Abortions Rights Aren’t Optional for Democrats — There’s No Economic Justice Without Abortion Rights

In spite of this, even some on the self-proclaimed socialist left, like Sanders, now seem willing to sell out abortion rights in pursuit of the elusive vote of the working-class white man. There’s no evidence that moving right on abortion will gain Democratic votes. But it’s an appeal to the same dynamic Trump ran on: a bygone America, the symbol of which is the white factory man, able to support his children and a stay-at-home wife on the salary he earned doing good honest work with his hands.

Safe, legal abortion and modern, reliable contraception made it easier for women to pursue education and work; it let us delay childbearing and to choose our marital mates more carefully, and enabled us to leave bad relationships more easily or avoid them entirely; it let us compete with men. Which is a big part of why it’s such a divisive and animating issue, both for the women who are thriving because of the freedom contraception and abortion offer, and for the traditionalists who think life was better when gender roles were clearer and women knew their place (and it wasn’t in the corner office or on the factory floor).

Many of the white voters who support Trump do so him precisely because he suggests to them that he’ll put white men back on top. If Democrats do the same, they’ll only be able to peel off some of these voters — many are simply GOP loyalists who aren’t going to be swayed — and they’ll alienate their base, which remains a multiracial and disproportionately female coalition, while they sell their souls.

Abortions Rights Aren’t Optional for Democrats — There’s No Economic Justice Without Abortion Rights

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Why Women Are So Angry with Sanders 

When Sanders repeatedly declared that “identity politics” were a problem, he exposed a dangerous weakness in progressive political thought that remains unaddressed. …To separate class from gender, race, sexuality, and ability in fighting for economic justice is to create a fiction that economic injustice is only driven by one kind of social injustice– the kind that able-bodied cishet white men experience. It’s a dangerous fiction that at its heart reinforces patriarchal white supremacy, and it’s becoming all the more dangerous as we fight against an administration and its attendant political movement that wants nothing more than to roll back as many social justice gains as possible.

Why Women Are So Angry with Sanders | Bitter Gertrude

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New research on role of sexism in 2016 election.

The MSS attempts to test for resentment toward women through questions about feminism and women in the workplace. Here are the five statements from the MSS that the Blair Center Poll asked its sample to assess:

  • Many women are actually seeking special favors, such as hiring policies that favor them over men, under the guise of asking for “equality.”
  • Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.
  • Feminists are seeking for women to have more power than men.
  • When women lose to men in a fair competition, they typically complain about being discriminated against.
  • Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States.

…fewer Sanders primary voters than Clinton primary voters were “sexist,” according to the scale. But when the general election came around, a model that used the Modern Sexism score was “highly significant” in predicting the 25 percent of Sanders voters who did not swing to Clinton. 

…In the general election, a high Modern Sexism score was very predictive of a decision not to vote for Clinton. …Among almost all the subgroups of voters in the sample, being “sexist,” according to the scale, moved you away from a Hillary vote. (Latinas and black Americans of both sexes didn’t seem influenced by their sexism scores in casting their votes.) So even controlling for all other variables, the researchers found that a Republican man who is strongly sexist had only a 10 percent chance of voting for a woman.

…“The GOP became this anti-feminist party under Reagan to chase votes in the South,” says Maxwell, who is working on a book on the way race, gender, and religion worked together to form the Republicans’ Southern Strategy. While appealing to white male voters via race-baiting, the GOP also “decided to drop the Equal Rights Amendment from their platform. They cultivated this patriarchal culture, they demonized feminists. And now in 2016, these numbers are like—we don’t see partisan gaps like that on a lot of things.”

New research on role of sexism in 2016 election.

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French Open bans Hamou over attempts to kiss reporter on live TV 

The episode drew ire on social media, including from French politician Cécile Duflot.”He kisses her by force, she tries to get away, he holds her by the neck and everyone… laughs #tired,” the Green MP wrote on Twitter (in French).

Quoted by the Huffington Post France, Ms Thomas described the player’s actions as “frankly unpleasant”.

“If I hadn’t been live on air, I would have punched him.”

French Open bans Hamou over attempts to kiss reporter on live TV – BBC News

Assault charges would be a nice touch.

French Open bars Maxime Hamou for trying to kiss TV reporter during interview

The French Tennis Federation has revoked the accreditation of Maxime Hamou after he repeatedly tried to kiss a female reporter during an interview following his first-round loss in the French Open.

