Hi I talk & write about gender absurdities culture, because I've had just about as much misogyny as I can take without my head exploding. Still, whenever possible, I would really rather laugh than cry while thinking about it. Feminist. Feminism. Intersectionality. Lady Rights. Girl Power. Gender Equity. Gender Empathy. I'll stop now.

rakastiikeri:

Faking orgasms, which up to 80 percent of women say they do, is a good example of how the belief that men are owed nurturing, emotional protection, and niceness from women plays out in intimate ways. A massive 2018 study found that heterosexual women have fewer orgasms than any other sexual demographic, and substantially less than heterosexual men. Women say that they fake orgasms primarily to protect the feelings and egos of their male partners. Of those women who fake orgasms, 92 percent say that they believe it contributes to higher self-esteem for their sex partner, the primary reason that 87 percent of them did it in the first place. Being careful with other people’s feelings is generally good, but not when it becomes one-way sexual entitlement.

In a searing 2018 piece titled “The Female Price of Male Pleasure,” writer Lili Loofbourow relentlessly described how normalized prioritizing male sexual pleasure is and how it relates to ignoring women’s needs and even pain. She pointed out that 30 percent of women experience vaginal pain during intercourse, 72 percent experience pain during anal sex, and yet “large proportions” never say anything to their partners. “A casual survey of forums where people discuss ‘bad sex’ suggests that men tend to use the term to describe a passive partner or a boring experience…But,” she goes on to say, “when most women talk about ‘bad sex,’ they tend to mean coercion, or emotional discomfort, or, even more commonly, physical pain.”

What does this look like in day-to-day life? Five times as many clinical trials have been conducted on the topic of male sexual pleasure, such as for erectile dysfunction, as on female sexual pain. What does this look like in terms of resources? Loofbourow, putting a fine point on the topic, looked at Pubmed, which publishes medical research studies and found 446 studies of dyspareunia, vaginismus, and vulvodynia, all highly painful conditions affecting women’s ability to have sex. Studies of erectile dysfunction? 1,954. As one doctor she quotes explains, women will silently provide sex “with their teeth tightly clenched.”

― Soraya Chemaly, Chapter 4: The Caring Mandate, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

The 2018 study she’s referring to is: 

David A. Frederick et al., “Differences in Orgasm Frequency Among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men and Women in a U.S. National Sample,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 47, no. 1 (January 2018): 273–88, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-0939-z

rakastiikeri:

Faking orgasms, which up to 80 percent of women say they do, is a good example of how the belief that men are owed nurturing, emotional protection, and niceness from women plays out in intimate ways. A massive 2018 study found that heterosexual women have fewer orgasms than any other sexual demographic, and substantially less than heterosexual men. Women say that they fake orgasms primarily to protect the feelings and egos of their male partners. Of those women who fake orgasms, 92 percent say that they believe it contributes to higher self-esteem for their sex partner, the primary reason that 87 percent of them did it in the first place. Being careful with other people’s feelings is generally good, but not when it becomes one-way sexual entitlement.

In a searing 2018 piece titled “The Female Price of Male Pleasure,” writer Lili Loofbourow relentlessly described how normalized prioritizing male sexual pleasure is and how it relates to ignoring women’s needs and even pain. She pointed out that 30 percent of women experience vaginal pain during intercourse, 72 percent experience pain during anal sex, and yet “large proportions” never say anything to their partners. “A casual survey of forums where people discuss ‘bad sex’ suggests that men tend to use the term to describe a passive partner or a boring experience…But,” she goes on to say, “when most women talk about ‘bad sex,’ they tend to mean coercion, or emotional discomfort, or, even more commonly, physical pain.”

What does this look like in day-to-day life? Five times as many clinical trials have been conducted on the topic of male sexual pleasure, such as for erectile dysfunction, as on female sexual pain. What does this look like in terms of resources? Loofbourow, putting a fine point on the topic, looked at Pubmed, which publishes medical research studies and found 446 studies of dyspareunia, vaginismus, and vulvodynia, all highly painful conditions affecting women’s ability to have sex. Studies of erectile dysfunction? 1,954. As one doctor she quotes explains, women will silently provide sex “with their teeth tightly clenched.”

― Soraya Chemaly, Chapter 4: The Caring Mandate, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

The 2018 study she’s referring to is: 

David A. Frederick et al., “Differences in Orgasm Frequency Among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men and Women in a U.S. National Sample,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 47, no. 1 (January 2018): 273–88, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-0939-z

profeminist:

image

Thor to Loki: “Are you a boy or a girl?”

Loki: “I’m a God”

Thor: “I mean, what’s your gender?”

Loki: CHAOS

Thor: “Ok but what’s in your pants?”

Loki: MISCHIEF!

rakastiikeri:

The most dangerous man a woman will encounter is the one sitting at her own dinner table, yet media continue to focus on horrific crimes perpetrated by strangers and acquaintances. This violence should be treated seriously in and of itself, but it is also meaningful to understanding public violence. The single most accurate predictor of violent crime is a man’s felony domestic violence conviction. For instance, 58 percent of mass shooters have histories of domestic violence. Nine of the ten most lethal mass killings in the United States involved men with histories of domestic abuse. Three of the deadlier mass shootings of 2017—one in Plano, Texas, in which seven were killed, another in which eight people died in rural Mississippi, and a third in which twenty-seven were killed in Sutherland Springs, Texas—were committed by estranged husbands enraged that their wives had chosen to end their marriages. Killings like these are not considered political or terroristic, even though in effect they are both. 

