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(A note: This was actually going to be posted on the historical thread, 'A trip Through the '60s...The Women's Movement,' with the quotes, and the memories and personal experiences decribed by posters, but I was late and it is already archived. This is the closest topic by the thread-starter, Madspirit.)
"I've always met more discrimination being a woman than being black. When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for President, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men." --The late New York Representative Shirley Chisholm. (Tried also to find a quote I read in a book or magazine many years ago--the '70s I think--from the asshole George Romney, who was once the Governor of Michigan, an extremist and as asshole, about women who were campaigning for the ERA at the time, among whom were the then-current Republican Governor and First Lady, William and Helen Milliken. The quote was that the types of women who supported the Equal Rights Amendment were "extremists and lesbians," trying to destroy the home, etc., the typical, hateful shit. When I tried to search Google, though, all I kept getting were these FAVORABLE, pro-Mormon websites and the quote never did come up! This is the father, of course, of the prick Mitty Romney. The Mormon "Church" has spent countless millions of dollars fighting against the ERA and feminism, even excommunicating feminist Mormons, Sonya Johnson and others.)
Males sometimes delude themselves that there are some women who are not angry, and only "some of them" are--like maybe the "small percentage" of women who have had some kind of "personal experience" of some kind, like who met an abuser, or were raped, or cheated out of a job by a less-qualified male, "once," or etc., and they delude themselves that pseudo-"analyzing" the woman, not males, will yield the solution to the problem. Here are a few memories of a life:
When you live in a society that encourages bigotry against women, then even the most outrageous behavior by males against you, is "explained away" by pretending it was a "joke" or that there "was no malicious intent," taking the judgment completely off the offender and giving it social sanction and acceptance, and putting it only on the victim's angry attempt to fight back. When the whole world excuses whatever males do, and attacks whatever women do, then you know you will always lose--hopeless--and they know they will always win--cruel and emboldened. When I was a kid, I happened to be walking by a male member of my family, who was listening to the radio. As I went by, I heard the lyrics of a song by those pricks, the Rolling Stone, this family member singing, now more loudly, as I went by: "Look at that stupid GI-IRL." "Look at that stupid girl," sung as snide as a male can get it. I felt uncomfortable, looked around, and saw the unmistakable look of male hate, fixed on this family member's face. (These pricks also had a song with the lines, "Under my thumb, a squirming dog who's just had her day.") Another time, sitting at home, I heard a news story of a woman who was raped in her own home, and her guard dog had not attacked the rapist, but later, confused, bit her. I cannot describe what burning rage I felt as I listened, over and over, to the loud laughter and JOKING of males, laughing and laughing, at this incident. (How many thousands of rape "jokes" do women hear from males all around them, over a lifetime?)
I grew up in a household where, if women won some victory--in the house, or anywhere in the world--there was a strained silence from my father, until we were "made to lose" again, and "all the world was set right." This was not even an abusive home; this is what we all live like. I never heard any concern for battered women, discrimination, equal rights, even when personal cases relating to people we knew were discussed. I was as if a pall fell over everything, palpable, and things would not feel "safe" again, until only males were fretted about. Another family member even described a woman friend who had been beaten and was trying to get out, and my father gave an angry look away, cutting off the discussion, and said, "Ah, I don't know anything about that--whether it's true or not," after it had just been described by a witness. This told a common male opinion: the woman is always lying, and I don't give a fuck, you aren't paying attention to ME. I heard lectures on how "feminists really just want to be males," women who want orgasms when males always have them are "sluts/selfish," etc.
When the news got out that O.J. Simpson had murdered Nicole Brown, battered woman whom no one helped, the very first thing my own father said was, "Well, she was probably a bitch." When, about 25 or so years ago, a male in Montreal had murdered only the women in a University there, calling them "all a bunch of fucking feminists," my own father said, "They probably weren't all even feminists," like that was the sad thing, whatever the hell that meant. All women hear taunting laughter about how males make more than we do, (especially after the recent outrageous Supreme Court decision making it impossible to file discrimination charges because of a demand that the victim know all the particulars immediately, when that is impossible--totally ignored by the male media), as all battered woman learned the new line after the "lynch" verdict in the Nicole Brown case, "I'm gonna O.J. you," meaning, I'm going to murder you, and get away with it. Women are taunted, "Let's see your tits bounce," countless, myriad "sexual" taunts, and cannot fight back, or you would escalate it.
