Security concerns?  Why might there be concerns for Lady Gaga’s security, (and the security of her crew, and the security of the concert attendees) just because someone has a problem with her or with what she’s doing, or expected to do?

Oh that’s right, it’s because men always, always back up their “concerns” with credible threats of violence.  Or rather, they cloak their threats in the rhetoric of “concern” in order invisiblize the context of constant, baseless — but for to support male power and male-centric institutions — and egregious male violence in which we all exist every day.

The “negotiation” aspect of it, where the intended target is given the opportunity to avoid negative outcomes by exercising their “agency” gives the appearance of a quid pro quo, as if the impending violence — if it occurs — will be in response to an individual occurrence devoid of context, rather than a longstanding political policy and practice of violent enforcement of patriarchal mores, whatever those mores happen to be.

And of course, both the mores and the violent enforcement of them are specifically designed to support patriarchal institutions and male power both locally and globally. Male violence, and violent enforcement of patriarchal mores is never a one-off, even though it’s always made to seem as if it is; and it’s made to seem as if it’s “regional” or cultural when in fact it’s global, and patriarchal.

Here, we see that the connection between male “concerns” and male violence is taken so completely for granted that CNN doesn’t feel the need to explain or even acknowledge the connection at all — “concerns” and “threats of violence” are used as synonyms here — so the relationship between the two is never addressed, as if violence naturally flows from emotion, politics, or religion when really there’s nothing “natural” or inevitable about it at all — in fact, it’s a decidedly male, not a human response.

CNN also conveniently ignores the obvious misogyny and the political implications of threatening specifically women with decidedly male violence, and violent patriarchal enforcement, when those women fail to conform to whatever patriarchal mores are in vogue in a particular time and place.  Of course, since patriarchal mores are somewhat inconsistent globally, all women are in danger of violent retribution all the time; here, all Lady Gaga has to do is announce her intention to travel, and suddenly it becomes very obvious that even she is subject to violent patriarchal controls (as if there was ever any doubt) where that might not have been obvious otherwise.  Of course, it was always true.  And it’s true for her in the United States too.

And the patriarchal media and their own policies and practices in reporting on men’s implicit threats of violence, and the pervasiveness and homogeny of media images and tactics employed in these instances furthers the patriarchal agenda and violent enforcement of it by normalizing and invisiblizing both.

Journalist Arthur Goldwag writes for the SPLC’s Hatewatch blog that the inclusion of the MRA movement in the most recent edition of the SPLC’s quarterly publication “The Year in Hate and Extremism” (Issue 45, Spring 2012) “provoked a tremendous response among men’s rights activists (MRAs) and their sympathizers.”

MRAs around the world apparently whined, complained and flooded the SPLC with letters demanding that the SPLC retract its statements, or alternatively, that it also investigate radical feminists as a hate group.  How either action — particularly the latter one — would prove that the MRAs were innocent, legitimate, nonviolent politickers (and didn’t hate women) was not made clear, but one is certainly left with the impression that the MRAs aren’t that smart, or alternatively, that they are well-versed in the political arts of misdirection and sleight of hand.

Or possibly both.

For his followup piece, an investigation into whether the MRAs’ accusations against radical feminists are true — specifically, that there exists a global radical feminist criminal conspiracy to commit worldwide violence against boys and men (all 3.5 billion of them) — Goldwag interviewed Baltimore lesbian activist Cathy Brennan, apparently asking her whether she personally hated men, and what she thought of Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto.

Of course, even if true, individual admissions of man-hating, and what anyone personally believes about one 40-page booklet — even if it’s positive — are not highly probative of radical feminists’ political position, or indicative of radical feminists’ political power and standing to carry out acts of global violence, including gendercide against boys and men.  (Hint: we have no such power or standing.  Because patriarchy.)

Goldwag’s investigation did reveal that some feminists “say hurtful things about men,” and that some feminists do “hate men,” but he ultimately concludes that there is no feminist conspiracy to commit any crime against men, let alone a global conspiracy to commit widespread acts of violence against males — all 3.5 billion of them — as the MRAs had reported in their letters to the SPLC.

Goldwag also noted — correctly — that while the MRAs are fantasizing about imagined or future acts of gendered violence against boys and men, there is a current, existing, real-life war being waged by men against girls and women, or what the Economist has dubbed a “Worldwide War on Baby Girls.”  Global acts of gendercide do exist, but they are perpetrated against girls and women to further patriarchal interests, not against boys and men to further women’s interests.

In the end, Goldwag correctly concludes that to characterize radical feminist dialog — even our private conversations where, presumably, the worst of the worst uncensored man-hating might be found — “as a well-developed plan, as Elam and his colleagues do, is not only ridiculous, it is willfully obtuse.”

Indeed, ridiculous and willfully obtuse would seem to be a fair representation of the MRAs claims about women and feminists, and, surely to the chagrin of the MRAs, the SPLC’s previous statements made about the Men’s Rights Movement were not retracted.

