antichoice is just another label for misogynist

tw for policing womens' behavior
Since the beginning of the year when conservatives and fauxgressives took control of the government around the country we have seen over 5 national laws and over 200 state laws which are attempting to make abortion more difficult to access. This continual chipping away at Roe is proclaimed as a way to preserve life. However, most of these laws are chipping away at what even most antichoice groups call the sacred cow of the abortion debate- abortions for victims of rape and incest, and abortions to save the life of the mother.
They are no longer capable of claiming preservation of life as their reason for doing this. They are actively telling hospitals not to treat women who are going to die because they can't have an abortion in the hospital. They want women to die. At the same time they are also going to defund PP which is the only way may low income women obtain birth control. This has nothing to do with preserving life. All this is about is a way to maintain control over womens' lives. And why do they want to maintain that control? Because they hate women. They hate that we exist, they hate that they are attracted to us, they hate that we are allowed to work, they hate that we are allowed to have sex of our own accord, they hate that they don't get to put us in asylums and bring us out only to make their male children
I'm tired of these people. I'm tired of trying to explain that to people who don't understand and think that all they want is to save innocent babies. These people do not want to save babies. They want to kill women because they have a deep seated hatred of each and every one of us

south dakota wants to kill abortion providers

I woke up to seeing this: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/south-dakota-hb-1171-legalize-killing-abortion-providers
Let's break this down for a second. The bill uses the ridiculous phrase unborn which is what the antichoicers (the people who are against abortion being legal, they call themselves prolife, I refuse to do so as very few of them actually support life, this being a perfect example) use in an effort to try and make people think that it's a baby and that it is very much alive. Reality is that legally a child is not alive until it is born and has taken it's first breath. This is due to the fact that there is a significant portion of children who are stillborn and never take a breath, therefore they were never really alive. Pregnancy is a complicated process. Most women miscarry before they even know they are pregnant. In order to be alive brain fucntion must be at a level that allows for breathing which a fetus is not capable of. They are not "unborn babies" they are not living fetuses as defined by medical experts.

Second the piece of legislation is purposefully vague enough to allow for a relative of a pregnant woman seeking an abortion to kill a doctor and get away with it, even though abortion is a legal medical procedure. Would we consider murdering a cosmetic plastic surgeon (I'm not talking about reconstructive surgeons who fix environmental and genetic conditions) who operates on children, a practice which is actually harmful to a living human being and just as controversial acceptable? No so therefore this is completely ridiculous

This piece of legislation, like all other pieces of legislation is a way to prevent woman from being able to seek their own health care because the antichoicers think that sex is wrong and dirty and pregnancy and STI's are a punishment to women who choose to have sex, not even considering women who have been victims or rape and incest, because those women must have done something to ask for it, which is evident by the legislation in the national house right now which is trying to change the wording in rape and domestic violence situations from victim to accuser. At the core of this type of legislation is a true and udder hatred for women, a hatred which has got to stop.

on valentines day

Valentines day is a loaded day to have to deal with whether you are in a relationship or not. I personally am not a fan of valentine's day, but my sweetie is so I make the effort to like it for him. Here's the deal people, you can hate any specific holiday if you want to, but at least have legitimate reasons for it. If you claim that you hate valentine's day because it's just over commercialized, then you also better hate christmas, halloween, easter, thanksgiving, independence day, cinco de mayo, and every other national holiday in the US because guess what? Companies will find any excuse imaginable to sell you crap that you don't need. If you hate it because you had your heart broken on that day, okay it sucks, but latching on to that hate isn't going to make it better. Make new memories. Find someone who you love, and it doesn't have to be sexual or romantic love, and go out with them on an undate. The same thing goes for being single and hating it. You can always have some self love time too.

There are plenty of feminist friendly ways to celebrate valentines day. Get a group of people together to go see the vagina monologues performed if it's going on on vday in your area. Volunteer with someone you love to work for a FABGLITTER organization for the day. Commemorate your egalitarian relationship with your sweetie by shaking up the gender roles on your date that night. Cook dinner for each other. Go on a picture scavenger hunt and find all of the places in your area that celebrate self love and positive body image.

Most importantly treat valentines day as a day to celebrate how much you love yourself. If you are practicing harmful practices to yourself make this the day that you vow to stop and get help. Eat some chocolate, cuddle with your stuffed animals, heck buy yourself flowers if you feel so inclined. Just don't treat this day like a day that you have to hate on principle, because really all that does is bring down the people who love you, and that is the last thing anyone should have to deal with on valentines day

consent and sexual experiences

trigger warning for discussion of BDSM

I am a member of the BDSM community. My current boyfriend is a masochist. He gets off sexually from me beating and scratching him. He also likes tying me to bedposts and screwing my brains out, and I love each and every minute of it. I've never really done this sort of thing before, even though there have been instances when I wanted to, for multiple reasons. One of them being my own hang ups about sex brought to me by years of christian guilt and thinking that sex and sexuality were dirty and wrong. I've gotten over that for the most part but my sticking to vanilla sex was a left over side effect of that and of consent issues. When your body has been violated it is very hard to get over that control to someone else, to just let go and be in that moment with someone else, but I've trusted my boyfriend enough to do that. We have a mutual respect with each other. We use safe words, A LOT. There are people in the feminist community who don't believe that BDSM can lead to feminist friendly relationships. I really really don't like that frame of mind. The thing is that you can be in a BDSM style relationship and it can be borderline abusive and it can be as far from egalitarian as they come. However, they can also be extremely respectful of each other.

