and he dropped the charges against the men and instead charged her with filing false charges. Based upon nothing more than what he perceived a rape victim should act like.

In yet another case a woman was threatened with jail when she refused to watch a videotape of her rape and be cross-examined about it in front of the courtroom. She said that it would be too traumatic and utterly refused to do it. The woman was very nearly jailed for refusing to watch her own rape on television until public outcry softened the judge’s stance.

In case after case we see young women who have been violated run through the emotional trauma of criminal charges leveled against them if they don’t fit the preconceived notion of what a ‘good’ rape victim should act like. Strippers are clearly not ‘good’ victims, nor are prostitutes, nor are women who wanted to have sex, nor are women who dress provocatively or women who are drunk or women who got willingly drunk, or women who had consensual sex with their rapists in the past, or women who are wives to their rapists, the list goes on and on.

In trial after trial we see every manner of situation being described in the same way. Women watch as the media slashes at women who report rape and public outcry says that it’s a case of ‘boys being boys’. When young men write emails saying that they will kill a woman and then, later that day, they are accused of rape, their actions are still minimized.

When a videotape of young men raping a mentally handicapped girl, urinating on her, lighting her hair on fire and so forth, is brought into the public eye we immediately see the media encourage the sentiment that ‘boys will be boys’.

Women are not stupid and repeatedly watching and absorbing these horrific trials will have a very predictable effect on even the bravest of us. Watching women being called whores, sluts and would be porn stars is terrifying to all of us. Even when the rape has been videotaped we watch, in horror, as the victim is martyred in the community and has her name and image plastered around the town.

With stories like these women are afraid of speaking up and pressing charges. They refuse to be forced to explain themselves, explain why they wore what they wore and why they didn’t do this or that. They refuse to put themselves through even more trauma for the sake of a conviction and would rather try to heal on their own.

So no, ’studies’ like these that claim that porn is reducing rape rates based upon little more than the observation that reported rapes are down while porn usage is up, are both dangerous and unfounded. I have much more to add to this but I find myself completely out of time for the moment. Perhaps I’ll come back later and add to this later but for now I have a stall to fix.

~BB

The Rapist Checklist (repost)

Ok, I was going to post something new and original today but I noted something in the comments. One of my old posts, entitled The Rapist Checklist has been paleoposted somewhere else once more.

Every now and then someone stumbles onto an old post and posts a link somewhere else. Now this post in particular really pissed off a bunch of people at the time and it continues to do so. I re-read it again this morning trying to see if I saw it in a different light now so many months after the original posting. It read the same as it did the day I posted it and made just as much sense to me.

However, you all would be amazed if you saw the sheer number of men who get ragingly pissed off by this post. For that reason alone I thought that it was worth reposting so today I’m copying it to this new post, just because I think it’ll be alot of fun to visit memory lane.

 

The Rapist Checklist

Some things to remember…

1. You are a rapist if you get a girl drunk and have sex with her.

2. You are a rapist if you find a drunk girl and have sex with her.

3. You are a rapist if you get yourself drunk and have sex with her. Your drunkeness is no excuse.

4. If you are BOTH drunk you may still be a rapist.

5. If she’s alternating between puking her guts out and passing out in the bed then you’re a rapist.

6. If she’s sleeping and you have sex with her you’re a rapist.

7. If she’s unconscious and you have sex with her then you’re a rapist.

8. If she’s taking sleeping pills and doesn’t wake up when you have sex with her then you’re a rapist.

9. If she is incapacitated in any way and unable to say ‘Yes’ then you’re a rapist.

10. If you drug her then you’re a rapist.

11. If you find a drugged girl and have sex with her then you’re a rapist.

12. If you don’t bother to ask her permission and she says neither ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ then you could be a rapist.

13. You are a rapist if you ‘nag’ her for sex. Because you manage to ply an eventual ‘yes’ from a weary victim doesn’t mean it’s not rape. You are a rapist.

14. You are a rapist if you try to circumvent her “No” by talking her into it. She’s not playing hard to get, and, even if she IS it’s not YOUR responsibility to ‘get’ her. You’re still a rapist.

15. You are a rapist if you manipulate her into sex when she doesn’t otherwise want it. If you say, “If you loved me you’d do X” then you’re a rapist. If you say, “All the other kids are doing it!” then you’re a rapist.

16. If you threaten her, or act in a way that SHE thinks you’re threatening her then you’re a rapist. If you puff up and get loud and frustrated while trying to ‘talk’ her into sex then you’re a rapist.

17. You are a rapist if you don’t immediately get your hands off of her when she says ‘no’. You are a rapist if you take your hands off of her and then put them back ON her after 10 minutes and she eventually ‘gives in’ to this tactic.

18. You are a rapist if you won’t let her sleep peacefully without waking her every 15 minutes asking her for sex. Sleep depravation is a form of torture and YOU are a rapist.

19. If you’re necking with her and you’re naked and you’ve already gone down on her and she says ‘No’ to sex with you and you have sex with her anyway then you’re a rapist.

20. If you’re engaged in intercourse and she says ‘No’ at ANY point and you don’t immediately stop then you’re a rapist.

21. If she said “Yes” to sex with a condom and that condom breaks and you proceed anyway then you’re a rapist.

22. If she picked you up at a bar looking for sex and then decides that she doesn’t WANT sex and you continue then you’re a rapist.

23. If she changes her mind at ANY point for ANY reason and you don’t immediately back off or you try to talk her into it and get sex anyway then you’re a rapist.

24. If you don’t hit her and she says ‘No’ you’re still a rapist.

25. If you don’t have a knife or a gun or a garrote and she says ‘No’ then you’re still a rapist.

26. If you’re a friend of hers you can still be a rapist.

27. If you had sex with her the night before but she doesn’t want morning sex and you pressure her for it anyway then you’re a rapist.

28. If you’re her husband you can still be a rapist.

29. If it’s your wedding night and she doesn’t WANT to have sex with you and you force or coerce her anyway then you’re a rapist.

30. If she’s had sex with you hundreds of times before but doesn’t want to on the 101st time then you’re a rapist.

31. If you penetrate her anally, orally or digitally against her will then YOU my friend, are ALSO a rapist.

32. Women do not owe you sex.

33. Buying her dinner does not entitle you to sex.

34. Paying her mortgage does not entitle you to sex.

35. Buying her clothing does not entitle you to sex.

36. Buying her lingerie does not entitle you to sex. It also doesn’t mean that she has any obligation to wear that lingerie around you.

37. Spending any amount of money on her does not, ever, entitle you to sex.

38. Seeing her legs or cleavage does not entitle you to sex.

39. If she ‘turns you on’ you’re not entitled to sex.

40. If she has fucked every man in a 10 square mile radius and she doesn’t want to fuck you and you have sex with her anyway, then you’re a rapist.

41. Her clothing is not a reason for you to rape her. Her LACK of clothing is no reason to rape her. If she’s wearing a thong and pasties you STILL have no right to rape her.

42. If she’s a prostitute and she says “No” then you’re a rapist.

43. If she’s a stripper and she says “No” then you’re a rapist. Likewise, if she’s a stripper and she’s been rubbing against your dick all night long and you follow her to her car and have sex with her against her will then you are ALSO a rapist.

44. If you watch a woman being raped without calling the authorities then you’re as bad as a rapist and you may also be a rapist yourself.

45. If you don’t fight rape then you accept rape.

46. If you don’t believe a woman when she says she was raped then you’re encouraging rape.

47. If you choose to remain friends with a man who raped a woman you are encouraging rape.

48. If you confess to the authorities that you raped a woman it does not exonerate you. You are not suddenly a model of good behavior.

49. If you ‘only’ raped one woman, you’re STILL a rapist.

50. You cannot tell who is a rapist by the way they look. Rapists are your friends, your brothers, your fathers and you won’t know it.

51. Do not get frustrated with a woman if she doesn’t trust you. SHE already knows that rapists don’t wear signs on their foreheads. Something you think is innocuous SHE may find terrifying.

Hmmm…I think that about covers it. Any questions? Good.

Oh, and feel free to add new ones in the comments and I’ll edit the post and put them up here for reference.