Interestingly, this investigation, such as it was, into the aims of radical feminism and various unrelated radical feminist forums doesn’t even appear to have been important — or revealing — enough of anything to warrant inclusion in the SPLC’s upcoming quarterly publication.  Instead, the article was published on the SPLC’s blog, and will presumably move further and further down the page until it disappears entirely.

Meanwhile, the MRAs have earned what they ultimately received — a prominent expose of their virulent misogyny and acts of egregious violence perpetrated in the name of their movement, permanently documented in an esteemed, real-life publication that will be around forever, which the SPLC expressly stands behind, and which has not been and will not be retracted.

And that, as they say, is that.

Apparently, Britain’s Daily Male first printed the story without bothering to perform even cursory fact-checking; regardless, the story was picked up and circulated by Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Yahoo! News, MSN, the New York Post, and The New York Daily News and Australia’s Herald Sun and New Zealand Herald among others.

Msnbc.com reports,

when msnbc.com contacted police in Wroclaw, Poland, about the supposed criminal case, a spokesman said they had no record of such an incident.

“Lower Silesia Police Department has not been notified about such an event and is not investigating such a case,” Pawel Petrykowski of the Provincial Police Headquarters in Wroclaw said in an email that was translated into English.

A legal adviser for Poland’s Chamber of Physicians and Dentists, which handles disciplinary matters, said the organization is not investigating and has never investigated any such case, and added that there is no dental practitioner named Anna Maćkowiak listed in Poland’s central register of dentists.

“No information about this kind of misconduct has been provided to the Supreme Chamber,” the legal advisor, Marek Szewczyński, said in an email. “The Supreme Chamber is also not aware of any actions of this kind being taken by the Regional Chamber of Physicians and Dentists in Wroclaw, which would be the competent authority in case of a possible professional misconduct committed by a dental practitioner from Wroclaw.”

[...]

The American Dental Association’s national spokesperson, David Johnson Jr., said the story of Maćkowiak’s revenge was highly improbable — not just as an unprecedented abuse of the doctor-patient relationship but because most dentists are equipped to administer drugs only for conscious sedation dentistry. That would mean the ex-boyfriend would know his teeth were being extracted as it was happening, rather than realizing it after he arrived home.

Why wasn’t this most cursory of fact checking and referencing performed before the story was printed?  Well, when asked that very question, the Daily Male staff writer under whose byline the story was originally written, Simon Tomlinson, said

he does not know where the story came from and distanced himself from it when questioned about its origins.  “I’ve drawn a bit of a blank,” he said in an email. “The (Daily) Mail Foreign Service, which did the piece for the paper, is really just an umbrella term for copy put together from agencies. My news desk isn’t sure where exactly it came from.”

This, after the story was shared more than 75,000 times on Facebook since it was first published on April 27, and after having spawned thousands of misogynistic comments on online news sites none of which have been removed, although most of the online news sources who reported this story have since issued retractions.  Gee, how civil of them.

Interestingly enough, the link to the original story at the Daily Male is now a dead link: they have removed the article entirely rather than print a retraction in the header and leaving the article — and comments — intact, like the other outlets did.  Comments like this from Huff Po:

Women + MAN = LOVE
Women + MAN – Love = Heartache and Pain for you Buddy , because we all know women are some unstable CREATURES .

More-so if I was the judge I would make it a condition of her parole or probation that she must have all of her teeth removed. As well as consficate (sic) ever last thing she owned to pay his multimillion lawsuit and her license removed.

The tone of this article is massively inappropriate. To imply sympathy with this kind of behavior strikes me as incredibly misandric and offensive as a man.  If a male dentist had done this you would be rightfully indignant. Have some class Huffington Post.

That last part made me laugh and laugh.  The tone of the article wasn’t sympathetic enough to the man: the fake, hypothetical man to whom this never happened wasn’t treated kindly enough by Huff Po, demonstrating misandry.  And if the sexes were reversed, the result would have been different.

Indeed, the result probably would have been different: in reality, if a male dentist had allegedly abused a woman this way, it might not have been reported at all.  What news outlet has either the space or a single crap to give to reporting on every egregious abuse, breach of professional ethics, act of sexual violence or human rights violation men perpetrate on women every day?  It never would’ve been reported at all, and would never have had the chance to be picked up and circulated globally.

Even if it were true, it never even would have been reported, let alone circulated globally.  Because there is too much male violence against women to even report.  See how that works?

And of course, if the sexes were reversed, it would have been assumed from the beginning to be a hoax.  If after being fact-checked thoroughly the story checked out and it wasn’t technically a hoax of the journalistic kind, it would’ve still been scrutinized and assumed to be a hoax of the lying-bitch kind, perpetrated by the woman herself, who would have been assumed to have been lying about all of it, including who had done that to her, under what circumstances, and why.

