Gosh I’m being terribly bitchy these days - don’t know what’s come over me, I used to be so lovely.

This was a great post, thank you. And the reason I never comment is because I am so very freaking negative, and have absolutely nothing good to say.

You do not measure the harm done to women by measuring the amount of nice guys. Mentioning that “all men aren’t like that” is a justification for continued tolerance of assholes; it is not a reason — because there is no reason for continued tolerance of assholes and neutral guys when the harm done to women is so great.

If we as a people were to truly acknowledge the amount of harm done to women by men, then we would have to also acknowledge the harm created by men — and their worthlessness would become apparent. So we deny, and say the harm “isn’t so bad” or “women deserve it”, all in order to justify keeping the neutral guy around.

It’s why I don’t believe society will ever recognize the range of problems created by rape. If these rape victims were Jews and their oppressors were Nazis, we’d have serial documentaries enumorating the horrors of men and “never forget” statues in our homes and public spaces. If these rape victims were men and women in rape concentration camps and their oppressors were “good german” men and women, the world would react with shock and horror, and invade in a heartbeat.

Instead, we deny. We deliberately shame these women so they will not come forward and they will not be counted. We shame them so we can pretend their voices are few in number but they are fucking legion. Men did this and women help, because to do otherwise is to admit that your son your brother your father your friend your lover is a fucking animal.

Delete this if you want, I have nothing good to say. Men can get away with any amount of autrocity to women, as long as they don’t kill us.

“Retired Major General Patrick Cammaert is the former leader of the UN peacekeeping mission in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo where tens of thousands of women have been raped. He told the Council that in today’s conflicts it’s safer to be a soldier than a woman.”
emphasis mine.

http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/news/detail/20355.html

I wonder if all sorts of beauty standards have to do with patriarchy (as I often said)? Correct me if I’m wrong, Sparkle?

Obviously it’s period of time related and it’s also cultural, but I wonder - have women ever determined what is ‘beauty’

Yeah, I heard of this too, Sparkle. Truly horrifying!

An important quote from Andrea Dworkin:

“[I]n any war, in any violence between tribes or nations, a specific war crime is perpetrated against women — that of rape. Every woman raped during a political nation-states war is the victim of a much larger war, planetary in its dimensions — the war, more declared than we can bear to know, that men wage against women.”
– in the book Woman Hating, p. 94.

Are they?

What does “desirable” mean anyway?

We live in a culture in which “beauty standards” have been culturally institutionalized, for women and men both (although more for women obviously). And why?

I wonder if all sorts of beauty standards have to do with patriarchy (as I often said)? Correct me if I’m wrong, Sparkle?

Oh I know, most of the doods who use prostituted women are so desirable and gorgeous that we wish that we could get paid to have sex (sic) with them.

Where do these gadgies get their egos from?

As regards the UN currently much of what is being discussed about men’s violence against women uses language wherein rape, male sexual violence and of course women as a group are never, ever mentioned.

Well we all know that the UN also took part in the rapes. The YouTube above mentions it, and maybe that’s why they try to ’sanitize’ the reality?

Serial posting on my own blog folks…

And 855 books wrote about it (or mentioned in) yet, still - it hardly gets a mention.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?q=bosnia+rape+of+women&source=citation