~BB

Link Dump

Monday again! I’ll be back in a few hours with a post, but for now I want to direct everyone over to The Margins and, more specifically to a few posts I was reading just this morning.

First, Heart has tackled the Andrea Dworkin misquotes from this article Tough Topic (here’s the rest of the article Part Two of the article). She’s done a fine job of pulling the relevant quotes and putting them into a much needed perspective. Thanks Heart, I had neither the resources nor the knowledge I needed to do such a fine job. Here’s the article by HeartDispelling Myths About Andrea Dworkin by Heart.

The other link I want to give everyone is also to The Margins, she’s put together a series of incredible posts on the rape of Iraq. In particular the rape and murder of Abir Hamzah by U.S. soldiers. I have not covered this story myself, in part because it’s incredibly triggering (so for those of you out there who like to say things to yourself like, “Geesh BB, how come you don’t get all up in the shit that’s REALLY important” I’d like you to think about that for a moment. Sometimes, I am truly incapable of getting all up in the shit of this shit)

In any case, she’s done a series of posts which are horrifying and well thought out.

WARNING: In the second post she posts photos that are triggering to the extreme. PLEASE proceed with caution.

First part is here, then, part two and finally, Part 3.

While you’re there check out some of the other articles. They’re very good.

Also, Amy’s Brain over at Feminist Reprise has done another spot on post titled, To All The Men Who Want To Touch Me. It’s a great read and I found myself nodding all the way through it.

And while I’m at it I may as well tell everyone about the new tarot deck I ordered over the weekend. It’s been out of print for a few years but I found it this weekend. Oh, did I tell anyone that I read tarot? Well, now you know *grin*. For several years I’ve been trying to find a deck that’s as ‘honest’ as my plain ol’ Rider Waite deck but which has imagery that I like better. So far I’ve managed to find the imagery that I connect with in a few decks but the readings weren’t ‘honest’ and they often felt ’soft’ or ‘muddled’.

I’m hoping that this deck will finally give me what I’m looking for! It’s the Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett and while the symbolism follows the Rider Waite deck the images are way cooler.  (images could not be transferred, sorry – Editor)

Morality clauses, EC, and broken condoms

I’m stunned. I’m utterly, completely stunned. I’m shaky and anxious and shocked beyond belief. I live in rural Ohio and I have been denied EC. 

Two months ago I stopped taking birth control. My body finally decided that it was fed up and the cycle of side-effects began again as they have every time I’ve taken hormonal contraception since I was a teenager. The Depo shot culminated in a trip to the ER due to heavy bleeding and fainting. So my doctor switched me to the yet another low-dose birth control pill which began fucking me up several months ago. So, approximately 2 months ago I stopped taking it.

I am also unable to be fitted for birth control methods that block your cervix seeing as how I have almost no cervix left after my operation last year. So for the last few months I have relied exclusively on condoms.

Friday night the condom broke. But I didn’t panic, I thought to myself, with a huge sigh of relief, “Wow, thank goodness it’s over the counter now!” and I fell asleep (since there are absolutely NO 24 hour pharmacies within 100 miles of me). Saturday morning I awoke and phoned the pharmacy. I asked them about EC and was told that they won’t be stocking it until January 1st, until then it was still by prescription only.

Soooo, I phoned my doctors office which informed me that the office was closed and that I had to call the local hospital and have her paged in order to reach her on the weekend. So I called her and had them page her. A little while later she called back and I answered the phone immediately. She sounded tired and really grumpy; I apologized for having to page her for a thing like this and then asked her if I could get a prescription for EC. She explained that I needed to go to the Emergency Room to get it.

My heart fell, the ER has a 100$ co-pay attached to it. “Well,” I thought to myself, “that’s still better than the price of a kid” so I called the Emergency Room to verify the information and to ask what their procedures were. When I called the hospital they transferred me to the ER. I asked the nurse what the procedure was for EC and what would be the best time to come down there (I didn’t want to wind up behind 3 critical people and end up waiting for 12 hours). The nurse responded in a small, questioning voice, “EC?” and so I explained. “Yes, Emergency Contraception. Plan B. You know, right?”

“Oh” she replies. “Hold on just a sec” and she puts me on hold.

A few moments later another nurse answers the phone. “Can I help you” he says.

“Yes,” I reply “My name is BB and I was told that I need to come here to get a scrip for Plan B.”

“Oh,” he says, “Can you hang on a second?”

“Sure” I reply, becoming decidedly nervous.

He puts me on hold and I sit on the edge of the bed frowning and fiddling with a pen. I wait on hold for 15 minutes before he finally comes back on.

“Have you talked to your doctor?” he asks.

“Yes, I talked to her this morning and she told me to go to the ER” I reply.

“Oh, so she won’t prescribe it for you?” he asks.

This possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I just assumed that the ER was standard procedure, “Hmmm” I say, “Well, I guess not. It’s not just standard procedure to go to the ER?”

“No, not really. We don’t really have this happen much.” He replies and then he says, “Well I called the pharmacy to ask them because I had heard that it was going over the counter. They told me that they won’t sell it til the first of the year” I finished the sentence with him and explained that I had called the pharmacy first thing this morning and was told the very same thing.

“Well see,” he begins, his voice dropping a little, “the problem is that you have to meet the doctor’s criteria before he’ll dispense it to you.”

“Criteria?” I question.

“Well,” the nurse sounds decidedly nervous as though what he really wanted to do was hang up the phone completely, “Yes, his criteria. I mean…ummm…well, are you ok? Is there any, ummm….trauma?” he asks me.

My face changes expression and I hurry to explain, “No, no” I said, “No. I haven’t been raped. This was consensual sex.”

“Oh…” he trails off.

I wait expectantly.

“Well, ummm….*clears throat*…So you haven’t been raped?” he asks again.

“No. I have not been raped. The condom broke”. I state, becoming very frustrated at this point and wondering what the hell is going on.

“Ok, well ummm….Are you married?” he mumbles the words so low I can barely hear them.

Suddenly I get this image of the poor nurse standing at the hospital reading from a cue card that was given to him by a doctor.

“No.” I state plainly. “I am not married. I’ve been in a relationship for several years and I have three children, I don’t want a fourth.” I respond tersely.

“Oh, I see.” He says and then he hurries on, “Well, see. *I* understand. I want you to know that I understand what you’re saying. But see, the problem is that we have 4 doctors here right now but only one of them ever writes EC prescriptions. But see, the thing is that he’ll interview you and see if you meet his criteria. Now, I called the pharmacy but I also talked to him and well….*clears throat*….you can come down and try to get it. You know, if you meet his criteria he’ll give you a prescription, I mean, there’s really no harm in trying.” the nurse trails off, his voice falters as I realize what I’m being told.

He continues, almost over eager at this point to distance himself from the hospital, “See, I understand what you’re saying and all. I think it’s a good thing that it’s going over the counter. I just thought I should tell you what he told me. You know, you’ll just have to have an interview with him and he’ll see if you meet his criteria. He’ll only be on duty until 2pm today though and you should ask for him if you decide to come down because he’s really your only chance. 

I sigh and thank him before hanging up. I know exactly what he was telling me. If I wasn’t raped and wasn’t married then too damn bad for me.

I opened the phone book again and called the Urgent Care in my county. Who knows, maybe they’ll do it for me. “No,” the nurse said, “We don’t prescribe the abortion pill here”.

“No, wait I’m not asking for the abortion pill. I’m asking for EC!” I say, “It’s not the same thing.”

“Well, we use the words interchangeably here. Sorry, we don’t prescribe it”. She all but races to get off the phone with me.

I start looking through the telephone book, dialing hospitals from counties all around me. It seems that nobody will prescribe it to me. None of the hospitals are willing to touch me, of the ones that will prescribe it I am asked a series of questions to ’screen’ me before I come to the hospital. The results aren’t good. I’m not married and wasn’t raped, so there’s very little they can do for me. But I can try the nurses tell me uncomfortably.

“But if I go through all this and I can’t get it will I still be charged the co-pay?”

“Well….ummmm…yeah. I’m afraid so Ma’am.” comes the reply.

I called every hospital in every surrounding county and none of them would prescribe me EC. Not even ONE. Of the 2 that said that they sometimes will their ‘criteria’ was clearly not my situation.