In reality, Huff Po — and the entire global mainstream news industry — demonstrates egregious misogyny here, not misandry, not to mention revealing for the entire world to see that its journalistic ethics are of the bankrupt kind: without demonstrating even the most basic care regarding whether this story was even true, it printed it anyway, and let the entire world believe that a woman had terribly abused a man in a way that was sure to draw the most vile woman-hatred imaginable, and condemnation of women as a sexual class.

In fact, one is left with the impression that this was the goal the entire time.  If it wasn’t “intentional-intentional,” the result — a global orgy of misogynistic woman-bashing and condemnation of women as a sexual class — was foreseeable enough that intent can and should be presumed.

This was intentional.  Which is to be expected, of course, considering that mainstream news reporting is, in actuality, the thinnest of covers for a global misogynistic pro-patriarchal propaganda machine.

If the world were a safe and sane place for women, the global news industry would never recover its credibility after this, but of course it’s not, and it will.  Because credible and male are synonyms, you see.  The global, male-centric mainstream news industry’s “credibility” was never lost and it never will be, any more than an apple can lose its appleness, or a tangerine can cease being tangerine-y.  They will recover.  But we mustn’t ever forget what we are dealing with, when it comes to the global media, and its treatment of us.

As if most of us even could.

Also reported at Radfem-ological Images.

Since a French law against sexual harassment was passed in 1992 (modeled on the US law that was pushed through by Catharine MacKinnon) the European association against sexual violence against women at work (AVFT)[1], based in Paris, has been relentlessly fighting for the past 20 years to get the law redefined because it didn’t do justice to victims and was almost useless in punishing the abusers. Cases were almost systematically dropped, the law was generally used as a way to downgrade greater crimes or offenses such as rapes or sexual assaults and the imprecision of the law allowed its application to be very restrictive, which made it difficult if not impossible to recognize most of what constituted sexual harassment in the first place (in particular verbal “propositions”, comments on body, demeaning sexualized language, non-verbal actions such as mimicking sexual acts, imposing pornographic images and physical gestures such as touching the hair, legs, waist, or imposing massages, etc.)[2]

Now, former secretary of the state and former MP, Gérard Ducray, after being condemned for sexual harassment in 2011 (in fact a sexual assault downgraded into sexual harassment by the court), unhappy about being punished for what he called “attitudes of seduction”, has appealed the decision of the court and showed up to some of his pals at the constitutional council (C.C.)[3] to demand an immediate abrogation, on the grounds that the imprecision gave way to unjustly condemning “admissible flirting”[4].  His demand was judged serious enough to be transmitted to the C.C. in February 2012.

The AVFT, which intervenes as civil party for hundreds of victims of sexual harassment every year, knows for a fact that the exact opposite is true: the law has been more helpful in protecting the harassers than the victims. Also, Marilyn Baldec, delegate for the AVFT, warned that “the immediate abrogation would result in the nullification of all procedures in course while creating a judicial void for the victims and guaranteeing total impunity for the harassers”.[5]

So, what did the constitutional council decide to do? Well, abrogate the law! The decision took force last Friday, May the 4^th.

The clique (er , C.C., aka the “sages”) who stood up like one single man to support their poor persecuted pal: not many women in there.

What a highly specialized, competent judicial European-level organization never achieved in twenty years of lobbying and in the name of thousands if not millions of women, one single man, in less than a year and after being condemned for sexual harassment – managed to abrogate the law, just because he said so. No years of lobbying, no endless demonstrations needed!

Now, although this outcome may have been predictable, you can bet that many of us feminists were furious. This meant a backlash in 20 years in terms of protection of women from male violence at work and also meant sending a grand message of impunity to all harassers and abusers of France.

This is what the news represented for some of the victims who now face an abysmal judicial void: (testimonies collected by the AVFT)[6]:

“We talk about license to kill, well – this is a real license to hunt”

“What’s sage about them apart from the title?”

“What am I going to do now, I’ve lost everything. My harasser is strutting about since this morning, I’ve just understood why, it’s horrible”

“This is revolting”

“I feel emptied; I came to France because I thought women were protected here”

“I’m not revolted, I feel sick, I’ve been fighting 5 years for nothing”.

