Looks like Wisconsin, Virginia, Texas, and Louisiana are in a fight to see which one can be the shittiest this week. (No disrespect to the rational people of those states, only sympathy.) Sweden of all places might have them beat, though! Let’s get down to the nitty gritty, shall we? (As usual, trigger warnings for pretty much everything apply.)
What in the everloving fuck? Hidden in a new anti-abortion bill being considered in Wisconsin, there’s a provision that a woman could be prevented from getting an abortion if her husband or one of their parents claims she was doing it to select the sex of the baby. Considering that most women don’t find out the sex until about 20 weeks and only a tiny percentage of abortions take place after that point, it’ll be interesting to see how this is implemented.
Virginia state senator and current congressional candidate Dick Black is just a fucking peach of a human being. In 2002 he argued against lifting the ban on prosecuting spousal rape (because think of teh menz! False accusations!), he calls EC “baby pesticide,” he made reporters watch violent rape porn with him on a public library computer to prove a point about the (supposed) need to ban porn from libraries… I could go on, but the full list of his transgressions against decent humanity is at the link. (Spoiler alert: He’s a big old racist and homophobe too. Shocking, I know.)
Hey, Denton County Republicans? Maybe if you want Texas women to think your party isn’t waging a war on women, you should stop calling Sen. Wendy Davis “Abortion Barbie” and freaking out over the prospect of a two-woman gubernatorial ticket. Just sayin’.
A Swedish judge acquitted a man accused of rape because, well, he didn’t mean to rape her! He thought that her screaming, “No,” at the top of her lungs was role-play, just like with some of the other women he’d slept with. What the fuck, Sweden?!
Virginia state legislator Thomas Garrett is trying to pass a law to prohibit teenagers from having oral and anal sex.
The Population Institute released its second annual State of Reproductive Health and Rights: 50-State Report Card, and overall, the US earned a C-. Only four states (California, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington) received an A or A+ rating, while 13 earned an F or F-. You can find out the details behind your state’s score here.
via the Population Institute
Meanwhile, Americans United for Life released their rankings of which states do the best job “protecting life,” and as you can imagine, it’s basically the inverse of the Population Institute’s list. They gave Louisiana top billing (because their policies are basically the worst ever) and lamented that Washington will basically let anyone who wants an abortion get one. The horror!
No, Brit Hume, people don’t see Gov. Chris Christie as a bully because of the “feminized atmosphere in which we live today.” It’s because he acts like a bully.
Medicare paid out double what the retail cost would have been for nearly 474,ooo penis pumps between 2006 and 2011, at a taxpayer cost of more than $172 million. Yet any time people complain about wasteful spending, it’s for women’s health.
Representative Randy Weber, Sr. (R-TX) is trying to bring back part of DOMA that was struck down by the Supreme Court; he’s introduced a bill that would prohibit the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages in states that prohibit them.
New York State Assemblyman Dennis Gabryszak resigned following accusations that he’d sexually harassed several women on his staff.
A Wisconsin bill that would cap the amount rich parents would have to pay in child support was partially written by a wealthy donor who wants to reduce the amount he’s paying in child support. I feel bad that his kids will one day figure out that their multimillionaire dad donated thousands of dollars to politicians and tried to rewrite state law so he could get away with giving them less money.
Thanks to redditor OKCThrowaway22221, the world now knows that women who sign up for online dating sites are barraged with inappropriate messages. Thanks, broseph! No woman has ever complained about that! How nice of you to stand in our shoes for two hours so that you can explain sexism to other bros. (Heina at Skepchick nails why this is fucked up.)
Au Bon Pain has apologized after it was revealed that their free wifi’s content blocker was prohibiting customers from viewing sites associated with LGBTQ issues and reproductive rights.
A new mom was temporarily kicked off Facebook for posting pictures of her home birth, which included some nudity but can hardly be considered pornographic. (NSFW pics at the link.)
I refuse to click through to brobible.com to read the associated article, but this is just a lovely headline. Ugh.
Recommended Reading
- We’re probably going to have to talk a lot this year about HR 7, the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act.” Think Progress has a good overview of what the bill entails.
- Olga Khazan at The Atlantic lays out the current state of abortion access in Texas.
- Mia and Ronan Farrow were, shall we say, less than pleased about Woody Allen’s lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes. Understandable, given his whole molesting-a-7-year-old-girl thing.
- June Thomas discusses the horrible things that happen to the female characters on Downton Abbey. (Big spoilers if you’re running behind on the show.)
- Amanda Hess on sexism in sports and why Tonya Harding wasn’t landing endorsements even before she had Nancy Kerrigan attacked.
- Sabrina Parsons, the CEO of Palo Alto Software, lays out an alternative to “leaning in.”
- How to talk to little girls about something (anything!) other than their looks. Hell, talk to grown women about other topics too!
- The title gave me pause because it sounds like it’s going to be yet another article about how nursing moms should cover that shit up, but this is actually a really good article about how it’s ok to realize that having a baby isn’t all sunshine and roses and can be a little gross.
- And by the way, having trouble breastfeeding isn’t just a modern first-world problem.
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks to Ellen Degeneres about his mom and identifying as a feminist.
4 replies on “This Week in Misogyny: In Which I Say “Fuck” a Lot”
The balance of lovelier things at the end makes the initial fuckery so much easier to stomach. Thank you for your kindly way of bringing to light the crapiness of the world.
This Wisconsin law is a new one for me. So what about if the husband or the parents think that the mother THINKS the baby is a particular gender and is then using the abortion for sex-selective purposes? I mean, there are all sorts of wives tales about what sex the baby will be if you’re carrying high or low. I wonder if the law states that there has to be proof that the baby is a certain sex and proof that the mother is aborting because it’s the sex they didn’t desire. Regardless, it’s just majorly messed up.
My guess is that whoever tossed that provision in has no idea how babies work (because why would you need to know anything about the realities of pregnancy to write laws about it???) and didn’t realize the timing made that scenario extremely unlikely. Hell, my kiddo decided to stick her hand in her crotch for that entire ultrasound, so we didn’t know what she was until like 33 weeks. Sex-selective abortion is largely a myth, but I bet some dipshit will try to use it as an excuse to prevent a family member from aborting, and it’ll be interesting/terrifying to see how the courts apply the law.
Keeping teens from any kind of sex? Haha, keep being delusional.