Next I tried Planned Parenthood. None of them were open. Not one. Every Planned Parenthood in Ohio was either closed on Saturday or would be closed before I could drive the 100 miles to them.

I was told by every urgent care I called and every emergency room that I was shit out of luck. I was asked my age. My marital status. How many children I had. If I had been raped and when I became uncomfortable with the questions I was told, “Well Ma’am, try to understand that you will be interviewed and the doctor has ‘criteria’ that you need to meet before he will prescribe it for you.”

When I asked about what ‘criteria’ there was that I had to meet, the reply was, “Well, he’s kind of old fashioned”. I was told that I might be able to ‘talk him into it’ anyway and that it can’t hurt to try (except for the fact that each and every time I try it I’ll have to pay $100 co-pay).

I found that the more hospitals and clinics and doctors I called the more ashamed I became. Yep, you heard right. I was feeling ashamed at being such an unworthy dirty whore. Well, at least in the eyes of all these hospitals and doctors and clinics. I cried, then I sweated, then I cried some more, then I called some more.

Folks, the condom broke Friday night and I searched all weekend for someone who could prescribe me EC. It is now Monday and I have to report that I have been unable to find anyone who will write me a fucking prescription for EC. None of the hospitals in the surrounding counties would write it for me. I stopped my search at about 100 miles from my home because my telephone book wouldn’t take me out any further than that.

I have been asked about my sexual practices. Whether I’m ‘monogamous’ or ‘in a relationship’ if I’m married, if I have kids, how many kids I have, if I was raped or ‘traumatized’ but there wasn’t’ ONE question about my health. Not one. The few places that said that they had a doctor who would occasionally write prescriptions for EC told me that I had to ask for that doctor specifically and then they proceeded to tell me that I would be ‘interviewed’ to see if I meet that doctors ‘criteria’ and then they proceeded to ask me all the above questions before telling me that I should ‘try anyway’ and I ‘might be able to talk him into it’.

Unwilling to go to the ER and be shamed and ‘interviewed’ for my ‘criteria’ before being told that I’m too slutty or too something or other I broke into a sobbing heap of anger and fear and I did the only thing I could think of doing. Dubhe and I went out to the local pet shop and played with the puppies for awhile before getting a bite to eat. Then I came home and drank a bottle of wine, smoked like a fiend and downed butter rum shots until I fell asleep.

Moral of the story?……

Well, quite frankly I don’t know, it seems that there is no moral to the story other than morality clauses fucking suck. I’m off to smoke a carton of cigarettes and suck down more butter rum so stick that in your morality pipe and smoke it you dirty bastards. Oh and if I end up having to get an abortion I’ll ask if I can keep the little parasite and I’ll be sending it to each of you who denied me EC.

Ok, I’m also editing this post now because I wanted to ask. Does anyone know if Nortrel 7/7/7 can be used as EC? I thought about getting the last refill I have on the old prescription and taking them all over a 2 day period. Of course, I don’t want to die either *sigh* and I’m afraid that it will fuck me up to take all the pills in a few days.

I’ve been unable to find the information on my brand of pill. The packet I have is actually Nortrel 7/7/7 but it was sustituted for Ortho Novum 7/7/7 (I assume that the Nortrel is the generic form of Ortho Novum) Anyway if anyone out there has used my brand as EC please, please, please let me know!!

Thanks a million guys.

~BB

Reflection Time

First thing I want to say is thank you to everyone for your comments on my post yesterday. The outpouring of support made me feel much better. Now, on to an update. 

I finally found somewhere who stocked Plan B yesterday via a link from Manxome (thank you so much for the link; I had all but given up on Plan B at that point). I called the clinic and explained the situation to them. They were helpful and kind and went out of their way to try and alleviate the need for me to drive to them. When I explained how far away I was they tried to route me to alternate clinics that may have a doctor on hand that day. The hope was that they could patch me through to a sister clinic where the doctor would just call in a prescription for me to my local pharmacy thus alleviating the need to drive the hour and a half to them.

Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, we were unable to locate a sister clinic with an on site doctor yesterday. With this in mind I called Dubhe at work and told him the deal. He left work early because, as he said, “This was something that involved both of us and I’m not going to have you be the only one who has to be inconvenienced by this”. Well, clearly *I* was forced to take the brunt of the inconvenience due largely to biology and my desire to take this into my own hands. However, the gesture was appreciated and so after he got home we both drove the hour and a half to get the EC (He’ll be working late today to make up for the time off yesterday).

The clinic was suitably far away although it was in a town that I’m slightly familiar with. We made good time and I was pleased that the trip there took and hour and ten minutes instead of the hour and a half I had anticipated.

I drove and did a lot of thinking and talking while driving. With the light at the end of the tunnel in sight I was able to think and, well, breathe again two things that I welcomed with open arms. Since this entire ordeal began I have been unable to either think or talk so it was nice to find that I was calming down enough to do both.

In either case the clinic was kind and helpful and after filling out a paper which asked me a few medical questions I was given the medication and I left. It cost me $20 + gas which is a far cry better than a $100.00 co-pay at an emergency room that may or may not give me the medication I needed. I took the first pill in the car and quickly ate a banana to go with it. It was then that I began to really stop and think about this entire experience and you know what? The things that popped into my head confused me and, quite frankly, surprised me.

Now, on Friday night when the condom broke Dubhe was a nervous wreck. He apologized profusely over and over again and I explained to him that I did not hold him responsible. We had practiced safe sex and it was just one of those things that sometimes happen. Saturday morning upon waking I called the pharmacy and thus began the long and horrible weekend.

I found that my confidence and good mood of Saturday morning was being quickly replaced by a feeling of badness and it wasn’t until I was driving home yesterday from the clinic that I recognized it for what it was. Something strange happened when I was being interrogated by these nurses and ER’s and so forth, I became ashamed of myself and feared that I had done something wrong.

This came as a surprise to me. Me? Ashamed? What the fuck was I ashamed over? This made no sense to me at all so I began to look at the events from the weekend. A pattern emerged that troubled me greatly; a pattern of trying to claim all the blame of what had been an accident. I looked closer at what I was feeling and as I did I found that there were some odd as fuck fears down there.

For whatever reason the more clear it became that getting Plan B was not going to be easy the more I began trying to take on blame that was not mine to take. This ‘blame grabbing’ resulted in feelings of fear, resentment and insecurity. I had spent the weekend thinking to myself, “Geesh, I should have read more about condom use. Maybe if I had done something more I could have prevented this” and that compounded with a desire to not let on to Dubhe just how badly I was being affected by this. Thoughts kept swirling through my mind and the more these thoughts swirled the more I remembered the questions I got from the hospitals and health care providers. The more I thought of those questions the more I tried to grab the blame and foist it onto my own shoulders.

I suddenly found myself spinning my wheels. I wanted to absolve Dubhe of any and all culpability. The more hurdles that appeared before me the more I wished to isolate him from all of it. The more uncomfortable it became the more worried I became that I would be punished or reprimanded. I found myself apologizing for shit that I became angry at myself for apologizing for. I remembered that on Sunday as I was biting my lower lip and twitching and fretting Dubhe said, “Are you ok?” and I responded by apologizing for being such a horny person.

He was puzzled by my reaction and shook his head in confusion before telling me that I’m not a terrible person and that this was an accident. Even as I apologized for some supposed wrong I had foisted onto myself I was angry at myself for saying something so ridiculous to begin with. As I spoke the words or thought the thoughts my warrior screamed, “What the hell are you doing? This isn’t your fault! Why are you so worried about making sure that you don’t inconvenience him? BB, wake up!!!!”

I didn’t say anything like it again but I thought it anyway. These thoughts, whatever they were, were not my own. I knew that there was some mechanism that was causing this terrible fear and worry and I knew that these ideas were not in keeping with what I believed but I didn’t have the presence of mind to think about it. All I knew was that I wanted to shelter him from the inconvenience of what I was going through.

Finally, on my way back from the clinic with the pill working its way through my system Dubhe looked at me and said, “So, do you feel better? Do you want to talk about it now? What was going on with all the self-blaming BB?”

