Friday, September 23, 2011

Recently in England

While I do usually focus on the Us of A...some noteworthy stuff that popped up in my google reader this (and the last) week: There was the case of a student suing the London School of Economics because there gender studies course was misandrist:
The 39-year-old, who attended the university last year to take up a Gender, Media and Culture Masters degree, said there was “systemic anti-male discrimination”.
A statement by the school kind of agree
The university’s legal team has asked for the case to be struck out, claiming the core texts were not compulsory, merely recommended readings, and that the texts were equally available for both men and women to read, so therefore did not directly discriminate against men. The team also argues that “any discriminatory effect [against men] was plainly justifiable”.
Read the excellent analysis by TS here. Then there was this
Liberal Democrat Lynne Featherstone has launched a scathing attack on her male counterparts, insisting the world's continuing financial crisis was a direct result of men's failure to make the correct choices. 'In terms of decision making I have always gone out and advocated to women you must get your hands on levers, you must get hold of power, you must be where decisions are made. Because otherwise if you leave it to - I'm going to say men in this case because that's the way the world has worked - you get terrible decisions. 'Look at the mess the world is in, and look who has been in charge. I leave it there.'
Kind of disturbing that the person saying this is the equality minister there.
Meanwhile, fellow Conservative MP Priti Patel told the Evening Standard: 'These comments are really ill-thought out. As equalities minister she has got to be unbiased about the value that both men and women bring to decision-making. 'She works in a department that is trying to address inequalities in society - to then dump the blame for a range of problems on one sex is completely wrong and misguided.'
From the same party that wants this.
[2d] 'Enabling vulnerable families to stay together by implementing the Corston recommendatons, which would see a gradual closure of all women's prisons and their replacement with some small custodial units for serious and dangerous offenders, and, for most women offenders, a larger network of support and supervision centres in the community.' [found via reddit]
More misandry in that teachers case:
Mr Pullinger had almost 20 years' teaching experience when he was dismissed in 2009. The GTC heard this month that he had allowed a pupil to sit on his lap, shared a chair with another and, on numerous occasions, "failed to disengage immediately when girls ran up to him and put their arms around his legs". He had been warned in writing on two occasions, but had "failed to heed" the advice. In its ruling, the GTC said it had "noted the positive testimonials about Mr Pullinger and the fact of the positive assessment of his technical abilities". But it ruled that his behaviour amounted to "a breach of the standards of propriety expected". The ruling added: "His behaviour demonstrated a failure to establish and maintain appropriate and professional boundaries in his relationships with children in his care."
I guess the following is not that surprising:
Around a quarter of primary schools [...] now have no male teachers, and experts have warned that a lack of male role models may be putting boys off school at an early age.
And we had of course this:
At present, a woman can start receiving her state pension at the age of 60 years and seven months. A man must wait until he is 65. Under the changes, the age will be 65 for both men and women in November 2018, rising to 66 by April 2020. [...] ‘We’ll make sure that the state pension they do get is calculated in a fairer way. At the moment, pensions are often bad news for women and I’m determined as the minister to change that. ‘There’s a range of things that you can do, whether it’s about dates or about other bits of the system, that would ease the financial pressure for those most affected. ‘I won’t pre-empt what we’ll say to Parliament in some weeks’ time but the crucial thing for us is fairness.’
Fair eh?

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Some Radical Feminist Quotes

“When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression.”
- Sheila Jeffreys: professor, political activist and author

“I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.”
- Robin Morgan: civil rights, antiwar and radical feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor of Ms. Magazine

“To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo.”
- Valerie Solanas (1936-1988): Author of the SCUM Manifesto, attempted murderer of Andy Warhol

“I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.”
- Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005): writer, antipornography activist

“We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men.”
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902): social activist, abolitionist, women’s suffrage movement leader

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Even crazier case from France

And while we are at it....take a look at this:
The 51-year-old man was fined under article 215 of France’s civil code, which states married couples must agree to a “shared communal life”. A judge has now ruled that this law implies that “sexual relations must form part of a marriage”. [...] But the 47-year-old ex-wife then took him back to court demanding 10,000 euros in compensation for “lack of sex over 21 years of marriage”. The ex-husband claimed “tiredness and health problems” had prevented him from being more attentive between the sheets. But a judge in the south of France’s highest court in Aix-en-Provence ruled: “A sexual relationship between husband and wife is the expression of affection they have for each other, and in this case it was absent. “By getting married, couples agree to sharing their life and this clearly implies they will have sex with each other.”
The implications of that one make my head spin.

Crazy child support case

I don't usually blog cases, but that is just too crazy. Via F&F:

She has 4% of the parenting time; he has the other 96%. So you’d think she’d be paying child support to him, but no. It’s the other way around. [...] In 2009, her child by her second husband was injured while under her care and both children were taken from her and given to their dads.

So Jon did the obvious thing; he asked the court to reduce his child support from $10,000 a month to nothing. After all, he was the custodial parent and custodial parents don’t pay child support, they receive it, right? Well, as the court admitted, that’s usually the case, but not here. Here, Jon must continue paying Sarah $8,000 a month even though she only sees the child 4% of the time.

[...]Sarah answered Jon’s request for a reduction of child support by saying it’s her only income, which apparently it is. That’s because she hasn’t had a job of any kind since 2005. Into the bargain, she’s not looking for one. In her last filing, she listed her monthly income (outside of child support) as zero and her monthly expenses as over $13,000.

So, according to both the trial and the appellate courts, because Sarah is too much of a deadbeat to even attempt to support herself, Jon must continue to support her with the child providing the weakest of pretexts for doing so.


I don't even....what? Read the original...it is a good article.

Misogyny - sexual preference edition

Two posts from feministe:

Do you have a right to refuse to have period sex because you think bleeding vaginas be nasty? Of course. And do I have a right to leave your ass and think less of you because of that? You betcha. Because it does come down to misogyny, basically [...] Lots of healthy vaginas expel blood. And if you think that’s gross, well, maybe spend your naked extracurricular time with someone who is vagina-free [...] Basically, dudes who have sex with women and think period sex is disgusting are the brothers-in-badnews-sexytime with people who think oral sex is gross. Don’t like normally-functioning vaginas? Then you should be disallowed from fucking them.


Toysoldier's take on another one.

So is a woman a misandrist if she doesn't like her boyfriend coming in her mouth?