Men Really Are Out to Get Women

By Jacqueline S. Homan, author: Classism For Dimwits , Eyes of a Monster, and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

The assault on women’s health is not about cost, or religious freedom, or morality. It’s all about getting the women, no matter the cost — and the majority of men are OK with that. Silence is consent. So is indifference.

Men like Pennsylvania’s governor Tom Corbett who says that women should lie back and “just close their eyes” while being medically raped with mandatory ultrasounds as punishment for getting a legal medical procedure to end an unwanted medical condition, and the rest of the he-man woman-hating lawmakers’ brigade pushing these hate crimes masquerading as laws that amount to gender apartheid against women did not get voted into office by some fairy godmother.

And their supporters are no different than Ted Bundy or Gary Leon Ridgeway in their pathological hatred for women.

Sadly, most average, working class American men are really out to get women, too — they think there’s something in it for them. They identify with those who share skin color and gender and religion, even though they really won’t get a seat at the table in Alpha Dipshit Land either.

They think if they “get the women”, they will have a shot at the wealth and power the rich white guys have, and be able to uplift their miserable asses from white male working class “hell” — they’ll get ALL the good jobs and ensure their own seat in a hierarchy of unearned privileges while it’s to hell with us women who are nothing but “leeches on society.”

They think that by getting the women with “men’s rights” groups (and the misguided feminists supporting them), paying child support won’t be an issue because they can just grab custody of the babies they force women to bear, while paying NOTHING for their “recreational” sex. And forget about welfare — us women are just “leeches” for getting “their” tax dollars or their child support (which impinges on their “fun” money) for “doing nothing” while they “work hard” (yeah, because they’ve made sure WE got deprived of any chances, any human rights, any jobs, and any liberty never mind any happiness).

And they think that we’re the enemy solely because we’re women: we should be happy to starve and go without while we’re forced to bear their progeny with no other options in life whether we want to go through pregnancy and childbirth or not. We should smile sweetly and behave demurely while they make us beggars and doormats in our own country, die by age 40 from pregnancy/childbirth, and have no healthcare, no food, no decent housing, no liberty, no human rights, no jobs (how dare we expect the same opportunities and rights men are entitled to, after all!), and no alimony or child support. The idea that we deserve respect, human rights and basic personal dignity makes us “feminazis” and “man-haters.”

States like Alabama are already pulling out of TANF. So, what welfare for destitute, vulnerable pregnant women do you think will be paid out to all those forced births due to no access to contraception and abortion? What welfare for the children? The majority of men don’t care. This is ALL about “let’s get the women” — “how DARE these seductresses tempt us and then reject us, how dare they have sexual freedom, and how dare they get MY money just for having my baby when they should have kept their slutty legs closed.” If this is chivalry, you can shove it up your ass; I’d rather have justice.

After the high profile disappearance and murder of 8 months pregnant Laci Rocha Peterson on Christmas Eve in 2002 by her fertilizer salesman husband Scott Peterson — who was leading a double life and cheating on her with a series of unwitting dupes including his thin, blonde mistress (Amber Frey) — former president George W. Bush signed the Laci and Connor Law which ostensibly was to protect vulnerable pregnant women from abuse and murder by their partners and co-conceivers. Instead of protecting society’s most vulnerable women (pregnant ones), these laws are being specifically used to deliberately hurt women.

Fetal homicide laws cropped up in nearly every state. But in over 300 cases involving miscarriage, stillbirth as a result of harm against pregnant women, only one or two men were charged with two counts of murder under these laws. Meanwhile, several hundred women who suffered miscarriages or stillbirths were subjected to discriminatory legal and judicial abuse as they were charged and convicted of “feticide.” The latest known of these casualties (which are not being reported in our mainstream media and are only being covered by foreign news correspondents) in these anti-woman ideological “culture wars” was 15 yr old Rennie Gibbs of Mississippi who was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in July 2011 for the “crime” of having a stillbirth. Nobody cared whether or not the sex or the resultant pregnancy was consensual. The co-conceiver skated into oblivion, scot-free of any consequences for his actions in impregnating an underage girl without her consent — and thus committing assault through forced gestation against her will in a state with no abortion provider and no access to reliable contraception for vulnerable women on the receiving end of men’s orgasms.

As an aside, when Scott Peterson was finally apprehended and arrested for murdering his heavily pregnant wife and dumping her body in the bay, he was in possession of $15,000 in cash, four cell phones, a shitload of Viagra, and Mapquest directions to Amber Frey’s workplace. Evidence later produced in court showed that Scott Peterson didn’t want to become a father and that he added two pornographic channels to his cable TV service only a few days after Laci’s disappearance and murder.