And for the first time since all this began I breathed and thought and suddenly everything made sense. My reaction to this situation was not an overblown, hysterical reaction which was entirely out of left field. Rather, it was the very logical reaction to a society which has made an art out of foisting all responsibility onto women. From the responsibility of reproduction and birth control and subsequent raising of children to the responsibility to not ‘get raped’ and so on.

Indeed, my reaction was not unforeseeable; rather it was perfectly in keeping with what society has taught us from birth.

If you inconvenience a man you must be held accountable. Everything and anything that happens in a relationship must be the fault of the woman somehow. The admonitions to myself of, “I never should have gone off the pill” were yet more ways of taking responsibility for something that wasn’t my fault. But what was driving this frenzied state? I asked myself and Dubhe this very important question as we were driving back home.

And then it hit me. The driving force behind all of this nonsense was fear. On some level I believed that if I made this more uncomfortable for him than was absolutely necessary then he would pull away from me. He would withhold intimacy. On some level I was scared that if I didn’t take ALL the blame for something that was an honest to goodness accident, that he would be afraid of me. Or that the blame would come back to me eventually. If I stepped up to the plate and apologized before I could be implicated then perhaps I would never be implicated to begin with.

Suffice it to say I was sickened that such fears were still able to be aroused in my feminist brain. What the fuck does it say about me? I’m still pondering the ramifications of knowing that these types of fears are still apparently in my mind.

However, what I’m not questioning is that this society does indeed want to put women’s feet to the fire for shit like this. Thirty-four years of living in this society has trained me very well and all of the feminist beliefs and theories and talking have still not completely erased the imprint that the patriarchal teachings had on my psyche. Even when a man involved in such a thing didn’t place the blame on me and didn’t want me to steal blame from the situation I still responded with the ‘acceptable’ response.

And that, my friends, is one of the biggest reasons that this bullshit patriarchal agenda has become such a huge fucking monster. So many of us respond exactly as we have been trained when our feet are to the fire. Despite my wishes to NOT have these thoughts. Despite my disgust that they were even IN my head, I could not stop them. The fear was real. This agenda had been imprinted so completely into my head that when trouble occurred I defaulted back to it like a trained dog. I obediently (I daresay reflexively) fell back onto blaming myself for the actions of a man.

Now, neither Dubhe nor I intended this accident. We did everything by the book and followed all the rules of condom usage he was no more at fault than I was. But when push came to shove, even without prompting (goodness knows that he didn’t do anything to prompt these thoughts in my head) I still fell back onto them.

On Friday night and Saturday morning I was fine and dandy. After speaking with the hospitals I began to feel like shit until even *I* doubted myself. It seemed that many people believed that I was a rotten excuse for a human being and their doubt in me surfaced in me doubting myself. Even though I knew better.

After this revelation (which left me rather speechless for a few moments while Dubhe watched worriedly) I started getting angry. And that, my friends, is where I am right now. I’m angry. I’m angry as hell at this society that insists that it’s their job to know what the fuck is happening inside my vagina.

I’m pissed because ANY pregnancy for me will be risky. After my surgery I was told that with my fucked up cervix if I ever DO become pregnant again that I will likely have to spend it on my back in bed. That surgery in December removed a large portion of my cervix, therefore they would have to suture my cervix shut in order for me to carry a pregnancy to term. Not only that, but I was warned that I would most likely be prescribed bed rest for my entire third trimester and be considered a high risk.

I was also warned that my cervix (or lack thereof) will make fitting for a diaphragm or cervical cap risky in more ways than one. I also refuse to get a tubal libation or a hysterectomy and Dubhe is not eligible to have a vasectomy paid for for another year. To top it off hormonal birth control fucks me up beyond belief and almost inevitably, after a few months of the pill or the shot, I wind up bleeding constantly.

Who are these bastards to deny me EC based upon whether or not I was raped? Based upon whether or not I was a godless whore who was unmarried? Who the hell are they to try and make me feel like shit for not living up to whatever standards they have? If they have ‘criteria’ then why the fuck weren’t they basing their ‘criteria’ upon actual medical facts about me rather than some moral smokescreen that allows them to play god?

I was given a sharp reality check this weekend that showed me several truths that I had neglected to foresee. The first was that this society has trained me very well to compensate and indeed, overcompensate when a man has to be inconvenienced. And the second is that we have a long, long, long way to go on many fronts.

When I walked into that clinic yesterday I was a nervous wreck. I kept half-expecting the kind woman behind the counter to begin lecturing me about what a whore I was. Of course, that didn’t happen, but it serves as a stark reminder to just what this society tells women when they’re in trouble.

You know what else is odd? The fact that I felt compelled to write in this post about my attempts at preventing pregnancy. Why I felt compelled to tell everyone that I’m a high risk candidate for pregnancy and to explain precisely why I cannot use many methods of birth control. It’s odd that I should even feel the need to qualify myself (defend myself?) by explaining my own unique circumstances.

No doubt that this experience has raised many questions that I need to look at, think about and ponder on. There are many reactions that I had that I need to look at in an attempt to understand where they came from and what I can do to get rid of them.

I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that the EC wasn’t too late at the same time that I’m cursing an institution that feels that it has a right to force pregnancy upon ANY woman, regardless of her circumstances. I’m thinking very seriously about what my own reactions to this situation can tell me about inner mindsets that I still have. Overall I have been challenged and while it has shown me a few things that worry me (Why am I so afraid of alienating Dubhe? Why am I so fearful of being alone, to the point that I revert to this fear when placed in a situation out of my control?) I think that this experience can also serve as a stunning reminder of exactly where we are in terms of women’s reproductive rights. As well as shining a harsh light onto training that I have absorbed so deeply despite my best efforts to erase it.

My reactions and thoughts throughout this experience have lifted a curtain into my own fears. The knowledge that I went out of my way to take on blame and save a man from inconvenience (even though he didn’t wish to be saved) tells me some things about myself that disturb me. The fact that this sort of treatment is still given to women who find themselves in this position is a stunning reminder of just how dangerously close we are to losing any say so we have in how our bodies are used.

Even though Plan B has been authorized for over the counter sales we still see the soldiers of the patriarchy trying to keep a foothold on that control as long as they possibly can. Would anyone question the food you ate before you bought an over the counter antacid? Would anyone force you to meet their ‘criteria’ before you asked for that bottle of Tums?

 

EC has been approved for sale over the counter and women are still jumping through hoops to get it, the tenacity with which these control freaks are still attempting to maintain their toehold on what happens in my uterus is disgusting. The ingrained response that I found myself having in this situation boggles my mind and lifts the veil on just how much fucking work we have to do before we’re all safe. When we look at these events against a backdrop of rape and brutality that women suffer with everyday it adds an even deeper level to the events I experienced over the weekend.

It appears that men as a collective will not be happy until each and every living being is beneath their boot of control. Combined with the articles here and here (two tiny little posts that I’ve been thinking about in a sea of violent news) we start seeing a bigger picture. When I take a look at my experiences this weekend with a system which seeks only to place as much control on me as it can and combine it with a generalized system that does the same the picture comes clearly into focus.

There is so much work to be done and so many fronts on this war. We look at the news about war, global warming, feminism, racism, and we see a common thread. That thread is that the collective that calls itself ‘mankind’ (and I will take them literally to the word on this one. They want ‘mankind’ they got it…I’m speaking exclusively to the collective of men with my usage of this word) is unhappy unless they are in control of everything. Control, violence and fear are the patterns that they have stuck to for so many thousands of years. Too few of them step forward to mark themselves as ‘different’. Too many of them wish to sit on the fence, being sympathetic to the issues that the collective mankind have caused and yet refusing to stand up and fight against the systems which allow them such power.

The threads of destruction, violence and domination over all life follow mankind through all of his bloody history and every day countless people are touched by it. Some more subtly, like my quest for EC this weekend, and some more violently like the wife of the dentist who was charged with murdering his wife. Some of mankinds victims are subtly affected while others are more outwardly affected but all of them are victims of the seemingly collective desire for control, power, and destruction that appears to run through the collective beating heart of mankind.

As for me. Well, I have some thinking to do. This experience has brought many of my own ideas and inner fears to light from my reactions to my thought processes to the reactions of the institutions around me. Lots of food for thought and, over the course of the next few weeks, I hope to post on some of the things I have learned and what they’ve taught me.

