Friday Fun with Sitemeter

Alright folks, I've been tallying and keeping track of the searches all week. We've got a huge list today and it actually took me quite awhile to sort them. Now, I would like for people to remember that not all of the searches are perverted or porn related, some are just amusing and gave us a good laugh. And, without further ado, I bring you the nominations for this week.


In the "WTF were they searching for?" category we have 8 entrants, here they are, in no particular order

• "Word I think you were a little hard on the beaver last night"(sic)- Pinellas Park Florida
  
  Now, I remember Leave it to Beaver but I’m pretty sure dad was Ward, not Word. Thanks for the giggle Pinellas Park.



• "freexxxpics" - From Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, Safe search ON -
  
  I seriously just don’t know when these guys will get smart. Ummm…for the last time boys, when you’re looking for XXX pics you HAVE to turn off safe search. Geesh, so much for the idea that porn doesn’t make you stupid.



• "honey beaver" - From Berkely California -
  
  Yes, this is another Honey Beaver search, odd, I didn’t realize that honey beavers were so popular *grin*



• "beaver trap get them fucktard assholes"- From the UK -
  
  Ummm…*cough*….Ummmm…. I ain’t touchin’ it.



• "The social consequences of a woman being friends with another woman who sleeps with many men for sexual favors" - Out of Marietta Georgia -
  
  We read and reread this one several times and STILL don’t know whether to laugh or cry.



• "andrea dworkin frigid" - Out of France-
  
  Sounds like a newspaper headline doesn’t it? EXTRA : ANDREA DWORKIN FRIGID!!



• And, someone in Schaumburg, IL is looking for
  
  "big clitoris"
  
  To Illinois, I have two words for you : Little Brain



• And rounding out the WTF category for the week, we have:
  
  "the women in porn" from Irvine, California -
  
  Is this a MadLib or something? It’s like he didn’t finish his sentence and I just keep looking at him and saying Yes?? The women in porn…Yes??? Go on??

And of course, we have the "Least Original" category. This category is for folks who search for porn with less than creative searches.

• From Roswell, Georgia we have:
  
  "masturbate"
  
  C’mon, isn’t this tired already? Seriously, are you guys that unimaginative?



• Edna, Kansas gives this illustrious search:
  
  "porn"
  
  What surprises me on this one is that somehow they found The Den through a search like that. Dude, are we that big? Or did this guy just go to the 50th page and find us?



• "masturbation"
  
  This was from "Mike" hailing from the great city of Atlanta, Georgia. He was kind enough to stop here on his search for jerk off material. He even made a comment in Needs vs. Wants. For your viewing pleasure I have copied it in full -
  
  Yeah "a man can go his whole life without masturbation or sex" but he would be one horny (and crazy) motherfucker! The Catholic Church has tried preaching that doctrine and now the Church is in moral and financial ruin because of hundreds (if not thousands!) of sexually repressed priests who finally had to let their sexuality explode (in more ways that one!). As for porn, if I want to look at it, I will! If the government, the right wingers, the religious wackos or anybody else doesn't like it, fuck 'em!
  
  What do you think ladies? Isn’t he a catch? I'm sure this dude is kind and sensitive to women. What? You don't think that using rape as a threat indicates a kind, sensitive man? Pshaw on all of ya! *grin*



• OH, and here's our friend again, with yet another telling peek into his psyche. Hell, it worked once right?
  
  "masturbation" -
  
  HI MIKE!! We SEE you!!! *waves enthusiastically*



• And rounding out our Least Original category for the week, we have Mr. -
  
  "boobies are good" from Eastford, Conneticut
  
  And to you my friend I say, yes I rather think that mine are good, particularly when they fed my child. Oh, that’s not what you meant is it?

Moving on to our "Requests for Information" category we have several fine request that BB will try to help with today.

• This one was a double search, one from the UK and one out of America
  
  "signs she's playing hard to get"
  
  Geesh, there’s a lot of dudes who really buy into this. Here friend, check this out She's just playing hard to get. Although, I doubt it will do much good seeing as how both of you followed the link to that page and then promptly left it. Apprarently you want to believe that she wants you and only want to hear that it's acceptable to chase her around. So, here it is in black and white -
  
  She’s NOT playing, leave her alone already, you're stalking her ok? Did you hear that?



• And, from Seattle, Washington we have -
  
  "sex and biting question" -
  
  Who’d have thought that this was such a popular theme? The only advice I have for you is that if he's taking out chunks of skin it's probably not a good thing.



• Malaysia wants to know about -
  
  "large dick myth orgasm"
  
  Yes Virginia, it is a myth, at least, I think it’s a myth, guess it depends on where you put the emphasis huh?



• "women's fantasies" is coming out of Beaverton, Oregon -
  
  Here’s a tip my friend. If you gotta look it up you probably ain’t our fantasy but hey, we appreciate you trying. Also, just for future reference, I suggest you actually ask a woman, we’re not shy, we’ll answer although, it may be more mundane that you want it to be.



• And, out of Rockville, Maryland we have a guy who wants some clarification on -
  
  "defining worksafe"
  
  I sense that Mr. Maryland could be trying to find a loophole on what is allowed on his work computer (yeah, I’m psychic what can I say?)



• Hamilton, Ontario has a question as well -
  
  "why do they call women's anatomy beaver"
  
  Damn, I really need to find the answer for this one. This is the second week in a row for this search. Anyone out there got any ideas?



• "cunnulingus guide" Comes from the UK.
  
  In the interest of being helpful I suggest these tips
  
  1. Don’t believe anything porn tells you on this topic and
  2. Please don’t drool, it’s distracting.



• This one could be my favorite, out of New York City we have,
  
  "types of shake-n-bake"
  
  I think I would have paid money to have been able to see the reaction when they read, "Cajun Shake n’ Bake, BBQ Shake n’ Bake and Shake n' Bake baby bet they were shocked.



• And, from Mortdale, Australia we find -
  
  "staring men assert their dominance"
  
  Now, this could be read in two ways -
  
  1. Do you want to know how to assert your dominance with stares?
  2. Do you want to know why men do it?
  
  If it's the first one then I’m not tellin’ ya'! Mwhahahaha! You’ll have to get your dominance shit somewhere else! If it's the second, well, it's tough for them to do it if you gouge their eyes out *wink*



• From New Gretna, New Jersey -
  
  "women discussing sex fantasies"
  
  Is this a new breed of porn? You know, a bunch of women sitting around in bathrobes chatting about fantasies? I don’t get it.



• Over in Garrett, Indiana we have a perv who's looking for,
  
  "absolutely free erotic beaver"
  
  Hey, you only stayed for 30 seconds! What’s wrong? Radical feminism not erotic enough for you?



• Someone in Los Angeles, California wants tips on how to
  
  "unfasten a bra"
  
  Here's a tip- Wear one for a week and then it’ll be easy.



• And of course, we have another
  
  "freexxxpics"
  
  Hey, Milford Canada, how about you try getting your rocks off without using women for power?



• A reader in North Dakota asks:
  
  "how women achieve orgasm"
  
  Here's a perfect page for you to review Tackling the g-spot orgasm

Now, onto the "Parts I didn't even know I had" category, which sadly only has 1 entry in it this week

• "orgasm nerve" - From Bluff City Tennessee
  
  I think you mean the genital corpuscle…or maybe you’re trying to build your nerve to have an orgasm?

And now, a category I just had to create, "Is this even possible?"

• From Diggins Missouri we have someone who wants advice on
  
  "how to have sex while asleep"
  
  Not sure if he wants to know if this is possible or whether he wants a how-to guide? Oh, Diggins, I’d like to remind you that if your ‘partner’ is asleep then it’s RAPE you dumbass.



• And this whacko from Paragould Arkansas wants to see
  
  "men screwing a horse"
  
  Now, what I’d to see is a horse screwing a man, of course, I wouldn’t want to be cruel to animals, poor horse. Obviously, I’m not entirely sure what the point of this sort of thing is, seeing as how I have horses and I guarantee you that they ain’t even feeling your tiny little dick.



• "large breasted anorexic" is the search we see from Los Angeles, California AND from Aurora Illinois.
  
  Ummm, isn’t this sort of, well…ridiculous? Seeing as how anorexia is, by its very nature, going to most likely get rid of most of the fatty tissue around the breast? Oh and thanks a bunch you stupid fucktard for encouraging even MORE women to starve themselves.



• "beaver women" is hailing from Toronto Canada -
  
  Gods, the first thing I thought of upon hearing this one was the "Crab People" from South Park. Are "Beaver Women" anything like "Crab People"?



• Oh and you gotta love this fucktard who seems to be as stupid as his search would suggest
  
  "rape willing porn"
  
  Ummm…doesn’t consent make rape impossible? Damnit man, men never cease to amaze me. I reiterate: Porn makes you stupid

And, of course, the category "Most Popular Searches of the Week".

Now, I'm hoping that all of these folks have just heard about the website and are looking to see if it's as disgusting and horrible as they heard

• "child supermodels" - Canada, Nova Scotia, Halifax -I will note that this one was with safe search off


• "child supermodels" Florida, Port Saint Lucie


• "child supermodels" Scottsdale GA, another one with Safe Search off.


• "child+supermodels" Plano, Texas


• "child supermodels" Orlando Florida


• "child supermodels" Saint Petersburg Florida


• "child supermodels" Germany


• "child supermodels" Germany again (different city)


• "Child supermodels legal or not" Lambeth City, London


• "child supermodels" France


• "child supermodels" Mount Laurel, New Jersey

And another new category, "Seriously, is there really a market for this? Why wasn't I told?"

• "penis-biting fetish" Hails from Groningen, Netherlands
  
  Heh, I was going to say something but I’ll shut up now.



• From Ft. Wayne Indiana we have -
  
  "testicals pain"
  
  Now, I know that this could be a legit search, but I couldn't help it I had to add it.



• "women who loves to eat dicks"


Hey, Klamath Falls Oregon, I like mine with ketchup. Oh, and here’s a tip, try spending as much time working on your grammar as you do trying to find "Women who loves to eat dicks" and maybe you’ll actually get somewhere in life.

And, just for the BDSM crowd (I know you're still watching *waves to leatherwomen*)

• "slapping buttocks"
  
  I dare you to say that in a Forrest Gump voice and NOT laugh.



• Hey, "Submissive male blogspot"
  
  Maybe you should start your own. OOH, or better yet, come here to MY site and I’ll abuse you! What? That’s not what you mean? Damnit, thwarted again. Le sigh (West Lafayette, Indiana)



• From San Carlos, California we have, "women who enjoy submissive feminised men"
  
  Is this a cry for help?



• "fantasies of rape and domination in literature and yellow woman" Palatine, Illinois
  
  Geesh BDSM people I hate to break it to you but it looks like all these searches are making my case FOR me. Yep, completely healthy adult interaction here, move along, nothin’ to see here!



• And, from Germany we have, "slaves ii"
  
  This guy stayed for a whole 36 seconds before he realized that I was neither a slave nor was I offering slaves for his amusement. Die in a car fire asshat.



• It's a shame that this dude is trying to represent Sri Lanka, "sex jobs for men in bdsm industry"
  
  We need to hook this one up with the ‘penis biting fetish’ above.

"Sexual Deviants who need to visit The Den of the Psychoanalyzing Beaver"

Now I decided to include these not because they’re funny or amusing. In fact, I originally was going to edit them out entirely because they are so damned disturbing. In the end I thought it was important for people to be able to see exactly what some dudes are typing in when they’re searching for their jack off material. This is the shit that people are typing in when nobody is around to impress and furthermore, this is the stuff they are masturbating to, it’s erotic and sexy for them. And THAT was reason enough to include it here.

• "role playing movies porn rape" Burketon Station, Ontario



• "preteen midriff" From the Bible belt once more-
  
  Hey, Mr. Midriff, how about you stop getting a boner from young children, huh?



• "beautiful girls being raped"- Los Angeles, California -
  
  Another one for the Psychoanalzying Beaver. On a slightly related note GO TO HELL MOTHERFUCKER!



• "animals adult porn" from Burdu, Turkey -
  
  Hey YOU, in TURKEY. I see you! Here’s an idea, how about you stick your dick in a garbage disposal you fucking whacko



• "a mother rape her daughter" Paris, France -
  
  Ok, this jerkoff needs WAY more than what the Psychoanalyzing Beaver can provide. I’m thinking something along the lines of a sharp knife.



• "story snuff" From Exeter, New Hampshire -
  
  Anyone wanna let this sick mother fucker babysit their children? Hey, Exeter, how ‘bout you get some fucking help? Seriously, no, really, I’m not joking. You need help yesterday



• "cunt "to pose for porn" From Santa Cruze, CA -
  
  Glad to see you think so highly of women asshole.



• sexy girls being beaten and raped - Lambeth, London
  
  I’m completely stunned, what did we ever do to deserve this sort of hatred? Seriously.



• "slut rape" - Port Edwards, Wisconsin
  
  Oh no, porn doesn’t push men to rape. Not at all, this fucktard is perfectly harmless for any woman to be around.



• "rape bitches" - York Mills, Ontario
  
  Further proof that indeed we live in a fucked up society that is full of rapists. Despite what porn apologists would have you believe these dudes are getting off to this shit.



• "rape while sleeping porn" - Sioux Falls, South Dakota
  
  Only if you’re a complete fucktard who hates women. Die in a car fire dipshit. On another note, is there really a market for rape while sleeping porn?



• "female ejaculators" - Kent, Washington -
  
  No, there is nothing wrong with female ejaculators, just men who fucking fetishize them. How many times must I say this you dumb fuckheads, STOP FETISHIZING US!!!!



• "rape me bitch" - Ontario, Canada -
  
  Not unless you ask nicely, and then, only if I can use a cattle prod and an axe. What’s wrong? Don’t want to be raped with a cattle prod and an axe?



