In complete and total honesty, I never meant to have a vendetta against Pandagon. Or Amanda Marcotte. In fact, I used to fucking love that blog. i would even say that for baby-feminist-college-me, she/that blog was fucking FORMATIVE. I read the shit out of that blog. I had my fucking EYES OPENED by posts on that blog, back in the day.

And you know, whatever. I was over it. I stopped visiting daily. I stopped refreshing obsessively. I was down. I was done with it. It was over. BUT EVEN SO, I CANNOT ESCAPE HER FAIL. IT IS FOLLOWING ME. ACROSS THE INTERNET. ONTO MY FAVORITE BLOGS. JESUS WEPT. SO DID I. (ACTUALLY, MY HEAD EXPLODED. SAME DIFFERENCE.)

See, apparently there is this thing called “birth rape” (I apologize for the scare quotes). This refers to rape that occurs during the birthing of ones child, usually performed by medical professionals. Apparently, this definition is controversial, because what if a medical professional decides they need to do something the the in-labor mother doesn’t want them to do, but it is OMGNECESSARY, because all medical professionals ever have the best interests of their patients at heart, doncha know?!??!!!ELEVENTY! Which, okay, I completely disagree with, but that, at least, comes from some area of brain-existence with which I am familiar.

What has BLOWN MY MIND, was the section of a post by Amanda Marcotte quoted on Tiger Beatdown: SEXIST BEATDOWN: Nation of Whoopi Goldbergs Edition.

Now, before getting into the MIND=BLOWN segment of today’s performance, I’d like to share a few things I learned about rape and childbirth from this excellent and amazing blog post (and the comments, linked blog posts, etc)!

1) “But he (the doctor) just wants what is best for the baby!! So it isn’t rape.” READ: BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN. HE DIDN’T MEAN TO HURT YOU. HE LOVES YOU, BABY. YOU MUST HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG TO MAKE HIM HURT YOU LIKE THAT.
2) “But it’s a doctor!” READ: MEN IN POSITIONS OF RESPECT AND POWER CAN’T BE RAPISTS, FYI
3) “But rape has to be sexual, and this isn’t” Ummmmmmmm… I thought it was about power? I thought we had decided that a while ago. Learn something new every day, eh?

Suffice it to say, I don’t think this was Tiger Beatdown’s finest hour. Though, at the end, I did get:

SADY: Right. Dear Pregnant Ladies: I Can’t Tell You What To Call Your Experiences, It Turns Out! But I can say that apparently the word rape is very important, which is why every single time a person uses it we have to put it past a judging committee, and otherwise act like a nation of Whoopi Goldbergs, it would seem?

So hurray for that! You can call your nonconsentual penetrative and traumatic experiences what you want!

BUT (and now we are back mostly on topic) before that, in the very first paragraph, Tiger Beatdown quoted this golden gem from Amanda Marcotte.

The problem is that actual rapists have completely different motivations than imperious doctors who inadvertently traumatize their patients by pushing them around in the birthing room. Actual rapists want to traumatize their victims—getting off on the power they have over their victims and the fear it instills in them is the whole point of raping them. (Don’t believe me? Here’s some evidence to ponder on this subject.) Doctors who push around their patients are rarely doing so out of sadism so much as contempt for the intelligence of their patients… If the social definition of rape is rooted in the trauma to the victim and not in terms of what the actual rapist did and why, we’ve lost our main tool in stopping rape from actually happening.

In the eternal eloquence of ONTD: WAT.

Like. How does a person even TYPE THOSE WORDS. WITH THEIR FINGERS. ONE AT A TIME. EACH LETTER.

Actually, come to think of it, maybe that’s it. She DIDN’T. She has acquired a brain implant that allows her to write blog posts while unconscious, and this was actually a nightmare. That is the only thing that makes that fucking paragraph (and entire blog post, for that matter) make any fucking sense whatsoever.

And, in case you guys haven’t read that post she links to (it is actually really good!) in the middle of her Paragraph Right Out of Her Nightmare, THAT IS NOT WHAT IT SAYS AT ALL. That is a blog post on two academic papers that were looking at rates of unreported rape. THERE WERE NO QUESTIONS OR CONCLUSIONS ABOUT WHY RAPISTS RAPE. The only thing that comes even REMOTELY near that is the fact that of the unincarcerated men who admitted to forcing or attempting to force sexual encounters, a vast majority of the rapes were committed by a very few men. Many of these men used drugs and raped acquaintances, because this is the kind of rape that is least likely to be reported and successfully prosecuted. So what does that tell us? Like most of humanity, rapists don’t want to go to jail. WHOA, SHOCKING NEWS IS SHOCKING, FILM AT ELEVEN!!! (Up sometimes that is not Now: Watch me froth at the mouth about Scientific Overinterpretation! Now with MORE WRONG ADDED BY NON-SCIENTISTS!)