Scott Peterson, like many other men who murder their pregnant partners, murdered Laci because she was pregnant and he wanted to be free to have sex with other women without any consequences. He admittedly resented the financial strain that Laci’s pregnancy was putting on his “lifestyle” of recreational sex as a playboy and con artist who peddled more bullshit to get in between women’s legs than the fertilizer company he worked for. On December 14^th 2002, ten days before his wife’s disappearance and murder, Scott Peterson attended a Christmas party with Amber Frey after which he had sex with her without using any protection. Meanwhile, his pregnant wife went to a friend’s Christmas party alone because Scott “had to work.”

When Laci’s disappearance splashed across the major news stations, her “devoted” widower played the heartsick spouse and expectant father. His shambolic performance could have won him an Oscar. What Scott Peterson had not told his mistress, a struggling single mother whose 20 month old daughter he doted on, was that he was already married and that his wife was due to have his son Connor any day. He did tell Amber, however, that he didn’t want kids of his own, and that her child would be enough for them as he talked of their wonderful future together. He discussed getting a vasectomy at great length with his mistress. Too bad he didn’t do that before he married Laci Rocha while having a string of affairs behind her back while keeping his marriage a secret from all of his other bed victims.

Most men are really delusional narcissists who think that women control them when in their warped minds they feel they have a divine right to control us; that we are oppressing men because they get horny and their brains go to shit at the very sight of a pretty woman — and that’s all our fault, too for “making men desire us.” They cannot make sense of that desire when they’re taught to hate us by every cultural more, every inch of our society’s social fabric that was founded on genocide and on a framework of hatred laced with biblical notions centered on gender inferiority, holding all women daring to challenge patriarchy and misogyny as evil.

They really think that their existence as men is meaningless if they can’t beat us, rape us, force us to get pregnant against our will, torture and murder us to keep our uppity asses in line, and that they will lose their manhood if women have the same human rights as they do because then they cannot get away with dominating, abusing, exploiting and controlling us. And they think that we women will in turn be lost forever without men as considerate partners instead of as tyrannical “masters” and “lords” because we’re violating the natural order of things if we have human rights to our own bodies (our bodies and lives “belong” to men as cheap, disposable possessions, don’t ya know?).

Several out-of-the-closet misogynists — Steven Patterson (a rabid woman-hater from America’s heartland married to a Philippine woman), Richie Roberts, John Latta (Sales manager at OC Nissan in Irvine, CA), Leland Williams, Jr. (a wealthy Christian author and speaker), Richard Mork (a conservative Mormon from Sacramento, CA), and Jeff Morris, a wealthy executive at Brenau who lives in Greensboro, NC whose profile picture shows him standing next to his Mercedes Benz in front of his McMansion (yeah, he’s really oppressed) —signed into USA Today with their Facebook accounts to post venomous anti-woman vitriol.

They were posting anti-woman hate speech under the article on Hillary Clinton speaking out about the oppression of women by extremists across the world. And they all actually said all that shit verbatim about women controlling men, women as evil temptresses, and women getting everything at poor little oppressed men’s expense — which justifies depriving women of our human rights. Yeah, because fighting for our basic human rights makes us “feminazis” — which is just like Hitler invading the East Bloc, right?

Only one or two men gave a tepid response in calling out these men’s misogyny, and the few women posting were cyberbullied and run off the site by all the anti-woman bigots. What does that say about how men really feel about their wives, girlfriends, mothers, daughters, nieces and sisters? What does that say about how cruel men really are, and how much they hate women while having the moxy to call their victims of oppression “man-haters?” Men have been showing us who they really are all along. Hello, wake up ladies!

For over three decades, Rush Limbaugh spewed misogyny and vitriolic hate speech (calling women “feminazis” and “welfare queens” and other choice pejoratives) over public airwaves. Nobody complained except a tiny handful of women — most women feared being called a “feminist” because that’s a bad thing in “free country” AmeriKKKa.

In the voice of “righteousness” Pat Robertson said, “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Even on progressive sites like Alternet, women cannot tell it like it really is without several “progressive” males jumping in to say, “that’s not fair, poor men this and poor men that”, trivializing and invalidating the real physical and psychological harm and oppression women are suffering. Everything is always all about the men, and never about the women — even among most Leftist men with a few very rare exceptions.