• "biting pussy" - Brentwood, Tennessee
  
  Guess that my brand of biting wasn't what your were looking for eh? Here's an idea, you can follow the advice I gave to "animals adult porn".



• "rape fantasies" From Freeland Pennsylvania AND Reston Virginia
  
  You want these jerk-off's dating your daughter? YOU. BOTH. NEED. HELP.



• "biting boobs" Mount Laurel, New Jersey
  
  Somehow, this guy is lacking in the humor that we see in 'Boobies are good' higher up. On a side note, don't alot of serial killers bite their victims breasts. Oh, Mount Laurel, YES that was intended for you to hear.

And that wraps up the sitemeter searches of the week.

~BB

Introducing my Warrior

I got an email this morning from someone. It was an email talking about her repeated rape at the hands of a young man. This is not the first such letter I have received in my email and the feelings it evoked in me were neither uncommon, nor unique insofar as I have had them before.

The pain from these women bleeds through in their words, the screams I hear when I read their stories resonates so deeply inside of me that I tremble with barely contained rage, fear and sadness.

I have received several such letters since starting this blog. And more confessions and stories and voices than I can separate in the clutter that is my mind. Each and every woman on this site has a story, chances are good that it is that story that brought them here in the first place. Now, those stories may not be alike in the details, not every woman has been raped, not every woman has been abused, but every one of them has found a thread of commonality in a radical voice. For whatever reason they have seen the cancer infecting this society, seen its ugly face and the barren wasteland and dead women it has left behind.

I cried this morning. I locked myself in my bedroom for a few moments and I cried. I cried the tears of sadness and rage that explode from my soul each and every time I read another story. I sobbed quietly beneath my covers, not wanting to upset my children who were busy reading their books for school. I cried the tears of the victim and survivor and I cried for yet another life destroyed, shattered by the force that is male pride and entitlement.

As I read that email this morning, as I have done on other mornings when a commenter has been moved to write to me, I felt rage burning fresh in my blood. I felt sadness and a loss so deadly that it brings everything home to me. It reminds me, in violent waves, about the society in which we women are forced to live. A society in which half of the population hates us for no reason I can discern.

This has been a trying week for me. I'm working on Friday fun with Site meter and the searches that are there are terrifying in their honesty. "Beautiful girls being raped", "Sluts being beaten and raped", the searches march across my screen, a grim reality and testament to the world in which I live. It is a testament to the violence of men, the undiluted disgust and hatred with which they view us.

And on this morning, there was another letter, another story, another scream from another woman who has joined the rank and file of the millions of survivors. Always, there is confusion in me when I see the proof of male violence and hatred towards women. Ever there is confusion, a sort of disjointed question that hangs thickly in the air, tainting my skin and forcing itself to be articulated.

"Why?"

That is the scream that rips through me. It is the question that lies unanswered and unspoken. Why?

Why? Why? Why? WHY???? Why do they do this to us? Why do they hate with such ferocity? Why do they spoil and silence these beautiful voices that are just waiting to be heard? Why do they contaminate and rip and tear and steal from women?

This is the word, the question that I asked myself as I cried this morning. This is the one thought that tore through me, demanding an answer, but I know that no answer will ever come. No answer can quiet that scream. When they say, "It's because I wanted to", it doesn't make it stop. I want to say "WHY did you want to?", "What did we do to you?", "Why didn't you care?", "Why does our pain bring you such intense pleasure?" Why? Why? Why?

They cannot provide a suitable answer, they cannot quiet the "Why?" flitting in and out of the corners of my mind. They cannot provide the answer anymore than they can give that girl back her life, anymore than they can undo the damage they wreak. There is no easy answer; there is only the reality of the millions of screaming voices, the millions of voices that have been silenced.

People come to me and say that radical feminism cannot be taken seriously because the women in it are largely composed of survivors (although, they say 'victims'). I say that it is because of this that radical feminism needs to be taken seriously. We are the proof of male violence, right here is the most honest and sincere proof you can find. It is because we are so largely comprised of so many survivors, and not just survivors of rape and molestation, but survivors of male pride and violence in all of it's forms it takes, that we need to be taken seriously.

Everyone reading this has a story. Kaka Mak, Delphyne, Ginmar, Laura, Mink Stole, Kelly Bell, and all the others (I know your names but I can't list them all, they ring through my head even as I type and I know that the numbers are too large to list) all of you have a story, a need, a desire. Each and every one of you has experienced the proof of male entitlement and violence. No, chances are good that not every one of you has experienced rape or sexual assault, but ALL of you have seen the truth and ALL of you have been affected by the hatred that men show us.

Occasionally, one of you reaches out to me, trying to make sense of it all and I, sadly, have no sense to give. I have no greater wisdom, no sage advice, no greater understanding of the unending question of "Why?" but there can be no doubt that your stories are just as real.

From the rage, to the sadness, to the helplessness and back to the rage, the stories are there. The violence, the entitlement, the ego, the aggression, all of us have felt it to some degree or another. From the woman who spends her entire day scrubbing toilets for minimum wage, to the women who have been harassed in the park or on the street all the way to the women who vowed to love a man only to find herself the recipient of his fists, down to the woman who went on that date with the 'nice guy' and ended her night being raped. All of you have stories and it is these stories and this deep seated, undying desire to make it stop that brings radicals together.

The letter I got this morning affected me down to that primal part of my soul and I felt the desperation that so many of us have felt. The overwhelming sadness and helplessness of it all. It woke that sleeping warrior within me who first cried for the loss of yet another woman, who screamed and mourned and sobbed for the loss of yet another one of us. But now she is angry again. And her anger feeds my desire, it is her indignation at the masses of women left behind, sold out, forgotten and silenced that compels me to push forward, even when I stop for a moment to sob and regain my footing. She fills me with anger and rage and focused energy to try and accomplish the impossible. And only when the rapes, beatings, and cycle of male violence has stopped will she be sated.

I stand in the face of these men who search for, "slut rape", and "sexy girls being beaten and raped". I stand in the face of all the men that have stolen my sense of safety and security. I stand in your face Richard, and Scott and Kevin. I stand in the faces of Steven and Shawn and Brian. I stand in the faces of all the men who would take what I never offered and I stand in the face of the fucker who stole the innocence and youth from the girl who wrote me just today.

I am your worst fucking nightmare.

Here is my promise to you Mr. "Story-Snuff". I will be your conscience if you refuse to have one. I will be the screams that you tried to silence. I am your worst nightmare, the walking skeleton of the dead bodies of the souls that you destroyed with your violence, with your entitlement and with your ego. I will not shut up until you have felt, tenfold, the pain that you have wreaked upon the women you have encountered. I, and others like me, will force your eyes open to the pain that you have caused and if I have one desire that burns through me with the fiercest passion I have ever known it is this: I want for you to never have another moment of peace in your lives. I want you to never sleep soundly again, I want the souls of these women to haunt you for all eternity, even into your next life and the lives beyond that.

I am no longer a victim, I am a survivor and I will continue to tell every person I meet of you and your kind. I will force-feed the pain of millions down your putrid mouth until you vomit it up, then, I will force it down again.

You, all of you, every one of you that come to this blog looking for, "Sexy women being raped and beaten", YOU are my mark and my crosshairs are firmly on you. You are the reason that we all have stories, you are the reason that every day more women, thousands more women, millions in the world, join the rank and file of the survivors and my voice is aimed at you.

I will not let you forget the screams until they have stopped. I am the ever present reminder of your fucked up entitlement and I will not be silenced until my ashes are thrown across the ground. My voice is small on its own, but it is a part of a sea of voices, a vast army of voices that is growing larger and stronger by the day. Each and every time you beat another woman, or rape another woman, or push your fucked up entitlement onto another woman, in whatever form it takes, you create another one of me. Do you hear that? You create another me.

The numbers keep rising and when they rise up and the sobs turn to cries and the cries to screams and the warrior in us that YOU created and YOU awoke comes seeking her vengeance then you will know that it was YOU who created us.

To my readers, I hear your voices, I believe your truths and you are not alone. Those of you who have felt male violence and who are scattered and afraid and unsure about yourselves take heart for there are millions of us in this world and those who have found our anger and our rage will speak until you feel able to do so. There are millions of hands extended to you, keep talking, keep speaking, your voice is powerful and your stories are truth. Don’t stop writing to me, and don’t stop talking, your voice is perhaps your most valuable weapon and your truth is an inspiration.

~BB

New Carnival!

The 8th Carnival of Feminists is up over at Gendergeek! Check it out, lots of links to feminist sites!

I think I'll be posting here in a little bit, after I take care of a few things that need takin' care of.

Until then, enjoy the Carnival!

Abuse and silence

"Don't say anything bad about your children's father because you have to protect the children."

"She told the kids WHAT? She's going to fuck them up!"

"Can you believe that Stephanie told her kids that their father beat her? She's a terrible mother."

"That’s bullshit man, the crap she told those kids was between the two of you, not them."

"She's just trying to turn them against you."

These phrases skitter through my mind as I look at my children, they're there, on the edges of my consciousness whenever they ask me, "Why did you leave daddy?”

For women who have experienced abusive marriages and nasty divorces these are questions that they are intimately familiar with. Women are accused of "trying to turn the kids against their father" when they break down one day and tell their children exactly why they left their father.

Divorce and abuse are contentious topics that become very tangled very quickly. I have been through 2 abusive marriages, one of those marriages also had a terrible divorce. When I left my first husband years ago my eldest son was merely 2 years old. My first husband was physically violent but it was only when he turned the violence to my son that I left him. The impetus for my decision came the night my 2 year old woke up with a nightmare. He was screaming in his little bed and my x husband went into the bedroom and beat him so badly that he was bruised and welted.

I kicked him out the next day.

Of course, this wasn't the first time he had been abusive. He beat me on a regular basis and my middle son actually drowned in a bathtub when he was 6 months old because my x husband thought that a football game was more important than watching his baby while I was at work. The paramedics did CPR on him and brought him back but it's an experience that still haunts me.

Throughout all of this I was told that I should "try to keep the marriage together" from numerous people. Finally, when I broke and left him, I was told repeatedly that I should never speak of the children’s father in a bad way, because I would 'hurt the children'. Fortunately, my two oldest children do not remember anything of my marriage to their father. Invariably however, the day came when they began asking me why I left their father. What had happened during the marriage that caused me to leave him? Why did I break up the marriage? I had remembered my training well and responded in a vague, dismissive way, "Your father and I just didn't get along, that's all".

The years trotted by and my boys began coming home from their fathers, asking me if I had done the horrible things he said I had done. Always remembering the rule that you can't talk about your X husband because, 'you'll hurt the kids', I responded by telling them that their father probably interpreted many events in that way and that he was free to believe whatever he wanted to about me.

I never mentioned the abuse that we suffered at his hands. I never spoke of it because to do so would 'hurt the children' and so my x husband basked quietly in the glory of perfection, telling the boys that it had always been him that loved them the best. Never telling them that for the first 2 years we were divorced he never saw his children, he was too busy with other things for that. Of course, he never told them that he was going to sign them away for my 2nd husband to adopt but decided not to only because, 'my mom would be mad'.

He never told them about the rapes, about the abuse, about the beatings. He certainly never divulged that when I was at work he would leave my middle son nude all day in his baby carrier. When the baby would defecate he would just leave him there to sit in it until I came home from work and cleaned him up and put clothes on him. He never told them that we fought bleeding diaper rashes of the sort that I had to take my son to the doctors for treatment because of his neglect. He never mentioned that he kicked me repeatedly in the abdomen when I was pregnant with my first son. He never spoke about the time he choked me into unconsciousness while the little ones were playing on the floor mere feet from their struggling mother. Or how Children’s Services were investigating because of his neglect.

And so I listened and I smiled and I told the boys nothing about their father.

After I divorced my first husband I remarried again very quickly (this is quite common in women who have been abused). I had another child with my second husband and that marriage too, was abusive. After 10 years of being with my second husband I called it quits. I had ceased to be able to excuse his behavior and his actions towards all of us any longer and I left. After I left him, he went stalker on me. I had to send my children to Florida because of his ceaseless antics.

Eventually he calmed down and I flew my boys back from my parents, sure that the kids and I would be safe once more. My boys ask me why I left him. They want to know what happened and why I decided we would be better off without him than with him. The questions came hard and fast and, in the meantime, the x was busy telling the children that he would kill himself if they didn't try to talk me into taking him back.

So, here's the thought I have been pondering, the question I'm trying to answer.

Why do we not tell our children about the abuses leveled on us by their fathers?

Who, precisely are we trying to protect with this blanket proclamation? Who are we helping? So many people say, 'Whatever happens between a husband and a wife doesn't concern the kids and the kids shouldn't be told anything'. But is this true? Is it true that the children shouldn't be concerned about the type of man their father is? Is it true that, in a family setting, a member of the family brutalizing another member has nothing to do with them?

When we say that a mother is, "Turning the kids against their father" aren't we really just saying, "A mother who tells her children why she left their father should shut the fuck up"? Why is it so taboo for children to know what kind of person their father is? To share the type of abuse she suffered at his hands?

Do men really expect us to protect them? Because, that is, at its core, what we're doing when we remain silent about abuse leveled onto the mother and children. We're continuing the cycle of silence and thus, reinforcing the cycle of abuse. These men know that using the children as a shield will make most mothers stop in their tracks. After all, oftentimes these moms left their abusive partners just to protect their children. A big part of the reason they left was to keep the kids safe and telling these same women that you have to 'protect your kids' by remaining silent about years of abuse is a surefire way to shut these women up.

I pose the question. What is so bad about telling children exactly what type of man their father was? What is so horrible about telling the truth? And furthermore how can it be that a woman is blamed with 'turning the kids against their father' when it was their father who did those things to begin with?

