FYI Congressman West: us feminists have no interest in neutering your gender.

Sometimes I hear politicians say things, and I wonder how anyone can actually believe the shit that comes out of their mouths. I realize this video is from April, but I just saw it for the first time last weekend at the NOW National Conference and I had to respond.

In this video, Congressmen Allen West (R-FL) urges his female supporters to come together to tell the “Planned Parenthood Women” and “Code Pink Women who have been neutering American men”, that the Women for West are “not going to have their men become subservient”. He tells them that if they don’t come together to stop the Liberal Women that the “debt will continue to grow”. I swear I’m not making this up, have a look for yourself:

 

 

First, he makes these wild accusations, bashing “liberal women” for neutering men then turns right back around and calls on “his” women to “lock shields and come together to strengthen the men that will go in to the fight” for them. Wow – great game strategy Mr. West – what a way to enabling that “mean girl” mentality and pit women against other women.

And what is this 1910? Why are us women supposed to just sit around in our “Women for West” t-shirts, strengthening up the men so they can “go in to the fight” for us? Frankly, I don’t want you anywhere near my fight with that kind of attitude.

When I posted this link on facebook, a friend of mine, Hugo Schwyzer – an amazing feminst, women’s studies professor, and blogger (definitely check out his site) – commented this:

“How the hell do I still have my balls after all these years as a male feminist? **checks scrotum** **checks politics**”

We need more men like him in this world. He reassuringly said, “men like him are a dying breed, just taking a long time to go extinct.”

Obviously, Congressmen Allen West knows nothing about feminists and the feminist movement. The very last thing we want to do is to neuter men. I don’t want my men to be subservient, but I don’t want them to be dominant either. I want my men to stand with me – next to me – by my side as my equal.

I’ve got news for you Mr. West – real men don’t have to denigrate women in order to make themselves look better or to win elections.

Since When Are Pedophile Rape Jokes Funny?

I ref men’s league hockey games at a few of the nearby rinks. I’ve heard some pretty shitty stuff on the ice. Everything from insulting me because I’m a female official – to sexist jokes about players skills on the ice. Last night what I heard was, by far, the worst, most disturbing and disgusting thing I’ve ever heard – not just while officiating either. It pretty much takes the cake for one of the sickest comments ever.

This guy (who’s lucky that I don’t know his name and that he can only be identified by his jersey that read HPPB in bright pink letters. He told me it stood for Hot Pink Panda Bears) skates over to the bench in between plays. Behind their bench were two little girls, one maybe 6 the other about 10. The younger one was sleeping in the bleachers, wrapped up from head to toe in a blanket. I said to the guys on the bench, “Well, someone’s kids are out past their bedtime!” It was an 11:15pm game.

The guy in the HPPB jersey says, “Oh those are my kids.”

He was really young – like maybe 25 so I replied, “No they’re not – are they really?”

He says, “Yea, I have 6 kids.” I don’t believe him, and he offers to show me pictures.

Now I can tell he’s full of shit and making all this up cause him and his teammates are all starting to giggle like little boys. I jokingly said to him, “Haven’t you heard of birth control?” At this point, play was going the other direction so I had to skate away.

He waits till the next face-off and skates over to tell me this story. This is where it goes from funny to sick REAL fast.

He goes, “Let me tell you what happened. So, I took my 7 year old daughter to the doctor. Everything was great – the doctor said she was fine. And I asked him, ‘Hey doc, do you think I can get her some birth control?’ and the doctor said ‘What?! For you daughter? She’s only 7 years old, you mean to tell me she’s already sexually active?’ and I looked at the doctor and said, ‘No way, are you kidding? She just lays there . . . just like her mother does.'”

I had absolutely NO idea what to say to him. I think what came out of my mouth was something like, “Your fucking sick. I should give you a penalty just for telling that joke.” (Which was a totally lame response, but come on I was shocked.)

He actively sought me out, half way across the ice, to come tell me a sick joke about him having sex with his 7 year old daughter. He honestly thought I would think it was funny!

I do have to give the guys on his team credit though, the ones that heard him tell it all made remarks about how they thought it was sick. A few minutes later in the game my partner called a penalty on him and as I skated by him in the box I told him it was karma for telling sick pedophile rape jokes. Then I told him he needed to change the HPPB on his jersey to HPDB for douche-bag.

I guess maybe I’m less offended by sexist or racist jokes, because we hear them so much more often. And I guess I should be just as offended by those too. But what could possibly make ANYONE think a joke about having sex with your 7 year old daughter is even the slightest bit funny. I don’t understand that.

He told that joke to the wrong feminist . . .

Her Dress is Not a Yes

I’ve been spearheading the SlutWalk Tampa coordinating the last few weeks and haven’t had too much time for blogging and writing over here, but there’s been a lot of cool stuff going on over at SlutWalkTampa.com. 

When I offered to organize the SlutWalk here, I knew it was a HUGE undertaking, but I also knew that there’d be many other women who’d want to get involved and I just had to trust that people would come out and offer to help. Over the past month or so I have received so many emails from people who want to get involved. The support has been incredible and I can only imagine it will continue to grow.