That male college professors are teaching Women’s Studies courses in colleges while paying far more attention and giving much more sympathy and activism support to the rights of misogynistic Muslim men in the Middle East than they do to the real deprivation of women’s human rights here and abroad says it all. Hezbollah and the Taliban have far more sympathizers and supporters in the human rights community than women and girls do.

War is immoral, except when it’s waged by men against women to preserve unearned male privilege with the deliberate intent to use sex and unwanted pregnancy to crush our spirits, our hopes and our dreams and destroy our bodies and cost us our lives by voting for misogynistic lawmakers committed to using fetuses instead of fists to injure, maim, or even kill women.

AmeriKKKa deserves the Scott Peterson Award for misogyny, and men who trivialize or minimize the deprivation of women’s human rights to have a say in what happens to our bodies are NOT women’s allies or friends. The only difference between America’s homegrown misogynists and the Taliban is 8,000 miles.

So why should women continue to sleep with the enemy, or vote for the enemy, support the “social justice” movements that will only benefit the enemy as they tell us that our human rights are so much less important than the “big picture”, or do business with the enemy to further enrich those who hate us, and hate our daughters?

The vast majority of men feel on a very visceral level that they have a divine right to subjugate, abuse, dominate, oppress, control, harm, maim, torture, socially and economically discard us, and even KILL us — by any means necessary.

You see, it’s our death-dealing vaginas to blame for their lost shot at immortality. This is what their religious doctrines say. Even the more enlightened and secular “progressive” men benefit from the unearned male privilege that their conservative brethren maintain through oppressing women. And they know it.

When the Occupy movement started, stories of rapes and sexual assaults at various camps leaked out. One survivor wrote in her Daily Kos diary of what she witnessed. The “facilitators” actually pressured the women who were raped into not going to the police, and “counseled” them to keep quiet about what happened — for the “greater good” of the movement and the need to keep “divisive, special interest” issues out of the discussion on social justice. Economic, social, civil and human rights for only half the population at the expense of the other half is no justice at all.

Few, if any, male social justice activists and journalists with access to the microphone and the media like Cenk Uygur, host and co-founder of the Internet and talk radio show Young Turks, and Christopher Hedges, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author of Death of the Liberal Class, have spoken out in defense of women’s human rights, other than to give some brief lip service but that’s about it. Women’s human rights have always been back-benched in every social justice movement in this country.

From Stokely Carmichael of the Black Panthers who said the only position for black women in the movement was “on their backs”, to the male leadership of Native American rights groups who climbed to fame and fortune while Indigenous women suffer in Third World poverty, and suffer the highest rates of murder and domestic violence, rape and unwanted pregnancies without any remedy at peril to their health and lives; to the white working class self-styled “socialists” and Leftists that blame everything on capitalism instead of on the cruel system of unearned male privilege as they deny misogyny, deny that there’s a War on Women, and trivialize the real harm to women as a result of being deprived of our basic human rights in a country by a male-dominated government that decided a 15 second old zygote and a religious corporation are “persons” but women are not.

Christopher Hedges, who chained himself to the White House fence in a publicized protest and act of civil disobedience over the war in Iraq and who spoke out about the fascist Christian Right, is noticeably silent in the face of injustice where women are the primary intended target of torture and suffering.

The one or two who timidly spoke out did so only about a quarter as vociferously against the War on Women as they have against the “1%”, the economy, and the war — even though they “love” women (they have wives and daughters, after all). Women have very few genuine allies and friends among men. That is fact; not hyperbole.

What many proudly misogynistic, selfish, narcissistic, sexually repressed, emotionally stunted psychos say on talk radio, prime time TV, during political campaign season, and post online in social media sites and in commentaries to news articles about the War on Women with very little opposition from the “good guys” loudly and boldly denouncing this legitimized misogyny reveals a lot.

My grandmother once taught me: When someone shows you who they really are, believe them.

All-male Congressional Birth Control Panels and Rush Limbaugh’s Non- Apology

By Jacqueline S. Homan, author of Classism for Dimwits and Divine Right

The right to freedom of religion is the right of an individual or group to practice their faith among themselves, but within limits. There are many religious practices that are not legal, moral or ethical that the 1^st Amendment does not protect: human sacrifice, ritual animal mutilation, and polygamy just to name a few. Just ask about how much the right to “freedom of religion” absolved polygamist human trafficker Warren Jeffs, leader of the FLDS, of his prison term. But I digress.