“I think there are no words to define what this judicial void means to me, we think things evolve at least a bit but then we get a massive slap in the face with this violent backlash, long live France, I’m sorry for myself and for all women”

“This judicial void makes me feel dizzy”

“I’m ashamed of my country”

“It’s as if nothing existed, everything is nullified”

“It can’t be possible!! So then what? Are we clearly saying to men, to bosses etc, come on guys grope me it’s allowed by the law”

“I have a feeling of hate and revolt, it hurts, it’s a whole part of my life that’s going to vanish, I might as well do justice by myself, I had to put up my own business and work for myself so to avoid men, I’m shocked, I don’t know what to say anymore, it really hurts”

“I’m not well, I’m panicking; he must be having fun with his friends right now”

“I was on the verge of suicide”

“All my money has gone in this trial which will be cancelled”

“I imagined him jubilating, it was unbearable”

“It was the end of one hell and the beginning of another”

Immediately after the abrogation, the AVFT and other organizations (World March of Women, Femmes Solidaires and the National Collective for Women’s Rights (CNDF)) called for a demonstration the following day, Saturday March the 5^th in Paris at 11 am. Around 300 feminists gathered that morning. Just before the end of the demonstration though, the group was still so full of anger that they decided to march off to the nearest police station to file a complaint against the president of the constitutional council, Jean-Louis Debré, for the motive of deliberately putting victims in danger and disrupting public order. Four women representatives of the organizations went in the police office and meanwhile they could hear the others waiting outside, shouting slogans against rape at the entrance of the police station.

Here’s a video of the women coming out of the police station brandishing a copy of the complaint: it was all very moving (video in French):

A copy of the complaint can be found here.

While as a radical feminist, one can debate as to whether asking men to ‘please stop raping and please write laws so you could stop raping’ is an efficient way to bring down men’s dominance over women, collective acts of revolt that directly attack a powerful man in a powerful institution in the name of thousands of women and against men’s sexual violence are inspiring and invigorating.  It sends the hopeful message that feminism hasn’t completely been requisitioned by men and their slutified, perverse repackaging of patriarchal ideologies they relentlessly promote to women through their media.

Perhaps more importantly, and this is where radical feminism can and should be used to inform any pro-woman political platform, the use of explicit language detailing the horrors men perpetrate on women and the consequences of this to girls and women — and eschewing euphemisms and male-centric issue framing that fail to name the agent of harm — is known to create mutual knowledge, which leads to collective power to challenge dominance.

Together we can confront male power and make it fun, and using the principles of radical feminism, specifically explicit language, we might actually be successful in challenging male supremacy.

Last week, the Daily Male reported that a dentist sedated her ex-boyfriend and then pulled out every single one of his teeth, after he had unceremoniously dumped her for another woman.  The man appeared at her office in need of emergency dental surgery just days after he had broken up with her; when questioned, she admitted what she did, saying that she had been “unable to detach from her emotions” and now faces jail time as well as professional sanctions from her licensing board.

The man explains,

I knew something was wrong because when I woke up I couldn’t feel any teeth and my jaw was strapped up with bandages.  She told me my mouth was numb and I wouldn’t be able to feel anything for a while and that the bandage was there to protect the gums, but that I would need to see a specialist.

[...]

But when I got home I looked in the mirror and couldn’t f****** believe it. The b**** had emptied my mouth.

Did I say “reports”?  Sorry, I meant acts as a stenographer for the gum-flapping of a sexologist and a “futurist with an interest in tourism” who recently co-authored a paper entitled “Robots, Men and Sex Tourism” for the current issue of Futures.  In that paper, the authors

envision a future where robotic prostitutes are the solution to the sex industry’s most glaring problems, such as human trafficking, human degradation and the spread of sexually transmitted infections.

They literally envision it, and make us envision it too, by presenting a vivid scenario of Amsterdam’s red-light district in a futuristic, post-sex-robot sci-fi/porn fantasy circa 2050, “playing off the Yab-Yum, once one of Amsterdam’s most exclusive brothels before its closure in 2008″:

The Yub-Yum is Amsterdam’s top sex club for business travelers located beside a 17th century canal house on the Singel. It is modern and gleaming with about 100 scantily clad blondes and brunettes parading around in exotic G-strings and lingerie. Entry costs $10,000 for an all inclusive service. The club offers a full range of sexual services from massages, lap dancing and intercourse in plush surroundings. The Yub-Yum is a unique bordello licensed by the city council, staffed not by humans but by androids. This situation came about due to an increase in human trafficking in the sex industry in the 2040s which was becoming unsustainable, combined with an increase in incurable STI’s in the city especially HIV which over the last decade has mutated and is resistant to many vaccines and preventive medicines. Amsterdam’s tourist industry is built on an image of sex and drugs. The council was worried that if the red light district were to close, it would have a detrimental effect on the city’s brand and tourism industry, as it seemed unimaginable for the city not to have a sex industry. Sex tourism is a key driver for stag parties and the convention industry.

The Yub-Yum offers a range of sexual gods and goddesses of different ethnicities, body shapes, ages, languages and sexual features. The club is often rated highly by punters on www.punternet.com and for the fifth year in a row, in 2049 was voted the world’s best massage parlor by the UN World Tourism Organization. The club has won numerous technology and innovation awards including the prestigious ISO iRobotSEX award. The most popular model is Irina, a tall, blonde, Russian exotic species who is popular with Middle Eastern businessmen. The tourists who use the services of Yub-Yum are guaranteed a wonderful and thrilling experience, as all the androids are programmed to perform every service and satisfy every desire.