It's akin to a small child yelling at another child for "Getting me in trouble" when the reality is that nobody can GET you in trouble, you have to take and action that will land you in trouble which means that YOU got YOURSELF in trouble when you acted in that way. Isn't the phrasing, 'turning your kids against their father' just another way of saying, 'you got me in trouble!’

I have to wonder, what do these men actually expect? Do they expect to be able to act in any way they want, stalking, hitting, raping and abusing the women they supposedly 'love' and then, face no consequences for it? I suspect that the answer is yes. They want to be able to run rampant across the women in their lives while yet being able to be held up as a shining example of fatherhood and be a role model for their kids. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but the LAST person I want my kids to model themselves after are psychotic, abusive men.

Why then is there so much guilt associated with the notion of telling your kids the truth when they ask for it?

Recently, I did just that with my middle child. He has hit his teenage years and has begun insisting that everyone hates him. His brothers ‘hate’ him, I ‘hate’ him, everyone ‘hates’ him and we’re all unfair to him. Everyone hates him and everyone is mean to him. His father tells him, quite often, that he should come and live with him, because he's the one who loves him. His step-mother tells him that I'm 'brainwashing' him and that life would be ever so much better at their house. Yet, I know that my X's cycle of abuse is still occurring. My children tell me things that assure me that I'm not wrong in this. For example (those of you with weak stomachs may not want to read this): He thinks it's hilarious to make himself sick with diarrhea by eating spicy foods or foods that don't agree with him. Then, he goes to the bathroom and 'explodes' in the toilet, purposefully making a large mess which he then forces his wife to clean.

To me, this is clearly abusive and controlling behavior, meant to show his wife exactly who is in control. It also shows me that his mind is in the exact same place it was some 13 years ago when I left him. My middle son however, has been telling me that he wants to move in with them. That *they* would treat him better than me and so on. He has also taken it upon himself to say that I am abusive to him when I send him to his room, or when I tell make him write me a report for screwing up.

Finally, several weeks ago when he was enraged at me for yelling at him for not doing his chores he told me I was abusive and that his father wasn't abusive and he wanted to go live with him.

After all these years I finally broke, I took the boy into the bedroom and we talked. I finally answered all of his questions; I told him everything about the way his father was when I was married to him. Chances are very good that there will be many people out there who don't agree with this, who will say I'm a terrible mother for 'turning my kids against their father' by telling them the truth. In fact, I've been torn on the topic myself.

As soon as we finished talking I felt two emotions simultaneously, a great weight seemed to lift off my shoulders when I finally decided to be honest with him. It was as if my entire body lightened, I no longer felt the need to keep these secrets from my son, he could finally know what his father was and most likely still is, (although I didn't tell him that). I was lighter than I had been in years.

At the same moment I felt an overwhelming wave of guilt crash into me. The taboo of speaking to my children honestly, without trying to “protect” their father, without trying to “preserve the father-son bond” left me feeling more guilt and shame that I have felt in many years.

As the weeks have gone by I have felt varying emotions over the whole thing. There were very few things I held back when I spoke to my son, and I have gone between feeling intense guilt and remorse at finally speaking the truth and a delightful feeling of lightness that comes when one is finally willing to part with secrets.

Always I wonder, “Am I turning him against his father?” Sometimes I think that I have, his attitude towards his father has shifted and he hasn't once told me that I was abusing him or that he wanted to live with his father since that day. It seems that now he sees that abuse isn't just sending someone to their bedroom he takes it that much more seriously than he did before. He seems to have a deeper understanding of why I left his father, and that I left him in an effort to keep him safe.

However, since then I've found myself wondering about these phrases that women so often hear. Who exactly are we protecting when we protect the actions and deeds of an abuser? Are we protecting the children like we want so desperately to believe? Is it in a child's best interests to not tell them what type of man they're trying to model after? Does it really do them justice to keep them “safe” from the realities of abuse, particularly when it has already touched them so intimately? Is it really in their best interest to pretend that nothing happened and that you and their father just “grew apart”? Or, is it another myth foisted upon women by men to force us into silence? Are these phrases and accusations just another way to force us to accept their crimes and allow them the privilege of being an idol to a young child?

It's a very effective tool to use to silence women. To tell women that they'll hurt their children if they speak about it, if they tell the truth about what their abusers did to them. It's eerily similar to what molesters and child abusers tell their victims, "Don't say anything or it'll hurt your parent's terribly", “You don’t want to hurt anyone do you?”

Quite frankly, I don't trust it. I believe that allowing these men to, in effect, get away with their crimes is a travesty. I believe that our children have a right to know the truth of why we left their abusive fathers. I believe that it is of utmost importance that we start telling women to TALK to their kids instead of hiding their years of torment in order to seem like a “good sport”. Do we really WANT our kids to grow up thinking their father is a model citizen?

No, it seems to me that this sort of behavior, this cringing at a woman who dares to speak the truth to the man's offspring, is simply a scare tactic. It's an attempt for cowardly men to wrap their deeds in a cloak of protection using their children as shields. It is the men who are doing the abusing; WE didn't “get them in trouble”. These women didn't “turn the child against his father” the father turned his child against him with his deeds. The one who tells the truth isn't the one to be blamed, for without the person who committed the deeds there would be no “turning against” to be had.

If he didn't choose to abuse the mother then she wouldn't be able to “turn the child against him”.

We see again the men becoming invisible as this plays out. Just as in rape, the men disappear. The abuser fades into the background as well meaning people debate on whether or not a woman should tell the truth. His acts, his deeds and his actions disappear and it is once more a woman's fault for telling on the man. In this case, she is punished severely. She is accused of being a 'bad mother' or of being 'vindictive' when she is honest with the children who are arguably the most effected by their father’s actions.

Do you see the threads of commonality in this? How a rape victim is accused of being 'vindictive' or of lying to hurt the man?

The same accusations are leveled at a woman who tells her children about the abuse she suffered at the hands of their father. She is “vindictive” and “lying to hurt the husband”.

She is expected to wrap herself into a cloak of silence with the children being held over her head as proof that if she dares to defy the unwritten rule she will cause them pain. But does it though? Does it really cause this sort of irreversible damage that people say it does?

Sure, it caused my son pain to hear the things that his father was capable of. To finally be able to ask me all the questions he's always wondered about but never gotten a straight answer on. It was painful for him, it shattered his idea of who his father was, and perhaps, still is. But is he better for it? I don’t know the answer to that. The best I can say is that at least he knows the truth and any decisions he makes about me or his father will be based in reality instead of the sort of pseudo-reality that I shrouded him with for the first 14 years of his life. At least, this way, he has the truth and he can decide what he will with all the facts.

Throughout my life I have had my voice silenced by men and their threats in almost every area. I have been silenced sexually, I have been silenced economically, and I have even been silenced as a mother. But the sort of silence that women are forced to endure when they are raped or beaten is perhaps the most damaging silence of all. When we hide our abuse from our children, when we answer their earnest questions about their fathers with vague hard-to-pin-down answers we are silencing ourselves and giving these abusers the ability to act without consequence.

The law rarely does anything to these men. I know that none of my abusers will ever take the stand in court. None of my abusers will ever have to see the inside of a cell, or even have to pay a fine for what they did. However, I think I've decided that my abusers will also not have the added benefit of me being silent about what they've done to me. I refuse to play into their hands anymore. The world needs to know that they're out there and my children deserve to know the truth, in fact, I would posit that they have a right to know the truth. They deserve at least that much.

~BB

I don't like kids, so sue me

a photo of my boys taken years ago in the loft of my barn


A cave spider


I have kids. I have 3 kids, 3 boys, ages 15,14 and 11.

I don't really even like kids.

And THAT is what this post is going to be about. In the comments section of a post further down there was a discussion about children, childbearing and the whole idea of women loving kids.

I don't love kids. Well, I suppose I should rephrase that. I love my kids, but I suspect it's only because when they were born I was forced to either love them or throttle them. I have begun to think that occasionally love is a defense mechanism, designed to keep children safe from their parents.

I didn't enjoy being pregnant. In fact, it has been rumored that I was the most miserable, hideous pregnant woman ever thought to exist in the glacial valley. *nod* I was nasty tempered, foul and pissy all the time. I have since heard of women 'glowing' in pregnancy, I glowed too, but it was with a fierce and dull rage at having my body so invaded.

I'm guessing that right about now you're asking yourselves, "Why the HELL did you have them?". Fair enough question. At the time I was ass deep in the Patriarchal ideal that women must aspire to have as many children as they can and that they must take every ounce of their self-esteem and self-worth from said children. Yes, I had children because, for a very long time, I felt I MUST have children to really become a woman, it was just what women did

But I don't really like children.

This has been quite the trying experience for me. A woman who doesn't like kids is a maligned and feared thing. While other women coo over newborns I wrinkle my nose in disdain. Most babies who come into contact with me begin screaming immediately as though I've done something horrible to them, and perhaps I have. Perhaps my anti-kid aura affects the little tykes in such a way that they feel like they've just been handed to a lion. Conversely, they affect ME in much the same way, I feel like I've just been handed some foreign creature that I don't know what to do with. The overall effect, I suspect, would be the same if someone took a cave spider and asked me to hold it and cuddle it.

I've never been attracted to children. In fact, my mother was worried sick that I'd be a terrible mother when I got pregnant. She recounts the times she would talk to my father and express concern that I'd fail miserably at the task that is motherhood. Happily, I proved her wrong. I'm a good mother, but I've always been a bit of a stern mother. My boys are good boys, NOT because they're just great kids, rather because I've forced them to be good kids.

However, the point remains that I have no motherly 'instinct' as it pertains to children. Babies do nothing for me, they're wrinkly and ugly as well as being the incarnate of the Id, which is cute for cuddly puppies but not so cute from demanding little babies.

Toddlers mostly make me cringe, the toddling, the crying, the fussing and the way they get into everything. The way they glue themselves to you, wanting every ounce of attention they can greedily grab up. The way you can't even take a shit without that toothless grin standing right beside you or screaming at the locked bathroom door.

Teenagers bother me too. From the lazy sloth-like way about them to the sense of entitlement they exude from their pores like so many beads of sweat. The way everything has to become an argument and getting the last word is the feat of the day.

Ok, enough about how I don't like children. Here's the real beef with this post, men are allowed to not like kids. Men are allowed to say things like, "All babies are ugly" and "I just want my kid to get older so it doesn't drive me batshit crazy". Hell, men are allowed to refer to the children as 'it', just like in the above sentence. How many people recoiled at my description of children? How many people thought, "Oh my GODS, she must be a terrible mother!" when, in reality, I’ve only said the same things that I've heard man after man say.

A woman in this society is expected to subscribe to the idea that she must, must, must melt into a steaming pile of sweetness at the mere sight of a baby. She must pick up every baby presented to her and sweetly and lovingly cuddle it whilst simultaneously looking to her husband or lover and say pleadingly, "Awww, look how SWEET she is! Oh honey, why don't WE think about having another one?" A woman who breaks those rules is s freak of nature.

My X husband knew that I didn’t like children. He knew that I didn't like babies, or toddlers or teenagers or anything in-between. When we would go to a friend’s house who had children he would make a big display of playing with the children while I mostly sat with my nose scrunched into a ball. As such, everyone constantly remarked about how "Wonderful a father he must be!!!"...*cough*...ummm..sure, right, IF your definition of wonderful father is a man who throws the kids into walls.

Of course, it was always assumed that I was a terrible mother by virtue of the fact that I didn't want to wipe snot from the nose of a kid that wasn't mine. For that matter I didn't want to wipe snot from my OWN children's noses. Because I didn't let my children share my ice cream (and leave big slobbery hunks of gods know what in it) I was a terrible mother.

There is a huge pressure in this society for women to not only HAVE kids, but to LIVE for those kids once you have them. I never wanted to live for my children and have said, since day one, that I can't wait to get them out of the house so I can have a life. The interesting thing is that my x husband could say things like this and people would laugh along with him and express their sympathies, but if *I* said something like this the room would fall silent while people waited for me to give them a good enough explanation about why I want my own life.

Here's a great example, I could never say, "I just can't wait for them to turn 18 so I can actually enjoy life unfettered". No, what I would have to say was, "I just can't wait for them to turn 18 so I can actually enjoy life. Of course, I LOVE my children and I'd die for them if someone asked me to, it's just that it would be nice to have the house to myself and to maybe go see the pyramids or something." Only with this disclaimer would my words be acceptable and then, only if I was very careful about the enunciation I put on the individual words.

Having said that I can only imagine what hell women who don't ever want kids go through. Considering I have 3 children already and I still catch hell over not wanting to give my very soul to them I can only imagine what it would be like to not only not WANT kids but to be repulsed by the idea.

Of course, we expect men not to want kids. Sure, they're 'programmed' to be bad fathers or some such nonsense. Fuck, all they have to do is play on the floor with the little tyke every now and then and they're frigging heroes. If you're a mother and you not only don't have a desire to head up the PTA but you actually abhor the thought of it then obviously you're a bad mother. You MUST be, don't you know that you're supposed to LIVE for your children?

If you're one of those women, you know, the ones who not only don't like toddlers but also take active steps to keep them away from you, then you're a freak and a terrible woman. Saying to someone, "I don't really like kids, I like mine well enough but please don't threaten me with that baby anymore" is akin to saying, "Jesus is a fucktard and the Devil is the good one". Both will see you drawn and quartered for even saying it.

Of course, EVERYONE wants to shove their babies at you when you're a woman. A mere dinner party can be hell for women like me. Everyone expects you to fall over yourselves to hold their little lumps. If you're particularly brave and you defy protocol by saying, "Well, I can't hold the baby because I'm eating". Suddenly you have 10 sets of hands jumping to remove your food, "Oh, well here, I'll take your plate so you can hold little Timmy". "Uht Oh" you think, looking for exits as you notice the drool slipping down little Timmy’s face, you recover yourself quickly and mutter, "Oh, well I have to go to the bathroom first" and you dash off to the bathroom thinking that you've actually gotten away with it. When you come back out, pleased with your ability to duck the baby holding thing mom is sitting right there trying to shove little Timmy into your lap once again.