The right to “freedom of religion” is NOT a right to abrogate an entire identifiable group of people of their human rights, nor is it a right to enter the public/secular sphere by owning businesses, schools, hospitals, or social service agencies and through these vehicles, force or coerce all those who work for them (or who have no other choice for obtaining services) to follow their dogma and doctrines.

If Catholic hospitals only treated Catholic patients and only employed Catholic staff, that would be one thing. But they don’t. Their hospitals serve the public and employ members of the public of different faiths, and of no faith at all. At that point, a sectarian institution gives up its rights to coerce others into fowling its doctrine and religious teachings.

President Obama made a very generous compromise when he offered to have insurance companies pick up the tab for contraception (which can run as high as $100/mo) rather than ask the tax-exempt churches to do it. This is exactly within the letter and spirit of the 1^st Amendment of the US Constitution. And institutions that accept federal tax dollars are NOT exempt from public law, including laws regulating commerce.

According to the IRS, in order to qualify as a 501(3)(c) non-profit organization, churches and their affiliated charitable organizations MUST:

1. NOT use a substantial part of their money or activities to attempt to influence legislation.
2. NOT use their money and activities to intervene in political campaigns.
3. Maintain purposes and activities that are legal.
4. NOT violate fundamental laws and public policy.

And not one single Republican in Congress has been willing to call out the initial act — which was prior to Rush Limbaugh’s latest publicly aired verbal sewage against women — that Darrell “Car Thief” Issa (R-CA) refused to allow testimony from a single woman on the question of birth control. Any condemnation of Rush Limbaugh’s remarks must also reflect the fact that an all-male panel convened by Darrell Issa wouldn’t allow ANY testimony from the group of people who need and use contraception.

Every tiny gain women have made, we have had to fight to keep — often paying for it with our lives. It’s time to kick misogynists in AmeriKKKa where it hurts for once and for all, and not let them up even if they cry “uncle” because history has shown us that misogynists — like all other sociopaths — in every culture never give up and stop on their own volition. They have to be stopped.

Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Bishop Lori, the pope, Darrell Issa, Ron Paul and his Teabangelical son Rand “Head Stomp” Paul — all came into this world on the blood, pain, trauma and bodily sacrifice of a woman. Not one of them respects women as persons deserving of human rights. They talk about “fetal pain” but callously disregard the pain a woman suffers in childbirth, which sometimes causes a woman to go into shock, “stroke out”, or die from a massive heart attack.

Not one of them acknowledges the sanctity of women’s lives — that no woman or girl should be punished with the trauma, pain and disfigurement of forced childbirth at peril to her health, wellbeing, liberty and life for the “crime” of satisfying some male’s sexual “needs.” (Who does Rush Limbaugh and his like-minded male supremacist pigs in Congress think women on birth control are having sex with? Ourselves? Each other?)

Rush Limbaugh’s scripted “apology”, which really was no apology at all, is not good enough considering all the harm and damage his publicly broadcasted venomous, misogynistic spleen these past 30 years has caused for women due to his influence on public policy (as admitted by some rich white male Congressmen) — all of which helped to promote and perpetuate our “rape culture.”

To dismiss Rush Limbaugh as “only an entertainer” is like calling dog shit “chocolate candy.” And what sort of people seek to continue the harm and injustice and deprivation of human rights against women for “entertainment” anyway? What message does that send to women and girls in this society?

If the potential human life of a fetus is more important and valuable than that of a sentient woman or girl because the fetus is “human”, then what the hell is the woman? Obviously, she’s not human or there would be more care for her wellbeing. That’s the same logic that legitimized the enslavement of African-Americans and kept them from enjoying the same human rights as white males.

Women who survive the ordeal of pregnancy and childbirth are often stuck with varying degrees of permanent damage to their bodies that diminish their quality of life. For this, women are not compensated. And now, it seems that women are going to be forced to endure this against our will. And no, a “healthy baby” does not make up for that. A “prize”, no matter how wonderful, does not cure physical and psychological trauma in any situation. We don’t tell a man who lost his legs that he should be grateful he didn’t lose his arms; It’s no different for women who have suffered trauma from childbirth — especially if the pregnancy wasn’t wanted in the first place.

No woman is obligated to give birth just because she had sex. To say otherwise is cruel, narcissistic and sadistic. Pregnancy is not a “gift” when it’s forced. The experiences of pregnancy/childbirth and the baby are separate things. The attitude that a healthy baby makes women forget all about the pain, trauma and lasting physical damage from their pregnancy and birth experience is bullshit. Women carry that experience with them for life. Fatalism and stoicism are not the same as “getting over it.”