~BB

Who’d have guessed…

 

That my pissed off ranty post over the trouble I had trying to get Emergency Contraception when a condom broke would invoke so much interest. I am utterly and completely stunned at the outpouring of support that has been given to me.

So, I’ve been doing a little of this and a little of that the last few hours and I popped back in to un-mod some comments and damn, was I ever surprised at what I found. Apparently my article was also linked by Boing Boing and I sat looking at the tons of comments that had appeared over the course of the last few hours with a look of stunned gratitude on my face.

Now, that’s not to say that before this time I wasn’t surprised. I had quite a few emails over this whole thing all of them were supportive and kind, I also got an email from a very nice woman at NARAL who wanted some information about the hospitals and doctors that denied me. She also sent me a link to a very informative site about a study that had been done in my state. Apparently only 2 hospitals in my entire STATE will give EC to any woman who needs it and 24% of the hospitals won’t even give it out to women who have been raped.

Anyway, almost every comment on that thread has been kind, thoughtful and supportive and to all of those people I say Thank you. Thank you for the support you have so freely given. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that so many have left such wonderful, kind and supportive comments.

However (isn’t there always a ‘however’ or a ‘but’?) not everyone has been supportive, with my powers of moderation I have largely kept the few comments that have been nasty and spiteful from getting through into the general comments. I deleted one or two at the beginning of this because I already felt like shit after what I had to go through to get the pills to begin with. However, I have kept the most recent ones and while I don’t usually post trollish comments I have decided to do so here because all of these comments will illustrate something much better than I ever could.

So now, without further ado, the Hall of Shame….or rather, those people to whom I give a great big happy “Fuck off” to.

Now before I start I want to remind everyone that this is not an abortion we’re talking about here. Rather these responses are directed at a woman who already has three children and who is barely scraping by as it is. These comments are directed to a woman who used responsible methods and who, if she were actually pregnant, would be in a high-risk group. These are responses NOT to an abortion, but rather to a simple medication that is nothing more than a large dose of oral contraception. EC is NOT an ‘abortion pill’ and there’s still a chance that it didn’t work and I will have to take alternative choices to keep my family from losing our home and living in the streets.

My family and I are balancing on the edge of a knife as it pertains to finances. The fucked up leadership that this country is currently under has forced many people who were barely hanging on as it is into utter financial ruin. I’m clawing for a foothold right now as I slip dangerously close to financial ruin myself another child would not only make us unable to pay for our heat, groceries and the like but also my mortgage.

So, without further ado I give you the Parade of Shame. I’m going to go ahead and mark them by stating #1, #2 and so forth. Mostly because I can’t help but take a stab at some of the stuff they’re saying.

#1. My thoughts, after reading your post, led me to question why you haven’t been more proactive; why aren’t you on birth control pills or an IUD if you don’t want to get pregnant? This way you sort of avoid the morality issue by preventing a pregnancy, rather than possibly aborting one. If it ain’t a baby, then you ain’t pregnant, know what I mean?

To be perfectly honest you don’t have a right to know what’s going on with my contraception. However, because I posted it elsewhere on my blog I will go ahead and tell you.

I am one of those who cannot take birth control. Through my entire reproductive life I have been switched from one form of BC to another. My system utterly rejects it and, after a few months after starting a different pill, I begin to bleed. The bleeding steadily becomes heavier until I am bleeding non-stop. If I don’t cease hormonal contraception at that point my iron begins to drop (I’m also anemic and too much bleeding brings me big problems).

Therefore, the last prescription I had was perhaps the last one there was to give me. The pills were a lose hormone and after several months I could no longer tolerate them either.

IUD’s cost money. I have no health insurance, plus I have had most of my cervix removed and the cervical cap and other barrier methods will have little or no effectiveness on me (or so I’ve been told by my doctor). Therefore we use condoms as a means of birth control. Not that it’s any of your business and, had you actually read my site you would have already known this.

While you think rape is a horrific crime, (which of course it is) I question the thought process that does not think abortion is a horrific crime as well.

Because a fetus is not a full-fledged human being with a life and responsibilities. Unlike you I do not believe that there is even a soul in a fetus until much later in a pregnancy.

Preventing pregnancy relieves you of the consequences you will suffer, possibly for the rest of your life, if you have an abortion. That’s the problem with places like Planned Parenthood – they don’t tell you that part. Believe me, I know – from the point of view of a teenage Mom, and from counseling teenage Moms and those who are considering abortion.

I assure you that if this EC failed and I AM pregnant that I will desire an abortion like an animal in a leg trap desires to chew off its own leg. See, the problem with your morality is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that the 3 existing children I have are my top priority and another child will ruin their lives as well.

——No offense intended, just trying to pass along some common sense. ——

We cannot continue to just go around having sex, creating babies, and then discarding them like a tampon. You’re not the only one who matters in this world of ours, and by not caring about others, you yourself are the one who ends up suffering.
Good Luck.

Ummm, actually yes I can. If you want to be technical about it I can indeed run around creating babies and discarding them like tampons. And when you say that I’m not the only one that matters, I wonder if you think that my three children matter? All of my sons were aware of what was happening and every damned one of them agreed that they’d rather be able to keep our house that we’ve worked so hard for than to be out on the street with a kid.

Do you want to deprive my kids of a home? Wow, so much for caring about kids eh?

#2. I have to say it’s encouraging that Ohio doctors have the moral backbone to stand for what they believe in (not prescribing Plan B).

Yes because forcing mothers onto welfare and into the streets with existing children is soooooo moral. Fuck off shithead.

It’s also ironic that you sarcastically commented that “I found that the more hospitals and clinics and doctors I called the more ashamed I became.” It is harsh to just come out and say it, but you aren’t married, and it is natural to be ashamed when you are sleeping around outside of marriage (even if it’s with someone you’ve been with for a long time). Because it is wrong, you are ashamed. That’s pretty simple.

Oh wow, and here I thought it was just the wingnut assholes at the hospitals who kept treating me like a slut that bothered me.

Come to think of it who the hell do my horses think they are engaging in sexual intercourse without being married! I bet they feel like complete hell about themselves for not being moral because, you know, the urge to get married is a genetic urge that we’re just born with. Shame on them! Shame, shame, shame!

It really does boil down to a previous post – if you don’t want more kids, and you want the freedom to sleep around and not be ashamed when it ends up like this, get your tubes tied! It’s not rocket science, but it would help you avoid running into situations where you are forced to explain your immoral lifestyle.

Sorry, I have no desire to undergo female castration, I’ve seen the shit other women have gone through and I’m not stepping up to that plate. Not to mention the lack of insurance is a bit of a brick wall, but of course I suspect that idea never crossed your mind did it?

#3 I have no pity for you, you disgusting, filthy whore.

Ahhh, so now we see what they really think eh? Apparently I’m a ‘whore’ and that’s a good enough reason to force me to carry a child. It appears that these guys are only concerned with the fact that I had sex, that’s the only thing I need to have done to qualify for “disgusting, filthy whore”.

#4 “I was feeling ashamed at being such an unworthy dirty whore.” If it quacks like a duck, and fucks like a duck…

And yet another upstanding citizen who most likely reads the bible with that mouth. And yet again, the only thing I had to do to qualify for this treatment was have sex. I wonder what I would have been had I not even bothered to use a condom? *grin*

This next one is from a self-proclaimed doctor, he actually posted twice and both of them are really indicative of his mindset

#5 It is not malpractice NOT to treat someone. If you refuse to see the patient, there is no malpractice. Malpractice only exists if there is an established doctor-patient relationship. That’s why those doctors didn’t want to talk to bitingbeaver directly. If they initiate a relationship, they’re liable. If not, they’re not.

Ok, I’m with him so far…guess you learn something new everyday huh? But this next line is where he screws up

You’d never win such a frivolous lawsuit, anyway.

Because of course it’s frivolous to want to make my own choices on something like pregnancy. Geesh, shouldn’t I have figured out by now that I’m just a baby making machine? It’s so frivolous to concern yourself with something like keeping a roof over my existing children’s heads. It’s very frivolous to actually think about whether or not you can raise another child for 18 years. What a frivolous thing to think about!

