This Week in Misogyny is All About the Misandry (Ironic or Otherwise)

We’re going to mix things up this week and start with some good news. Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of awfulness to get through after that! Seriously, so many terrible people. I’m sorry. (As usual, trigger warnings for pretty much everything apply.)

Maryam Mirzakhani just won the Fields Medal in Mathematics! She’s the first woman to do so since the award was founded in 1936. Yay!!

Two girls are playing in the Little League World Series this year. Mo’Ne Davis and Emma March, y’all are fucking badass!

California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez has introduced a bill that would give parents on welfare $80 per month to help cover the cost of diapers.

In September, the CBS Sports Network will be launching a new weekly sports talk show starring women and with women running the show behind the scenes. It’ll be the first all-female cast of a show about sports; fingers crossed they don’t fuck it up.

In what the fuck?!? news, women who want to become teachers in Sao Paolo, Brazil have to either prove that they’re virgins or get a Pap smear to prove that they’re healthy enough to teach. (Men also have to undergo prostate exams, but not until age 40.)

The Jezebel team finally got so fed up with Gawker Media’s unwillingness to address the trolls who were leaving rape gifs in the comments of posts that they finally called them out publicly. Which prompted the trolls to spread their bullshit to the other sites in the Gawker empire, but at least the public shaming worked and they’re working on a solution. (And on behalf of everyone here at PMag, THANK YOU for not pulling that shit here.)

Terrible people of the week!

• Wisconsin State Sen. Glenn Grothman, for saying that women shouldn’t be paid the same as men because we don’t care about money as much, trying to pass a bill allowing the parents or in-laws of an adult woman to stop her from having an abortion, and holds all sorts of other charming racist, homophobic, and anti-worker beliefs. Oh, and he just won the Republican nomination for Congress.
• Rand Paul, for saying that civilization will collapse unless we grant personhood rights to the “unborn.”
• Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver, for severely beating his ex-girlfriend and a friend who was at her house when he showed up uninvited, and tried to claim it was in self-defense even though he’s a fucking cage fighter and participated in the Ultimate Fighting Championship until they kicked him out in 2008.
• Judge Mark Fuller of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, who was arrested on misdemeanor battery charges after assaulting his wife (and this isn’t the first time he’s been accused of domestic violence).
• Associate Pastor Jeff Beltz of the Hydesville Community Church in California, who was arrested for hitting his wife so hard that he broke her glasses.
• Trooper Eric Roberts of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, who’s being investigated for raping a woman during a traffic stop in July.
• The unnamed 17-year-old who was arrested for raping and murdering a 6-year-old girl in Washington.
• The Virginia man who shot his 16-year-old daughter as she tried to sneak into the house after curfew (and then crashed the car while trying to rush her to the hospital after he realized she wasn’t actually a burglar).
• Highway of Holiness Church in Oklahoma City, for allowing a registered sex offender (who was once the church’s youth pastor) to attend a children’s event because “God can change people.”
• Massey University in New Zealand, whose response to a student’s rape was to tell other students to wear running shoes and carry a rape whistle and flashlight, which of course is a form of victim-blaming and doesn’t address the people who commit rapes.
• The California parents who freaked out that their kids’ sex ed textbook was pornography because it actually taught them about sex; they forced the school to pull it even though the health teachers unanimously decided Your Health Today was the best resource from their available options.
• OnePlus, a startup that just launched its first cellphone in a very limited initial quantity, for having a “Ladies First” contest to choose the first people to get the phone by asking women to draw their logo on their bodies and have men vote for their favorite pics.
• The 63 Texas Republicans who signed a legal brief stating that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalizing polygamy, incest, and marrying children.
• Richard Woods, the Republican nominee for state school superintendent in Georgia, for joking about Democrats “dust[ing] off their copies of their VHS copies of The Color Purple” in order to try to win votes. And yes, his Democratic opponent, Valarie Wilson, is a black woman.
• Keith Ablow, for calling Michelle Obama fat and accusing her of eating too many french fries instead of “kale and carrots.” (Apologies for the fat-shaming of Ablow at the link, but the irony, it hurts.)
• Dear Abby, for telling a woman who was upset that her mother told her she shouldn’t wear a bikini around her family because her body made them “uncomfortable” that she should listen to her mom and by the way, go see a doctor about “your weight problem.”
• The W.W. Bridal Boutique in Bloomsburg, PA, for refusing to sell gowns to brides in same-sex couples. (And Pennsylvania, for making it perfectly legal for them to do so.)
• The Joe Rents & Contractor Supply store in Fargo, ND, for advertising an “ex-wife sale” with discounts on duct tape, chainsaws, and shovels.
• The catcallers who punched a man unconscious when he told them to stop harassing women on the street in Philadelphia. (And people wonder why women rarely speak up in the moment. Fuck’s sake.)
• The horrible fuckers who were so cruel to Zelda Williams in the wake of her father’s death that she had to quit using social media.
• Kevin Burke, who blamed Robin William’s depression and addiction on the fact that his girlfriend had an abortion back in the 1970s. Even though Williams was pro-choice.
• The Associated Press, for choosing to announce the conviction of Renisha McBride’s murderer with the following tweet. (They deleted the original tweet and replaced it with a reworded announcement, but screencaps are forever!)

Massive WTFs at Amanda Hess, who I usually like, for arguing that we need to leave the Steubenville rapists alone because statistically speaking, they probably won’t rape anyone else. (Or at least, they won’t get caught, since most rapes aren’t reported and those that are rarely get prosecuted, so you can’t assume that only those juvenile offenders who are re-arrested are repeat offenders.)

Annoyed eyerolls at TIME Digital Operations Editor Sarah Begley, who’s really upset about ironic misandry setting back the feminist movement. Oy fucking vei.

Glare and side-eye at Lucy director Luc Besson, who thinks it’s awesome that Scarlett Johansson “is totally gorgeous… But what is amazing about her is she absolutely never plays with that [beauty]. Scarlett doesn’t care. It’s about the part.” Yet another man telling us that our value is in our looks, but only if we don’t care about our looks.

(Apologies for the lack of the usual recommended reading list; I’m sick. I’ll try to have it for you early next week.)