The idea that fetal pain matters but the pain, trauma and disfigurement women are expected to suffer in childbirth as a mandatory punishment for having sex shows just how easily the UN Convention of Torture can be subverted when it’s women being targeted for sexual and reproductive torture.

Denying women the human right to have control over what happens to our bodies by imposing a sexual double standard in denying us access to reliable contraception and abortion, and denying women adequate pain relief during childbirth without a scientifically valid reason (and there really isn’t any) while making sure Viagra and penis stents are legal and available for every selfish jerk that wants to get it up so he can masturbate in some woman’s body without any concern for what his orgasm may cost her — is state-sponsored gender-specific torture and a crime against humanity.

The legal language in Article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment spells out the definition of torture. This was ratified by the US Senate in 1994. Torture is the intentional infliction of severe mental or physical pain or suffering by, or with the consent of, state authorities for a specific purpose. Methods of torture include rape, sexual assault, and forced childbirth.

In 2009, 49% of all surveyed Americans said that the use of torture under certain circumstances is “often” or “sometimes” justified while 85% of Europeans oppose it. In 2007, evangelical pastor and former Nixon administration staffer Chuck Colson wrote that torture might be “inconsistent with the Christian understanding of human dignity but as with all moral obligations, there may be circumstances for exception.”

No matter how “pro-lifers”, social conservatives, and Christians want to spin it, the devastating effects and injuries of torture cannot be bifurcated by drawing some imaginary line between “faith” and political issues — a line they cross at their convenience in the name of “religious freedom.”

In 2006, the same US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) that is today in 2012 promoting the sexual and reproductive torture of forced pregnancy and childbirth against an entire identifiable group of people (women), asserted that policies permitting torture and inhumane treatment are “shocking and morally intolerable.” The USCCB also said, “Let America abolish torture now — without exceptions.”

Apparently, abolishing torture “without exceptions” doesn’t apply to women. This same powerful Vatican lobby group shamelessly promotes the torture of women and girls with forced childbirth, even at peril to our health and lives, by influencing Congress and shaping public policy to deprive women of access to contraceptives and abortion — even in cases of rape or where pregnancy will kill a woman. That’s what “conscience clause” laws and “fetal personhood” laws being pushed by Christians and their misogynistic hangers-on imposes: Torture and chattel enslavement of women, no matter the harm and cost to us.

Every society teaches its members what they need to have or do in order to belong. And being able to belong, to fit in, to be socially accepted and loved, ranks in importance of human needs right alongside food and water, according to human development specialist Abraham Maslow. In our society, a woman’s “worthiness” for everything from social acceptance to a good job to love and commitment is solely based on her ability to conform to men’s shallow, superficial and unrealistic standards of physical attractiveness which is very unforgiving of the realities of aging, genetics, metabolism problems, poverty, and the ravages and rigors of childbearing.

For women who have abandonment issues, especially those who were the deserted result of an unwanted pregnancy, or who lived through their parents’ divorce, the risk of being discarded by your “Prince Charming” over shallow, superficial reasons makes the traditional gender role of unpaid housewife and motherhood so not worth it. Women who fail to get their pre-pregnancy bodies back, despite making superhuman efforts to do so, are told by everybody else that “having a baby is no excuse for letting yourself go.”

Women suffering from abandonment issues are already emotionally fragile and insecure enough as it is and don’t need any more hate dumped on them as gratuity for sacrificing their bodies, careers, educations and risking their health and lives by providing compulsory gestational service for some selfish prick’s genetic material. And a cheap Hallmark card, a box of chocolates, and a bouquet of flowers once a year on Mother’s Day (if you’re lucky) doesn’t make up for all that.

Now, think about misogyny and sexism as a sacrosanct religious belief, as “entertainment”, and as public policy and what message that sends in our society about where women and girls belong: in the cemetery by age 45 after being physically worn out by endless cycles of pregnancy and childbirth from menarche to menopause (if we make it) — right about the time we women lose our ornamental value to men, and to a male-centric society that worships youth and fitness (read: thin, tight bodies with perky breasts) and that marginalizes and punishes women who can’t look 20 at age 40, or whose bodies don’t “snap right back” after taking a beating from pregnancy and giving birth, often with permanent consequences that are far more severe than mere aesthetic side effects.

A trip to any old country cemetery will quickly verify the multitude of women’s premature deaths as casualties from men’s “right” to an orgasm at women’s expense.