It's like a nightmare you can't get out of. "Well, he looks like he needs to be changed" You stammer while trying to gently push his little fingers out of your mouth. "Oh yes! I guess he does. Here, let me change him and then you can hold him". It can only end one of two ways. Both of them are bound to be uncomfortable for everyone. The first way is that you finally sigh loudly, shake your head sadly and stutter out the words, "I really just don't do babies. They don't really like me, hell, my own kids don’t even like me" you say, just to add a little humor. At this point they either grow completely silent and look at you like the freak you are, or (and this is my favorite), they say, "Of course you like kids, you have 3 of them!" and they proceed in trying to shove their kid onto your lap.

The other way this can end is that you finally give in and take the kid, you try to look natural and bounce it on your knee or coo at it but it just keeps staring at you with those big bug eyes and you have to spend the entire time trying to unwrap cute little Timmy's hands from the death grip they have on your hair. Finally you disentangle yourself enough to hand back the child (who now has a fistful of your hair) and you smile politely and tell them what a cute kid little Timmy is.

Either way, if the kid screams at the top of its lungs when you finally take it your cover is blown. It's like a radar that every woman in a 20 mile area can pick up on and all the eyes land suspiciously on you, "Is she one of those women?" you see the questions in their eyes.

Of course, when the men come in from chatting about cars and women and one of them grabs the little guy and it breaks into a rousing scream they just laugh and say things like, "Well, he's just tired and cranky right now". Or they giggle at his incompetence with babies. Of course, it is never reflective of his ability as a father because, of course, we know that men don't really have to BE fathers, only women have to be good parents. He just has to be around and not kill the kid and occasionally wrestle with it on the floor to get a 'father of the year' mug.

This dichotomy illustrates just how much pressure is put onto women to love, nurture and basically be the only parent who is responsible for a child. A woman is judged personally on how much she coo's over babies. Even if that woman is a perfectly good parent, even if that woman is the sole caretaker of the children at home she is judged at a very fundamental level if she doesn't love EVERY child. Furthermore, it is assumed that she must be a terrible mother if she says things like, "I refuse to live for my kids".

We don't expect fathers to be good parents. We only expect them not to beat their kids, and even then they're failing miserably. Women are the culturally designated parents and a woman who admits to not really liking kids, or who says that she never wants kids, is always reduced to less of a woman for not wanting these things. She is questioned, interrogated and people take it as a personal challenge to make the poor woman hold as many babies as possible in an effort to 'Show them the light!’

As for me, I love my children, but sometimes I don't really like them. Oftentimes I dream of a day when I'll be free and be able to travel to another country. I get no joy or self-worth out of taking care of or nurturing my children. I do it, I do it because I love them, but there is no worth in the task for me. My children did not make me 'whole', and taking care of them and cooking and cleaning and doing all of these things doesn't add to my self-esteem one little bit. In fact, it mostly TAKES AWAY my self-esteem. When my entire life is defined by cleaning, cooking and diffusing arguments I feel entirely worthless.

As a woman in this society this is unacceptable. I'm supposed to hinge everything on my children. I'm supposed to sacrifice everything for my children, including my own happiness and self-worth, because that's what women do. Once that little guy comes out of my body my entire LIFE should be devoted to making him happy. The expectation for men and women is entirely different and it is this expectation, this desire to force women into the mold of child bearers that's driving me crazy.

We tell women all the time that “Raising kids is the most important job in the world”. I gotta tell you, those assholes who say that need a swift kick in the ass because MOST of them wouldn’t have a thing to do with doing the Stay-at-home mom thing. They don’t WANT to pick up slobber and change diapers and clean up after dinner and scrub toilets. Quite frankly there’s a lie in there someplace because if it was so damned important then why in the hell aren’t THEY doing it? Seriously, if it’s that important and vital then YOU wipe noses and scrub toilets. But of course, they don’t WANT to do it, they just want to make you feel better for having to do it.

The people who say this don’t really believe that staying at home is the most important job in the world. They’re just like the people who tell you, “Well, she’s in a better place now” when your Aunt dies. If they REALLY believed that your aunt was in a better place then they’d gladly be trading places with her. But of course, they don’t WANT to die, which tells you exactly what they really think. It’s the same for SAHM’s. They just say it to make YOU feel better so you don’t revolt and stop doing it. But if they really believed that your job was the most important in the world they’d be begging you to let them in on some of that nose-wiping and diaper changing.

A woman who doesn't like kids is akin to a bird who doesn't like flying. It's unnatural and frightening because what if ALL women started feeling this way!? What if ALL women decided that their happiness and their needs and wants and desires are just as important, and even MORE important than those of her children? We all know that men's desires, needs and wants are more important than their kids. For proof of that just have a look at how many men actually take a truly equal share of taking care of the kids. But for a woman to feel this way she is labeled a bad mother.

If a woman goes to a bar once a week then she's obviously unfit. If you can't eat off of her floor then she MUST be unfit! If the kid goes to school with no socks on then it MUST be the mothers fault.

To close this post I'll leave you with a true story. When my son was 6 years old I worked at a Research and Development plant for a local manufacturer. I had to be at work by 5am (this was largely so that I could be home before the kids got out of school). My x husband didn't have to go to work until 1:00 in the afternoon; obviously, he was supposed to get the kids off to school each morning. Sadly, he didn't bother; he would sleep in most of the time. One day, in early spring, I got home and cleaned the mess from the morning as usual, when my 6 year old son came in the door from school. He was wearing cowboy boots, knee-high socks, shorts and a heavy sweater. He had evidently dressed himself that morning and gotten himself off to school.

Within 20 minutes of his arrival I received a telephone call from the school. His teacher was concerned because he had been coming to school dressed unsuitably. I explained to her that I was working and that I had to be to work by 5:00 am and that his father was getting him off to school. The teacher told me that perhaps I should adjust my schedule or wake my son up at 4 am to ensure that he was dressed and ready to go for the day. She also suggested that I take a look at my 'priorities'.

At the time I just cried and felt like a terrible mother. Eventually I quit the job after this scenario repeated itself several times. I look back on that incident now and wonder why it was my fault that my husband and the father of the child didn't do anything. Why was it that *I* was being asked to re-examine my priorities?

And that story sums up the role that we expect women to play in this society.

~BB

Tackling the g-spot orgasm.

Alright, I promised a post on the G-spot orgasm, and here it is. Now, first I want to note that I have done several other posts on the topic and they always prove to be incredibly contentious. So, to start this post I'm going to link to an article that sums up what I think about the G-spot orgasm.

I'll also take a cue from her, insofar as she stated up front that an article cannot be written about such things without the person who is writing it drawing from their own experiences.

With that in mind, I will go ahead and divulge that I have never had a 'g-spot' orgasm. I have certainly had the g-spot poked and prodded in a (rather futile) attempt to find this new, mind-blowing way to orgasm. For me, it wound up just making me feel like I had to pee. For me, clitoral stimulation always works and it works very well.

Now, on to the post.

The g-spot orgasm is everywhere. All over the place we see self-help books designed specifically to show women how to find this elusive spot. We are bombarded with images, text, articles and fights about our orgasms. From Barnes and Noble to the spam in our email we women, and our orgasms, seem to be of primary concern. I suppose that this could be construed as a good thing, you know, that men are finally beginning to concern their selves with our sexual desires.

I, as every other woman, have noticed the overwhelming amount of literature on the subject. Everywhere I go it seems I am inundated with g-spot orgasm guides. This is all well and good and I thoroughly support the women out there who can and do have these g-spot orgasm. What I find incredibly disturbing however is the LACK of publications designed to teach men, and women, about the clitoris.

Here's the facts. The studies have shown that 14-24% of women are able to experience the g-spot orgasm. The remaining 74-86% of women are experiencing clitoral orgasm alone. In other words, p-V penetration just isn't doing it for them at all. And it is here that I have my beef with the g-spot orgasm.

Now, I want to point out, for the record, that I have NO beef with any woman who has orgasm through p-v penetration, if you do, that's great. Hell, it's probably better for you in the sense that you have a much greater chance of actually getting to achieve an orgasm in this P-V penetration society. Every man can penetrate and, as many of us have come to understand, they're more than willing to penetrate. With that in mind, if you're one of those women who DO have P-V penetration orgasms then I say great for you because you'll probably wind up having more lifetime orgasms than those of us who don't.

Now that we (hopefully) have that out of the way, I'd like to reiterate that most women aren't getting off in this fashion. And, to be quite honest, there's enough information out there now that if we could get off this way we probably would have gotten it figured out by now.

As with other women my beef is in the huge amounts of pressure that women who CAN'T achieve g-spot orgasm live with. Let's face it, most men are obsessed with penetration. They want us to believe that we are at our most powerful when they want to penetrate us. Men have built an entire civilization on penetration, specifically, the penetration of women. Men WANT to penetrate because that's what works for them. They love to see us be penetrated, by other men, by objects, even by animals. Dudes adore penetrative acts and it is no small wonder that they want US to enjoy penetrative acts just as much acts THEY do.

With this in mind there’s no wonder that the internet is chock-a-block full of "Gushing babes getting off to HUGE cocks!" (And yes, I am aware that this language will bring even MORE disgusting searches and men to this site. At this point that's kind of an added bonus, some perv looking for porn gets the keywords on this blog and I put a big ol' damper on their raging hard on when they see it's a radical feminist blog *wickedgrin*).

Not only is the internet full of this, but our bookstores, magazines and everything else geared towards women is teeming with it. From the latest Cosmopolitan which boasts the newest blurb on the front cover, "G-spot mystery solved! Show your lover what a great lover YOU are!" to the toned down version in the bookstore, "Sex tips that will save your marriage!" we are bombarded with g-spot orgasm.

I have to say right now, I resent it. Yes, I do. I resent the focus that (men, largely) have put on trying to conform OUR usual (and by usual I'm referring to the tried and true clitoral orgasm) method of orgasm to what they want it to be, which, of course revolves around them penetrating us. Again, I want to say to those women who get off on P-V penetration, I'm not talking to you. YOU are among the lucky because you are wired in such a way that you'll have an opportunity to have orgasms with much greater frequency than those of us who are 'clit girls'.

Men are so consumed by their desire to penetrate that they are once again, projecting their own desires onto us. Just as they do with rape fantasies, ("Well, women want to be raped! They have rape fantasies"), just as they do with their voyeurism of every woman in close contact to them, ("Well, women like it when we stare at them, it makes them feel good about themselves!"), to mundane chores like housecleaning, ("Well, women like to clean! It's biological and it makes them feel good to clean") and now, we have the g-spot orgasm, ("See! We knew that women love our cocks as much as we do! It's our dicks that are giving them so much pleasure!").

And, just as with all the above examples, we have a plethora of men declaring that all women just LOVE this stuff when it's actually a much smaller percentage than all women. Sure, there are women out there who have rape fantasies. Sure there are women who like it when men stare at them. Sure there are women who like to clean because it makes them feel good. Sure, there are women who like to have babies. And sure, there are definitely women who orgasm to P-V sex, but in all those cases it doesn't translate into all women.

Just as there is a great pressure on women (by men, of course) to clean, cook, take care of kids and enjoy it, there is a pressure on women (by men, of course) to love P-V penetration as much as they enjoy it. It's a convenience issue as well as a male-ego issue.

I think most of my readers would agree that, for the most part, men are dick obsessed. And, more than that, they want US to be dick obsessed. They want US to love their dicks just as much as THEY do. The G-spot orgasm is just another manifestation of this mindset.

Look at their porn. How often in their porn do they bother to go down on a woman? And, on the rare occasion that they do the act only lasts for a few seconds PLUS the guy doing it looks like my Doberman Pincer puppy when he grabs a toy and viciously shakes it. These dudes in their porn make growling noises and grunting noises and shake their heads back and forth just like my damn dog. Not only that, but the woman rarely acts like she's getting off.

Now, compare that to the 'real' show, that being, of course, penetration. In which, the woman moans, screams and puts on a huge display of fake enjoyment and how the pitch changes and she presumably has an orgasm (though, I have to say, MY orgasms have never, ever mimicked the mating call of the Greater Madagascar Lemur). Face it; dudes are full of dick pride. They LOVE their cocks and expect us women to bow down to their altar-of-the-dick just as they do.

And now that we've establish that, let's tie it up in a nice little bow. Since men are obsessed with penetration very few of us can count on an orgasm even 50% of the time, unless we make it abundantly clear that we're not getting off to P-V penetration. And THAT is hard enough as it is. I mean, seriously, most women have faked orgasms in the past. Some studies show that number to be near 100%. And, as many of us know, when you fake a g-spot orgasm once it's damn near impossible to stop faking it. It becomes a huge cycle of faking that is difficult, if not impossible, to stop. Women have tried all sorts of things to curtail the pressure to fake, from, "I don't know, maybe my body has changed" to saying, "Well, yes, I do have g-spot orgasms honey, but the clit kind feel sooooo much better".

Most of us know that once we START faking it's damn near impossible to STOP. Because, dude, we don't want to tell the guy that we've been lying to him, sometimes for years, even though we were under tremendous pressure to begin because of the saturation of the g-spot orgasm in this P-V centric society. Even though most of us saw our earliest depictions of 'sex' in porn and wondered, "What the hell is wrong with me, it doesn't work that way for me?"

MOST of us have had partners in which we simply don't have orgasms; unless and until HE decides that perhaps tonight he has a fantasy to go down on us. For lots of dudes P-V intercourse is all they care to do and we are caught in the crossfire. Society tells us that g-spot orgasms are what we really want, porn reinforces that idea and women's magazines continue it.