And here’s the good doctors second post!

I am a physician. I agree that you shouldn’t have been treated like that. However, it is not a physician’s “duty” to prescribe EC. That’s what planned parenthood is for. Donate $$ to planned parenthood so they can stay open on weekends. The ERs are already overcrowded with traumas and major emergencies, especially on weekends, so it’s not appropriate to seek EC at an ER. Remember, healthcare is not an entitlement, its a privilege.

Ahhh, I see. How about this then? The next time someone comes to the ER with a gunshot wound how about you refuse to treat them? No? Well why not? Geesh, if it’s a privilege then you should be asking the victim all sorts of questions, you know, see if he’s moral enough to be treated by you. Oh…I see, I guess that’s just different right?

#6 Oh, BB, I’m SO sorry the consequences of sleeping around have caught up with you! Maybe if you saved all the money you spend on booze and cigarettes you could afford to get your boyfriend an operation to prevent this!

Nah, I don’t smoke or drink enough to save that kind of money *biggrin*. Not to mention, the last time I checked it wasn’t illegal to smoke or to drink.

Oh and by the way, has anyone noticed the lack of talk about ‘babies’ in these comments? Most of them seem to just be pissed that I have sex. Gotta love fundies!

#7 Erm, calling a child a parasite is going a tad too far dont you think? I understand your position, but dont blame the child if you become pregnant

No, I do not think it’s going too far. If the EC didn’t work then there is no ‘child’ here, just a bunch of cells that could one day be a child. As for the ‘parasite’ thing? Well, let’s see, parasites live off the life of another without giving anything in return….yep, sounds like a fetus to me!

Not to mention my religion dictates that a child isn’t ensouled until after birth *wickedgrin*. I demand religious respect here!

Here’s the thing folks. If I’ve said something to offend you then too bad. I spent an entire weekend looking for someone to get me a medication that I needed to prevent a pregnancy. Hours of listening to doctors play god and tell me what I can and can’t do with my fucking uterus before I finally had to take a 3 hour round trip drive to a clinic that would dispense me the medication I needed to literally keep myself and my children with a roof over their heads.

 

If you think that anything I have said is offensive then shut the hell up because I for one think it’s offensive as hell that these so called pro-lifers clearly didn’t give a shit about the 3 existing lives that I already take care of and who I was trying to protect.

I also find it offensive that because I had consensual sex within the confines of a monogamous relationship with a partner of 3 years and I am still accused of ’sleeping around’. Furthermore you sanctimonious godbags one reason I’m NOT married is because my abusive as fuck x husband has refused to grant me a divorce for years after I pissed him off by kicking him out when he beat my kids. But I guess that doesn’t fucking matter does it you sick fucks?

I also find it offensive that you assume that I believe that a fetus is a ‘baby’. Keep your Christian god out of my frigging womb. I happen to follow an entirely different religion that has no such ridiculous ideas ensconsed in it.

Furthermore, I find it offensive that even IF I met each and every one of your pre-existing ideas of who I am that it would even matter. I don’t care if a woman sleeps with 1000 partners while unmarried without using any form of birth control. The fact that you all seem to believe that your morality belongs in HER womb is fucking sick.

So take your garbage elsewhere because I will have none of it.

~BB

I love a parade!

It appears that the fuss is beginning to die down a bit and I’m happy to say that with about 360 comments thus far on the EC thread and around 50,000 hits yesterday on sitemeter only a comparitive handful of comments have been negative. I modded almost all of the negative comments out but, as per usual, I saved them in a file. 

I thought about letting the comments stay in the actual thread, but to be perfectly honest I figured that most folks aren’t going to read 360 comments and these gems make the pro-choice stance better than anything I could say. It would have been a shame to let them get lost in the shuffle when there’s a valuable lesson to be learned with them.

There’s too many of them for me to personally respond to them but I thought I’d give you a taste of the hatred that pro-birthers actually have of women. All of the comments are the original and none of them have been altered in any way. So, with that I’ll let the forced birthers show everyone, in their own words, why they’re all a bunch of sick fucks.

Here’s the parade of forced birthers.

joe: dirty whores like you are sickening.. deal with responsibility you abortion whore.

DAVID!!! :SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT!!!! YOU LIBS JUST DON”T GET IT DO YOU!!!! JESUS WILL BE BACK ANY DAY NOW AND THEN YOU’LL ALL BE CRUISIN FOR A BRUISIN!!!!

Anonymous: Insensitive bastard WHORE!

kamakazibuttsecks: LOL!!!!!!!!

Amanda: Get your “boyfriend” to get a vasectomy. Or get your tubes tied. Problem solved.

bandit: ‘The fucked up leadership that this country is currently under has forced many people who were barely hanging on as it is into utter financial ruin.’
Right….it’s all somebody elses fault. Loser.

Michael: Logic would indicate that if you didn’t want to get pregant you shouldn’t have been screwing. You have a CHOICE not to get fucked, right? You’re sound as if you were rapped. Sex doesn’t happen on accident. You have no self control and now you have to have an abortion or a fourth child. Dumbass.

Conservative: Haha you whore! Ashamed is how you should feel.

firf jiggler: Well congradulations are in order here. Maybe if you are prego ,you will have a smart child who will grow up to be president and will change all those horrible laws that don’t allow you to kill babies.

john: You had me on your side until you described a baby as a parasite, and not knowing whether or not you are pregnant, you decided to suck down a shit load of alcohol and smoke cigarettes. It is the last paragraphs that make most people think less of you, not the sex part. And like most women like you, you want to put the responsibility of pregnancy on everyone else, but it wasn’t the doctors who made you have sex, you CHOSE to. You always have the freedom to chose, are you woman enough to accept the responsibility of YOUR choices???

aj: The Taliban would have had you stoned to death, and then let the guy go, because they had no proof that he was involved. With three children, wouldn’t be easier to get your tubes tied, rather then go through this every time the condom breaks? Now that you know what the attitude of the medical people around you is, do you plan on taking responsibility for your own actions, before it happens again? Like stocking up, as was suggested above. Or is it easier to blame others for your mistakes?

dragoon: wow most of you are horrible people. Should not have sex outside of marriage it’s your fault all this happened. Abrotion is evil and I can’t believe that you called a baby a parasite. No doubt that you are going to hell. Jesus taught not to kill. FUCK YOU!

cypher: I’m really sorry about your predicament. However, that said, I really don’t understand everyone’s position here. It is really disturbing to me to hear a living, growing, developing fetus called a “parasite”–especially since you’ve already got kids of your own.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I am “pro-choice”. I just believe that the choice comes when you decide to have sex–don’t do it if you’re not willing to accept a pregnancy. Condoms do break–the answer to that is not to get rid of the child. Contrary to what you believe, that child is *human* and without intervention will develop into a child. A living, breathing child. It’s just shameful the way people nowadays consider aborting a baby is no worse than popping a zit.

Oh, and for those of you that haven’t seen an abortion, you really should. I’ve been there for a friend of mine. Imagine seeing a glass jar fill up with a bloody fluid knowing that just moments before, that fetus was alive and developing. Had hands, feet, a heart.

America should be ashamed.

Jason: Too all you idiots blathering on here, here’s the opinion of an ACTUAL LAWYER: You’re a little slutty whore who couldn’t even own up enough to actually go see see a doctor. Thus, not seeing a doctor, means nothing ever happened. No discrimination or whatever other nonsense you feminazis wanna throw out. Had you actually gone to a doctor, they’re perfectly fine in denying you an Rx all the same. I can go to my doctor and say I need lots of crystal meth, it doesn’t mean he’ll write me an Rx for, because in reality I just want it.

It’s the difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’. Sorry you got screwed, in more ways than one.

Anonymous:
I wish that you were aborted. Get bent!

