amurph11

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By amurph11 • 14 years ago

Blame It On The Rapist

NOTE: this blog post is about a particular type of male-to-female sexual assault. In it, I explore why societal messages directed mostly at straight, cisgendered men and women are one of the most effective tools for promoting this kind of assault. By it’s nature then, this is a pretty heteronormative post, so please treat this as full disclosure, and feel free to add your own voices and perspectives to the conversation below.

Buzzfeed recently posted a list of 7 popular songs that are “too rapey”. There are several classic choices listed – Lionel Ritchie’s stalker anthem, “Hello”, as well as the cheery-yet-undeniably-date-rapish holiday tune, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Buzzfeed is a pop culture criticism website, so it’s nice to see them unabashedly approaching the issue of rape culture, and doing it with a sense of humor. But what really stuck out to me were the comments below (I know, I know. I should stop reading comments if I want to maintain some semblance of faith in humanity, but alas, I always end up reading them anyway, like a moth to a patriarchal flame).

While many of the commenters got into the spirit of the post, offering up their own examples of disturbing pop songs celebrating various forms of rape and sexual assault, there were also some who took issue with the assertion that songs like Jamie Foxx’s “Blame It On The Alcohol” had anything wrong with it. “Girls ...

By amurph11 • 16 years ago

Yet Another Pundit Spectacularly Misunderstanding Foreign Policy, Condescending to the Secretary of State All at the Same Time

Michael Hirsch has managed to be both infuriating and incredibly ineffective in one go. It’s not that his article’s main premise is wrong – that, essentially, foreign policy in the Middle East is a mess (though speaking as someone who lived and worked in the region, that statement can be applied to almost every administration in the last sixty years). But the reasoning for how Obama’s administration should get out of its funk is at best annoying and at worst misguided. The frustration in Washington has been mounting in the last few weeks as Obama hedges his bets in Afghanistan, which has resulted in a worrying trend among pundits and op-ed journalists. Several articles have demanded ...

By amurph11 • 16 years ago

The Problem of Portraying Disabilities

An interesting disability issue came up with Abigail Breslin’s casting as Helen Keller in the upcoming Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker. Advocates such as Sharon Jones of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts have protested, pointing out that an actor from their community should have been considered. The producer of the show, David Richenthal, explains that to secure the financial backing, the show needed a recognizable star. Anything else, he said, would have been “financially irresponsible.” Still, this demonstrates some circular reasoning common in acting circles – if disabled actors are never considered for recognizable roles, how will they ever become recognizable themselves?

This brought up in interesting discussion at Jezebel, wherein Anna North talks about how ...

By amurph11 • 16 years ago

Can We Please Stop Writing Articles Speculating if Men are as Good at Housework as Women?

There was a post on Jezebel yesterday deconstructing an article by Ruth Marcus on whether or not men are as effective at housework as women are. Marcus posits that the reason for disparity in the amount of household tasks (including child-rearing) has to do with women’s high standards. “We cling to our multitasking as much as we bemoan it,” she says. She goes on to suggest that maintaining an attachment to domestic chores is comforting, in a way: “there remains an impulse to live up to the standards of our stay-at-home mothers even as we race out the door each morning.”

Now, Marcus does admit that perhaps younger women do not feel this same tug towards housework. However, I’m still ...

By amurph11 • 16 years ago

Passive-Aggressive Victim Blaming

I’m always frustrated and saddened at victim-blaming, but it’s especially disheartening to see it from a woman, on a woman’s website, by an advice columnist.

There is so much wrong with the response that she gives to the first letter writer, and most of it has been detailed in the 8 pages of comments. But what is most frustrating to me is the blatant passive-aggression of Ms. Rosenfeld’s response. She won’t come right out and say that the letter writer is lying. She just hints at it with extremely condescending phrases (“Only you can know”). It reminds me nothing so much of media coverage of rape trials (“So you were drunk, and wearing revealing clothing? Hmm.”). Regardless of whether this ...

I’m always frustrated and saddened at victim-blaming, but it’s especially disheartening to see it from a woman, on a woman’s website, by an advice columnist.

There is so much wrong with the response that she gives to ...

By amurph11 • 16 years ago

Things That Make You Want to Crawl Back Into Bed, Vol. 1

Today on a walk with my dog, I came across a sidewalk chalk drawing of two stick figures. One of them was yellow and smiling. The other one was blue with its eyes x-ed out. Above the first was written, “Mr. Fag, alive.” Above the second was written, “smooshed.” Both the writing and drawing style were obviously that of a young child, not a teenager.
Some days, you just want to crawl back into bed and snuggle with your dog, who cares not at all what race, gender, orientation, size, or age you are as long as you will scratch his ears and give him treats.

Today on a walk with my dog, I came across a sidewalk chalk drawing of two stick figures. One of them was yellow and smiling. The other one was blue with its eyes x-ed out. Above the ...

By amurph11 • 16 years ago

If They Do Serve Beer in Hell, I Hope it’s Warm

The Boston premiere of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell happened in Cambridge last night. For those of you that haven’t been following, (and I hope this applies to most of you), it is the film adaptation of a book, which was a based on a blog. The blog, in turn, is largely based around the exploits of Tucker Max (and here “exploits” is exactly the right word): getting women drunk, performing sex acts on them, and then writing about it. Many of the encounters detailed in the blog, book, and now the film, meet the legal definition of rape (this should come as no surprise). It is almost unbelievably predatory, so it should also come as no ...

The Boston premiere of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell happened in Cambridge last night. For those of you that haven’t been following, (and I hope this applies to most of you), it is the ...

By amurph11 • 16 years ago

An Open Letter to the Pill from my Uterus

Dear Yaz,
Fuck you. Just fuck you. I used to have periods that were light, cramp-free, and over in three days. Now, thanks to you, I am a clotted, bleeding mess for a week at a time, only comfortable when my body is contorted as tightly as possible into the cannonball position. Your advertisements claim to make periods better, and you have actually somehow made mine worse. Which is ironic, actually, because it’s not even a real period, it’s your nasty and unnecessary interpretation of it. You cavort around in the disguise of a “natural period”, wreaking havoc to my uterine walls, when everyone knows all you are is just withdrawal bleeding. You disgust me.
What’s more, you’ve turned the ...

Dear Yaz,
Fuck you. Just fuck you. I used to have periods that were light, cramp-free, and over in three days. Now, thanks to you, I am a clotted, bleeding mess for a week at a time, ...