The New Society
Month
“Two weeks ago a man in France was arrested for raping his daughter. She’d gone to her school counselor and then the police, but they needed “hard evidence.” So, she videotaped her next assault. Her father was eventually arrested. His attorney explained, “There was a period when he was unemployed and in the middle of a divorce. He insists that these acts did not stretch back further than three or four months. His daughter says longer. But everyone should be very careful in what they say.” Because, really, even despite her seeking help, her testimony, her bravery in setting up a webcam to film her father raping her, you really can’t believe what the girl says, can you?
Everyone “knows” this. Even children.
Three years ago, in fly-on-the-wall fashion of parent drivers everywhere, I listened while a 14-year-old girl in the back seat of my car described how angry she was that her parents had stopped allowing her to walk home alone just because a girl in her neighborhood “claimed she was raped.” When I asked her if there was any reason to think the girl’s story was not true, she said, “Girls lie about rape all the time.” She didn’t know the person, she just assumed she was lying…
No one says, “You can’t trust women,” but distrust them we do. College students surveyed revealed that they think up to 50% of their female peers lie when they accuse someone of rape, despite wide-scale evidence and multi-country studies that show the incident of false rape reports to be in the 2%-8% range, pretty much the same as false claims for other crimes. As late as 2003, people jokingly (wink, wink) referred to Philadelphia’s sex crimes unit as “the lying bitch unit.” If an 11-year-old girl told an adult that her father took out a Craigslist ad to find someone to beat and rape her while he watched, as recently actually occurred, what do you think the response would be? Would she need to provide a videotape after the fact?
It goes way beyond sexual assault as well. That’s just the most likely and obvious demonstration of “women are born to lie” myths. Women’s credibility is questioned in the workplace, in courts, by law enforcement, in doctors’ offices, and in our political system. People don’t trust women to be bosses, or pilots, or employees. Pakistan’s controversial Hudood Ordinance still requires a female rape victim to procure four male witnesses to her rape or risk prosecution for adultery. In August, a survey of managers in the United States revealed that they overwhelmingly distrust women who request flextime. It’s notable, of course, that women are trusted to be mothers—the largest pool of undervalued, unpaid, economically crucial labor.”
Soraya Chemaly, How We Teach Our Kids That Women Are Liars
Remember: Women are three times less likely to lie than men. The stigma has no factual basis, and is rooted in misogyny.
“Free speech” is nothing but a shield used to protect ideas that actively harm the oppressed.
“We don’t let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas” ~ Joseph Stalin
Ideas can be more dangerous and when you want to silence one the correct response is to silence you. We become robots in the oppressed world that you idiots want.
Wrong. By preventing dangerous ideas from being spread, through the use of censorship, fewer people learn about them, and the ideas ultimately die out.
Bigotry is learned, it is not inherent in anyone. If we are to eliminate it, we have to employ tools such as censorship. Why would anyone disagree, unless they find some redeeming quality in hateful, violent rhetoric?
I agree that censorship will work. Prohibition certainly worked. Crime went down and people most certainly DID NOT smuggle alcohol. We should just censor things we don’t like because then people won’t talk about them. We should protect everyone’s feelings because that’s more important than having a dialogue.
This isn’t about protecting feelings, this is about protecting livelihoods.
Think about it. Why has racial violence against black people decreased since the 1960s? Because racism became stigmatized. The n-word was semi-censored in public (not counting it being reclaimed, of course), and look what an effect it had. We had the dialogue, and we said that racism was intolerable. And our society is quick to say that we abhor sexism, and now homophobia, but we don’t take the extra step to prove it. We still allow the ideas to fester, and then they result in events like Elliot Rodger’s massacre, for example.
If we destroy the speech, we destroy the idea. Then we won’t have to worry about it being censored, because the idea will no longer exist.
“Free speech” is nothing but a shield used to protect ideas that actively harm the oppressed.
“We don’t let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas” ~ Joseph Stalin
Ideas can be more dangerous and when you want to silence one the correct response is to silence you. We become robots in the oppressed world that you idiots want.
Wrong. By preventing dangerous ideas from being spread, through the use of censorship, fewer people learn about them, and the ideas ultimately die out.
Bigotry is learned, it is not inherent in anyone. If we are to eliminate it, we have to employ tools such as censorship. Why would anyone disagree, unless they find some redeeming quality in hateful, violent rhetoric?