Women get taunted about every male privilege, no matter how seemingly small: I remember on a very hot day, a male "friend" took off a T-shirt saying, "I can take my shirt off, and you can't," smiling. I had never thought of it as them shoving our faces in the shit--until then. Phil Donahue has talked about how males get credit for every little thing, and women are attacked unless they do every little thing. As an active parent, Donahue enrolled the kids, then young, in school. When asked their birthdays, Donahue didn't know, but promised to get the information, then said later, that everything that happened, they were so thrilled that a male was doing any parenting at all, that everything was excused and praised, where if a woman had brought the kids in and not even known their birthdates, she would have been considered an unfit mother; this was Phil Donahue. Reminds me of when I was taking care of my beloved, dying Mom. I did everything, kept track of everything, and one time when I was visiting her in the hospital with other male family members, a woman nurse turned to me and said it was so wonderful that my brother was taking care of her and doing all that work. Out of nowhere she had just made this up--so used to crawling like a slave and overpraising them for everything, and ignoring all the real work the women actually do.
No matter how great women athletes are, they are almost never covered by the media, and only if the pricks can exploit them, half-naked; like slaves. No matter how brilliant women are, the comments are not paid any attention to, until a male says it. No matter how bravely they criticize Bush and Republicans--Dixie Chicks, Whoopi Goldberg, Linda Ronstadt, etc.--it is never cheered until some male says it, much later--Olbermann, Stephen Colbert, etc. Then, of course, the praise is all about "big dicks" and "big balls." Imagine praising them for "white, white skin"--why, that would be bigoted! Male bigots have a whole society backing them up on their ugly attitudes, and so they can still maintain the unbelievable fiction that they are "nice guys." "Nice guys," PLUS referring to us as "cunts." Yet we are "ballbusting bitches," no matter how nice, how ethical, we actually are. When a male cheats, "the cold cunt" caused it and "the poor guy" had to do it; when a woman cheats, the "demanding, selfish bitch" caused it, and the "poor guy" should beat the shit out of her. Either way, it goes against the woman. Then of course we have all the phony "academics" on DU as everywhere else, with these phony "histories" of this or that--and never a mention of women or women's perspective.
There was a story of a male rapist that I had read about, who later developed a conscience and started helping with an anti-rape group in prison. Describing the original encounter with (all-male) police, on arrest, and knowing that the victim was not lying and that the attack had happened, this rapist later said, after making up a lying, blame-the-victim routine for police, "I couldn't believe it. They believed everything that I said." They take the pro-male side, first, last and always, approach the woman with only contempt and suspicion, and never analyze themselves at all. Then they deny it--because you are another hated woman.
Sometimes they even invent a whole complicated scenario where they pretend you yourself caused your oppression, because of your "personality type," "your own needs," "your fear of success," on and on. It isn't us sabotaging or threatening us, yet they magically make themselves disappear, as when they say, "She got herself pregnant," another male line. Then of course there is the constant warning to political women: we can't waste time on your little cencerns, we have to fight for the general good, etc., ("everybody"), a phony remark that never excludes them and theirs, but cuts you and your "selfish," "one-issue," etc., interests out, always. Male="general."
Sometimes, I get sick to death of trying for the millionth time to explain to bigoted males what they are doing, and that they fool no one. Still, they deny, "Fuck you too," etc., or give one of the manipulator's replies, "I am so sorry that you hate fully one-half of the world's population, and that perhaps something happened to only you alone, that made you inadequate to deal with males and reality ever again," blah blah blah...No matter how many examples from real life, and male hate, you give them, their response is almost always, drearily, "YOU are so angry..." Not them, never--YOU.
...But then I think again, let them think over every shitty thing they have ever done to women, every time they jumped to the side against the woman when they didn't even know the facts, think of how they so often hate women and think they/males are superior, then try to hide it--and realize that we notice all these things that you do, and ask yourself, "What do you THINK that makes us FEEL like?" How would you feel if you could actually realize that you were blocked by an oppressor group every step of the way, and were never going to achieve what you want and were capable of, and that you will never win, it will never end, you will never get a fair chance? Then imagine after that, that when everything is over and the story is told, it is all a lie, told by the prick who oppressed you and caused the whole thing, and who now completely reworks it to their favor, and you are censored and unheard again, always.
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