This Week in Misogyny: Listicles Before Testicles

There’s not too much news to report this week, though what little there is still manages to be rage-inducing. However, I have a ton of awesome recommended readings for you, from listicles about ridiculous sex advice and the ignorant things people ask trans* people to discussions about doxxing and victim-blaming. Let’s jump on in! (As usual, trigger warnings for pretty much everything apply.)

Alabama State Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin (R) is just a peach. Not only has she proposed to ban abortions after only six weeks (at which point women may not even know they’re pregnant!), she said that women shouldn’t have sex at all if they aren’t prepared to have a baby. She also compared inevitable legal challenges to this proposal (if passed) to Brown v. Board. Well then.

And then there’s Virginia State Sen. Steve Martin (R), who called pregnant women “hosts,” though he conceded that “some [people] refer to them as mothers.” Charming.

And then there’s Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who apparently ordered the firing of a doctor because she’d previously worked as an underwear model.

Notre Dame has been thwarted once again in its attempt to stop insurance companies from providing contraception coverage to the university’s students and employees.

Following public outrage about the arrest of a jogger who jaywalked, Austin’s police chief said she was lucky to have just been dragged to the police car because some officers sexually assault people while on duty. He apologized, but he’s still a terrible person.

Lloyd Oliver thinks we spend too many resources prosecuting domestic violence cases and that DV is “so, so overrated.” He’s running for district attorney in Harris County, Texas (Houston and surrounding areas), which has more homicides stemming from DV than anywhere else in the state. And he’s a fucking Democrat!

A Northwestern University student is suing the school for violating Title IX by not firing a tenured professor who got her drunk and sexually assaulted her when she was a 19-year-old freshman. The school counters that they did, in fact, punish him — by denying him a raise, not awarding him an endowed chair, and making him take sensitivity training.

While gun activists love to tout the supposed benefits of women owning guns for self-protection, actually looking at the numbers shows that women are far more likely to be killed with their own weapon.

Helen Grant, the U.K.’s minister of sports, equalities, and tourism, suggested increasing girls’ participation in sports by giving them “what they want” — ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading, and rollerskating. While some are criticizing her for implying that girls don’t want to do “real” sports (which, some girls don’t!), those are all activities that you have to be pretty badass to be good at. I’m calling it a wash.

Well this is a giant steaming pile of horseshit — Lynn Anderson wants J.K. Rowling to stop writing because she gets so much attention that no other women writers can compete with her. Because we can apparently only have one successful lady writer at a time?

For the first time, women (slightly) outnumber men in a Berkeley intro to computer science class. Awesome!

Go CVS! Their training pants packaging actually shows toddler girls playing sports and toddler boys cuddling stuffed animals.

Welp, turns out that when you actually compare siblings who were fed differently as babies, there’s almost no difference between breastfeeding and formula. Except that breastfed babies are more likely to develop asthma. (Thanks, Mom!) Maybe we can stop being so condescending to families that choose formula.

Recommended Reading

• Rehtaeh Parson’s father speaks out against trolls who tell him she was raped because he was a bad father, and urges us all to shun rapists instead of shaming their victims.
• Epic smackdown of moms who go on about how they just love having boys because they’re so different (read, better) than girls!
• “34 Problems Men Will Never Understand” — It’s funny because it’s true!
• The inevitable flow of the conversation when we try to educate mansplainers about feminism.
• Actress Olivia Wilde discusses the imbalance in roles for women in Hollywood; I love her story about reactions to a genderswapped American Pie reading!
• True Detective has all kinds of misogyny, but Willa Paskin argues that it’s an intentional attempt to show how horribly men treat women.
• The majority of Broadway theatergoers are female, so producers are apparently trying to get more men in the seats in the spring season by debuting shows about dudely subjects like Rocky, Bruce Lee, the Yankees, and LBJ. Bo-ring.
• Noah Berlansky on how most major media is biased against female book reviewers and how, in general, they refuse to publish reviews of romance novels. (Though, the Washington Post has just launched a romance review!)
• And is it just me, or do people who think it’s impossible to write a good sex scene really need to pick up some good romance novels?
• Chelsea Handler on why being reduced to a parenthetic statement is a shitty way to acknowledge her six-year run as a late-night talk show host.
• This is fantastic — “The Top 19 Questions Trans* People Get Asked.” Mercifully it’s written by a trans* writer who knows what she’s talking about, which wasn’t really the case with Slate’s occasionally-cringeworthy guide to gender identities.
• I love this list of hilariously bad sex tips from lad mags and pickup artists. (Well, the tips themselves are disturbing, but the commentary is great.)
  
• How “You get what you put out” encourages victim blaming. Dead on.
• The Atlantic‘s Julie Beck talks to Kim Murphy, author of  I Had Rather Die: Rape in the Civil War, about rapes during wartime and how it was particularly difficult for black women to accuse rapists during the Civil War.
• Six women speak out in Cosmo about their terrifying and infuriating encounters with abortion clinic protesters.
• Tracy Clark-Flory on doxxing and saying women are asking for it if they take even mildly suggestive pictures.
• Emily Bazelon on how we shouldn’t tiptoe around the word “rape” in cases where someone was raped, because using euphemisms like “sexual assault” and “molestation” make it seem less serious.