For some of us our men have pushed so hard for that elusive g- spot orgasm that we get tired and sore and finally fake it just to get him the fuck out of us. When you're lying in bed with a man you love and he's poking and prodding and asking, "Is it here?", "How about this?", "OH, I think I felt something, do YOU feel something?" (Aside from feeling like the actor in that goofy Sprint commercial, "Can you hear me NOW? Can you hear me NOW?") many of us cave and respond in typical porn fashion for a few moments before bearing down and trying to expel the lubrication in a gush.

For others, we can't even use our sex-toys efficiently because our men get all pissed off that we orgasm with a plastic toy but not their dicks. OR, if they DO want us to use toys it's so that THEY can use them on us and *surprise* penetrate us with them and thus, completely avoid the orgasm altogether.

For many of us g-spot impaired women sex isn't what we want it to be. There is tremendous pressure to be like 'everyone else' (which, as we've noted, isn't true but the myth is still perpetuated with all the gusto of men wanting us to love their dicks like they do) we are thought of as 'dysfunctional' and 'frigid' (ol Grafenberg himself said that women who didn't have g-spot orgasms were 'frigid'). For the woman who doesn't get off to P-V intercourse our sexuality is a maze of self-doubt and worry that we're somehow 'wrong' or 'dysfunctional'.

Men have created a g-spot-centric orgasm for women. And the proof is all around us. The simple fact is that while there ARE women who orgasm with P-V penetration, a vast majority do not and for those women, their needs are oftentimes not met.

We can be assured that as long as women are having P-V orgasm that they are relatively more likely to actually have an orgasm during 'sex' (which, of course, according to popular opinion cannot even HAPPEN at all without penetration, another male-centric ideology that has to go bye-bye). However, that distinction does little for the vast majority of women who aren't having them through intercourse.

And here's the problem. For those of us who are pissed off about the g-spot centric female orgasms there are hordes of men and women who yell at us and tell us that THEY have them and that we’re marginalizing them by saying that most women don’t. Now, it is here that I’m going to risk pissing off the masses (all 14-24% of them) and say that we’re NOT trying to marginalize you, we simply want to get off as much as YOU do. In fact, we’re jealous ok? We KNOW that as long as we can’t get off to P-V penetration that our odds of having an orgasm are smaller than yours. Stop complaining already, you are getting off with sex alone, and, as I’m sure you know, many dudes simply DON’T bother to do anything OTHER than sex. You are among the lucky in this penis centric society.

Of course, anytime the g-spot argument erupts we have gobs of men who show up to also tell us that THEY can produce a g-spot orgasm in anyone and that ALL of their girlfriends, lovers and spouses had them, and that THEY defy the statistics because ALL of their lovers had them and therefore, we’re just stupid and frigid. Of course, they also despise hearing that the numbers of women who fake P-V orgasm is much, much, much higher than the numbers of women who actually experience them.

With this post I am putting myself out there in terms of pissing off everyone, with that in mind I’ve pretty much relegated myself to knowing that anytime the g-spot comes up there will be controversy.

In closing let me summarize. The push for the mandatory g-spot is a push that has been made, from the beginning, by men. From Grafenberg to most of the authorities on the subject it is men, claiming that ‘all women have a g-spot’. The g-spot, rather conveniently, encompasses both of the things that men are absolutely obsessed with, the penis and penetration. As a woman who does not have g-spot orgasms it’s frustrating to see young kids tell me that the way a woman orgasms is through penetration. Yes, a child of 16 told me this. Why did he believe this? Because of porn.

It is clear, to me at least, that the g-spot has been overinflated to the extent that I wish to revolt against it. I want to vomit up all the g-spot books, images, depictions and tips and eradicate the fucker from the annuls of history. And this is largely the result of men and their cock-worship. I suspect that most women out there don’t give a rat’s ass HOW they orgasm, they only care that they do. They don’t care if it has a name, if it’s ‘better’ than other women’s or if they get them by clit, p-v penetration or by standing on their heads while singing the Mararena. They care only that they have them.

To further this, I suspect that women just want to be left alone in this regard. ALL of us want to be able to orgasm. ALL of us want to just be able to tell a partner that X does it for me whether that be penetration or oral sex or whatever and have them believed and taken care of in a sexual interlude. With men dictating that our pleasure resides in their cocks it’s always bound to be a matter of some contention. With men dictating that only “immature” women experience clitoral orgasms there will be contention. With men dictating that most women get off to penetration there will always be contention. The g-spot is yet another schism that men have put between women, by making sure that the g-spot orgasm is the only ‘mature’ and ‘cool’ way to orgasm they, once again, create a divide in the masses of women who’s only power has ever come from being what they want.

The Patriarchy is very clever my friends but until men take our orgasms for what they are and don’t harass us for not having the ‘right’ kind of orgasm then the divide will remain. Until men start appreciating all the orgasms we have, all the different orgasms we have instead of focusing on the statistically small percentage of women who have orgasms through their preferred method the division will remain.

I think that it’s important to note that women have been largely innocent in the continuation of the debate about g-spot orgasm. This debate has, from the beginning, been of male interest because the debate centers entirely around male penetration. If they can convince this society (as they have so effectively done) that the g-spot is the way to go as well as the most popular method of orgasm, then they have managed to completely absolve themselves of any responsibility as a loving partner in an intimate relationship to worry about female orgasm.

~BB

Patriarchy and Paganism

Ok, blogger simply will not let me put up a photo so, here's the links to the pics I wanted to put up here, Artemis 1 and Artemis 2. Compare and contrast my friends

This is a post I've been holding back on for some time. Mostly because I realize that paganism is a rather niche topic on its own. Patriarchy and paganism is even MORE niche and I like to write about things that everyone can try to relate to. Nevertheless I decided to put up this post because I believe it's important and it's a topic that is very close to me.

I am a pagan. Now, we hear the word bantered around quite often but, in essence, paganism is any religion that is not Christian, Jewish or Muslim, in other words any religion that isn't based around Abrahamic religions. Native Americans are pagan, as are many other mainstream religions such as Hinduism. The umbrella of paganism is quite vast and beneath it you will find scores of different types of people with different paths of spirituality. Among them are Wicca, Buddism, Native American and a vast amount of others.

Many of the people treading the path of paganism have decided to do so because they profess to relate more to the Goddess aspect of spirituality. Many pagan paths recognize the female aspect of the Creator just as fully, if not more so, than the male aspect (which is the aspect that Bible based religions recognize). It is generally believed in many pagan circles, that the Creator has both male and female sides to it, and, as I said before, many people are more comfortable with the female aspect than the male or want to incorporate the female aspect more fully than Christianity allows them to. This is particularly true of Wicca and its derivatives.

Now, for myself, I follow a traditionally Native American path, though the trappings of it are a strange conglomeration of what I have observed and what works for me.

This post will be about observations I have made within the pagan community since I have been a part of it. I have noted, with much regularity, that many pagans use porn. It has always struck me as odd that a path that is comprised, in great part, of people who wish to worship the female half of the Creator seem to forget that women in porn, women who are being called a 'slut' and a 'whore', are intrinsically linked to the goddess aspect. The very aspect that they pray to and worship to.

It has always struck me as odd that in pagan communities porn, every manner of it, from bestiality to the Lesbian Caricature is fine and dandy and, in fact, you are often accused of being 'controlling' or 'hysterical' for not liking it. Obviously, there are males following the pagan path and not a small number of them either. In fact, some of the largest pagan boards and pagan forums on the internet are owned and run by men. Many of them who claim to worship the goddess aspect of the Creator. Many of whom claim to pray to the Goddess and to ask the Goddess for help throughout their lives. These same men, who claim devout servitude to the Goddess aspect have no trouble, and indeed, seem to thoroughly enjoy, hearing women being told to 'Take it like a good whore”.

They say that porn is 'empowering' to women, that it is an expression of female sexuality to be celebrated. They claim that female sexuality has been so repressed by the Christian bible that the pagan path, the Goddess worship, is a means of taking that power back. They say that female sexuality should not be repressed and indeed I would agree with them, but they hold porn in their pockets and claim that it's empowering and they are celebrating female sexuality.

So I pose a challenge to you pagans out there, male and female alike, the next time you call down the Goddess, the next time you bow at the alter of the female aspect of the Creator, I dare you to call her down whilst calling her a whore. What? Don't want to do that?

Here's the problem with mainstream paganism: It is inherently sexist and revels in the stereotypes of dominance/subordination that the Patriarchy rests upon. And I say this as a card-carrying member of the pagan community.

In some paths we have what is known as 'The Great Rite'. This is reportedly and supposedly the ultimate means of communicating with the Goddess aspect of the Creator. The most powerful way to 'draw down' the Goddess, to show her your respect, to ask her for help.

Here's how the Great Rite goes: Male finds female. The pair consecrates the area. They have sex. The male orgasms.

Now, what I'd like to know is this: Why in the Goddess's name does a religion which supposedly devotes itself to the female aspect require sex as the most powerful expression of feminine energy?

Does anyone else see the utter and ridiculous hypocrisy in this?

Now, I'm certainly not a Goddess (although I think I'd be pretty good at it) but I'm going to wager a guess here that any Goddess that does exist would be pretty fucking offended if the most powerful aspect of her energy was all about sex. I know *I*, as a mere mortal, am offended as hell that MY most 'powerful' attribute is sex.

Yet, this hypocrisy seems to go not only unnoticed, but celebrated as female sexuality in pagan circles. Men and women alike worship Artemis, who is actually the goddess of the hunt, but do a quick google search on Artemis and you'll find a plethora of bare breasted male fantasies. Not only that, but it's also quite telling that you have to turn Safe Search OFF to get any results or images of Artemis on the first page. How many Kali worshippers are there? Not so many in my travels.

The female aspect of the Creator, even in a female based spiritual path, has been defined by male orgasm. The Goddess is at her most powerful through sex.

These men hold up porn, the 'Great Rite' and other sex-based 'celebrations' as the key to getting in touch with the Feminine half of creation. Wow, do they need to learn a thing or two about female power and feminine energy! As a practicing pagan I am disgusted.

My spirituality is vastly important to me and I am sickened by the mockery of female sexuality at the hands of men in a religion whose devotees are supposedly enamored and in awe of the Goddess.

In the 'Great Rite' the male is supposed to become the male aspect of the Creator and the female the Female aspect of creation. Apparently the female is only at her most powerful when the male is around to penetrate her.

Now, these 'Fuck rites' as I'll call them from here on out, are done at all times of the year. On important pagan holidays pagans all over the world run out and fuck men to celebrate the female aspect of the goddess. Note also, that these fuck rites are the most powerful aspect of the Goddess.

Hell, when the feminine is expressed most interpretations show her as a pseudo porn star as in the above example with Artemis. Other examples of the Goddess aspect being twisted into some deranged eye-candy-for-the-male-gaze can readily be found.

I was given a tarot deck some time ago. I believe it was called the Goddess oracle or something similar. The deck consisted of all female cards. The cards represented various goddesses from all over the world all in one deck. It was gift from a friend. I never used it. In fact, normally when I receive something like this that I don't care for or that doesn't mesh with me I hold onto it in the hopes that I'll meet someone with whom the object will 'work'. I threw this deck away. I couldn't bear the idea of passing something so hideous onto another woman.

The defining moment for me was when I flipped through the cards and noted that well over half of the women in the deck were naked. Not only were they naked (contrary to popular belief I don't despise nudity *grin*) but the ones who were nude were drawn to look just like porn-stars, complete with perky breasts and waspish waists. The deck also contained fertility goddesses, which are traditionally portrayed as large (more realistic) women. This deck DID portray them as large, but none of them were nude. Each and every single fertility goddess was covered from head to toe in fabric, presumably because they simply weren't fuckable enough. Ishtar, a Babylonian goddess of death and war was depicted as a fuckable, topless sex object with makeup and male imposed beauty ideals.

The deck is hopefully rotting in a landfill somewhere, a place it rightly deserves.

Another interesting phenomenon is this: Traditionally women in pagan religions have been defined by the 3 aspects of woman. It is oftentimes referred to as the Triple Goddess who represents the stages of women’s lives. The 3 stages are as follows.

1. The Maiden
2. The Mother
3. The Crone

Here's the problem with neo-paganism as it pertains to the archetypal aspects of women. They generally categorize the aspects by the woman's sexual prowess

For example: In pagan circles The Maiden is generally known to be the archetype of a virgin. She is pure, virginal and, as such, holds little wisdom.

The Mother is the adult female. She is categorized by her status as mother and her reproductive ability. The wisdom that she holds is directly linked to her status as mother.

The Crone is the old lady. Post menopausal and decidedly unfuckable. She has accumulated all the wisdom that life has to offer.

Now, the archetypes aren't bad in and of themselves, but they are so commonly linked with women and their fuckability status that it becomes a dreaded thing for a woman to reach 'Crone'. There are no such archetypes for the Male in paganism. He just *is*. To have the same effect paganism would need to define stages of male life as well. But we don't. We don't say that the God aspect of the Creator is categorized by, "Virgin", "Father" and "Grandfather". Why is this?

Paganism was a bastion for women's spirituality, or at least I believe that was the original intent. It was terrifying for men to see the female aspect done in such a powerful, frightening way, therefore, she has to be made to be less powerful. What better way to make women less powerful than to create a fuckable goddess who is at the apex of her power when she is having sex?

Many men whom I have met who are involved in paganism show a frightening amount of animosity towards women. Defending porn of the most degrading and disgusting types from detractors they claim female empowerment and then expect the Goddess to help them in life, to gift them with knowledge and wisdom. They fail to regard the suffering that porn causes women as a problem for the Goddess, they deliberately close their eyes to the degradation and simultaneously hold up pornography as a bastion of female power. Obviously a Goddess who so readily wants to fuck is far less frightening than a Goddess who wants females to be equal to men. A Goddess who stands for women never being denigrated for male power and pleasure is much more dangerous to the fragile male ego as a Goddess who actually worships the dick that they possess.