All androids are made of bacteria resistant fiber and are flushed for human fluids, therefore guaranteeing no Sexual Transmitted Disease’s are transferred between consumers. The impact of Yub-Yum club and similar establishments in Amsterdam has transformed the sex industry alleviating all health and human trafficking problems. The only social issues surrounding the club is the resistance from human sex workers who say they can’t compete on price and quality, therefore forcing many of them to close their shop windows. All in all, the regeneration of Amsterdam’s sex industry has been about the success of the new breed of sex worker. Even clients feel guilt free as they actually haven’t had sex with a real person and therefore don’t have to lie to their partner.

It’s difficult to digest all this depravity in one sitting, but one is left wondering about the details: how is this supposed to “transform[] the sex industry alleviating all health and human trafficking problems”?  Some specificity would be nice, as well as some actual data to back up the claim which appears to be, essentially, that “letting men act more depraved will cause them to (somehow) act less depraved.”  Adding in what we do know, the proposition could be illustrated thusly:

1.  Design and build female-human-looking robots for men to stick their dicks into;

2.  Further normalize and perpetuate the current working definitions of “sex” and “sexual” which appear to be “a man sticking his dick into any object under any circumstances” and “whatever sensations a man might experience while sticking his dick into any object under any circumstances” respectively;

3.  ??

4.  Helps women.

What?  The discerning non-misogynist reader is left reeling, wondering and concerned, and with a multitude of unanswered questions, the first of which perhaps being “Is there somewhere we can view this ‘paper’ — and its footnotes — without having to pay for it?”

But instead of asking any of the dozens of obvious questions that immediately spring to mind, the stenographer writing msnbc.com’s tech beat leaves us with this to ponder: (of course they aren’t even the reporter I mean stenographer‘s own questions, but the questions fed to him by the paper’s authors)

Robot sex is safer sex, free from the constraints, precautions and uncertainties of the real deal, but regardless of how good the sex is, will we always continue to think of it as something less than fully human?

Are they suggesting we would be wrong if we did?

Yesterday, the editorial board of Columbia University’s student newspaper announced that it supports the “gender-neutral approach” being implemented this year at Columbia’s annual Take Back the Night march.  Previously, the march organizers had a policy of allowing only women at the front of the march, acknowledging that women-only space for rape victims was important because of the traumatic nature of rape and the fact that almost all rapes are perpetrated by men on female victims.  TBTN organizers had previously stated that

[t]he women’s space was created to ensure that female survivors, co-survivors, and allies could participate without feeling afraid, intimidated, or triggered in a co-gendered environment.

And indeed, the editorial board of the Spectator acknowledges that this reasoning is sound:

the presence of men at the front could possibly be traumatic and be a barrier in creating a safe space for the rape survivors.

We understand the reasoning behind this approach. As TBTN’s recent press release stated, a significantly higher percentage of perpetrators of sexual assault are male. Having women at the front of the march can be a visual symbol for rape’s gendered status. Moreover, while we cannot claim to fully grasp the psychology of rape, we understand that the trauma of some female rape survivors with male perpetrators—who constitute the majority of rape victims—can lead them to feeling threatened and emotionally unsafe in the presence of men.

Could they be more patronizing at the end there?  I don’t think so.  As academented, overly educated babies, none of which have apparently been raped themselves, they cannot fully grasp the psychology of rape — psychology is important, you see.  As a patriarchal, pseudo-medical academic field, psychology is key to our understanding of the world, and key to our understanding of rape — not listening to rape survivors, who say that having men at the front of the march is triggering and intimidating.  The editorial board at the Spectator might easily avail themselves of some learning on the issue however, if they wanted to, being at a major university and all.  Lots of books there, although who knows what those books would actually say.  About the psychology.  Of rape.

And while the editorial board of the Spectator understand why female rape victims might feel threatened and emotionally unsafe in the presence of men, they simply don’t care.

Why?

Because gender.  Yes!  The editorial board at the Spectator apparently cannot tell the difference between sex and gender:

sexual assault is not just a women’s issue. Gender identity does not define who rapes or is raped. Men can be rape survivors, women can be perpetrators—and wherever oppression exists, sexual or otherwise, it is everyone’s issue. Having men at the front of the march can help illustrate that this issue transcends gender. Additionally, when some of the students who will be a valuable part of the march identify as transgender or reject gender identifications, it can become problematic to enforce a rule among gender lines. A gender-neutral approach is the only way for the march to be all-inclusive. By including more than just women at the front, TBTN is showing the many faces of rape survivors and allies in the community. As a show of inclusivity and solidarity, it can only strengthen the cause.

Rape is an issue that transcends gender alright: trans men are in danger of being raped and impregnated by men, and this is due entirely to their sex — they are female — and nothing to do with their gender at all.  So opening up the front of the march to all FAABs including trans men would indeed show that rape transcends gender — but of course, this is not what the Columbia Spectator or the organizers of this year’s TBTN have in mind.