OKAY, sorry for that GIANT DIGRESSION, BACK ON TOPIC. According to Amanda Marcotte: Rape is only rape if it was motivated by the desire to hurt the victim.

BUT WAIT. IT GETS BETTER!!!

If the social definition of rape is rooted in the trauma to the victim and not in terms of what the actual rapist did and why, we’ve lost our main tool in stopping rape from actually happening.

Ummmmmmmmmmm…

Yeah. She typed THAT.

See, I understand that in our legal system, which I have not and never will study in any academic or in-depth fashion, we devise laws that are based on three things:
1) VERIAFIABLE OBJECTIVE FACT (This thing happened)
2) HOW THE VICTIM FEELS ABOUT IT (Emotional suffering!)
3) HOW THE PERP FEELS ABOUT IT (premeditation, remorse, probably some other stuff)

The idea, as near as I can tell, is that by taking into account things besides the action itself, we can devise more just punishments for those who break the law.

But! She’s not even talking about the LEGAL definition of rape. She’s talking about the SOCIAL definition of rape. Like how you say you’ve been robbed, when legally, you’ve been burgled. And this social definition, which will be used to magically stop all the rape ever, depends on the motivations of the RAPIST?!!!!!!! I CALL SHENANIGANS.

See, here is why I’m a feminist. BECAUSE WOMEN MATTER. WE ARE IMPORTANT. So. Here is a protip. From me, to you Amanda Marcotte dear internet:

RAPE IS DEFINED BY HOW THE VICTIM FEELS ABOUT IT. IT IS RIGHT THERE IN THE DEFINITION. WE USE THE WORD NONCONSENTUAL. THAT MEANS THE VICTIM DIDN’T WANT IT. Nowhere ever has the definition of rape EVER included how the rapist feels about it.

Because, see, if it was consensual, that’s called sadism, and there are folks who like being hurt, and that’s called masochism, and there are like, clubs or something for that shit. So, you see, sadism isn’t actually a defining characteristic of rape. LACK OF CONSENT IS THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC OF RAPE.

… And you thought it was over? OH NO, THERE’S MORE.

If we want bad doctors to cut it out, we have to define what they’re doing wrong accurately. In most of these cases, they just don’t respect their patients. That’s the problem that has to be worked on—getting them to the point where they listen to and respect their patients. Approaching them like they act out of sadism is simply going to turn them off.

So, lack of respect, you say? Would you perhaps say lacking respect for the woman as an autonomous human being and instead viewing here as simply a baby incubator? A problem to be solved? Maybe even an OBJECT?

WOW, THAT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE HOW OPPRESSIVE PATRIARCHS FEEL ABOUT WOMEN!

OH WAIT.

LACK OF RESPECT FOR THE HUMANITY OF WOMEN IS A DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC OF THE PATRIARCHY.

WHICH IS WHAT CAUSES RAPE CULTURE, WHERE RAPISTS FEELINGS ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT MATTER.

WHICH IS WHAT CAUSES RAPE, WHERE RAPISTS EITHER FEEL THAT THEIR WANTS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAT THEIR VICTIMS, OR WANT TO EXERT POWER OVER THEIR VICTIMS, BECAUSE THEIR VICTIMS DON’T COUNT BECAUSE THEY AREN’T REALLY FULLY PEOPLE.

SHIT SON. SHE WENT THERE. OH YEAH SHE DID.

So basically what I am getting from all this is that rape isn’t rape if it is performed by a medical doctor in the context of childbirth, because it is motivated by the same lack of respect for the autonomy and humanity of women that motivates rape and characterized by the same (if not greater) power imbalances between rapist and victim. And (from the rest of the blog post that I did not quote here, and her comments on the post) somehow telling doctors who do not care about their patients’ humanity that they are hurting their patients will make then care about the patient and treat them like full humans, despite ages of people telling rapists that they are hurting their victims and the rapists continuing to rape. OKAY THEN.

So in conclusion, I’m actually done with Pandagon 4realz now. NO REALLY. And I’m going to learn how to scroll. SCROLL SO HARD. And maybe even use my back button. And now I’m going to go scrape the fragments of my exploded skull off the walls and see what kind of food I can scrounge up. Blind rage followed by head-explosion always makes me hungry.

The first new blog I’ve picked up is Tiger Beatdown, a collective lead by Sady Doyle. I’ve heard it mentioned before, but never checked it out until recently. I started reading during Ladypalooza, more specifically, the post about Dude Music. (The rest of the Ladypalooza posts can be found on this archive page and can I just take a moment to tell you that it drives me to despair when people refuse to make it easy on me by tagging their posts in a useful fashion ;_; ) I appreciate that there are multiple posters who all seem to have reasonable things to say (unlike some other blogs with multiple posters :p) and I like the wide range of topics covered and the hipster-ish sense of humor there. That said, I can see why the hipster-ness of it all could be a turnoff for some people. And I would also like to express my appreciation for their NPR-style support of themselves. People should be paid for doing work. And all that is why they are my new jam. I just wish they’d update more often, but then they’d maybe suck more, so I guess I’ll just have to learn patience or something.