One girl in particular, Teagan, emailed me and said she was a rape survivor and that she wanted to get involved. I can’t tell you why, but for some reason I felt like I needed to ask her to get more involved. She told me she was a writer and that she’d love to help with the website. Her first post, Rape: Not a Casual Word was beautiful, powerful and inspiring. Then, I asked her if she’d be interested in doing a response to an article from Daily Mail Online, where celebrity lawyer, Nick Freeman, said, “girls who wear ‘racy’ underwear and skimpy tops made it clear they had one thing on their minds: sex.” He goes on to say about the SlutWalk movement,

“Those taking part claimed women should be able to wear whatever they like in public – including racy red underwear – without being judged and their motives questioned. But, as a red-blooded alpha male, let me state unequivocally that I believe how a woman dresses (and behaves in that dress) tells a man what’s on her mind.”

I wasn’t expecting Teagan’s response to be so incredible! She posted the video below and I love it! You can read the original post here. I love that she’s a young confident woman, with the courage to speak out and be so honest about her experience. I hope that she inspires many other women because I know she has inspired me. Keep it up Teagan!

For more about SlutWalk Tampa visit www.SlutWalkTampa.com or ‘like’ us on facebook at www.Facebook.com/SlutWalkTampa

Feminism Worth a Thousand Words

Slutwalk London - No means no by RenderDonkey on Flickr.

I couldn’t resist . . .

Saw this on a tumblr feed and I couldn’t resist posting it for everyone. I’m a huge someecards fan anyways.

If you haven’t already spent hours checking out their cards I highly recommend it! Love this!

. . . only if she swallows

Turning Women into Meat . . . Literally

I realize that this HUSTLER cover is really outdated (June 1978), but I think it’s important to talk about. This was the cover of a HUSTLER magazine form 32 years ago. Yet, I still feel like it’s relevant to how women are viewed in the gentleman’s magazines of today.

Yesterday started reading the book Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality. So far I’m loving the book! I’ll be sure to post some updates about it!

Any thoughts on this image? 

Take Back The Night: End Sexual Violence

Here is a short video I made from a collection of street interviews about rape and victim blaming. Feel free to share it and spread the word! Thanks to everyone who participated!

Take Back The Night Part I

The teal butterfly is the international symbol for rape survivors.

I spent all day Saturday at the Take Back The Night event in Tampa. It was inspiring, powerful, emotional, beautiful, and life changing. I got the chance to do some random street interviews with people that were walking around. The interviews came out amazing and I will be putting them into a short video in the very near future. The event ended with a Survivor Speak-out. It was unbelievable. I’ve never been witness to such a powerful gust of intimate emotion on such a public platform. The women and men who spoke about their stories had an amazing sense of heart and strength. They were all such beautiful people. One young girl, in particular, broke right through my wall of armor and brought me to tears. Her story landed right inside my heart. Her courage and will to fight will stay with me forever. As she was leaving the stage after she told her heart wrenching stories of being sexually abused by a former boyfriend, her dad hurried over to her and enveloped her in this hug that radiated love and support. This was a tipping point for me  – I went from tearing up to full on, lip quivering, crying.

One of my favorite parts of the event was the Clothesline Project. Throughout Hyde Park Village were clotheslines of hundreds of t-shirts. Each t-shirt was decorated by a survivor of sexual or domestic abuse. White t-shirts represented women who died because of violence. Red, pink, and orange were for survivors of rape and sexual assault. Yellow or beige represented battered women. Blue and green t-shirts were for survivors of incest and sexual abuse. Purple or lavender for women who were attacked because of sexual orientation and black shirts for women who were attacked for political reasons. Reading the messages on each shirt was incredible. Out of hundreds of shirts here are my favorites.

Video For Those With Vaginas!

In light of the pending government shutdown over the proposed Planned Parenthood budget cuts, I thought I’d post this video. It is definitely worth the watch!

“They help women . . . period!”

Thanks to TheSecondCity Network for creating it!

Nascar > Planned Parenthood

Are you serious? I'd like to hear them justify this one.

Via The Campanil. “On February 18th, the US House of Representatives voted to withdraw federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The withdraw amount in total, if it passes in the Senate, will reduce the organization’s budget by $363 million dollars.

The measure is part of a larger bill to cut government spending — strangely, among the programs which did not receive cuts that day was NASCAR, the largest sanctioning body of stock car racing in the United States. Yes, really.

A bill proposed by Minnesota Democratic Representative Betty McCollum would have stopped the Army’s annual $7 million sponsorship of NASCAR, paid for by taxpayer dollars.  However, the Republican-controlled House voted overwhelmingly against it.

Apparently health services for low-income, uninsured women is less of a basic human right than high speed car races.

The Campanil Staff feels that cuts for Planned Parenthood in conjunction with the decision to continue to federally fund NASCAR is one of many examples showing the often mixed up priorities of our country’s government.  The billions of dollars spent on the continuation of the “War on Terror” while the nation’s schools suffer enormous budget slashes comes to mind pretty quickly.”

I think I might be sick. Read the article for yourself here.