No, the Columbia Spectator and the organizers of TBTN are trying to tell us that rape — and specifically stranger rape –  transcends sex, but of course that is not true.  In fact, TBTN was specifically created to address the problem of male-on-female stranger rape, and women’s reasonable fear of that, where women were and are not free to walk the streets at night without fearing for their safety and their lives.

From the TBTN history page:

Why Take Back the Night?

A woman walks alone down a dark, deserted street. With every shadow she sees, and every sound she hears, her pounding heart flutters and skips a beat. She hurries her pace as she sees her destination become closer. She is almost there. She reaches the front door, goes inside, collects herself, and moves on forgetting, at least for tonight, the gripping fear that momentarily enveloped her life. This scene could have occurred anywhere last night, last year, or even 100 years ago. Historically, women faced the anxiety of walking alone at night and that is why Take Back the Night began.

That is the history of TBTN.  TBTN was never meant to address the problem of “unwanted sex” as such, it was specifically designed to combat rape, that overtly political, interpersonal, biological and social oppression that male-bodied persons routinely visit on female-bodied persons cross-culturally and around the globe.  Rape, where the victim often feels — and is given every reason in the world to believe — that she will be killed after her rapist penetrates her with his penis and ejaculates into her vagina.  That she will never see her family again.  That her children will be left without a mother, because she was raped and murdered by a man.

And where female rape victims are left to agonize for weeks — if they survive — whether they have been impregnated against their wills; and where they must live with the knowing that it could happen again.  Because women are members of the rapeable class, and being raped once does not mean that it won’t happen again, and again, and again.

Men never have to deal with these consequences in their own lives, no matter what has happened to them, or who did it and why.  No.  These are the realities of rape, for female-bodied persons.  And men deliver these consequences onto women by raping us.

Placing men and men’s concerns literally front and center at TBTN is ahistorical, acontextual, and the organizers know it will be damaging to women — and the editorial board of the Spectator and the organizers of this year’s TBTN are demonstrating that they do not care.  That it will be damaging to women alone should be reason enough to not do it, but the truth is that there are other options that are apparently not even being explored; damaging women and disrupting women-only space is the first resort here, when it could be made the last resort — it could, if anyone cared even that much.  But they don’t.

Whoever believes there is a need, could encourage male crime victims to start their own movement, instead of leaching off of the women who started and continued TBTN for themselves and for other women because men can’t seem to stop raping us.  Let male victims start their own movement if it’s so important to them: let them amass their numbers in public and demand the kinds of change they want and need.

But do not let men — overwhelmingly the perpetrators of rape against both male and female victims — march in the front of, or take over, Take Back the Night.  And definitely don’t do it because gender.  That argument simply and obviously doesn’t hold any water at all.

Rape does not transcend sex.  Rape is the use of sex and its attendant reproductive consequences as a tool of political oppression by men against women.  Putting men literally front and center at this year’s TBTN is wrong.

In early April, news outlets reported that One Goh, a former student at Oikos University, a small Christian college near Oakland, California, killed seven “people” at the school, which recently expelled him.

Early reports indicated that Goh walked into the single-story building housing the university, took a (female) receptionist hostage and went looking for a particular (female) administrator.  When Goh could not find his (female) target, Goh took the (female) receptionist  into a classroom, shot her  and ordered the (mostly female) students to line up against the wall, where he executed them.

Of those killed, six were women, but Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said “investigators do not know whether Goh was targeting women.”

So, Goh went to the school to look for a female administrator, and then shot six females, but the police do not know whether Goh targeted women? And the media accepts this?

Days after the murders, another news outlet addressed the “targeting of women” by Goh. That report noted that Goh, fueled by anger at the school and a particular (female) official, may have killed six females as proxy victims for the intended (female) target.  Countering the meme put forth by the MSM immediately after the killings that Goh murdered six women because of teasing over his poor English, Oikos nursing professor Romie John Delariman reported that Goh spoke perfect English but “had a problem working with females.”

“He can’t stand women,” Delariman told the Associated Press . “He said he never used to work with women, or deal with women in a work setting or a school setting.”  The husband of one of the victims confirmed that his wife feared Goh and predicted that Goh would do something like go on a murderous rampage – against females.

Hey, this looks like Goh targeted his victims based on sex.

We already know that males commit most violent crimes, with males committing 87% of all homicides. With rampage killings in particular, might it be helpful to know what motivates rampage killers? Say, in order to PREVENT it?

MSM’s failure to name the problem of male violence against females is not new.  A 2000 New York Times account of rampage killers noted that although “rampage killers were overwhelmingly male,” the presence of six females out of 102 cases examined led the Time to conclude that mental illness, not male violence, was the “problem.”  The Times study also did not bother to examine the sex of the four hundred twenty-five people killed and 510 people injured in these 102 cases, thus further avoiding the question of male violence against females in rampage killings in particular.  Another article that catalogs the “top” rampage killers suggests rather obliquely suggests that “problems with women” may have motivated some of the (male) killers, including Luby’s restaurant killer George Hennard and Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-hui.