[Hamou] also held Eurosport TV journalist Maly Thomas around her neck as she tried to move away during a live interview at Roland Garros.

French Open bars Maxime Hamou for trying to kiss TV reporter during interview

That’s a good start, let’s see some actual charges. An example clearly needs to be made of idiots who think they are entitled to subjugate other human beings based on gender or skin color.

Belgium: Female students asked to wear low-cut tops to graduation 

The ULB Confessions page also published a response it had received from a student: “No one has the right to tell you how you should feel in your skin. Nobody has the right to tell you how to dress. No one has the right to tell you how to play your role as a woman. No one has the right to take away this freedom that has been (and is still being) obtained with such difficulty.”

Belgium: Female students asked to wear low-cut tops to graduation – BBC News

WTF?!

Bernie Sanders, Jon Ossoff, and Heath Mello: “Democrats” appear divided over Abortion and Populism 

NARAL Pro-Choice America, an organization that endorsed Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, harshly criticized the DNC for what it called the party’s “embrace” of “an anti-choice candidate.”

The statement followed a report in The Wall Street Journal that Mello once supported legislation “requiring women to look at ultrasound image of their fetus before receiving an abortion.” 

… Sanders also drew backlash from Democrats after he told the Journal that he doesn’t know if Jon Ossoff, a Democratic candidate hoping to flip a conservative congressional district in Georgia, is a progressive in an article published on Wednesday.

“I think that Bernie seems to have a rather extreme point of view, that if a candidate wants to do anything to create jobs, that he’s not a progressive,” Moreno added.

David Nir, the political director for Daily Kos, which has been instrumental in channeling grassroots support for Ossoff into an influx of small-donations, respond to Sanders’ comments on Twitter by saying: “Bernie Sanders isn’t helping—he’s hurting. He should either endorse Ossoff and raise money for him, or keep his silence.” Nir later added, “on second thought, Sanders shouldn’t endorse Ossoff. He should just remain silent and not hurt the efforts of those of us helping in #GA06.”

Source: Bernie Sanders, Jon Ossoff, and Heath Mello: Rifts over Abortion and Populism Divide Democrats – The Atlantic

Sanders is progressive, but only if you are a middle class or richer white male. If you’re not he’s a tone deaf dinosaur who will work against your well-being to assuage his own feelings of self-importance. There is no economic justice for women without reproductive empowerment. Bernie’s age and focus on seeing everything through the lens of his own gender and ethnicity betrays his real lack of support of women and their empowerment, economic or otherwise.

Melania Trump eschews headscarf in Saudi Arabia 

That’s not uncommon, illegal or even particularly impolite. While Islamic women are required by sharia law to cover their heads in public, there’s no such expectation for western women. And King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud greeted Melania Trump warmly at the airport, even shaking her hand — again, something forbidden between unrelated Saudi men and women but allowed for foreigners.

So none of this would be an issue, except for the fact that President Trump himself made it one — when Barack Obama was president.

“Many people are saying it was wonderful that Mrs. Obama refused to wear a scarf in Saudi Arabia, but they were insulted,” Trump tweeted. “We have enuf enemies.”

Melania Trump eschews headscarf in Saudi Arabia — and it’s not an insult

Cheeto in Chief is such a woman-fearing loser.

Bye bye, Bernie: He’s not fit to captain the Democratic ship if he can’t stop chasing the great white male

The Democratic Party is selling out women and all marginalized groups in favor of  [fiction]

Sanders is clear that he is not a Democrat — except when he needs to be one in order to run for president. 

…Economic populism and what are commonly erroneously and dismissively referred to as “social issues” — such as reproductive rights, immigration reform and civil rights for people of color, those who have disabilities, people of all faiths, LGBT people and women — are indivisible. Sanders routinely demonstrates his own lack of progressive values by dividing them.

There is no economic populism without abortion rights and civil rights. No one can have economic justice if he or she doesn’t have fundamental rights. Yet Sanders has made it plain that abortion rights are negotiable and brushes off [what he terms] “identity politics.” He consistently argues that his values — and his alone — should define what it is to be progressive. (Which can’t help but remind one of Donald Trump’s unilateral defining of terms.)

…The Democratic Party, which has a deeply progressive platform and whose candidate won the popular vote by 3 million and lost the Electoral College tally by only 77,000 votes in just three states, need not look for its soul. Its soul is right there in its platform and its voters, not in Sanders’ white-male dog-whistle rhetoric.

Bye bye, Bernie: He’s not fit to captain the Democratic ship if he can’t stop chasing the great white male – Salon.com

Mmmmhmmm.