The thing is that when you engage is any form of BDSM consent becomes paramount. You are dealing with situations where one or both of you are potentially in very dangerous situations and when one person says that they've had enough, or that they are not feeling up to it that day, it's not just your relationship and your partner's emotional health that could be at risk if you don't listen well enough, but their physical health could be at risk too. You learn very quickly what boundaries are and how important setting boundaries and respecting your partners boundaries are. These are the kinds of things that we talk about when we are talking about enthusiastic consentual sex. And that is dare I say it? a feminist model of a relationship.

I like my naked body

trigger warning body discussion, weight issues, eating disorders, self mutilation, and brief mentions of sexaul assault

That's a pretty radical statement to say in our society. The truth is that most people do not like the way they look naked. From my perspective it is mostly culture that tells us that there is something inherently dirty about our bodies. That's why when people criticize female celebrities for appearing in their underwear I get extremely pissed. If you want to criticize somebody about posing for the male gaze because they have admitted to doing that fine, but if you are just assuming that because they are a celebrity and they are posing in their lacy bits on a magazine cover only for the male gaze? NOT OKAY ever. It takes a lot of us a long time to be okay and confident in our bodies. The last thing any of us need is to be told that we are catering to the male gaze when we show off our figures.

This kind of attitude along with other issues is what led to my eating disorder. I was a ballerina who grew into my womanly figure much earlier than most girls. This put me under extreme amounts of pressure from my ballet teachers to be thinner, but I was getting different messages at home. My mom would go back and forth between yelling at me that I was getting fat and ugly or that I was becoming a woman and therefore was to pretty for my own good. Both of those comments along with the pressure to stay skinny from my dance teachers and fellow young ballerinas made me hate my body. At one point I hated it so much that I wouldn't even get undressed to take a shower. I would shower with my clothes on and not look when I had to actually soap whatever area I had exposed to wash at the time. When I started getting stretch marks on my legs from muscle growth from dancing and on my breasts from their rapid expansion I would cut the marks open in an attempt to make them disappear. I started purging every meal I ate. This horrible and harmful behavior went on for close to three years before my boyfriend at the time caught me and forced me to get help. By that point I had broken the muscles that controlled the gag reflex in my throat and I had surgery to repair them. It took me three years of constant therapy to be able to stop harming myself with the cutting and the purging. I still struggle with my body, but I've gotten to a place where I can look at it in the mirror and like what I see. I see my curves as a testament to my womanhood and the battles that I have survived because of that. I see my stretch marks as the marks of a dancer who loved her art. I see my porcelain skin so soft and my hair so rich and supple and healthy, and it reminds me that if I want to keep everything looking healthy that I have to eat and not self destruct my own progress.

So when someone states that women who display themselves are only catering to the male gaze I get really frustrated because for some people, that approval is the only thing that keeps their dinner from going into the wastebasket.

hi all

so this is my first post. I plan to do a couple of things with this blog. First and foremost I hope to teach those who are new to feminism a couple of things. I really want other people to understand that feminism isn't about manhating or necessarily about being a butch lesbian with natural body hair (although there is absolutely nothing wrong with those choices either and if you fall into any one of those three categories I welcome you here) Which leads me to my first point. I am a feminist who believes in the ideas of kyriarchy. That means that there is an interaction between all kinds of oppression and that all marginalized people also have some form of privilege that people in other marginalized groups don't have. For example, I am a young white conventionally attractive thin cissexual able bodied woman. That means that while I suffer the marginalization all women do in my society from the patriarchy, I have no clue what it really feels like to be a WOC to be differently abled, to be a member of FABGLITTER (This stands for fetish, asexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, intersex, transgender, transsexual, engendering revolution and is a more inclusive version of LGBT) (although I do upon occasion technically fall into the first category and I plan to do a detailed post about that shortly) but because of that I do not try and tell those people what they should or should not feel. I'm not here to play the oppression olympics and anyone else doing that in this space will be banned. Which leads me to my second point. This is a safe space. As allies and advocates we have a responsibility to not make life harder for people who have suffered through trauma. I am a rape survivor, a domestic violence survivor, and a still struggle with an eating disorder related to those two things. Other people have various forms of mental conditions, and some people are very sensitive to things such as violence. They have just as much right to be reading this blog as you do and therefore everyone will remain civil and understanding to one another. If you're going to talk about your traumatic experiences use a trigger warning. If what you are talking about invokes aspect of the kyriarchy please do the same thing. We'll all mess up from time to time and that is okay too. If someone says things that are harmful to you please call them out on it and make me aware of it so that I can delete the comment if necessary, ban the user if applicable, or add a trigger warning to it so that others know to proceed with caution. The second thing that I plan on doing here is talk about and discuss the cultural implications of the things the media, pop culture, and the government does that affects our lives and citizens. I hope you all enjoy reading my blog