Club Jacobin

An escalating wave of violent crime in Santa Cruz reached a higher level today with the fatal shooting of two SCPD cops — the first ever to die “in the line of duty” as they say — and one other man.

I notice that this incident began as a domestic violence call. Come to think of it, as far as I know all of the perpetrators of the recent robberies, shootings, sexual assaults and attempted sexual assaults have been male. I haven’t seen media discussions of toxic violent masculinity though.

I also can’t help remembering how two of my friends in Santa Cruz who worked in anti-DV programs were laid off in one round of Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts. Did Jerry Brown restore any of that money? My friends certainly never got re-hired.

I don’t have any real conclusions here, just some stray observations while the tide of American barbarism rises around us.

obama-2012:

clubjacobin:

renacc:

clubjacobin:

That’s the headline AP gave this article, but the anodyne phrase ‘other sex crimes’ really means serial rape of subordinate soldiers.

If this is how a US Army general acts towards soldiers from his own country, how do you think US soldiers are behaving towards women from the country they are occupying?

Ending all US military actions abroad and disbanding the armed forces would not put a stop to rape and male domination, but it would be a good step in the right direction.

This statement disgusts me.  Implying that because one man took part in an extremely horrific act does NOT mean that everyone else in the same field of work does the same.  That’s just as ridiculous as saying that all Catholic priests are serial child molesters or that all men with beards or all women that wear skinny red dresses are rapers.  Get a grip, dude. 

If you think this is a story about just one dude then you haven’t been paying attention. Thousands of women in the US military are raped by male soldiers from their own army every year. Kate Weber, a survivor of one of these rapes who still suffers PTSD as a result, describes it as an epidemic. Do you think that those thousands of men and their brothers in arms show more restraint when it comes to women from the countries they’re occupying? That the despicable violent and misogynist culture of this military has no relationship to the string of massacres and other crimes from Haditha to Kandahar?

It’s amazing the lengths that some people will go to in order to avoid drawing unpleasant conclusions about the systems of imperialism and patriarchy and the institutions that enact them.

fyi cccp raped *millions* agreeing w/ post is by proxy disagreeing w/ stalin and that is un-cool

Yeah, that is true as I think most people know? I’ve never been someone to put Stalin or the Stalin-era USSR on a pedestal. Although the defensive war against German invasion and the resulting war to utterly annihilate Naziism were overall justified, some attendant events such as the widespread rape of German women did occur and even in that overall context they are great crimes which indict the failures of the Soviet Union at a number of levels, from the individual to the social and over several decades of socialist construction.

That said, it is kind of utterly different than what we’re talking about with the US. To give just a couple reasons: the Soviet Union did not unleash its army against Germany; rather they were invaded at the cost of millions and millions of deaths, and had the choice of fighting back (with the predictable attendant evils that would follow) or not to do so, which would have spelled genocide of another order of magnitude and long-term consolidation of a Nazi empire as the preeminent world power.

Compare to the United States, which chose to invade Iraq and Afghanistan (to pick just a couple recent examples) and unleash its thugs on the people of those countries in order to further its own economic and state interests.

Also, in 1941 the Soviet Union had had all of about 20 years of opportunity to work on eliminating patriarchy (while also rebuilding from civil war and invasion, and learning how to construct socialism with basically no experience to draw on.) That doesn’t excuse rape and misogyny among Soviet men, but it is quite different from the situation in the United States which has had two hundred years and the benefits of all the world’s resources to construct the kind of society that it wants. The practices of the US military today indict US society to a totally different degree than did the actions of Soviet soldiers during World War II.

(via t-u-r-k-e-y)

renacc:

clubjacobin:

That’s the headline AP gave this article, but the anodyne phrase ‘other sex crimes’ really means serial rape of subordinate soldiers.

If this is how a US Army general acts towards soldiers from his own country, how do you think US soldiers are behaving towards women from the country they are occupying?

Ending all US military actions abroad and disbanding the armed forces would not put a stop to rape and male domination, but it would be a good step in the right direction.

This statement disgusts me.  Implying that because one man took part in an extremely horrific act does NOT mean that everyone else in the same field of work does the same.  That’s just as ridiculous as saying that all Catholic priests are serial child molesters or that all men with beards or all women that wear skinny red dresses are rapers.  Get a grip, dude. 

If you think this is a story about just one dude then you haven’t been paying attention. Thousands of women in the US military are raped by male soldiers from their own army every year. Kate Weber, a survivor of one of these rapes who still suffers PTSD as a result, describes it as an epidemic. Do you think that those thousands of men and their brothers in arms show more restraint when it comes to women from the countries they’re occupying? That the despicable violent and misogynist culture of this military has no relationship to the string of massacres and other crimes from Haditha to Kandahar?

It’s amazing the lengths that some people will go to in order to avoid drawing unpleasant conclusions about the systems of imperialism and patriarchy and the institutions that enact them.

teenage-trash:

candlesandair:

victim-of-foolish-pride:

princebel:

redheaded-dancer-x:

lexinicole-xoxo:

writergirl1029:

heronwoods:

sassy-asami:

thatonechick42:

perfectwrongturn:

thingswilllookup:

I saw this and it broke my heart.. 