From the 'fuck rites' to their porn usage to their complete apathy towards women and women's rights they are a shame and a sham to paganism as a spiritual path. Those men out there who are viewing pornography and defending it so vehemently ask yourselves, Would you ask the Goddess for help by saying, "Help me you slut"? Is THIS the respect that you lend to the female aspect of the Creator? Is THIS the role you would put your Goddess in? A role that dictates that the height of her power is in fucking men?

If so, then perhaps you should start another religion, one where you worship at the altar of male ego and male erections because that, at least, would be more honest.

~BB

Needs vs Wants

Blogger hates me this morning and refuses to upload a picture, *sigh* I'll try again later

A few days ago Dim and I were chatting about pornography again. We talk about these sorts of things quite often, bouncing ideas and theories off of one another and bantering about radical feminism etc.

This time we were talking about pornography and the conversation veered back to entitlement and women. We discussed how disconcerting it is that men feel they have a blanket entitlement to women. How so many of them feel that it is their right by virtue of having a dick, that they then have women around to satisfy any whim that said dick wants.

Nowhere is this entitlement more blatant than in pornography. In no other area do we see men respond in such a vitriolic manner, with such animosity, anger and outrage as when a feminist begins critiquing their porn usage.

Yet, no man owns up to this entitlement aspect when I call them on it. When I tell them that they feel entitled to women, they balk. The common reaction is to shoot me a look of utter contempt and disbelief, as though their conviction alone will convince me of what they want so badly to believe. “I do NOT feel entitled to women!” they cry. Normally followed by some variation of, “Damn feminist’s they just hate men”.

“Oh, but you do” I reply. “You and all the other porn users out there absolutely feel an entitlement to women”. Obviously this rarely goes over well. I am normally faced with a horde of angry men (and sometimes women), who are insulted that I would dare to suggest such a horrible thing.

This is not a unique reaction. As most radicals know people get very angry when one suggests an entitlement mindset and for good reason too. Nobody wants to think of themselves as being a person who feels entitled to another human being. I mean, dude, what a horrible state of mind to admit to.

But it’s true. Those people who watch porn, who defend it so fiercely, feel that they have an innate entitlement or right to a woman’s body. They feel they have a right to use a woman’s likeness, a woman’s image (to say nothing of a woman’s pain) as a masturbatory aid.

Now, you porn apologists out there will be balking right about now, screaming about your First Amendment rights and so on. I’m not talking about the rights that a Patriarchal government, which has never given a flying fuck about women to begin with, has so kindly bestowed upon you. Certainly we can all agree that just because a government decides that a person or group of people has a ‘right’ doesn’t mean that it is a decision that is actually ‘right’. (And I mean right as in right or wrong in that sentence). Because, if that’s the case, then everyone can stop bitching about Bush putting his own disclaimer about torture onto the top of the anti-torture bill, oh and while you’re at it, stop complaining about Bush being able to wire tap your house. The Government decided therefore it’s ‘right’.

Now that we have that out of the way, I’m not talking about the rights that a fucked up government bestows upon half the population to ensure that the other half (you know, the female half) gets to live in misery as a sexual class with no emotions, feelings or well…rights. I’m talking about whether or not you believe that you have an inherent ‘right’ to the sex of a woman.

When you defend your ‘right’ to pornography you are defending a desire, not a ‘right’. You are inherently stating that you are entitled to women, to use women as a sexual repository for whatever fantasy you have come up with. See, it’s easy for people to conflate their rights that a government bestows upon them, and their ‘rights’ as a human being.

This is not a new idea for me; I’ve discussed it elsewhere on this blog, many times in conjunction with other theories and ideas. Tonight, however, I want to focus on this entitlement that males have towards females and female sexuality.

When a man says it’s his ‘right’ to view pornography what he is saying is that he has a ‘right’ to use women as sexual objects to satisfy his desires. I think it’s also important that we take a real hard look at this ‘right’ that they claim to have. They hold the First Amendment before them like a holy idol, crowing and complaining that we’re against their Free Speech, but that’s not what this is about, and don’t be confused. When they take this tact what they are saying is that they personally have a right to a woman’s body. That they have a right to view a woman in whatever way they want, to orgasm even in spite of her pain, to degrade and dehumanize her. They honest to gods believe that they have a right, and entitlement given to them by the penis-loving god himself.

The belief here is that women should be available to them for whatever uses they deem fit. Call them on it sometime, they’re not defending this all male Government’s decision to bestow an unfair ‘right’ onto them. No, what they’re defending is their personal belief that they have a right to women as the sex class. Let that sink in for a moment: there are many men out there who believe that they have a right to a female body whenever they desire it

When we take this sort of entitlement onto ourselves we are conflating needs with desires, which is exactly what these guys do. Of course, white males are constantly coddled and given their desires and told that those desires are actually needs. This society has made coddling white males into an art form. And those people who defend their ‘right’ to porn are actually defending their personal belief that they have a ‘right’ to women as sexual objects and that smacks of entitlement.

Sex is not a need. Humans do not need sex as they need, say, air. Contrary to popular belief a man can go his entire life without masturbation or having sex. Air, water, food, the ability to defecate and urinate are all needs therefore, we have an inherent entitlement to those things. In order to live we must have these things and clean air, clean water, and medical care are ‘rights’. Sexual access to women, ANY woman is not a ‘right’; it is not a ‘need’.

This conflation is probably just splitting hairs to many people but I think it’s very important. It’s important that we hear what these folks are really saying when they prance about crying over their rights. What they are really saying isn’t that they want to defend a government decision, no, people have no trouble saying that The Right to Bear Arms doesn’t extend to armor piercing, fully automatic machine guns. They have no problem at all distinguishing THOSE rights. When they say that they have a right to Freedom of Speech, they understand that they don’t have a right to scream ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre. They understand perfectly that Freedom of Speech wasn’t intended to protect ALL forms of speech. What they’re really defending and getting upset over, is their belief that they have a personal, god-granted, socially endorsed ‘right’ to women and women’s sexuality.

Sure, they may not feel that EVERY woman should be available to them at all times, but the disturbing truth is that they believe that SOME women should be available to them at all times. In other words, they believe that a caste of women should be available for them to choose from at any time they wish. This is what they’re really defending, they’re entitlement, their ‘right’, their ‘need’ to have some women available to them at all times for their purposes.

These men and women, believe, with all of their heart, that women should be available for them sexually in some fashion. All of them have conflated their honest to goodness 'needs' with 'desires'. Yet, they expect us to believe them when they tell us they don't believe this, that they don't feel they have an entitlement to women.

The next time you hear someone getting pissed off at you when you rail against pornography be sure to ask them why they believe they have a personal right to have a number of women sexually available to them at all times, because that's what they're really defending. Don’t let them throw up their ‘First Amendment’ rights to you, keep asking them, and demand an answer from them. Ignore everything else and demand that they tell you why they believe that a segment of the population should be available to them to use as they wish.

Ask them, and see if you get an answer.

~BB

'Good' by association?

This is The Moon card which is a particuarly apt card for this phenomenon


I was just reading a post over at Buried Voices about, what else? The Culture of Dominance. She has some great points about how men oftentimes are not only resistant but downright defensive and nasty when faced with a radical perspective.

It got me to thinking and ultimately sparked this post. Many men are resistant to the ideas of radical feminism. As many pro feminist men can probably attest to, when they met their first 'radical' it seemed like an attack on them. Everything these radicals talk about is about men. Everything they say is about men, the foregone conclusion is that, they must hate men.

Now, we can question why they feel so personally attacked by feminism, why they troll every feminist board they can find, why they are so angry. We can say things like, "They don't want to give up their entitlement" and so on. But I think that the simple truth in all of it, the binding cord that runs through all of this anger and defense that radicals encounter when it comes to men is this: They want to believe they are 'good' and normal people.

I do believe that most people want to be 'good'. That people, men and women alike, want to be seen as 'normal' and inherently 'good'.

Here's the problem, the tenets of the Patriarchy are so ingrained, so normalized that they are accepted into the very fabric of our lives, without question, without scrutiny, they are simply accepted as 'normal' and 'good'. When a radical begins to challenge those norms as being not only not 'normal' (insofar as normal is not defined by the number of people who are doing it) but also not 'good', it is taken as a personal attack.

A radical who decides to argue against small things, like staring at women in grocery stores, or making passes at complete strangers, hits a nerve. She hits this nerve not necessarily because the man feels his entitlement slipping away (though that could certainly be going on in the background) but rather, because what she is saying is that this action and this deed are wrong. The hapless man hears that what he is doing is wrong and not normal and it challenges his very belief in himself.

He is, to himself, normal and good. And he's not hearing that she's challenging the action that he is engaging in, rather, what he's hearing is her challenging his worth as a human being, his 'goodness' and 'normalness'.

Humans are funny creatures. We believe, very strongly, that we are good people. We want to believe that we are moral, good, normal people. With this in mind, if we're already assuming that we are 'moral', 'good', 'normal' people then by extension everything we do is also given those same judgments.

After all, a 'bad' person does 'bad' things; a 'good' person does 'good' things. We fail to see that we can be 'good' people and engage in 'bad' behaviors or behaviors that are unthinking, careless and even damaging.

A long time ago I posted my theory on Acceptable Losses (soon, the archive for porn posts will be up, I promise, then it will all be at your fingertips). Suffice it to say the theory was perhaps my most contentious idea. Dim and I hit on it quite a few times and each and every time it proved to be a hot topic that brought the porn-apologists out of the woodwork. I challenged many people on that theory, asking them, repeatedly asking them, over and over, harping on it, What's your number?, I believe that NOBODY rose to the task. Nobody.

Not. One.

Nobody would tell me what their number was.

Now, here's the reason that this was (and still is) a maligned theory. It challenged people's inherent ideas that they are 'good', 'moral' and 'normal' people. Because they exist, and because they must assume that they are 'normal' and 'good', that means that everything they DO is also labeled with the above value judgments. We define ourselves by our actions. We determine whether we, and other people, are 'moral' and 'good' by our actions as well as by the number of people in a society that do those very same things. It is extremely important to us that we remain 'normal' and 'good'.

When someone comes along and says that the action you are engaging is neither of those things, it is taken as a personal attack. How can it NOT be good? After all, everyone else is doing it? And, since it's a given that only 'bad' people do 'bad' things and I'm not a 'bad' person, well, obviously this radical just hates men.

You see? It becomes a personal attack which is why so many men (and yes, even women) are out there trolling radical boards. They are trying to reaffirm to themselves that they are both 'normal' and 'good', as well as healthy and well adjusted. They simply do not get that one can be all of those things and still act stupidly, selfishly or even do 'bad' things. These people have so defined themselves by their actions and deeds and so convinced themselves of their moral and societal standing that anything that is said to the contrary, even if it's an attack on behavior and not an attack on the person is seen as an attack on the individual.

They are unable to separate the two and ANY attack, on ANYTHING that they practice brings into question their own ideologies of what moral, good and normal is. Much of human behavior is made up of this response. I know that for me, I become the most irate, the most defensive and the most 'hysterical' when I am confronted with a mindset that shows that I'm not the 'moral', 'good' person that I think I am.

Occasionally, someone is able to point out something about me that is not what I had thought it was. Something that has escaped my attention and that is in direct conflict to the ideals that I believe make me who I am. When this happens I am at my most dangerous. I defend my ideal, although not nearly as often and not with the venom that I did before. The reason for this is because I have recognized and understand that I can still be 'good' and 'moral' and 'normal' even *if* I harbor some thought that seem to the contrary.

I am no longer so enmeshed in my perception of who I am that I take it as a personal attack when someone says that something isn't jiving.

So, in short, when a person is offended by the radical view, the initial reaction is based around fear of not being what they thought they were, fear of having their perception of who they are prove to be untrue. These folks feel that anything that attacks their actions, mindsets and deeds is a direct attack on them rather than an attack on the vices and selfishness that they hold.

In short, they are convinced that they are good, normal, moral, upstanding people and they cannot and will not tolerate anyone challenging that view. They troll boards in a ceaseless attempt to alleviate their fears that they're not who they think they are. They dodge questions about Acceptable Losses because THAT is a surefire way to level a shotgun at your internal mirror and blast a hole in it. They defend their 'indulgences' in porn, bestiality and even rape fantasies because they believe that they are people who are normal and good.

Oftentimes these folks are defining normal and good NOT by an internal gauge or ideal that they have come up with themselves, but rather by a societal pressure. I've known many men who have told me, after getting off of porn, that when they looked at it they often felt guilty or dirty. This jives with my own personal experiences with porn. The excuse that we ourselves for getting off to degradation is that everyone does it. So, by that logic, if everyone does it, and we know that MOST people are 'good', 'normal' people, the action is then given a good and normal pass.

Defining 'morality', 'goodness' and 'normalness' by the masses is not the way to go.

So, the next time you see one of those trolls, the next time you meet a man who is acidic and vitriolic to your message, understand that you are challenging that persons preconceptions of who they thought they were. You are forcing them to look into another mirror, a different mirror than the one they are currently holding themselves before.

~BB

A Penis Called "Peter"

Ok, so I saw this quite awhile ago. It's a "How does pregnancy happen" movie by Planned Parenthood.

I've wanted to do a post on this one for awhile but it kind of got pushed to the back burner in favor of a few other thoughts that were bouncing around the ol' BB noggin. However, today I found the link sitting quietly in my favorites folder and thought, "Aha! I remember this!".

Now, I'm gonna give you a few minutes to go check out the movie, don't worry, it's short.

*checks watch*

Alright. Now, am I just way overly sensitive or are there more than a few things wrong with this movie?