Jason: Admit to yourself you were a slutty whore, and break into a pharmacy.

hebdey1015: you are a dirty, dirty whore; aren’t you? WHORE! How much for head, biatch?

dumb bitch: What an obviously fabricated story, stupid bitch. Yes, it is George Bush’s fault you are a slut and can’t kill your baby, that’s right, ok… You obviously made this shit up anyway, what a dump loser, obviously a fat ugly chick who can’t get any so has to make up bullshit about “condoms breaking” as though you ever actually get fucked, bitch. hahahahaha

anon: There’s a really simple solution. If you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t have sex. It’s that easy. The whole (biological) point of having sex is something called re-pro-duc-tion. They go hand in hand. Suck it up and act like a responsible adult, and the next time you have any sort of sexual intercourse, have the maturity to understand what you’re doing.

dann: whaaa whaa whaaa i’ve been forced to live up to the responsibility of my actions! whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa i want to have sex without reprecussions! whaaaaaaaa
solution: people have sex, babies happen. live up to the responsability. girls, you play you pay. guys, grow some freakin’ balls and take care of your share.

mark: if the condom broke he must’ve felt it…i reckon he must’ve known it broke but liked the feeling of your slippery vagina too much. sex definitely feels better without a condom – just ask this “dubh” guy (what the hell sort of name is that anyway?)

Ausblog: I am a pro-lifer who has no religious convictions at all . I didn’t need the fear of god or anything else to come to my decision, just a good sence of what is right and wrong.

You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?

You would not exist, if you have children they would not exist, and your (husband or wife) would be married to someone else. You would have been deprived of all your experiences and memories.

In this day and age with terminations being so readily available and so many being carried out, if you make it to full term you can consider yourself lucky. Lucky you had a mother that made the choice of life for you. Don’t you think they all deserve the same basic human right, LIFE?

I’m all for contraception, prevention is certainly better than termination.
Did you know you can get an implant that is safe, 99.9% effective, and lasts for three years? Just think girls not even a show for three years, wouldn’t that be great? I think too many people rely too heavily on the last option (abortion), I think if abortions weren’t so readily available people would manage their reproductive system far better resulting in a fraction of the number of unwanted pregnancies.

World wide there are over 50 MILLION aborted pregnancies each year. In America 3,500 terminations carried out every day, that’s over 1.3 million every year, 50% of all cases claimed that birth control had been used, 48% admitted they took no precaution, and 2% had a medical reason. That’s a stagering 98% that may have been prevented had an effective birth control been used. Don’t get me wrong, I suspect the percentages in Australia would be much the same.

Just a lot of unnessessary killing.

I am convinced that in the not too distant future, people will look back at many of the practices of today with disbelief and horror.

At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existance. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.

memeandme: be responsible and quit whining on here, oh the doctors wouldnt give me a pill…booo hooo hooo. Either get your tubes tied or have your boyfriend get fixed. How damn hard is that? No but instead you choose to come on here and bitch about doctors not giving you a pill. Give me a break. And for everyone on here applauding you. They obviously arent thinking straight either, or they would tell you to get your tubes tied.

Anonymous: You should have given the ER a try, you raging slut! lol seriously, though. it sounds like you just phoned a bunch of clinics and, based on what you heard nurses trained in protocol say, decided ‘hell, ain’t no way the doctor’s filling my prescription, I’m going to sob now, humanity is doomed’.

you can negotiate. some doctors are reasonable people, even out in hicksville or wherever you live. most of them take their jobs really seriously with the hippocratic oath and shit. they don’t like mixing politics and practice. I would have asked the nurse if the doctor seems like the religiously conservative type.

Better yet, I would have called back your doctor, told her about the bullshit they’re giving you at the ER with copayment, dumb irrelevant questions, and everything, and ask why she’s sending you there. it’s her job and duty to care for you. if you don’t like her answer, then kindly inform her you’ll be switching doctors for her failure to care for you in this serious situation properly, ask the sympathetic nurses to refer you to a better doctor, and get that prescription.
damn

Anonymous: Doctors take an oath to save lives. In recent years it’s become hard for them to distinguish when life begins and whether or not EC violates their oath.
It’s unfortunate there isn’t a more diverse opinion among the doctors in your area but this isn’t a case of “the man keeping you down”.

The idea you would be so desperate to OD on BC is apalling. Do you understand the success rate of using BC as EC? The risk it poses to a potential life?
And what if that hypothetical baby was born? Not only would you have a kid you didn’t want but that child would probably have needs exceeding that of a normal healthy baby.

Or would you just try to pawn it off on another family?

You’re concern wasn’t a medical emergency. Pregnancy doesn’t quite rate with a heart attack. Sorry if a child doesn’t quite fit into your life plan at the moment
This isn’t a morality concern but one of ethics, there is a difference. Get off it and take responsibility for the possible outcome of sex.

You can respond if it makes ya feel better, but I won’t be back to read it.

Anonymous: Some hambeast managed to trick a lonely schmoe into fucking her, and his gunny-sack breaks. So she piles her jellyrolls into her clown car and zips around town looking for cunt pills. Of course because she lives in bumfuck Hickston and it’s infested with Christians who have no sympathy for her unmarried, child-spewing misandry, THEY WON’T SELL HER THE CUNT PILLS. For once, the retarded churchies do something right.

What I can’t wrap my head around is that some guy willingly stuck his cock into a chick who runs a blong named “The Biting Beaver”, with a graphics of a female beaver chomping a cock in half. What’s worse, the subtitle reads “Exposing the Heart of Patriarchy and Destroying It”.

WHO WOULD FUCK THIS GIRL!?

Anonymous: PWNED!! Here’s an idea, don’t be such a whore! Then, you won’t have to force poor emergency room doctors who didn’t sign up to be abortionists act like Planned Parenthood.
Idiot.

Anonymous: lol go 2 hell lol

White Male: Hey BB, you dirty whore. GET MARRIED YOU FUCKING SLUT. Have a nice day.

Bob: Reference this sentence “Oh and if I end up having to get an abortion I’ll ask if I can keep the little parasite”

Nice. I bet you’re a great mom with an attitude like that towards children. “Come, little parasites, time for dinner! Let’s all have a pre-meal discussion about how you ruined mommy’ life!”

Anonymous: I don’t understand. There was a condom involved, which implies the presence of a penis. What sort of man would fuck a feminist?

That’s all of them for the moment. I think they make the pro-choice case better than I can do myself. I did notice something that stood out as I was marking these comments down, so, being the curious mind I was I began writing down the names that people chose to use when commenting.

Now, there are a total of 32 comments. Here’s a breakdown on something I thought may be interesting.

Number of decidedly male names – 12

Number of decidedly female names – 1

Number of anonymous posters – 9

Number of ambiguous (i.e. ‘bandit’, ‘conservative’, ‘white male’ etc.) – 10

Note that there was only one person who retained a female name. Twelve commenters used decidedly male names like ‘Mark’ or ‘Jason’.

Now, it’s clear that this is but a tiny little sample on a random blog that, in the big scheme of things, is pretty damned small. You can take these numbers as you want and I won’t extrapolate a meaning to them outside of ‘hmmmm’. In any case, what IS striking is that during all of this Dubhe became completely invisible.

 

Indeed, he thought about posting something last night in regards to this phenomenon but note how none of these raging lunatics said things like, “That fucking whore, why the fuck did he let his dick out of his pants?” or, “You know that whore that fucked you should have been more careful!” Afterall, the condom was on his dick when the accident occured, so it’s odd that there are so many who wish to call me a ‘dirty whore’ when it’s apparent that Dubhe and the role he played in this, is utterly, completely forgotten.

Funny how he became the invisible man in all this eh?

Oh, I’d also like to note that I actually received several death threats via email through this entire ordeal. Not to mention the ‘advice’ I received via email that was written to sound like real advice but, upon further inspection the herbal ‘cures’ that he recommended taking were lethal. So, not only were there deaththreats but I received at least two emails that were disguised as ‘helpful’ which listed deadly herbs for ingestion. But yeah, the forced birthers have a hard on for life eh? So much for that idea. Apparently I deserve to be, in effect, murdered because I used contraception.

The reason I mention that is because I want to warn women out there. If you ask for advice on matters like this and someone sends you something then please, please, please check out the voracity of the claims. Be safe my friends because some of these guys really want you dead for wishing to control your uterus.

Also, there was another interesting comment that I meant to attend to but it has become lost in the shuffle. It was from someone who brought up a very good point which, during the process of defending myself, living my life and so forth, I neglected to mention.