I love the phrase “I’m all for equality but isn’t this going a bit too far?” because like. It acknowledges that the issue is a matter of equality and tries to soften the ideological blow of what’s about to be said with the waiver that in most situations equality is totally cool by them, but on this occasion, there is an excess of equality here. Too much equality. This makes people too equal and they cannot in good conscience stand by it. Slow down this equality at once before we get too carried away on people being equal.
“I’m all for everyone being equal but shouldn’t some people be MORE EQUAL than others?”
Honestly, fuck equality. Equality is about sameness, but sameness doesn’t make up for thousands of years of oppression. And it gives rise to these mindsets, these “I’m for equality, which means I’m against affirmative action” sort of statements. The people who say they’re for equality are trying to turn a blind eye to discrimination and injustice, while trying to feel good about how they “don’t see color” or “treat everyone the same.”
Equity needs to be the center of these discussions. Equity means fairness, justice, acknowledging the differences between the privileged and the oppressed, and putting them on level ground by raising them up or lowering them down appropriately. Plus, it’s harder for someone to say “I believe in equity, but I don’t believe in affirmative action,” as it becomes a contradictory statement.
We find out who our true allies are when we shift the conversation from equality to equity.
“Free speech” is nothing but a shield used to protect ideas that actively harm the oppressed.
Let’s talk about that “she must be lying” reaction whenever women accuse a man of abuse or rape.
Not only are false allegations ridiculously rare, but women are three times less likely to lie than men. And even then, what do women lie about most often? Their feelings. Women have been socialized to conceal their true emotions from men (despite being stereotyped as “emotional”), and made to look like evil liars whenever they have the courage to tell the truth.
I dare you to tell me again about “reasonable doubt.”
If you refuse to believe that Johnny Depp is a serial abuser in the wake of Amber Heard’s evidence, you are an abuse apologist. Period.
And throwing around “innocent until proven guilty” as a defense of Depp is the same as saying “Amber Heard is a liar until proven otherwise.” That is textbook victim-blaming.
YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW THAT YOU’RE TRANS IN YOUR CHILDHOOD TO BE TRANS
YOU CAN BE 5 AND REALISE IT
YOU CAN BE 16 AND REALIZE IT
YOU CAN BE 27 AND REALIZE IT
HELL, YOU CAN BE 68 AND REALIZE IT
YOU CAN BE ANY AGE AND REALIZE THAT YOU’RE TRANSThis is for the people who don’t think they’re “trans enough” just because they didn’t know they were trans as a child.
You ARE trans enough.
<3
Lots of Men Don’t Think Rape Is Rape – Science of Us (via brutereason)
And people wonder why women are misandrists. Misandry saves lives.
Little-known fact—I am a fan of Magic: The Gathering.
Today’s announcement was amazing from a progressive point of view.
Wizards of the Coast is ending the name “Fat Packs” in favor of “Bundles,” which is an amazing start. Our society tends to throw the word “fat” around without knowing how it affects people dealing with body image issues, or how it seeks to reinforce sizeist marginalization. Removing the descriptor “fat” for a product is an acknowledgement that such a word is neither inviting nor empowering, and has no place in a game that is intended to be safe and welcoming for all people.
Additionally, the set after “Eldritch Moon” will be “Kaladesh,” which is described as a “diverse plane with many ethnicities – including, prominently, many humans who look Indian.” The first planeswalker revealed from this set is not only a person of color, but a woman of color, further adding to Magic’s diversity. Additionally, this is yet another new, female-identified planeswalker. For comparison, the last new, humanoid, male-identified planeswalker was Dack Fayden in 2014′s “Conspiracy” set (not counting Commander 2014). In the two years since, we’ve had three new planeswalkers introduced, who were all female-identified (Narset, Arlinn Kord, and now Saheeli Rai).
In a game that is dominated by straight, white men, increasing the diversity of figures seen in such a way not only extends the hand to a more diverse playerbase to the game, but also tells anyone who objects that they are no longer welcome. The way that Wizards of the Coast has handled Magic in the past years, from inclusion of diverse identities; to taking a zero-tolerance policy towards sex offenders as players; to openly supporting the trans and gender-nonconforming community in events; is nothing short of incredible, and exactly the kind of behavior that is necessary to defeat bigotry and toxicity.