On the upside of it, they have lots of good information, moreover it's accurate information and important information. Accurate information is tough to find in this age of the Bush war on information.

Nevertheless I had a few problems when I first saw this movie. To refresh my memory I just watched it again and I still have the same issues with it.

First off I have a huge problem with the name of the pseudo-talk show. "The G-Spot". If we're going to refer to orgasm-inducing spots on women, why not call it "The Clitoris" or, "The C-Spot"?

Now, I have said this before and I'll say it again, there's some serious debate over whether the G-spot even exists (see Anne Koedt's the Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm for more information). Even according to the studies most favorable to its existence, it's a well known fact that only 14% of women are capable of experiencing one (the highest number recorded for this particular experience is 24%). So clearly, the majority of women aren't having these orgasms. Yet, every single time we discuss sexuality, even with a pregnancy learning tool for young people, we hear about the G-spot, as though it were not only the primary means of orgasm (which it isn't) but also the ONLY means of orgasm.

I'm actually feeling another G-spot post coming on, so most likely I'll end up opening another can of worms with it over the next few days. For the moment, however, I just want to note it as a serious problem with the Planned Parenthood movie.

Now, here's my second problem. The woman SCREAMS stereotypes. She's dressed in a low slung gown (which I can even understand since they're trying to make it look like a vulva) but, we've also got an eyeful of cleavage.

Combine that with the platinum blonde hair and yes, even the overdone beauty mole and we have a cartoon porn goddess, and this is to say nothing of the phone sex voice we're presented with.

Now, let's compare and contrast. We have the penis dude who doesn't appear to have any real defining characteristics of a man, other than being a giant penis (which I'll get to in a second). And, next to that, we have a completely overdone female who is so reminiscent of a porn-queen as to be textbook. Have we so identified women as completely equivalent to their sexual organs? A penis can just be a penis, but a vagina cannot be a vagina without also being a woman. This seems to be promoting the mindset that a woman does not have a vagina, she is a vagina, and vice versa, but males are not necessarily directly equivalent to their penises.

Conversely, it could also be viewed as saying that the Penis is some sort of force of nature, rather than something that is attached to an actual human male; an entity unto itself (thus making it harder to control than if it were a part of a person).

Let's put it this way: If they were portraying the male the same way they did the female, he would have a broad, muscled chest, a square face with a stone jaw, perfect hair, and a GIANT FOUR-FOOT PENIS. Why did they give porn-star characteristics to the female genitalia-representation, but keep the penis as nothing more than a sex-obsessed, uncontrollable penis?

Next, the penis man would be a gigantic insult to me if I were male. Seriously, the dude appears to have ZERO control over himself. He is the epitome of the "men are dogs" cliche'. It also furthers the idea that men have zero control over their orgasm, where they orgasm, what they orgasm to and that we shouldn't even expect them to control it.

Notice also that the penis dude can't even be logical when the vulva woman is being clinical in a discussion of sex and pregnancy. The mere mention of a clinical "vagina cam" sends him into seemingly uncontrollable fits. This implies that men aren't responsible for anything they do, hell, they can't even TALK about how a woman gets pregnant because they get too excited.

In the meantime, the woman is not only responsible for knowing all of the information with regard to sex and pregnancy, but she is also the one responsible for conveying that information to men. It's just yet another obligation foisted onto women when the responsibility for the act - and its consequences - should theoretically be distributed equally.

Another troubling aspect to this movie, as well meaning as it is, is that the woman has no name at all. She's simply a vulva (with blonde hair), yet we know that the penis dude's name is Peter. Not only that, but she is condescending and snide and appears to have nothing but contempt for the penis dude. She cannot take a joke and threatens bodily harm to our loveable little penis dude for something as small as pushing a buzzer.

Let's put all that together: this movie seems to be portraying women as mouthy, humorless, know-it-all, snobbish vaginas. On the up side, they show cleavage and coif their hair, so men will tolerate them, right?

Another disturbing moment comes when the female is describing the acts that will affect the semen in the seminal pool. When she says "Jumping up and down won't empty it," the image we're presented with is a young thin blonde jumping up and down in front of an old, grey-haired balding fat man who is lounging, post-coitus-like, in a bed.

So yeah, in addition to everything else, let's normalize men's absurd "youth" fetish.

Basically, while I understand that this movie was most likely created to be taken in a sort of tongue in cheek way, I can’t help but wonder if it could have been done differently. In this already porn-saturated culture do we really need one more reinforcer of the stereotypes of women as snobby, catty bitches while men are fun-loving, irresponsible, spontaneous ejaculators.

It just seems to me that in this climate it says something about Planned Parenthood that they may not otherwise wish to be saying. Normalizing the porn-star look, the wasp waisted, large breasted (WHITE!) woman as the epitome of sexuality doesn’t exactly ring of egalitarian treatment of the sexes.

Overall, while I get that this is supposed to be a lighthearted attempt at sex-education to me, anyway, it seems to be lacking in some very important areas.

The information on the other hand, is great and I’ve already had my kids watch it while simultaneously asking them to look at it under a radical lens.

What do you guys think?

~BB with a little help from Dim

Friday Fun with Sitemeter

Ok, we've taken a bit of a cue from Vociferate who had stumbled upon a fun way to play with Sitemeter. As most of you know, the little doohickey down there will tell me all sorts of Big-Brother type things. Not least of which is the ability to see the referring pages of every IP that enters my site.

What this translates into is that I can see the search terms of each and every IP used to enter my site. It's quite a nifty feature that gives me and Dim lots of laughs, giggles and downright scares.

So, we got to thinking about it and decided that our readers deserve to have just as much fun with sitemeter as we do. We decided to share the most hilarious, scary and just plain ol’ strange searches of the week. And yes, this will be a regular feature here at The Den.

So, without further ado, I bring you our own little taste of the Oscars.


Here're the categories.

The "WTF?" category. These searches are the ones that left Dim and I scratching our heads over.

• From the Midwest we have, "christina agulara frigging out dance"(sic) –
  
  Yes, that is the EXACT search term used. Can anyone tell me what the hell this person was actually looking for?



• "honey beaver" -
  
  Now, this one we scratched our heads over for a long while. We finally decided to see what responses it brought up on the search engine. Turns out the #1 hit for "honey beaver" was a motor home tire gauge thingy. We still have no earthly idea what the hell they were looking for, though Dim and I kinda figured they were perhaps hunting for a "honey badger" (which, I'm pretty sure, does actually exist) and stumbled here instead.



• And, vying for top contender in the “WTF” category we have someone out of Newark, Delaware who searched for-
  
  "freexxxpics"
  
  Not exactly a surprising search, until you see HOW this brainiac did it: With safe search ON
  
  Now, far be it from me to say that porn makes you stupid (ok, that's not far-be-it-from-me to say, but we'll forget that for now), but here's the proof. For further proof, I'll add that he stayed here for 2 minutes and 51 seconds, apparently it took that long for our friend to realize that he had stumbled onto an ANTI-porn site.



• And not to be outdone we have:
  
  "take it like a good" slut dirty whore rape”
  
  This was out of California and while we weren't surprised to see the search term this was yet another brilliant porn seeking dude who didn't understand that safe search filtered out every single search word except for rape.
  
  Here's a tip Mr. California- Next time, turn Safe Search OFF before you try to find your rape porn.

Now, for our next category we have: "Least Original"

It's amazing just how unimaginative folks can get. It's actually amusing to see “take it like a good' slut dirty whore rape”- followed by "boobs"

• "boobs" - This is out of the UK.



• This guy actually managed to type 2 words in his quest for the mammary glands of females –
  
  "boobs blogspot"
  
  Thank you reader in Richland Washington for that oh so creative way of looking up porn.



• And of course, yet another one lacking in any creativity
  
  "Boobs" from Trenton MI
  
  I see you friend! Have you found your "Boobs" yet?



• Then we have -
  
  "sex" from smack dab in the middle of the Bible belt.
  
  Somehow I doubt he's looking for bible references.



• And, from the Philippines we have -
  
  "topless".
  
  Wow, what is it with the boob fascination? *looks at her boobs* still don't get it *shrug*. And they say that we have envy, I think these folks should be called out as having titty envy



• And this one is a contender in both this category AND the "Requests for information" category. From Atlanta Georgia we have -
  
  "masturbate"
  
  Not sure if he needs help or wants to see it?

Our next category is "Requests for Information".

Of course, we here at The Den are all about trying to help people so we were touched that so many folks out there stumbled blindly in looking for clarification on a few points. So, without further ado, we give you the top contenders for "Requests for Information":

• "why is the female anatomy called beaver"
  
  Ummm...Hmmm...Well actually, umm.... Ok, I can't help you. I really don't know the answer to this seeing as how I've actually SEEN beavers and well, they look nothing like what I have between my legs. So, for my friend in the West, I have no earthly idea. But who knows, maybe my readers can help me out on this one.



• "how to tell if she's playing hard to get"
  
  Ahh, now this is a common search term, hell, it's almost as common as "boobs". Here's your answer Mr. Florida - She's not playing hard to get, leave her the fuck alone. Playing hard to get is a myth, if she wants you, she won't run away from you.



• And from Loudon, Tennessee another poor soul who wants desperately to believe that she doesn't want to run screaming from the room whenever he comes near –
  
  "Signs She's Playing Hard To get"
  
  To answer your question I refer you to the above



• "pussy whipped means"
  
  Ahh, here's one I can sink my teeth into. Whoever told you that is trying to destroy your masculinity by using women as the lowest forms of life on the planet and then, equating you to them. This, my friend, is called Mis-og-y-ny and it's rampant in the world.



• And here, we have someone who has a rather odd question -
  
  "faking an erection" from Leesburg GA.
  
  Sorry Leesburg, I ain't gonna touch this one.



• And who could forget our contender for the "Least original" category. Out of Atlanta Georgia we have, once again -
  
  "masturbate" -
  
  And dude, once again, I gotta say that I'm also not touching that one. Here's a tip though, just start poking around until it feels good.



• And here’s another ambiguous search. I've put it into two categories because I'm actually hoping it might be a "Request for Information"-
  
  A friend in Katherine, Australia wants to know about "penis biting". For this I suggest that it be hard first *nodnod*. It'll bleed more.

Now, this could be the most disturbing category, we've dubbed it "Sexual Deviants".

• "heterosexual threesomes"
  
  Which is kind of strange when you think about it because the very nature of a 'threesome' dictates that at least 2 of the people will be rather non-heterosexual. Guess that only applies to men huh?
  
  I think his search would have been much more accurate had he said, "Only show me threesomes of women doing whatever the fuck I want them to do because the thought of men touching each other makes my erection go the way of the Do-Do, plus it’s not really about their sexuality at all since, well, I’m a dude and therefore the only person that matters anyway."



• Oh, now THIS one is disturbing. From someone at Polytechnic University in Blacksburg Virginia we have –
  
  "child legal porn".
  
  Looking for that loophole huh?



• And just as I promised you, once more, from Katherine, Australia we have
  
  "penis biting"
  
  Honestly, is there really a market for this? Where the fuck do I sign up?



• San Diego California makes a request for-
  
  "sex and biting"
  
  Ummm maybe we should get "Penis biting" in here to meet "sex and biting", although, I rather suspect that our friend isn't looking for that kind of biting.



• Now this one is great –
  
  "women being watched showering"
  
  Ladies, look for those cameras in the house because there's more than one of these fruitcakes. Wonder if this guy's looking at the stars with his telescope?



• Out of San Jose California we have yet another deviant, but this one has a twist, which you'll see in the other category we made special for this search -
  
  "satisfy his sexual needs" girl submissive" -
  
  Cute huh? Yep, gotta love those classy search terms of our BDSM friends.



• Out of Bronx, NY *waves to Bronx* we have another search for, what else?
  
  "child supermodels"
  
  Of course, I've done a post on this very thing here on this blog, in case you're interested it's here. And, for the record, it's one of the most popular search terms that show up on Site meter. Pretty scary stuff yes?



• Next up we have a fan of the Far East located in the Southern United States, Georgia to be exact.
  
  Let's give Mr. "watching bukkake" a big warm welcome.
  
  For the 1 minute and 30 seconds he was here he was, as the indubitable Twisty says, "Blaming the Patriarchy". I would say I'm surprised that it took him a minute and 30 seconds to realize his mistake, but sadly, the porn crowd doesn't appear all that bright. I suspect he was waiting for the rabbit to jump out of the hat and say, "Surprise! We really ARE a porn site!"

Our next category only has one entrant, mostly because after reading the entry I HAD to make a new category-

"Parts I didn't even know I had"

• The only entrant in this category is a friend who searches for
  
  "feminine orgams"
  
  Now, are orgams located on my torso? Are they an appendage that has lost it's usefulness through thousands of years of evolution? Or, is our friend just spelling handicapped?

And finally, to round out our Friday Fun with sitemeter, the last category is -

"Searches that prove our point"

• "satisfy his sexual needs" girl submissive"
  
  Seems our friend has a bit of a BDSM fettish eh? OH and LOOKIE HERE, the post that he managed to bring up in this search is - Dim: I am a rapist and it's also the exact post that he came INTO the blog on. So, let me get this straight. Just because you want a woman to "satisfy his sexual needs" girl submissive" doesn't mean you actually LIKE raping or hurting women...yet, this guy is inevitably drawn to the post where a man says he's a rapist. Hmmm....bah, I'm sure it means absolutely nothing that a man who's into BDSM and wants a woman to "satisfy his sexual needs" girl submissive" was curious about a post in which the word "rape" was used. Must be just me.

I’ll be back with another post later on. I’m feeling better than yesterday (thank the gods for that!) and am happily cranking out another post as we speak.