 

 

Red Pill Boss: All Feminists Want to Be Raped 

GOP State Rep. Robert Fisher denies he is still involved with a misogynistic Reddit forum, but an investigation suggests he may be posting incendiary comments under a new alias.

Fisher, now 31, described women as having “sub-par intelligence,” suggested that women’s bodies are the only thing that makes their “lackluster” personalities “worth it,” and commonly expressed paranoia about what he perceived as a growing plague of “false rape accusations” supposedly used as a weapon by feminists.

…redpillschool had said, “There’s no discussion of rape strategies [on the forum.]” But to his fellow red-pillers, he joked, “You don’t need a strategy for rape, other than ‘where do i buy roofies, and what’s the best brand of duct tape?’”

…In December 2016, redpillschool conducted an exhaustive three-part “thought experiment” called “All Women Lie About Rape.” …“Every woman I know has a rape or attempted rape story… But on the other side I don’t know a single man who is interested in raping women,” he wrote.

“Feminists are obsessed with rape because we live in a rape fantasy culture, where feminists wish they were hot enough to be rape-able,” he wrote in April 2014. “

“Every woman wants to be attractive enough to be raped. It’s like the pinnacle of male desire, when he can’t stop no matter what.”

And marital rape—a crime in all 50 states—shouldn’t exist as a concept in his view. “If a woman does not wish to submit to her husband she should not marry him. The contract of marriage is the verbal and written consent for sex,” he wrote in 2013.

…On The Red Pill, redpillschool wrote a lengthy post entitled, “‘Sexual Assault’ is why I’m Endorsing Donald Trump for President of the United States.”

…In 2015 and 2016 redpillschool posted a column titled, “Women are Children.” …He contends that he has “met enough women” to make an accurate generalization.

“I’m saying that women, by function of who they are, cannot have the same perspective or experience as men, and therefore cannot be expected to have the same maturity level. Even if a woman is well behaved and well mannered, her thought process still comes from a limited and childish perspective,” he wrote in May 2016.

…This perspective is one reason some on The Red Pill advocate stripping women of the right to vote.

Red Pill Boss: All Feminists Want to Be Raped – The Daily Beast

Stay classy, NH GOP!

Missouri City Banishes Domestic Violence Survivors for Calling the Police 

In 2012, the city of Maplewood, Missouri ordered Rosetta Watson to vacate her home. But the city wasn’t done punishing Watson yet and also barred her from living anywhere in the city for six months. Her offense? She called the police four times seeking protection from her abusive ex-boyfriend.

Under Maplewood’s local ordinance, more than two calls to police regarding domestic violence within 180 days qualifies as a “nuisance,” as do commission of acts prohibited by federal, state, or local laws at a property. The ordinance does not exempt situations where residents need to call police for help or where they are crime victims.

Maplewood officials concluded that Ms. Watson should be removed from her home and banished from the city because she made calls for help with domestic violence, even though it was clear from the city’s own records that her ex-boyfriend had physically assaulted her. She was forced to move to St. Louis, where he again attacked her. This time, he broke in and stabbed her in the legs.

Because of her experience in Maplewood, she feared calling the police and instead took herself to the hospital. When the hospital contacted police, she was relieved to learn that law enforcement would not punish her. Her ex-boyfriend was arrested, convicted, and incarcerated.

This Missouri City Banishes Domestic Violence Survivors for Calling the Police | American Civil Liberties Union

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Here’s How Frequently Women Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted by Men 

A new study shows that in 2015, when a record-high three women sat on the Supreme Court, 65.9 of interruptions happened as the women made their oral arguments.

…Interestingly enough, the women on the court actually speak less often and use fewer words when they make their argument (it’s unconfirmed if this a defense mechanism to cope with the inevitability of a male justice interrupting them). However, that doesn’t stop their male colleagues from interjecting at a much higher rate than they would for the other men sitting on the bench. Case in point: In 2015, Ginsburg was interrupted 11 times by Anthony Kennedy; Sotomayor was interrupted 15 times by Kennedy, 14 times by Samuel Alito, and 12 times by Chief Justice John Roberts; Kagan was interrupted over 10 times each by Kennedy, Alito, and Roberts. In contrast, only two of the men court were interrupted upwards of 10 times and the highest number of interruptions coming from one of the women was seven.

