This Week in Misogyny Has a Black Belt in Gender Judo

Oh, what a shock, Congress is being useless once again when it comes to securing rights for women. And let’s all direct our middle fingers in the general direction of the Women Against Feminism Tumblr. Sigh. At least Thor’s a lady now? I’ll take whatever good news I can get. (As usual, trigger warnings for pretty much everything apply.)

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists endorsed the Protect Women’s Health From Corporate Interference Act which would have overridden the legal loophole that the Hobby Lobby case exploited. Unfortunately, it’s already been blocked in the Senate. Motherfuckers.

Another proposed bill that won’t go anywhere is the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would prevent states from enforcing regulations on abortion clinics that don’t also apply to other similar clinics. During a Senate committee meeting this week, several anti-choice witnesses’ testimony included claims that have been debunked or otherwise found to be fraudulent and untrue.

An estimated 20 to 29 women and several men were killed in a militant raid on a suspected brothel in Iraq.

Pope Francis said that an estimated 2% the of Catholic clergy are pedophiles, which works out to about 8,000 priests, bishops, and cardinals worldwide.

Good news! The EEOC has passed new rules to strengthen protections for pregnant workers.

Terrible people of the week

• Republican Representatives Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachmann, and Rich Nugent, for drawing weird lines between refugee kids and rapists.
• George Fox University, for refusing to put a transgender student in a men’s dorm on religious grounds.
• Hobby Lobby, for insisting that a transgender employee has to use the men’s restroom since she hasn’t undergone gender confirmation surgery.
• Wicked Campervans, an Australian company that rents out vans painted with hideously offensive slogans like “In every princess, there’s a little slut who wants to try it just once.”
• Charles Payne, for wearing cufflinks showing a caveman dragging a woman by her hair when he made an appearance on Fox News’ Outnumbered.
• Senatorial candidate Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO), who said that his opponent’s attacks on his hardline anti-abortion views are just a distraction because voters aren’t really concerned about that issue right now.
• Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), who said that politicians need to “bring [discussions] down to a woman’s level” because we can’t understand things as well as men can unless you draw a parallel to domestic life.
• Scott Bollig, who added a crushed mifepristone pill to his pregnant girlfriend’s pancakes to induce a miscarriage; he’s been charged with first-degree murder.
• Instagram strikes again; they took down a teen’s #bodylove selfie for violating their nudity rule even though she’s wearing just as much as all the skinny girls posting on that hashtag.
• “Women Against Feminism” who think we’re all whiny man-haters.
• This dude, and everyone who thinks he’s an awesome dad for threatening to kill his daughter’s boyfriend.
• These books.

Boys are brilliant, girls are beautiful. I see, I see. @EverydaySexism @LetToysBeToys pic.twitter.com/j9NnzXGnNk

— Leopard (@CratesNRibbons) July 14, 2014

High fives to Emily Dawson, who has filed a complaint that her high school is violating Alberta law by requiring students to sit through a slut-shaming, anti-LGBTQ abstinence-only sex ed programming order to pass one of the classes required for graduation. The school is reconsidering their curriculum and looking for new speakers.

More high fives to 14-year-old Carleigh O’Connor, who upon learning that someone had painted graffiti mocking her ass decided to take a picture with it show that she’s proud of her body.

Study Break!

• So, that study that told you to change your Facebook profile picture because people will think you’re unattractive and incompetent if you have a sexy pic? Massively flawed. Use whatever picture you want.
• Also, people are making a big deal about the studies claiming that women who looked at a picture of a woman dressed in red perceived her as “actively advertising” herself for sex and less trustworthy around men than the same woman in a white or green outfit. The study’s behind a paywall and the abstract doesn’t provide any hard numbers, but I have sneaky friends and the effect isn’t nearly as big as the blogosphere would have you think.
• Last year’s National Health Interview Survey finally starting asking respondents about their sexual orientation, which allowed them to learn more about the physical and mental health obstacles unique to the LGB community (they didn’t ask if people were transgender). However, the number of people who self-identified as LGB was lower than other studies have found, so the results may be somewhat skewed by people who didn’t want to answer honestly.
• Bitch Magazine rounds up seven studies that prove that mansplaining is real.

Cool news from the comics world! Marvel announced this week that in upcoming issues, Thor is a woman and Captain America is black. We also have casting news from Sony’s TV series Powers; the female lead will be played by Susan Heyward even though in the original comics Deena Pilgrim was white.

None of the season five episodes of Game of Thrones will be directed by a woman, but at least Alex “that wasn’t really a rape scene between Jaime and Cersei” Graves won’t be back.

Recommended Reading

• The New York Times on rape allegations that were seriously mishandled at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
• Though of course, we shouldn’t forget that rape is a problem elsewhere, especially among people who are unlikely to go to college, and when colleges handle things internally with no police involvement, rapists generally don’t have any sort of official record that they ever did anything wrong.
• On the fundamental attribution error that leads us to think some people (read, poor people and minorities) are terrible parents when they let their kids play alone outside or make other decisions that we wouldn’t blink an eye at if other (affluent, white) people did them. Or at the very least, we’d attribute it to a bad decision, not a fundamental character flaw.
• Why men should stop calling women crazy. (Not much new here, honestly, but I like the point he makes about how if a woman released an album like Robin Thicke’s Paula, she’d be called “crazy,” not “creepy.”)
• Another burlesque dancer was fired from her day job (and evicted, since she managed an apartment complex and received free housing as part of her compensation) after her bosses found out about her stage work.
• On the “gender judo” balancing act women have to do to stand up for themselves and their accomplishments without being seen as “cocky.”
• I wish fixing the gender wage gap was as simple as “pay women more money.”
• A 59-year-old woman on dumping her 55-year-old boyfriend because he told her she was too old to be sexy, but that she could try to “hide” her age if she really wanted him to have sex with her.
• Fat-shaming is wrong, and people should feel bad about trying to make other people feel bad about themselves (especially since it usually backfires, so they aren’t even being helpful assholes).
• Leighton Meester on why people hate her Of Mice and Men character and how it’s hard to hear the audience laugh at her death scene (which shouldn’t be funny).
• Where are the women in summer blockbusters like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes?
• Noah Berlatsky can STFU; Orange is the New Black doesn’t need to address men in prison.
• Men. Stop singing about women who (in your opinion) don’t know how beautiful they are.
• Colbie Caillat talks about her new song “Try,” which is a response to unfair beauty standards for women.