— Soraya Chemaly, Chapter 6: Smile, Baby, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

rakastiikeri:

The most dangerous man a woman will encounter is the one sitting at her own dinner table, yet media continue to focus on horrific crimes perpetrated by strangers and acquaintances. This violence should be treated seriously in and of itself, but it is also meaningful to understanding public violence. The single most accurate predictor of violent crime is a man’s felony domestic violence conviction. For instance, 58 percent of mass shooters have histories of domestic violence. Nine of the ten most lethal mass killings in the United States involved men with histories of domestic abuse. Three of the deadlier mass shootings of 2017—one in Plano, Texas, in which seven were killed, another in which eight people died in rural Mississippi, and a third in which twenty-seven were killed in Sutherland Springs, Texas—were committed by estranged husbands enraged that their wives had chosen to end their marriages. Killings like these are not considered political or terroristic, even though in effect they are both. 

— Soraya Chemaly, Chapter 6: Smile, Baby, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

luxe-pauvre:

“In many environments, all you have to do to be castigated as an angry woman is to say something out loud, so you might as well say exactly what’s bothering you and get on with it. This means that, usually, you have to come to terms with not always being liked. Your anger and assertiveness will make some people unhappy, uncomfortable, sensitive, cautious. They will resent you, your thoughts, your words. They will hate your willingness to risk social connections and challenge social conventions. Be prepared to be labelled as humourless, difficult, a spoilsport, and a ruiner of parties, meetings, dinners, and picnics. There is discomfort in understanding. There will always be people who are deeply uncomfortable with your anger. They will attempt to diminish what you say by disparaging your choice of expression. This is a kind of laziness and a sure symptom of dismissal and, sometimes, abuse. If someone does not care to consider why you are angry, or why anger is your approach to a specific event or problem, then that person is almost certainly part of the problem. Among women, this dismissal often comes from the desire not to identify with “victimhood,” and your anger, as a marker of social difference and disadvantage, is a challenge to that concept. Demanding fairness and describing a problem doesn’t make you a “victim.” Silencing, denial, mockery, intimidation, and callousness might, though.”

— Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her

sapphic-pink-kryptonite:

dustedlaces:

sorayachemaly:

zukoscar:

ryncoon:

mousepunker:

the-philosophers-bone:

itrhymeswithalayne:

people have no idea what its like to be 14 and have everyone telling you that you’re faking and pretending to be ill for attention or to skip art class and the doctor’s telling you you’re ‘just being a teenager’ when you actually had a serious kidney disease

if someone hadn’t eventually listened to me i would have died

Please, please support self-diagnosed teenagers, don’t pretend they’re not really disabled, don’t belittle or mock them, don’t exclude them from disabled spaces and for the love of god don’t pretend you know more about them than they do

i am disabled to this day because when i was a teenage girl, my doctors didn’t take me seriously. when i said i was in extreme pain, they said i just wasn’t trying hard enough at physical therapy to repair a broken ankle. turns out they’d fucked up the surgery to fix it, and their neglect of my months of complaints meant it was damaged beyond repair. i still have mobility issues 8 years later, will have pain and require surgeries throughout my life and will, always, be disabled. because of them. because of the silencing of girls’ voices, in all spheres. because doctors do not value the voices of teenaged girls.

When I was twelve, the knee specialist I had finally convinced my mom to take me to (after years of begging) told me that my knees hurt because of my hips widening.

“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I can’t walk when it happens, it hurts so bad. It’s been since I was a little kid.”

“It might twinge a bit, sure,” he told me. “Go to physical therapy for a few weeks.” I burst into tears.

My mom then refused to take me to physical therapy, because it was a long drive and the doctor said it wasn’t serious, so why should she bother? That was the start of her not listening to any complaint about my joints I ever had.

As it turns out, my knees were dislocating every couple of days. She and my doctors ignored and taught me to ignore sprains, fractures, cartilage tears, and dislocations until I moved out and learned that it wasn’t normal. I missed out on years of my life because of my doctor not only discounting the experience of a young girl, but fully blaming my pain on the fact of my being a young girl.

Listen to children when they tell you something is wrong with their bodies.

I had stomach pains for years as a kid. Almost daily. I was blamed as a faker. 

I have Celiac.

People know what the hell is going on with their own bodies. If they don’t think something is right fucking listen to them.

In their study, “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain,” researchers Diane E. Hoffmann and Anita J. Tarzian documented the degree to which girl’s and women’s pain is routinely dismissed as the “not real,” “emotional,” response of “fragile” females. Not only are girls and women who experience pain less likely to be taken seriously when they describe it, but they are less likely to be treated by medical professionals.

When my sister was 16 she had a horrible cough, like every ten minutes she’d have a massive coughing fit. My mum took her to the doctors for a year and she was perscribed medications for mental illnesses since they thought she was coughing FOR THE ATTENTION. turns out she had whopping cough and as a result her lungs are permanently damaged (any sort of mild illness that involves coughing is about 20 times worse for her because of the damage), she has depression, anxiety disorder and agoraphobia as a result of being mistreated for so long and then not being taken seriously when she eventually got the correct diagnosis. Seriously fuck doctors.

I kept saying I was scared, miserable, “not myself.”

Anxiety, depression, bpd.

I complained of being aching and tired all the time.

Severe fibromyalgia, scoliosis, and lumbar lodorsis.

“I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong! I don’t know how to make friends! That food makes me vomit, it’s not about the taste, it feels bad!”

Autism.

“I can’t see! I don’t care that the exam says routine myopia, my eyes hurt and I can’t see!”

Optic neuritis.

Fucking listen to children.