…Worse, this behavior even carries through to advocates who appear before the Supreme Court. These men show less deference for the women on the Court and interrupt the women regularly, even though Court protocol prohibits such behavior and the Chief Justice is expected to intervene when such a matter occurs.

Here’s How Frequently Women Supreme Court Justices Are Interrupted by Men | Glamour

Unacceptable to show such disrespect to SJC justices.

F*ck Roberts and the hack horse he rode in on if he can’t a tighter lid on interruptions in his courtroom. Clearly his own respect for the rule of law and the institution and the country he serves is nil. Until he regulates and insists on respect for all justices ont he bench, he’s simply a useless, inequality fomenting, injustice perpetrating f*ckstick.

The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’

A web of secret online identities connects the creator of the misogynistic Red Pill forum to a New Hampshire state representative.

…The Red Pill—an online Reddit community of nearly 200,000 subscribers that promotes itself as a “discussion of sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men.”

…On Reddit’s Men’s Rights forum, [Fisher’s associate] Youssef described “the corruption, greed, lies, and abject depravity of the feminist system…” 

Youssef and Fisher aren’t the only New Hampshire politicos to have espoused anti-feminist beliefs. In 2015, New Hampshire State Rep. Al Baldasaro, a Republican, publicly mocked the breasts of fellow female lawmakers in the name of protecting “family values.” 

And yet Fisher’s past comments on a host of Reddit forums are arguably far more disturbing than what his colleagues have said in public. He blasted women for their “sub-par intelligence.” He said that women’s personalities are “lackluster and boring, serving little purpose in day to day life.” And Fisher once commented, “It is literally the [female] body that makes enduring these things worth it.”

…“You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill… and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

In manosphere-speak, the rabbit hole is feminism, which the red pill reveals to be a War on Men. In this [delusional departure from] reality, the “feminine imperative” reigns; masculinity is its victim. As a result of this power struggle, old gender dynamics formerly seen as mutually beneficial, such as marriage, have all but disappeared, but female expectations of a pedestalled life unfairly remain. A common refrain among men’s rights activists is “take the pussy off the pedestal.”

The Red Pill ….community also subscribes to the beliefs that women lack both intelligence and substance, are programed to cheat on their partners, and expire after the age of 30. Its darkest sections are heavy with rape denial and apologia.

…On The Red Pill, Fisher commonly expressed disappointment that the institutions of marriage and religion were destroyed by women’s equality. He maintained that as a result of financial independence, women were no longer compelled to remain faithful and as a result, men needed to protectively adapt their sexual strategy.

“Marriage, and yes, female oppression, slut shaming, religion, these were all a means to control hypergamy [infidelity]. Marriages might be considered loveless, and women might have been unhappy, but for men it meant marriages that lasted, commitments that continued, and protection against the fickle whims of females,” Fisher wrote on The Red Pill in November 2012.

“To give women autonomy is to take away the very thing that made marriage a realistic institution… what I dislike is the general attitude that somehow we owe [women] something for sex…” …Fisher wrote.

…“Understand that in the old days, women were not brought up the way they are today. Before feminism, there was less freedom, and therefore it was not necessary to teach women consequence. Consequence was strictly a man’s game. Feminism took the lid off pandora’s box, but the mothers, and the daughters of those mothers never internalized, learned, or passed down the concept of responsibility for their freedoms, only the freedom itself.” Fisher wrote in 2013.

In addition to anti-feminist screeds, The Red Pill teaches “sexual strategy.” This includes how to “spin plates,” or balance sleeping with several women at once; how to respond to women’s “shit-tests,” a social device used to determine a suitor’s “fitness”; and how to practice “negging,” a game tactic involving a backhanded compliment calculated to undermine confidence and make a woman more vulnerable to advances. Red Pillers practice “dread game,” or intentionally instilling “dread” in a partner that you have other options, and various other techniques.

Of gaming women, Fisher said, “[Women have] absolutely done this to themselves. I feel zero regret or shame pumping and dumping.”

…Fisher seemed obsessed with the negative effects feminism was having on his dating experience.

…He felt  …that women get a free ride, believing “a pair of boobs grants [them] equal footing with somebody bringing intelligence or a personality.” 

…Fisher posited that the notion that “rape is bad” was not an absolute truth. He wrote, “I’m going to say it—Rape isn’t an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot. I think he’d say it’s quite good, really.”

Though he stated he “doesn’t advocate breaking the law,” Fisher said online in 2012 that a 40-year-old man asking to see the breasts of a 15-year-old wasn’t creepy. Instead, he said it was “evolutionarily advantageous and perfectly natural.”