Til then

~BB
BTW, I have had this post finished for over 2 hours, THEN I had to add the HTML...have I mentioned that I hate html? *grin*

Godbags to Society: "Women Deserve Cancer"

First, I'm sad to announce that BB is currently laid up with some pretty severe flu-like symptoms, and as such cannot post today.

Second, I'd like to point folks to This Article.

I'll wait a moment to let that sink in with y'all.

What shocks me is not, necessarily, that there exist a substantial, politically-influential number of men who believe that women dying of cancer is preferable to women having sex. What shocks me is that there are so many people, both men and women, who can read this article and still claim that "Patriarchy is really more of a passive thing spawned by thoughtlessness and years living under privilege".

No, no, buddy; this is about as active as you can get.

Here's the rundown:
WE HAVE A CURE FOR CANCER.
But it could make women promiscuous.
IT'S THE CURE FOR FUCKING CANCER.
But if it makes women less worried about having sex, we should pretend we never found it.
IT'S THE FUCKING CURE, FOR FUCKING CANCER!
But women don't deserve it. We'd rather they die than have consequence-free sex.

One person quoted in the article even says: "There might be an overwhelming (public) backlash from people saying, 'don't you dare put something out there that gives my 12-year-old daughter a licence to be promiscuous'." He may as well have said "If she’s having sex young, she deserves to be die young too!"

For one thing, these nutballs act like teenaged girls are saying "Hold on, Billy... I would have sex with you, but there's a remote chance I could contract a high-risk strain of HPV from you and develop cervical cancer years in the future. We'd better not."

For another thing, they act like they have a RIGHT to force a woman to GET cancer just because she engaged in acts these people don't approve of!

Well, according to Patriarchy, they do.

See, because HPV only ever really affects women, not men, it's assumed to be yet more proof of a Penis-Loving Invisible Sky Daddy bestowing his Just And Righteous Holy Punishment on the penis-challenged population. Sort of like how HIV/AIDS is assumed to be proof that the PLISD hates members of the penis-equipped population who misuse their Godly Gift by turning it onto other penilely-gifted folks.

Unwanted pregnancies are yet more of the same thing and abortion is an attempt to thwart The Great Penis-Lover's Heavenly Judgment.

It may SEEM paradoxical that they're ascribing Divine Punishment upon women for doing exactly what they want women to do: i.e. have sex with them. One could reasonably assume that, all things being otherwise equal, men of this society would not want to reinforce a behavior that would seem, in the end, to be detrimental to their male sexual entitlement.

The truth, however, is that such reasoning does not actually inhibit men from exercising said entitlement. Quite frequently, due to physical, mental, or emotional, or economic manipulation, women have very little opportunity to actually avoid male sexual entitlement when it's running rampant.

These men will get laid, no matter what, by any means necessary. They will exercise their dominance and control through penetration and subjugation no matter how many or how few vaccines a woman has against any ick he may be carrying in his popgun.

How many men REALLY expect a woman they've withheld vaccination from to turn around and refuse to service her husband because she's now at risk of cancer? And how many men OR women actually expect a woman to forego all romantic companionship for her entire life to avoid cancer, especially since we're all aware of just how vehemently society defends the idea that all heterosexual romantic interludes MUST include sex, because men won't - oops, I mean, "can't" - grant any significant sort of emotional intimacy without it?

Face it; nobody expects those results on any wide scale. Not even the godbags. They know that the idea of women suffering The Wrath Of The Invisible Sky Daddy won't actually hinder, in any significant way, their ability to have sex with said women.

What would hinder the exercise of their male sexual entitlement is the thing nobody ever talked about doing, and that's quite intentional. Testing men for HPV, like they test for any other STD that can actually make a penis rot off, would give women the choice. We already have the test and we've had it for almost a decade now; it's just a slight tweak of a test they use on women. They could ask to see test results before sex, and selectively refuse to have sex with men who have the disease while engaging in sex with men who do not.

Such an option would at least reduce the amount of sex going on, while simultaneously preventing lots of cancer.

As it stands now, women know nothing about their cancer odds; they have no way to reject or accept any man's sexual advances on that basis.

This is exactly the point. If all men are an equal risk, no individual man's sexual entitlement is in more danger than any other man's. Women must either accept them all, or reject them all. We cannot give women a Line-Item Veto on certain (cancer causing) males.

The entire point of the movement is not to convince women, even/especially married women, to have less sex. That would obviously be pretty stupid, for men who want to have sex. The entire point is to make sure women are not the ones benefiting from autonomous exercise of their sexuality.

Men will have their sexual entitlements fulfilled regardless of the risks to women. Such is Patriarchy. But with threats of deadly cancer and compulsory pregnancy, women are far less likely to exercise their own sexuality until pressure is applied by a man exercising his.

Does that make any sense? Teenage boys, for example, have sex. Nobody's out there protesting and busting a scrotum over the idea that teenage boys might choose to have lots of sex. What sticks in men's craw is that teenage GIRLS might choose to have lots of sex. That's the Bad Thing(tm). That's what they're trying to save society from; girls choosing to have sex. As opposed to when girls have the choice pressed upon them by boys. Girls having the choice to engage in sex pressed upon them by horny males is pretty much what our society was built upon. But girls choosing to have sex, and with whom, and when, is much, much more threatening.

Suddenly, women actually become the sexual gatekeepers that MRAs claim they are already. Men would no longer have a stable, captive selection of sexual partners to pick from, who are frozen with fear and do not move until his inertia compels them to.

Which is why all advances that give women more of an incentive to exercise their own sexual choices without fear of Retribution From On High are seen as a Really Bad Things(tm).

So of course there are people protesting this vaccine. It removes another element of women's fear, and removes another element of women's punishment for acting on their own sexual desires. That this disease punished women who were also merely the recipients of men's sexual entitlement was beside the point; in a Patriarchy that's just the risk you run for being female at all.

To Patriarchy, this vaccine is exactly the same thing as abortion and emergency contraception and lesbianism. So the fact that there are protestors does not shock me. It's just very telling that this society will protest THE CURE FOR FUCKING CANCER if it promises to help women in some way.

What does shock me is how anyone can still say that Patriarchy is not an active conspiracy of repression and dehumanization. I would say this development proves that point pretty conclusively.

~Dim

Dim: Shame as Control

Our society has set up a whole bunch of pretty nasty Catch-22's for women. For instance, not talking about rape makes boys grow up unaware that what they do is wrong, but talking about rape makes boys grow up raping just to rebel against you. But even more common and more damaging than that is the Catch-22 of shame.

When men do something wrong, women are shamed for letting them do it. But when they try to stop men from doing such things, women are shamed for not letting them do it. The cry is either "Why on earth are you staying with him??" or "You're just trying to control him!" At no point is a statement made by society to a woman who is in danger of being abused by a man that is not laden with shame-implications.

The primary application of this shame is to control women. Men are doling out painful shame and humiliation at every turn, and women, desperate to feel like they are not hideous or evil, do whatever it is men say they must do to be "good". But, like the agnostics in the outer circle of Dante's Inferno, they are chasing a whirling banner they can never catch, all the while being stung by flies of degradation.

Women can never catch that banner because as soon as a woman gets close, we switch it. We tell women who are "too uptight", "prudes", and "vanilla" to become more "sexually liberated". We tell them that not being sexually available, not being communal male property, is wrong and shameful. Are you still covering your hair like some Amish lady? Dear god, you have GOT to get out more! That's not what women are supposed to look like! You're supposed to be free and open and sex is not something to hide!

Then that woman goes and puts on the things men tell her to: maybe a skit, maybe heels, maybe some lipstick and eyeshadow. She does the things men tell her to: she goes to clubs and bars, she goes to parties, she flirts, she teases, she drinks, she promotes the image of her sexual availability.

She's made it! She's no longer ashamed of herself for being frigid and cold! ...wait, not quite. There's a man again. Now he's saying something different. "Whore!" he says. "Slut! What was that? You got yourself raped? Should have thought of that before you wore that skirt! Before you flirted and teased! Before you went to parties and clubs! You should be ashamed of yourself, teasing all those men and then getting all out of sorts over what happens! You're a horrible, lying bitch who needs to put some clothes on."

And the cycle continues on. Just when a woman thinks she's reached a place where men have told her she should not be ashamed, men find shame in it and smear her with it anyway. It's a very effective tool of control; anything women do, men can at any time change it to what they desire by invoking that shame.

A secondary application of that shame is that it hides the crimes of men. Women are not only shamed for what they do and who they are, but also for what happens TO

them. When a woman steps forward to talk about her abuse, the fact that she was abused reflects badly on her. Rarely do we turn the man and ask "Why did you beat her?". Mostly, we turn to the woman and ask "Why did you stay with him?"

Women know this. They hear it and see it all the time. That shame keeps them from seeking help and support from their friends and peers. A woman is understandably reluctant to tell others about her pain when that pain is associated with shame of "allowing" it to happen.

There are a billion men out there, who look to the rest of the world to be wonderful, loving, tender men. The kind of men women say "You should thank your lucky stars for so-and-so!" over. But if those men were abusive, or if those men were emotionally manipulative and cold, or if those men were so full of sexual entitlement that it leaked out their ears in the privacy of the bedroom, nobody outside would ever know.

That shame makes men look like saints, while allowing them to behave like demons without consequences. They know that if the truth ever got out, it would be their women suffering the slings and arrows. We as a society have set women up to be the sole repositories for shame. They take shame for their actions, which we dictate to them to begin with, and they take shame for our actions, over which they have no control.

Look very, very carefully at all the men you consider to be saints, my friends. Deftly or ham-handedly, many of them wield shame as a weapon and are not what they seem. Many of the most practiced can even make the woman they are currently abusing think that he is a saint, and that she is just "crazy" or "damaged" or "controlling" or has "too much baggage". Shame hides men's crimes, allows men to bask in the warm sunlight of adoration and recognition, and still do all the horrible things they feel entitled to do. Shame protects men against the consequences of their actions so effectively that those actions may as well be consequence-free entirely.

Societal training tells women to be passive to their surroundings. It shames them when they are not. But it also shames them when they exercise the training they were given.

When women are abused at the hands of a man, women are shamed for allowing it to happen. They are blamed for bringing it onto themselves. How many times have any of you heard some variation of the idea that "if you weren't such a victim/pushover/doormat, people wouldn't do these things to you"? It's a very common assertion; it says that being a victim causes one to continue to be a victim.

Andrea Dworkin wrote about this phenomenon in Pornography: Men Possessing Women: "[A woman] suffers, and is more provocative in her suffering. The more she suffers, the more she provokes men to make her suffer. Her suffering is arousing... She, then, becomes responsible for her suffering, since she invites it by suffering."

But not only is that idea the very heart of victim-blaming, it's also not something that society is willing to allow to happen in any case. Every time a woman starts trying to NOT be a victim, she is still shamed.

I once knew a woman who had set a boundary, to keep herself and her self-esteem and her sanity from becoming victims of a man's narcissism and entitlement. She said "No porn in my house. You will not be with me and look at porn."

But when she talked about this with a group of her "friends", the very same people who have said that women can only be victims if they allow themselves to be victims, they told her she was being (and I swear to god I am not making any of this up) a control freak.

They shamed her for protecting herself! But if she had let the man bring porn to the relationship and had been damaged by it, she would be shamed for letting it happen! She should be ashamed of her attempts to not be a victim, but she should also be ashamed of being a victim!

The fallout from that argument and the enmity it engendered in at least one of the male participants actually resulted in a brief period of internet stalking, which would ironically shame the woman AGAIN if anyone she knew was to learn of it.

No, when we tell women, with the passive voice standing out loud and clear, not to "become victims", we don't mean "set boundaries that you can protect yourself with" or "be assertive and bold when you deal with people who would otherwise victimize you" or even "stand up for yourself".

What we mean is "Shut up and like it." Andrea Dworkin talked about that attitude with regard to rape:

Here we have Justine, raped, tortured, violated, and she hates it, so she is a victim; here we have Juliet, raped, tortured, violated, and she loves it, so she is free.... [A familiar phrase is:] if you can't do anything about it (and I will see to it that you cannot), lie back and enjoy it. ...rape in the criminal sense exists mainly as a subjective value judgment of the one who was used, to whom hysteria is always attributed. Women... can and should choose to experience the rape of women as men experience it: as pleasure.

Our society applies this not only to rape and sexual abuse, but to all abuses: mental, emotional, physical. The only acceptable way to not be a victim (a shameful state!) is not, in fact, to prevent your victimization (a shameful act!), but instead to enjoy your abuse and the shame that accompanies it.

And THAT attitude is something every single male in this society should be personally ashamed of.

Men: Stop shaming women. Stop controlling them with shame, stop shaming them into hiding your sins. Stop shaming them for having been victims and stop shaming them for not letting you victimize them. Shame is a chain, built over a lifetime, link by link, through men and their games and their abuses, until it binds the limbs of women who would otherwise stand up and make their voices heard. We are perfectly capable of choosing to treat women the way they deserve to be treated, like human beings, without crafting chains to keep them weighted down with. It is wrong and inhuman and disgusting, and we should all, as one, choose to stop it.

I choose, right now, to stop it. The rest of you men can choose so as well. Will you choose with me?

~Dim

Work in progress, blog archives

Ok, I'm working through the numerous past posts and I've gotten them categorized. I'm hoping that this will allow folks to see what we've posted on in the past and check them out.

I've managed to get 2 of them finished so far, have a look at the sidebar and you'll see a new category. I think I'll see if Dim can get them moved to the header for now but I have no clue how to do it myself.

In any case, here are two categories for your perusal, "Outrages and Rants" and "Non-feminist stuff" more will be coming and soon we hope to have every month archived and sorted for easy viewing. I've got a few changes in store for the look of the blog which we'll be instituting over the next few days (weeks) as we finish them.

I also have another post forthcoming today, if I can squeeze it in around the archiving.

I'll have more links up as the day progresses but for now, have at it *wink*

~BB