Another notorious rampage killer – George Sodini – killed three women in an aerobics class in 2009 and even stated that he had “(n)o sex since July 1990,” but, apparently, that was proof of intent to murder based on class warfare, not hatred of females (or male entitlement to female bodies backed up with the threat of male violence).  Apparently, the only time the MSM will allow that a male targets females is when the killer himself indicates that motivation, as seen in the Montréal Massacre of 1989.  In that rampage, an anti-feminist, female-hating man murdered 14 women at the École Polytechnique after telling them “you’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists.”

And in a post-secondary setting, where there are often more female students enrolled than male, it would seem reasonable to ask in every case whether targeting of specifically female victims was the intent, and an analogy made between “school shootings” in a university setting and a white man going into a predominantly black establishment and shooting the place up.  In the latter case, the discriminatory overtones would be easily recognizable — but in the case of university shootings, which are often predominantly female establishments, apparently, not so much.

See this chart demonstrating the “gender gap” in post-secondary enrollment in California showing that as of 2004, female enrollment outshines male, sometimes drastically so (depending on other factors such as ethnicity).  And Okios University specifically appears to have been well-known for its troubled nursing program, as well as offering degrees in Music, Theology and Asian Medicine.  Shooter One Goh himself had been enrolled in the nursing program before he dropped out (or was expelled) — a man with known “problems with women” who left the school perhaps feeling humiliated over his failure, while other (female?) students continued with their educations.

Were the students at Okios University predominantly female?  Was the nursing program in particular dominated by female students?  These are questions that immediately arise, yet statistics on enrollment by sex at Okios University following this mass woman-murder are not forthcoming, and a quick internet search does not reveal them.  Why not?

Six women shot dead in a university setting.  Male former nursing student did it.  Nursing program.  Nursing program.  Questions linger, and so far have yet to be satisfactorily addressed, but this is always the case when women are gunned down by men, including by men who are known to hate women and where only or predominantly women are targeted, or where the violence occurs at a predominantly female or female-only space.

The first question reporters should ask when they hear “he’s got a gun” is “how many women did he kill?,” “was it a female-only or female-dominated space?” and “how were his ‘issues with women’ manifesting before he targeted them for violence?”

Memorial service for victims from Okios University’s website.

He sets the scene for his article by using a fictional, fantasy picture of witches (see above) which appears to have been lifted from some movie. The witches in the image are, of course, a joke. The picture is ironic. (Don’t you feminists have a sense of humour?) The murder of women should never be taken seriously. All a bit of a laugh. And it’s downhill from there. He describes Carol Duffy’s tribute as:

“a thoughtful celebration of ten women who were hanged for witchcraft 400 years ago”

From the way the sentence is written, we immediately get the feeling that what happened to these women was a rare, unique anomaly. That these particular ten women happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and, as bad luck would have it, they ended up dead. There is no mention at all of the systematic killing which lasted for centuries: the planned, premeditated, ongoing purge in which millions of women were killed by their paranoid rulers, men. He appears to be searching for reasons why the women were targeted:

“two of the women hanged at Lancaster castle aged over eighty and blind, another probably driven mad by a disfigured face with one eye lower than the other, and all ten convicted largely on the evidence of a nine-year-old child.”

Looking at the figures of the deaths at the time, the real question is not “Why were these women picked?” but “Why were those women spared?” Indeed Wainright would do better to ponder over the characteristics of the women who managed to survive the slaughter, not of the ones who were killed. For example, were they particularly meek? Unusually submissive? I think we’re on the right track.

Rather than honouring their deaths, he mockingly re-writes history:

“Their fate has always been controversial, with even contemporaries divided over whether they were genuine conspirators against the wobbly social order (their deaths in 1612 came seven years after the Gunpowder Plot), or victims of prejudice against ‘wise women’ herbalists whose village medicine sometimes went badly awry. They may alternatively have been a bit too feisty for the masculine establishment or simply the victims of feuds.”

A bit too feisty for the masculine establishment? Two of the women were over eighty years old. Wise women in scare quotes? Eh? And what does the gunpowder plot have to do with the price of fish? (Is he suggesting again that the executions were a rare occurence, a blip in an otherwize orderly and just world? Or is it a (what-about-teh-menz) men-were-sometimes-executed-too allusion?).

Village medicine sometimes went badly awry? Has he read about the botch jobs and butchering of bodies that took place, (and continues to take place), once men took over medicine? Does the author realise that in order to be taken seriously in this field men had to first kill off the women herbalists?

