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Demand Kickstarter remove guide to sexual assault

By Alexandra | Published: June 19, 2013

*Trigger warning: This piece discusses sexual assault*

You know what always gets the ladies in bed? Assaulting them.

This is the guidance redditor Ken Hoinsky wants to offer to the world in his new book, Above the Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women, for which he’s already raised nearly $16,000 on Kickstarter. Apparently the “game” of which he is “above” is securing consent, and his advice is a play-by-play description of sexual assault. Casey Malone picked out some highlights:

Get CLOSE to her, damn it!

To quote Rob Judge, “Personal space is for pussies.” I already told you that the most successful seducers are those who can’t keep their hands off of women. Well you’re not gonna be able to do that if you aren’t in close!

All the greatest seducers in history could not keep their hands off of women. They aggressively escalated physically with every woman they were flirting with. They began touching them immediately, kept great body language and eye contact, and were shameless in their physicality. Even when a girl rejects your advances, she KNOWS that you desire her. That’s hot. It arouses her physically and psychologically.”

Decide that you’re going to sit in a position where you can rub her leg and back. Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances.

Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, GRAB HER HAND, and put it right on your dick.”

Hoinsky’s fundraising is set to close at 11:56am EDT today. Visit the book’s Kickstarter (major trigger warning; don’t listen to the video) to report the project and Tweet @kickstarter to demand that the company pull the page and return all promised funds to the donors. Here’s a sample Tweet you can copy and paste:

Hey @kickstarter, “Above the Game” promotes sexual assault. Take down the page NOW and refuse to fund the book http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tofutofu/above-the-game-a-guide-to-getting-awesome-with-wom?ref=home_popular

Tagged Kickstarter, rape culture, Sexual Assault, take action | 1 Comment

Nothing says “pro-life” like an assault rifle

By Alexandra | Published: June 19, 2013

Do you think a fertilized egg is a human? Are you convinced abortion is murder? Support the righteous souls defending human dignity and the preciousness of life by purchasing an assault rifle.

Personhood Ohio needs some extra cash for a mass mailing to promote (you guessed it) a personhood amendment on the Ohio ballot, but its traditional fundraising tactics aren’t up to the task. Patrick Johnston, the organization’s director, is up for the challenge. Always willing to sacrifice for innocent clumps of cells, Johnston is selling his beloved guns and ammunition to bring in some cash for the campaign.

In a recent fundraising email, Johnston justified his decision to protect fetuses rather than fulfill his duty to shoot things. RH Reality Check reports that he wrote:

I’m a firm believer that the Second Amendment protects the future of freedom, but not as much as justice for the preborn. See, if God’s against you, your guns won’t help you at all. The shedding of innocent blood will bring God’s wrath on the land – and then you can wave freedom goodbye. So protecting Ohio’s children is more important than securing your right to keep and bear arms.

From his rhetoric, you’d think we could count on Johnston for help during the next round of the post-Newtown gun control push, a legislative effort–hot in Ohio–inspired by the conviction that we should care more about (already born) kids’ lives than the joys of shooting. But Johnston isn’t actually sacrificing one freedom for another: he’s arming the historically violent anti-choice movement in the name of saving lives.

Tagged anti-choice violence, gun control, gunz, newtown, personhood, Personhood Amendment, Personhood Ohio, pro-life | Leave a comment

Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet

By Katie | Published: June 18, 2013

How immigration reform could help improve women’s economic security.

VICE ran a fashion spread based on the suicides of female authors.

In terrible news, two women sue a Texas jail for running a “rape camp.”

Comedian Patton Oswald changes his position on rape jokes. I’m glad, because he’s too smart not to acknowledge the existence of rape culture. And he’s too funny for me not to like him.

Potential break through in screening for the oral cancers caused by HPV.

To the surprise of nobody, Russia passes a law banning the adoption of Russian children by foreign LGBT parents. This is great news, since Russian orphanages are awesome, said no orphan ever.

It was just a question of when, not if, Allen West would say something like this about women being integrated into front-line combat by 2016: “I find it completely hypocritical for everyone to be up in arms about military sexual assault, but then want to cast women into high stress small unit combat elements…The objective is obvious: destroy the last bastions of American warrior culture all for the advancement of a misguided vision of fairness and equality.”

Yay! Half of NASA’s new astronauts are women.

Doctors don’t talk about contraception often enough with their teen male patients.

Tagged Allen West, HPV, patton oswald, Rape, rape culture, rape jokes, Russia | 4 Comments

Mind the gap: Latinas and unequal pay

By JulianaBrittoS | Published: June 18, 2013

On June 10, 1963, the U.S. government passed an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act making it illegal to pay women less than men for the same work.

That was 50 years ago, and women are still paid less than men at all education levels, in almost every field. On average, women make 77 cents to every dollar a man makes per hour, translating to about $11,084 per year less than a man.

These are statistics that many of us know like the back of our hand. Since the implementation of this amendment, we have progressed 18 cents towards closing the wage gap, however that progress ended a decade ago. In the past ten years, women have earned a static 23 cents less than men per hour. These numbers continue to shock us as a very real and tangible example of why we need feminism.

However, what a lot of people are not familiar with is the way in which wages are segregated along race lines as much as gender. According to this report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Latinas are paid the least of any demographic, earning an average of $521 a week. That’s 54 cents for every dollar the average white man makes, and in California the numbers get worse, with Latinas earning 43.2 cents for every white man’s dollar. That’s thousands of dollars a year.

In addition to earning less than their male counterparts, Latinas are mostly found in our country’s lowest paying jobs, often in the informal sector where they are more likely to be exploited. If they are undocumented, these women can easily lose their jobs as a result of the Obama administration’s silent ICE raids.

Now, imagine trying to feed your kids with two minimum wage jobs, yet knowing that every day that by going to work, you risk being torn away from your family?

This is why Equal Rights Advocates (ERA) threw a luncheon last week, honoring those women struggling with unfair pay, celebrating the progress we have made in the past 50 years, and laying out the work still to be done. At the luncheon some incredible presenters spoke to their experience struggling for equal pay. Among them was Saru Jaramayan of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, an organization that fights for fair pay and better working conditions for restaurant workers in the United States. Read More »

Tagged equal pay, fair pay, latina, Lilly Ledbetter, restaurants, wage, women in the workplace | Leave a comment

Quote of the Day: Masturbating Fetuses

By Katie | Published: June 18, 2013

As Congress debates imposing a 20 week ban on abortion, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) urges banning the procedure at 15 or 16 weeks. Why, you ask? Because, simply put, fetuses like to jerk off. And how could we deny them of that god-given right? Burgess, who was also an OB/GYN said:

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful… They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

There is so much to unpack here. First of all, I’m kind of impressed a Republican from Texas would publicly approve of masturbation. I mean, some of them have campaigned against the sin. I would think the fact that a fetus masturbates would turn a conservative Republican into a pro-abortion fiend! I also appreciate that he specifies that it’s the male fetuses who engage in the activity. It’s certainly not very lady like for a female fetus to do it, which is probably why Burgess has only observed the males.

You can check out the video, posted by AmericaBlog.