The other blog I’ve added to my regular rotation is Fugitivus, which I will delay in linking for a moment. I feel somewhat terribly awkward for reading it and liking it so much, because Harriet very frankly discusses her abuse and rape and how she deals with the long term repercussions of them, which is often extremely distressing. The wonderful parts about her blog are how well she writes and how thoughtfully she discusses coping. I feel like after every post I read I have an entire month’s worth of ideas to chew over and digest, and I really appreciate her very personal approach to Dealing With Problems and Being Better In The Future. It isn’t just identifying a problem, but then also thinking about how to solve it. An other aspect I really appreciate about her writing is how honest she is about how hard she is on herself, and the ways she is working to be kinder to herself and others, which is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Being able to read someone else’s thoughts on the ways they are unkind to themselves and the ways they change to become kinder to themselves has really helped me thinking about how I treat myself and what I want to change. At any rate, you can find her writings at Fugitivus.net and be prepared for explicit discussion of distressing topics.

I’ve also dabbled in Fatshionista, but my engagement is somewhat uneven as I am not really the audience she is writing for, and I am okay with that. I just love that she also loves Lady Gaga and linked to this great performance of Lady Gaga singing Gershwin.

I read Pandagon.net for a feminist analysis of the world around me. This analysis is often combined with general pop culture. Today we got a post about the soccer and the World Cup which is about to go down soonish which much of the non-USA parts of the world Really Really Care About.

That’s nice, I think. Then I read the comments.

Thing that Actually Happened:
A commentator, oldfeminist, posted a list of links to feminists talking about the problematic aspects of soccer culture in general and the World Cup in particular. Namely, that like most mainstream sports endeavors, most of the people involved in high-powered soccer in general and the World Cup in particular are misogynist dicks.

Wow, you say. Since I am a reader of a moderately advanced patriarchy-blaming blog, I am not shocked by these developments.

OH BUT WAIT FOR IT.

COMMENT THAT WAS ACTUALLY POSTED: (emphasis mine)

Wow, can’t have fun without someone being humorless all over it. For a good example of how to acknowledge that this is a tremendous thing for South Africa while not forgetting the problems of the country and the corporatism of the tournament, check out some of the coverage in The Guardian. They don’t go enough in-depth but it’s a good start. Or look at the work Grassroot Soccer is doing to fight HIV and teach life skills to youth in South Africa.

Personally, I’d rather celebrate the good while acknowledging that more work needs to be done. Football needs more women to participate as fans, administrators of the game, and players, not less. But if you’d rather piss all over other women’s enjoyment, more power to you. I’m going to watch a few games outdoors in Dupont Circle tomorrow and enjoy myself while cheering heartily for England. Thanks for bringing footy to Pandagon, Amanda and Marc!

Comment #27: elena on 06/11 at 12:03 PM

LOLWUT?!?!?! Did someone with a rather female-sounding name just tell another someone who I also presume is female that they were being humorless? As in “A Humorless Feminist”? As in, one of the accusations that is constantly being thrown at feminsists? Was a feminist who was pointing out that there are some pretty ugly problems with the international soccer community being told to sit down and shut the fuck up and stop spoiling our fun by pointing out that it has very ugly problems associated with it?!?

OH YEAH, THAT JUST HAPPENED.

Thankfully, later in the comments, oldfeminist and elena seem to kiss and make up and agree that they were talking past each other. Which doesn’t really excuse Amanda’s multitude of comments defending the misogynist-dick-loving-lets-ignore-it-when-people-bring-up-stuff-we-don’t-want-to-think-about-right-now crowd, but whatever. This is me, wearing my whatever face.

And for the most delicious icing on this shit cake, I leave you with this one final gem:

The World Cup is probably the only thing the brings the world together (hope I don’t sound too idealistic). So criticizing it is kinda tacky/uncalled for/doesn’t help your cause/etc., that’s how I view it, anyway.

Comment #56: whiskeytangofoxtrot on 06/11 at 06:45 PM

Wow, its like there isn’t this other GIANT Sporting Festival that happens every two years, but instead of focusing on just one sport it showcases lots of other sports from around the world, is attended by people from around the world, and countries from all around the wold send athletes to compete. Now, if I could only remember what it was… OH THAT’S RIGHT. THE OLYMPICS. WHICH JUST HAPPENED. But maybe that’s too American-centric, what the fuck do I know.