Why would the word of a child (male, I guess?) be taken more seriously than the word of the adults who were being charged with witchcraft?  Are we to believe that it’s insignificant that a woman’s word was worth shit in the eyes of the law? If the child had pointed out a couple of powerful men instead of two old women, would they too have been marched off to be hanged? (And it’s funny how children are rarely believed when it comes to the crimes men commit against them–crimes that actually exist– such as sexual abuse)

Why is it acceptable to depict the executed women in any other light other than innocent victims?  From where I’m standing, there is nothing “controversial” about the Burning Times/ Witch-craze. Any moreso than the killing of the Jews, or slavery.

There’s controversial, and then there’s wrong.

Perhaps he thinks witches did actually exist? Is the notion of “controversy” connected to the possibility (in his mind) that the ten women may have been witches? [Grasping at straws here]

But the more pressing question is:

Would it be appropriate to write an article about the hollocaust headed by a photograph of rats… simply because the propaganda at the time depicted the Jews as sub-human?

I think not.

ETA: Since this post was written, (and following a complaint by a commenter called nihonshu) the original “three witches” photograph used for the article has now been changed.

From the article:

[...] women with lower testosterone levels – typically caused by the use of hormone-based oral contraceptives like the pill – are more attracted to men who also have low testosterone levels.

Previous studies have shown that the less testosterone a man has, the less likely he is to cheat, the more supportive he is, and the better he is at providing for his family. Sounds good, right?

Not quite. Previous studies have also shown that most women are historically more sexually attracted to higher testosterone levels. And the mothers in the study who eventually went off birth control post-wedding reported less sexual contentment than other women; they found their husbands less attractive and less sexually exciting once they went off the pill.

Dr. Craig Roberts of Stirling University questioned more than 2,500 women from around the world for his research. Did their taste in men shift? Or did their birth control have a “love-potion” type of effect?

By “love potion” do you actually mean a pharmaceutically-induced altered reality that makes women willing to fuck men they normally wouldn’t?  Sounds like rape to me, Mr. Kerner.  But apparently since so many women are being raped this way, it’s become completely normalized and doesn’t count as rape, even though it is.  Just like every other instance of PIV on the planet that happens under dubious or coercive circumstances, which are also rape, but are alternatively known as “just regular normal everyday sex, nope nothing to see here, move along.”

Dr. Roberts, who performed the study, even advises that

women who met their partner while taking hormonal birth control should consider switching to another method several months in advance of tying the knot in order to assess whether their feelings for their partner will change or stay the same.

Women’s perception is so drastically altered by the Pill that they are in danger of marrying a man to whom they would not ordinarily even give the time of day, if they hadn’t been drugged for years by a reality-altering pharmaceutical that makes women fuck and — unsurprisingly, considering the potential for and reality of trauma-bonding from all instances of PIV — fall “in love” with Beta-males.

Mr. Kerner’s favorite handmaiden of the patriarchy, Dr. Madeleine Castellanos who wrote a book about “all things penis” even adds regarding the Pill and hormonal contraceptives that “some of these side effects are so serious that I now urge young women to consider just using condoms and leaving the birth control pills behind.”   That’s coming from a woman who is about as dick-pleasing and male-centered as one can possibly get.  If you aren’t extremely concerned yet, you should be.

Problematically, Mansplainer Kerner concludes in the face of these findings that

for those women who do choose to stay on the pill, the study offers a silver lining: the women on the pill were happier overall in their relationships and more likely to stay together than their non-pill-taking counterparts. The benefits of the non-sexual aspects of the relationship outweighed any sexual downsides.

So perhaps it’s better to be evenly matched at the low-testosterone end of the spectrum (with a man who is more likely to be faithful) than potentially mismatched.

Yes that’s a silver lining alright: there’s a pill women can take to make partnering with men more tolerable.  And women taking a pill to make partnering with men more tolerable, even if it’s a dangerous drug with known side-effects that can kill you, is better than the alternative; in Kerner’s mind, the “alternative” obviously being “partnering with an Alpha male who might have better genes but who will treat you even worse, being more prone to violence and more likely to infect you with disease.” It’s a lesser of two evils: men and male violence and male abuse/neglect within the context of the het partnership being the “evil” of course, but Kerner never says it.

Unsurprisingly, CNN’s resident mansplainer does not conclude that women partnering with any man, whether Alpha or Beta, is neither necessary nor advisable, and that there are alternatives.  It’s a false choice, and the one that includes women taking drugs to cope is presented as the better of the two.  The scary thing is that it just might be, if you believe those are the only options.  The truth, of course, is that they aren’t the only options.  And women having to be medicated to survive in (men’s) reality is pretty solid evidence that this thing we know as “reality” is really men’s reality, and male-centric social engineering, no more and no less.

Suggest for one second that men be medicated to make them easier to control, however, and more than a few people get their panties in a bunch: social engineering — including medical interventions — is how we control women under patriarchy, not men.  And not a single allegedly “rational” or egalitarian-minded person seems to have much of a problem with that, at all.