This commenter mentioned that this planet is already so overpopulated with humans that we’re destroying everything and they noted the absence of this reason in my posts. I want everyone to know that this is yet ANOTHER reason that having a kid is out of the question. This planet is suffering the plague of humanity and this push for reproduction is going to overwhelm this world entirely at some point. I’ve contributed to this problem three times and while I very much love my children I have also decided that I will not be bringing another person into this already stressed global ecosystem.

Also, I wanted to note that in the flurry of comments I think I let through a few comments in other threads that I wouldn’t normally approve. I got overwhelmed and a few times I just glanced at the comments and approved them without actually reading them.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that some people wrote to me telling me to publish proof of this fiasco. They wanted names of hospitals and so forth. Now, I have actually sent these names to NARAL but I will not, I repeat, will NOT publish the names of the hospitals on this blog. Anyone who has spent any time reading what I write understands that I’m not a well known and loved celebrity. Indeed, my religious beliefs alone have gained me a stalker and I have 3-4 people who would just LOVE the opportunity to find out where I am.

The simple fact of the matter is that with these sorts of vitriolic comments coupled with the normal run of the mill cyber stalkers I have I would never, in a zillion years, publish something that someone could use to find me with. So no, I will not give you more information although, for what it’s worth, I have informed a few local people and will most likely be getting names out locally. I guess it’s just up to you to believe this story or not because I will not be putting any information out here, on this blog, that could be used to track me down.

Despite the fact that some people apparently believe otherwise I am quite happy and I have three children whom I love and adore. I’ll be damned if I’ll jeopardize any of that just to prove to a bunch of strangers that my story is true. Of course, it seems to me that the fact that there are so many people siding with the hospitals and doctors on this one should tell you something about the possibility, indeed, the reality of situations like this.

Ahhh well, I have things to do today so I need to get away from this computer. I could end this by trying to explain (defend? justify?) myself again but you know what? I don’t owe an apology or an explanation to any of these asshats and I’ll be damned if I try to make my incident rise to the level of ‘acceptability’ amoung these people. And with that, I’m off to get some shit done today.

Have a great Saturday folks!
~BB

Awww, did you have your comment moderated?

It seems that the recent flap here at The Den over the EC fiasco sent a few folks shuffling through the archives and posting all willy nilly on my anti-porn posts. Of course, this is not unexpected since that most beloved of all patriarchal doll babies is pornography and any threat to the almighty power of porn (either real or imagined) must be taken as a personal assault. And so, our pornified friends have been popping in on random posts and spouting the exact same porn-defenses that I have repeatedly addressed in my many different posts about pornography and the dangers it poses to women and children.

Of course, each and every single one of these people believes that when they click on the ‘publish comment’ button they honestly have some enlightening piece of wisdom that I have never addressed. I call this the ‘Silver Bullet’ line of thinking. All of them come up with a tired old song and dance that I have dealt with ten times over but each and every single one of them believes that they have found a unique perspective on a topic which I have studied time and again. All of them are sure that they have come up with the silver bullet needed to take down this anti-porn feminist.

And so it continues. I post an article discussing, in great length, why a given argument doesn’t work. I post statistics and numbers and studies. I post government findings as well as scholarly works devoted to the subject of pornography and the damage it does to women and children. I go through my hard drive and peruse the internet looking for the newest information available to back up my claim that X excuse has been debunked 1000 times over. I wrap it up in a neat little bow and publish it.

A week later some idiot leaves a remark on a different anti-porn post giving me the exact same excuse that I debunked on another post a mere week before. And of course these folks think that they are the first ever to give me this particular excuse, they seem to believe from the pit of their indignant little guts, that they have stumbled across my ’silver bullet’. Now, when I get these people with their self-proclaimed ‘original’ theories I roll my eyes and shake my head sadly. Their comments put me in the unenviable position of either:

1. Letting them get through moderation where theirs will be the very last comment on a thread that has been inactive for some time.

2. Refusing to unmoderate the comment and deleting it instead.

I normally decide to do #2. My reasoning is simple. I am well aware that people peruse the archives; many people stop by here on their journey through feminism. The very last thing I want them to see while they’re hunting through the archives is the half-assed comment of a twerp who couldn’t be bothered to read the gazillion other articles I have written on the topic. The last thing I want is for a budding feminist to read their tripe (which I have carefully debunked in other posts) and believe that the uniformed argument actually has merit.

Indeed, the very fact that I never addressed the comment can sometimes lead a person to believe that I couldn’t address it. And that, in and of itself, can instill doubt in the anti-porn argument for a new feminist. With this in mind I simply delete the comment whether it was a polite comment or whether it was a rude and nasty comment.

This almost invariably leads to another problem. The next day I will wake up and begin the morning process of unmoderating comments and I will, almost without exception, see this sort of thing in the moderation queue.

Well, I see that you only approve comments that you like just to make it look like everyone agrees with you. What about free speech? Aren’t you a believer in free speech?

I can almost smell the indignation and self-congratulations coming off the comment as I smile again, roll my eyes and delete these comments as well. The funny thing is that these guys always walk away believing that they have not only been unfairly moderated but also that their flimsy argument is 100% sound. They are certain, in their small minds, that they really DID find the feminist silver bullet argument.

The truth of the matter is that I have no desire to rehash the same tired argument I just dealt with a week before. The truth is that if they can’t be bothered to read the many links on the sidebar or, at the very least, the tons of articles I’ve done on the topic then I can’t be bothered to engage in the same debate with them particularly when I’ve already debunked their argument weeks before.

So, here’s a message to all of you who feel so put out that BB didn’t post your comment. If I didn’t post your comment to a post it’s because I’ve already addressed it in another post!

See, here’s the deal. I’ve already heard your argument and defended myself against it in a post that most likely took me hours to research, cite and organize. I’ve spent hours of my time and hours looking up statistics, personal accounts, scholarly articles and so forth and I’ll be damned if I’ll go through it all again just because you’re too lazy to look it up.

In the first three months of running this blog I debunked every pro-porn argument more times than I can count and, to date, I have not found another original argument.

See, here’s the deal. I’m not going to lead you by the nose through feminism. I have no intention of arguing the exact same point that the last fly by night troll handed me a mere week ago. If you want to post a pro-porn argument on one of my old (or new!) posts then don’t even bother until you’ve checked the links to the many anti-porn sites on the right side of the page AND the archives links to old posts on the left side of the page. If you really want to argue with me about pornography at the very least you must inform yourself.

I will not debate a point that I have addressed time and time again. I don’t care how polite you believe your comment to be, if I have addressed it I won’t be posting your comment. If you have a truly original argument (very, very unlikely) then I will take a stab at it however I will warn you that I haven’t seen a ‘new’ argument in years.

Time and time again I put my effort into constructing logical posts that take hours to research and complete. As a body of work this entire blog has, at some point or another, dealt with whatever ‘unique’ and ‘bulletproof’ argument that you have posed. You are not special, or brilliant or even all that logical. So, if you have posted a comment containing an argument that you believe to be rock solid and I have not approved that comment what it means is that you are unoriginal and I have already tackled your particular argument before. Indeed, it is most likely that I have dealt with it again and again and again and I won’t be your teacher. If you wish to learn the anti-porn stance then look at the links and the archives, the material is out there. If however, you simply want to argue a point that you pulled out of your ass without checking out first then be forewarned:

I’ve heard it before and I’m not going to be your personal mentor

If you have a serious argument that I haven’t heard, one that is unique and insightful it’s likely that I will deal with it, probably in its own post. But I’m not going to publish comments which detail arguments I have had so many times I’m blue in the face and I definitely won’t be leaving your already debunked argument as the last comment on a thread that is months old.

Do the research. Clearly you know how to use google and surely you know how to click on a link. Once you have read all you can read on this site and others and you’re STILL certain that you have an argument that hasn’t been covered at great length by any of the radical bloggers or incredible feminists that I’ve linked to on the site, THEN you can post and only then will you actually have a shot at getting your comment up.

So, if you’re one of the unfortunate people that I have not let through moderation don’t assume it’s because your argument is the feminist silver bullet. It’s not. It’s just that most feminist bloggers have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with your same old-same old comment that they dealt with just last week.

I hope this clears up any confusion you may have.

~BB