What I do know is this: It’s also tacky to point out that your neighbor is beating his wife, that the nice upstanding pillar of your community also likes raping little girls, and that you would really appreciate it if your boss would stop looking down your shirt, staring at your tits, and ‘bumping into’ your ass. It isn’t polite to criticize things, unless you have a penis.

Fuck that with a stick.

I… was not really impressed.
To backtrack for a moment, there is a trope, most often found in half-hour sitcoms, but can be seen in many other places.  It is the Hot Wife Married to Fugly Loser Dude.  In SitcomLand, all the women are HOTT, and they always marry fugly-ass losers who can’t wipe their own ass without help.  For (hopefully) obvious reasons, I hate this trope with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

Knocked Up has exactly this trope, and I just can’t get past it.  Katherine Heigle is gorgeous.  Her character is in the entertainment business, and is in front of the camera.  She is HOTT. Not only is she hot, but she is apparently (at least) moderately intelligent and has a career on the upswing. The dude who is played by one of those frat-boy comedy actors whose name I can’t be bothered to remember is not hot.  He isn’t completely fug, but he’s definitely not even in the same league as her.  Add on to that the fact that he is a skeezy-ass loser with no income, and no ambition beyond building a completely revolting website devoted to nudity in film, I completely FAIL to buy the premise that a) she would sleep  with him once, no matter how drunk, and b) that she would continue to associate with him once the pregnancy was discovered and she found out what a loser he was.

Add that COMPLETELY IRRITATING AND ENRAGING trope to the movie’s already repugnant handling pregnancy and the issues surrounding an accidental pregnancy, and Knocked Up is definitely not going in my list of classics any time soon.

According to the remains of this extra-old entry, there were some things that I thought the movie did well (perhaps the montage where Fugly Loser Dude halfway gets his act together), but I can’t remember what they were for the life of me, so I’m going to leave it at that.

That said, the first thing I watched that way was kind of a dud.

The sad thing is, this movie has all the hallmarks of a story I could really like. Ridiculous plot? Check. Angsty misunderstanding? Check. Lies, more lies, and selfish deceit? By the metric fuckton. So, I will completely admit, I was primed to love this stupid piece of shit movie. Except then it all went to hell in a sexist hand basket. (Are we actually surprised? No, but a girl can dream.)

I actually kind of liked the first half of the movie. Ridiculousness, silly scenes, overblown conniving – exactly my cup of tea. It was how everything was tied up at the end that completely ruined it for me.

1) Hypocrisy. Okay, so yes, everyone does it. But I expect a little more from my fictional characters. She is upset because he was doing it on a bet that will determine his career trajectory? When she was doing it all for an article? When all is said and done, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones around that casually. Both of them get a giant FAIL here.

2) Him. They did a pretty good job of showing what she saw in him, but what did he see in her? The entire movie, we’re shown him time after time gritting his teeth and trying to hang on to her, all for the sake of a bet that will bolster his career. We get a little bit of what he’s feeling during the visit home, but I’m not convinced enough for it to counteract everything that has come before. So his mad dash to get her back when he thinks she really did love him didn’t do it for me. Plus, it’d be cool to see him liking something else about her besides her love of basketball and ability to use his relatives to cheat at cards.

Which brings us to the last and most egregious sin committed by this movie.

3) The Taxi Scene. This is me wearing my radical feminist hat again, but this scene completely ruined the movie for me. Instead of “Don’t go to a job interview in DC because I am here and not there”, the correct answer was for him to kiss her sweetly, wish her luck, and with a lusty look in his eye, tell her to hurry back. Later, they could discuss her applying for jobs in the city, or a long distance relationship (now that he’s making the even bigger bucks with his ‘awesome’ new add campaign, he can probably afford it), or talk of him finding a job there. None of this shutting down her career bullshit. That completely pissed me off, and ultimately makes this movie a complete FAIL.

Really? Someone thought that was a good name? I mean, they got racism, sexism, and domestic violence all in one go. I’m almost impressed.

Maybe I’m being a little hypocritical here. I am a slash fan, and I speak completely seriously of pimping music, authors, and fic to other fans. But this context is so completely unexpected and inappropriate! And unnecessary! The fandom usage of ‘pimp’ is to show other fans awesome things in a way that brings joy to everyone involved. This usage of ‘pimp’ is faux-cutesy and vomit-inducing. I’m not really seeing any use that either reverses or negates the negative connotations of the word or is subversive to the usual meaning of the word.

I realize that not all crafters identify as radical feminists, or even feminist at all, but I expected better of both Craftzine and their demographic. It’s too bad, really, because I would totally buy Tamie Snow’s adorable octopus pattern, except I cannot give money to any entity with ‘pimp’ in the name. Sorry Tamie, I’m just going to have to draw my own adorable octopus.