Besides, Fisher argued, historically, statutory rape and age of consent laws gave the sexes unequal treatment in that only females were given protection under such laws. He noted that these laws were intended to protect “teenage girls” from having their virginity stolen. Indeed, age of consent laws were originally intended to preserve virginity—a “commodity” at the time—however, in Colonial America, where statutory rape was considered a property crime, the age of consent was generally 10 or 12.

…“Regret-rape” accusations refer to the theory that women, to alleviate feelings of guilt, shame or promiscuity, accuse men of rape to detach themselves from responsibility. Men’s rights activists refer to this as an “anti-slut defense,” and have an acronym for it, ASD.

…Among Red Pillers, the notion that women commonly abuse the judicial system for means of retaliation, or “cry rape” for attention, is viewed as a matter-of-fact element of the feminist “agenda.”

The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’

And this is what NH GOP has to offer women… Charming!

Under the GOP’s health plan, sexual assault could be considered a pre-existing condition

Under the amendment, states would have the all-clear to waive the ban preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to patients based on pre-existing conditions. That means companies could also deny preventive health care services, like mammograms and gynecological exams, to these patients, which many sexual assault survivors in particular rely on following an attack.

In 2010, before the ACA became law, the Huffington Post reported the story of Christina Turner, a 45-year-old woman who was turned away by her insurance company because she’d been raped. 

After she was drugged and sexually assaulted, Turner was prescribed a month’s worth of prophylactic medication to prevent HIV infection, just in case. Though it turned out Turner hadn’t been infected with the virus, when a prospective insurer saw the prescription on her health record, the company said it wouldn’t cover her until — “in three or more years” — she proved she was still AIDS-free.

…Other conditions like postpartum depression, being a survivor of domestic violence or having gotten a C-section could also be considered pre-existing conditions.

“Most of the people who have C-sections identify as women, so that’s a shorthand for a gender discriminatory policy.” 

Under the GOP’s health plan, sexual assault could be considered a pre-existing condition

sigh….

What Does Mike Pence Think Happens At Restaurants?

It describes a world in which women are not individual human beings—witness these men who cannot even imagine a reason why any man might choose to share a meal with a woman he doesn’t intend to fuck—but generic objects of sexual temptation at which men have only very limited power to resist flinging their genitals. It weaponizes women—most especially young, unmarried women—against themselves: I can’t be alone with you, even over some friggin’ nachos, or your presence might cause me to fuck you. Indeed there could be no other reason for us to sit down to a meal together. This is the sort of thing that is being referenced when people use the term “rape culture.”

What Does Mike Pence Think Happens At Restaurants?

Weaponizes women and infantilizes men. Insulting all ’round.

The destruction of Hillary Clinton: sexism, Sanders, and the millennial feminists 

Appearances to the contrary, Sanders was not a union organizer, but rather a longtime member of the Senate. And if Clinton had more support from the Democratic party, that was due in large part to the relationships she had cultivated over the years, working with others – something Sanders was not particularly good at. Nonetheless, for weeks during the early months of the primary, I listened to 19-year-olds and media pundits alike lavish praise on Bernie Sanders for his bold, revolutionary message, and scorn Hillary for being a part of the establishment.

He was seen as authentic in his progressivism while she was pushed to the left by political expediency – as though a lifetime of fighting for equality and children’s rights meant nothing. He was the champion of the working class (conveniently ignoring that black and white women were members, and that their issues were also working class issues), but her longstanding commitments to universal health care, child care, paid sick leave, racial justice, the repeal of the Hyde amendment, and narrowing the wage gap between working men and women apparently evaporated because she’d accepted well-paid invitations to speak at Goldman Sachs.

Later, the news media even let Sanders get away with describing Planned Parenthood and NARAL as “establishment” when he didn’t get their endorsement. They made little of it when he described abortion as a social issue (as though loss of control over one’s reproductive life has no impact on one’s economic survival). They accepted, without question, his descriptions of himself as an activist for feminist causes, when all he had done was vote the right way in the Senate. They posted pictures of him being arrested at a protest against the University of Chicago’s real estate investments, while making no mention of the work Hillary had done, when she was the same age, investigating racist housing practices with Marian Wright Edelman. Clinton’s emails and her “trust problems” were the only stories about her they were interested in reporting.

The destruction of Hillary Clinton: sexism, Sanders, and the millennial feminists | Susan Bordo | Opinion | The Guardian

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