okay - the WE network is doing a special on women behind bars. the fifty second clip basically suggests that these women were victims who struck out or in some other way sympathetic. it starts by saying "they're wives - pan to this woman "i wanted to be a good wife" - they're mothers" etc. etc. this is why i can't be a feminist. you think there aren't men in prison with sympathetic stories??? or woman who are just plain mothereffing evil. ugh.
now for the cheery portion. my son has begun narrating himself. first of all he is no longer 'pig' he is now 'sir topham hat'. so this morning at the breakfast table he tells me something that he finds funny - giggles about it and then says "laughed sir topham hat". i can't decide if this is incredibly creative of him or just plain creepy.
this was begun much earlier today and again i am waking up to post it so that's all you'll get from me. perhaps tomorrow we can discuss the matthew shephard act.
4 comments:
Wow. I love you very much, Cassie, but seriously? Things that piss me off are women who claim to not be feminists. Of course you are a femenist. Do you advocate equal rights for women? yes? Then you are a feminist! And btw, did you even watch very much of that program? Do you know how many women go to prison for killing their husbands or partners after years of abuse? Yes, men also have sympathetic stories, and yes, some women are just down right evil, but there is a whole lot of injustice out there and a whole lot of sexual discrimination that still goes on. We need to talk, my friend.
i love you too my friend. so everything that follows is meant with respect and is simply my views. i respect your opinions and i suspect on some of them we agree but . . .
i advocate equal rights not preferential rights. and i believe the trend in feminism today is toward preferential treatment. and i will come back to that.
feminists, media, etc. - - don't make excuses for me because i am a woman. i don't like "finding" reasons for what women do. it is demeaning to me. it suggests that i lack the proper physical or mental equipment to consider my own actions and be judged on equal footing with men.
however, here i will concede this one point - the footing in some areas needs to be reconsidered as the terrain was designed by men. that doesn't mean we take the existent terrain and put in "ramps" for women. we reshape it a little. back to the general point though:
a woman kills her kids 'oh, she was mentally ill' a man kills his kids and he's just downright satanic?? in any but the most extreme of mental illnesses (see schizophrenia etc) they are both evil satanic bastards and i don't give a fig what their damned reason was (and yet, my friend out there [not you jess], if you are still listening i *still* don't believe in the death penalty ;) ) although, i will say, the one thing i prefer about men who kill their ""loved ones"" is that statistically they at least have the damned decency to kill themselves afterwards
but enough flippancy, i do advocate equality and i always did and my original viewpoints are sharpened by the fact that i now have a son. and i don't want him growing up thinking he's evil because he has a penis. that any sex that is regretted after the fact he must be responsible for because of the aforementioned evil. or that if a female teacher molests him he is one lucky son of a bitch. or for that matter any host of other things that i could probably do a whole nother blog about.
here is the caption from WE's website "Women are supposed to be the gentler sex, the softer side of humanity. But some women do kill, and when they do, we want to know why. What drove them to kill? Was it an abusive husband? Was it drugs? Was it envy…fear…lust? Back for a second season, this WE tv original series takes us behind the killings to try and answer all of the burning questions of why they did what they did."
first off - *we* are soft?? i know it's an old joke but when a man endures childbirth then we can talk about how soft we are. second - when *anyone* kills i want to know why or i don't. i don't give an extra special shit if it is a woman. (especially when she kills her kids) and if we go back to their list of possible why's the ONLY one worth discussing is abuse. envy, lust, jealousy, drugs??? tough noogie
as for the abuse question. i can give you a lot of statistics on the subject. for instance, the number of men murdered by someone intimate to them has dropped by 75%since 1976 which makes a lot of sense since there are so many more options now. which leads me to my personal stance - yes, absolutely, you get to kill in self defense. and in fact, about 15% of women convicted of killing their partners are let off for that very reason. BUT you only get to do that after you have tried to leave. and do i understand the victim mentality yes. and on a personal level i feel sympathy for it. but i also understand the desperate straits that leave young poor kids thinking they have to join a gang. and i feel sympathy for them too but you just don't get to kill people unless there is no other option. not 'unless you can't bring yourself to another option'.
i can give you another jail statistic - over 60% of men in jail are there for non-violent drug crimes. that's sad.
now, why i think the trend in feminism is toward preferential treatment. some are minor reasons ie the firefighters test. now, there has been talk that the test goes to unnecessary extremes in the area of physical prowess. okay, then, change the test - but then don't have there be a set of criteria for women that allow them to do it at 80%. because if i'm in a burning building you best be able to lift my ass. and then there is the fact that school systems are actually having to look at the fact that over the last 15 years in an effort to help girls along boys have begun to lag behind. i mean, really people is it so hard to just treat them all like kids. one thing i saw first hand which has just gotten worse is the drugging of boys (ritalin etc) for ADD. i saw it in preschool. a three year old being hyper is no reason to drug him. there is an increase in male eating disorders and yet there is no focus on teenage boys with image issues. bah! and back to my aforementioned boys with teachers. they are victims - even if they think they aren't. maybe precisely *because* they think they aren't.
if i wanted to cut carl out of my sons life i could do it in an instant. the court would go after him for the money (to varying degrees of success i grant you) but would never never try to enforce visitation from me.
ultimately, i guess that's what it comes down to for me. kids. i am on kids side. and boy kids are kids too.
my final little rant - for now ;) - is that so many so called feminists balk when you suggest that there is no reason for a man to pay for dates; most are disgusted by the idea of dating/marrying someone who makes less than them and just breath the words "equal draft" . ..
um, yeah, you are a feminist, at least by an objective standard.
you can't see the forest for the trees, however- women have come so far so fast that you take for granted things that your mother didn't have or fought very hard for, and you're brain is poisoned (not pejorative, sry) against the term feminist- you think a feminist is a barn burner when it still means what it aways meant, someone who wants equal rights for women.
hell in 4/5ths of the world you wouldn't get 1/10th of what you get as a woman leaving in the enlightened west.
anon - your definition is spot on. a feminist is someone who wants equality for women. i want equality for everyone. i do recognize that historically men's opportunities have been more wide open and that the things they have been denied are not as dire. however, i still want equality for all.
as for your statement that i don't see the sacrifices made - just the opposite. i see our foremothers had to fight for the right to vote; to be able to leave their husbands; to have the right to support themselves etc. etc. i don't think those forerunners of feminism intended for us to have the right to kill our children and blame it on our hormones.
and your point about the enlightened west - EXACTLY! in this country we are railing against unhealthy images of women in magazines (you know, the magazines we buy) while in other countries women are being stoned to death for being raped. should we fight against unhealthy images of women - yes. but we should NOT lose sight of the fact that it is not the same thing. oh, and to come full circle, if we want to really be "equal" we should be fighting against the unrealistic pitures of men as well.
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