I don’t really have words for this. This hurt to the core of my being.

My heart just sank.

This makes me so sad.

it took me two reads to understand this and then I burst into tears.

…Why do people suck?

What the fuck …..

It took me two seconds to understand this. I will never not reblog this. Everyone should do the same.

… This makes me want to turn into an angry amazon and cut off some penises. Wouldn’t accomplish anything, I’m aware. But it would make me feel like some stupid people might not reproduce.

I saw a post about mothers crying that had over six million notes. Why the fuck doesn’t this have just as many? One of my best friends was raped. He told her that she was gay because she hadn’t had a guy fuck her properly. There’s no excuse for rape, and there’s no excuse for people who say this shit about/to rape victims.

I may be a guy, but I’m a feminist. Feminism isn’t just about supporting women. It’s about supporting equality — no matter what race, religion, sexuality, or gender you are. No woman should be talked down to like this. But the saddest thing about rape? It’s never seen as a tragedy to the general public. There’s always some sort of justification for rape, and it’s sickening.

And I know I include rape in my role plays, but I do it because I don’t romanticize it. I know what rape is. It’s a filthy, disgusting, power-hungry thing. It’s not sexy. It never has been, and it never will be.

So fuck anyone who supports rape, and fuck anyone who made a comment like this to any man or woman. No one should be thankful for this shit. No one.

It disgusts me that this has even been said, and that this doesn’t have more notes.

god bless her soul.

(via melancholynecrokiss)

manasobject:

if this image was made today I wonder whether or not prostitution would be included as one of the tentacles of capitalism

Excellent question, although sadly we know that for most left groups the answer is no. Apparently at some point in the last hundred years prostitution changed from am institution to exploit and degrade women into something empowering that must be supported.

(Source: clubjacobin)

Alain Badiou (via theantihumanist)

(via naazeethesecond-deactivated2012)

They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work.

They call it frigidity. We call it absenteeism.

Every miscarriage is a work accident.

Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both working conditions…but homosexuality is workers’ control of production, not the end of work.

More smiles? More money. Nothing will be so powerful in destroying the healing virtues of a smile.

Neuroses, suicides, desexualization: occupational diseases of the housewife.

manasobject:

this is White Feminism: white feminists run naked through Muslim-majority neighborhood

deafmuslimpunx:

Dear white feminists: fuck you very much for disrespecting Muslims and for ignoring Muslim Feminists while trying to shove your so-called “modern” western ideals down Muslims’ throats. Muslim feminists exist, too, and when you fake-ass white feminists pull shit like this toward our people, you are the reason why so many of our people are distrustful of the Feminist ideaology.

White feminists. I can’t even. Someone on Twitter accurately described this as “COLONIAL FEMINISM.” yep, sounds about right.

femen is a fuckin joke 

Ugh. I like an action with some element of spectacle as much as anyone, but there still has to be a strategy and a purpose behind it. If your action will shock, it should shock the right people. If it’s going to inspire or challenge people then it should inspire or challenge the right people.

If anyone can explain how this act will contribute to the struggle of Muslim women in France against patriarchy I’m all ears, but from here it sure does look an awful lot like “colonial feminism.”

naazee:

violentopinions:

socialistictendencies:

gigthesilentchief:

socialistictendencies:

communismkills:

Can a “trannyqueen” do that?

One day you’re going to get wrecked for saying this shit to someone’s face, and it’ll be one of the universe’s better days.

“woo yeah someone said something I don’t like I hope they get beaten the fuck up”

tumblr you need help

Let’s defend the asshole that wants to spew vitriol because someone said they’ll suffer consequences for actively participating in acts that get people killed.

tumblr you need help

Y’know what? No. I do want CK to have her ass handed to her by someone one day. Preferably by someone she actively oppresses, but I won’t bat an eyelash if it isn’t.

She’s gone on long enough without consequences. She’s long overdue. 

Male leftists being misogynists again 

wishing violence on a woman is never okay

That is such a simple baseline and yet we fuck up at it again and again.

(via naazee-deactivated20120915)

catladyinwaiting:

inspired by other true stories of street harassment, here’s (of what i can remember) a few things that have been shouted at me while biking:

• hey baby
• move it
• pedal faster!
• wanna race?
• think you can keep up with me?
• why you pedaling so fast, baby?
• damn, girl
• nice ass
• work it baby
• fucking cyclist
• ugly faggot
• i hope you die, fag
• why don’t you smile?
• you should smile
• it’s a nice day, baby, smile
• i said hi, baby
• won’t you say hi
• give me a lift?
• where you going?
• I SAID WHERE YOU GOING?
• fuck you, bitch
• show me your tits
• get off the road, bitch.

i can’t remember anymore. it’s not fun to remember, either.

this is why i wear headphones while biking. sure, it’s dangerous. but now i can pretend i can’t hear these guys. 

(the aggressive smile-demanders are, in my opinion, the worst. i’m very obviously female, so the “ugly fag” comments were from the wintertime, when i wear coats, and apparently appear to the average frat-boy-on-a-frat-house-balcony to be a gay man, whereas in the summer, these same dudes probably yelled “show me your tits!” at me.)

Things that were shouted at me during seven years of daily biking to and from campus:

Fuck patriarchy.